Overtime

The silence in the office was thick, broken only by the low hum of the air conditioning.

Mark was the last soul in the building. It was 1:12 AM when he finally packed his bag, the blue light of his monitor still burned into his retinas. He walked toward the elevators, his footsteps echoing against the polished marble.

The doors opened with a heavy, metallic sigh. Mark stepped inside and pressed 1.

The elevator began its descent, a smooth, gravity-defying pull.

Floor 13

A violent jolt threw Mark against the steel wall. The elevator stopped.

The digital display above the door flickered, then settled on a blood-red number:

13

Mark’s heart hammered against his ribs. The building only had twelve floors. Between twelve and the lobby, there was nothing but solid structural concrete.

The doors slid open—slowly, as if hesitant to reveal what lay beyond.

Outside was not the lobby. It was a corridor draped in absolute, suffocating darkness. No emergency lights, no exit signs. Just a long hall that smelled of old machine oil and damp earth.

Then, a sound.

Thud. Drag. Thud.

Something was moving in the dark. It wasn't the sound of an animal. It was the sound of something heavy being pulled across the floor.

The Doppelganger

Mark frantically hammered the Close Door button.

"Come on, come on!" he hissed, the plastic button clicking uselessly under his thumb.

The shape emerged into the faint light of the elevator. It was a man. He wore the same white shirt as Mark, the same blue tie, the same worn leather belt. But the figure moved wrong. Its joints snapped with the sound of breaking dry wood. Its shoulders were lopsided, its gait a grotesque parody of a human walk.

As it reached the edge of the light, the figure looked up.

Mark felt a cold void open in his stomach. The face was his own, but the eyes were gone—replaced by two pits of shimmering black ink. The creature’s jaw unhinged, stretching down toward its chest in a silent, jagged scream.

The Swap

The doors slammed shut just as a grey, elongated hand reached for the gap.

The elevator shrieked as it shot back down. When the doors finally opened on the ground floor, Mark collapsed into the cool night air. He ran past the revolving doors, not stopping until he reached the safety of a streetlamp.

Trembling, he pulled out his phone to call for help.

A notification was waiting on his screen: New Photo Synced to Cloud.

It was a candid shot taken by the elevator’s security sensor at 01:13 AM. The photo showed the interior of the elevator just as the doors were closing.

The elevator was empty.

Mark looked at his reflection in the dark glass of his phone screen. Behind his eyes, a flicker of black ink began to spread. Across the street, in the dark window of the office building, a man who looked exactly like him was pounding on the glass from the inside of the 13th floor, his screams swallowed by the night.