caught in a nightmare

She never clocked out on her final day at work, what was the point when the factory was shutting down tomorrow? Everyone else seemed to keep to their routine though, something about an old superstition that all the workers but her knew.

According to them, keeping an unstamped time-card was as good as never leaving the place. You might as well plonk yourself down in a chair, rot with all the old gear and save fate having to find you. It sounded ridiculous enough that she laughed it off and went home to forget she ever worked there at all.

That night marked the first of many she would spend dream-chasing her former colleagues around a factory that was crumbling under her feet. Every night she would run just a little faster, get just a little further and sometimes even brush her fingertips against their clothing only to wake up sweat-drenched, exhausted and out of breath with only the vaguest idea that she'd spent the night running but from what or whom?

It took five weeks of this before she finally gathered up the nerve to go back and punch her time-card in the hopes that she might dream of anything else - or hopefully nothing. The gates were meant to have been locked but apparently everybody stopped caring that final day, even security.

Her key unlocked the side door smoothly and under the watchful gaze of the CCTV cameras she slipped inside. The first thing she noticed was how quickly everything had deteriorated and how familiar it all looked at the same time. There was no way the stairwells could have rusted so suddenly, no way the machines could have fallen apart so soon and yet she felt waves of déjá vu brushing against her thoughts, trying desperately to remind her where she'd seen all of this before.

She crossed the familiar hallways towards the staff room and the time recorder only to be hit from behind by someone running at considerable speed. She caught sight of familiar faux designer shoes rounding the next corner before another person ran straight over her. This one was so much heavier, the full brunt of his weight cracking her ribs as he fled like the woman before.

She heard more people running towards her and further in the distance, a distorted howl cut through the air.She barely managed to roll to one side of the hallway before her entire team sprinted past her, their eyes never leaving her bruised face as they headed the same way as the others.

Gasping in pain and fear, she curled up behind the closest thing she could find - a printer that had been shoved halfway into the hall. At first she didn't know why she'd done this, only that she felt she needed to until the sound of footsteps, much heavier footsteps, came closing in.

She heard whispers coming from the far end of the hall and saw her old team crouched and peering around the corner, all staring at her with unreadable faces and bruised eyes. None of them look like they'd slept since the factory had shut and maybe this was all her fault.

She didn't get long to deliberate as the heavy footsteps came to a stop on the other side of the printer. Sharp nails tapped away at it before it came to life, whirring and juddering copies out that fell at her feet. That's when she knew that she'd already been spotted.

Her colleagues stopped whispering as her eyes met theirs.

Then she looked up.

And the dream ended.

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