The corridor stretched on with the kind of sterile emptiness only hospitals could achieve — a place where hope came to die quietly behind beige walls and flickering lights. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and something sweeter, like wilted flowers left too long in a vase.
Somewhere far off, a heart monitor beeped in a slow, irregular rhythm; even the machines were tired of their own persistence. A nurse's shoes squeaked against the floor in the distance, then faded, swallowed by the building's cavernous silence.
Hospitals always had this uncanny stillness at night — a hush that felt less like peace and more like the building holding its breath. I'd walked corridors like this before, though under today's moonlight it was for different circumstances.
My footsteps echoed too loudly. Too eagerly.
They bounced off corners that should have been empty but felt occupied.
By something patient.
Something unseen.
Possibly the ghost of the Hispanic woman whose body I'd left drifting through the city's most grotesque sewage artery. Although I didn't believe in ghosts, of course. Superstition was for people who needed the universe to feel personal.
But every so often, in moments like this, I felt a prickle at the back of my wrinkled neck — the faint suggestion of being observed by something that didn't breathe. Ridiculous.
If the dead could follow me, I'd have needed a much larger corridor.
Nevertheless, I was never one to display my grotesque artistic freedom to the world — it left evidence, evidence in its highest and most vulgar form of self‑promotion.
My work, if one insists on calling it that, was meant to be efficient, discreet, and entirely unremarkable to the untrained eye. No theatrics. No signatures. No dramatic staging for the newspapers to salivate over. If someone notices your handiwork, you've already made your first mistake.
However, the city's sewage system was an underworld unto itself — a sluggish procession of industrial effluvia and biological despair, a labyrinth of pipes and culverts where civilisation's refuse congealed into something almost sentient. A realm of perpetual dampness and chemical rot, neglected by the inhabitants above who preferred to pretend their filth simply evaporated rather than travelled through these subterranean tunnels like a diseased bloodstream. In short, nobody would notice the mangled corpse.
Maybe it was the air conditioning making that useless humming.
Most people found the noise irritating.
I found it comforting. Predictable.
Machines rarely lied.
People, on the other hand, were a different species entirely.
Even that steady mechanical buzz struggled to drown out the hollow ache gnawing at my stomach. Hunger was an old acquaintance — one I usually ignored — but tonight it insisted on being dramatic.
I rarely grew hungry.
Rarer still did I stoop to hospital vending machines.
But here I was, extending a finger toward the glowing rectangle of processed carbohydrates.
A faint, phantom sensation brushed across my palms — the memory of something warm, metallic, and stubborn to wash off.
Twenty‑four hours had passed, yet the mind clung to details the sink refused to acknowledge.
I pushed the thought aside.
Dwelling on the past was for sentimentalists and detectives.
Six or seven decades ago, I wouldn't have wasted a second on theatrics like this.
Age, however, has a way of dulling the body while sharpening the mind — a trade my old folks loved to boast about as "wisdom."
They're all six feet under now, without a legacy worth engraving on a stone.
I fed the machine a coin.
It swallowed it greedily.
Nothing dropped.
I fed it a second coin.
Still nothing.
I stared at the empty slot.
Interesting.
Of all nights, why did capitalism choose now to betray me?
It reminded me of a small disagreement I once had with a locksmith.
A cheerful man with a moustache far too optimistic for his profession.
He'd promised a "guaranteed thirty‑minute service," then arrived two hours late and charged me triple for the privilege.
I paid, of course. I'm nothing if not civil.
But later that evening, his entire workshop mysteriously lost power, several key machines jammed beyond repair, and his prized display of antique padlocks ended up scattered across the pavement like metallic breadcrumbs leading nowhere.
The local newspapers headlined it as vandalism.
Inwardly, I dubbed it a gentle reminder that punctuality is a virtue.
I pressed the button.
Nothing.
Pressed harder.
The button emitted a weak, defeated click — the sound of something that had accepted its fate. Perhaps from my insistent fingering. Ha, pause?
I leaned in, examining the coin slot like a puzzle I'd solved a hundred times before.
Which was ironic, considering I'd solved far more complicated situations over the years — some involving far more screaming.
My most recent playmate had been a middle‑aged woman I'd followed for weeks.
Call it stalking if you must — I preferred "a one‑sided game of hide and seek."
However, this one was peculiar. She had dropped something. A slim paperback, its cover creased and its spine softened by too many rereads — the kind printed cheaply and sold even cheaper. The sort of book people carried around for comfort, escapism, or delusion.
The title was forgettable, but the protagonist was not.
His name was Han Jae-min — a boy born into poverty, raised in the cracks of society, and treated as though the world had already decided he wasn't worth the oxygen he consumed.
He grew up through discrimination and hardship before eventually being orphaned. How laughably sad.
Yet the story followed his rise: slow, painful, relentless.
Every chapter dragged him through another trial — corrupt officials, bad luck, powerful enemies — until he clawed his way upward with nothing but stubbornness and spite. A classic underdog narrative, the kind readers adored because it made them feel hopeful about their own miserable lives.
And, of course, every good underdog story needed a villain.
The novella's antagonist was a third‑rate, stereotypical bully: wealthy, arrogant, and destined to fall. A background character with too much money and too little sense. A man whose only narrative purpose was to be crushed under the protagonist's righteous ascent.
I remember scoffing at the predictability of it all.
Fiction loved its neat little moral arcs.
Real life was never so tidy
In contrast, though, unlike her uninteresting novel, I gained far more satisfaction from observing her instead. The entire pursuit — the anticipation, the quiet, the final stillness of simply watching someone who had no idea they were being watched — had been almost meditative. She redeemed herself for failing to capture my attention with her book by providing a far more engaging pastime with her life. Quite impressive, really, considering I was a geezer old enough to be her grandfather. Even at my age, some hobbies never lost their charm.
The vending machine stared back at me.
Blank.
Stubborn.
Uncooperative.
I gave it a small nudge.
A polite warning.
It didn't respond.
I nudged harder.
The machine creaked.
Good.
It understood pressure.
I tilted it further, applying the same controlled force I'd once used when pressing a blade against a certain woman's warm, tanned throat.
The machine rocked forward.
A little too far.
I froze.
It froze.
For a moment, we regarded each other — two stubborn entities locked in a silent standoff.
Then gravity made its decision.
The vending machine tipped toward me in slow motion, like a great, lumbering beast finally deciding to strike.
I remained perfectly still.
Running would've been sensible.
I've never been particularly fond of sensible.
Besides, I was far too exhausted to attempt anything so athletic. My legs felt like overcooked noodles, my stomach was gnawing at my spine, and my vision had begun doing that charming little vignette effect usually reserved for fainting Victorian women. Even if I'd wanted to run — which I didn't — the best I could've managed was an aggressive shuffle.
And frankly, after the week I'd had, collapsing under a vending machine felt almost peaceful.
A mercy, compared to the alternative: sprinting down a corridor like a malnourished ghoul while my joints staged a coup. No, if the universe wanted me flattened by a snack dispenser, I wasn't going to argue.
I was too tired to fight fate.
Too hungry to negotiate.
And far too old to pretend I still had the stamina to outrun anything heavier than a shopping trolley.
As the machine descended, I had time for a single, final thought — one that was neither fear, nor regret, nor even annoyance.
I hope no one sees this.
The machine hit me with a loud, twisted bang. Darkness enveloped my vision, blessing me with a brief silence that mentally prepared me to meet my new care home. Hell.
Then — light.
Not the harsh hospital kind.
Something warmer.
Softer.
Wrong.
I opened my eyes to a ceiling I didn't recognise. To an ambience so idyllic, I wondered if I deserved it.