I work a night shift as a guard in my local hospital. We work in shifts because the hospital’s entrance can’t be left unguarded. So we work in a 12/36 hours type of thing. It is a very easy job. The part I generally cover is the surgical center, and because it is the night shift people don’t generally do surgery at night.
We sometimes get one or another patient. And the general quiet and easy night became a horrifying nightmare. But that’s another story.
Now… The entrance has a little room( it’s more like a cell really.) Where I generally have to stay. It doesn’t even have a bathroom, so sometimes I can leave to do my necessities. But in this room, there’s a toy of the mascot of the hospital. The mascot is a black hound, just like the ones that guard the cemeteries.
Yeah… I also think that a hospital having a mascot is kinda silly, but as long as the paycheck is coming I won’t be doing anything about it.
The weird part is… The mascot is new. I have been working there for about four to five years. The mascot and subsequently the toy in my room just came some months ago. It simply appears in my room. On one shift it wasn’t there and on the next just simply was in the middle of the central desk.
When I asked my supervisors they just said.
“Nothing like a hound to guard and protect us from the evils of the world.”
I would say this toy is not out of the ordinary, except it has a little piece of gold fused with it.
Before you say anything I have thought about stealing and getting a little more cash, but I had a bad feeling about doing it so. Unfortunately, my coworkers didn’t come to this conclusion.
Ever since this toy came I got a new coworker every week or so. The new ones that come are normal for the most part, but they all take a lot of interest in the toy. We have to make sure everything is ok when delivering to the workplace. This means I have to make sure everything is clean and in its place, by the time I end up doing all that the next guys almost always have already come. So with the little time we interact, we can chat a little.
As I have said earlier, they are changing every shift. That time I decided to make sure to know why. I made a friend in the camera department and they made sure to show me the camera footage. But a feeling inside me told me that I shouldn’t let anyone besides me see. I told them to hand me the footage and I checked out at my home later.
I watched it and my coworker simply stole the dog toy. I thought “whoa… That is it… They are being fired just because of a toy.” I could have just stopped and made no mind out of it, but some things weren’t clicking. Yeah stealing is treated with total termination in this hospital, but how did they find out so quickly, how was everyone doing the same, who they managed to have that many dogs… So unfortunately I keep watching and when was the night shift again ( not mine shift, but the one that is the night before.) When that other coworker, that I didn’t know at the time, was sleeping the camera cut off for just the slightest moment. When it is back to my surprise the toy was back.
At that moment I froze in place and a vivid terror covered all over my body. That terror wasn’t like any normal terror that I have felt. It was as… It was alive… And I could feel… That it was telling me something… I don’t know how, but I knew that the terror was telling me to not say anything about this to anyone.
Before I could delete this or recompose myself I checked the video once again and to my surprise, that coworker have awoken, and what was more terrifying… He didn’t act surprised to see the toy that have just appeared out of nowhere. This told me to keep an eye on it.
So in the night, I got a spy camera that I could connect to my phone and waited for my shift to start. I was going to place the camera directly on the toy, but the terror feeling come back. I, for the better, decided to put the camera in the new coworker I would receive today.
The rest of the shift would have been normal if it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t get any sleep. It was the worst twelve hours of my life up to that point. When the new guy came I was met with q mix of relive, pity, and fear. I implanted him with the come and ran to my apartment. I could sleep for some time and was feeling ready for whatever was to come. I wasn’t ready.
I checked the camera and it was online and working. The new guy was about to deliver the shift. It was the most normal delivery I have ever seen or made. But I was sure he had taken the toy with him. And as expected not even five minutes after he was off the hospital grounds he checked his right pocket to see the toy. I could make out a few of his words.
“…You… Power… House…”
There were others words in between but I believe, or better-put hope, that is something along the lines of… “With you, I can pay the power bill, or even buy a house.”
When he finally made it to his apartment I was greeted with an unpleasant surprise. His apartment was full of trash and trashy posters, the walls were very unpleasant to look at with a clock that was pointing at eight and thirty-one, which to my surprise is the correct hour. The floor is filled with holes and in the ceiling, I could see the plumbing. I could tell that it smelled like sewage and rotten eggs. Then he put the toy on the middle table and there it begins.
His apartment fell over his head, yet he was alive. The floor crumbled under his feet, yet he wasn’t falling. The trash was burned and destroyed, yet I could still pick up the sewage smell. The walls have gone missing too. There was just an empty void of darkness and terror. The only things that were still human enough to make out were the new guy and the toy, until… It begins to grow… Not like normal humans know to grow. It was like it grows by making other things small.
This sent me to my knees and even the new guy screamed in terror, but it hasn’t stopped. The toy lost all its cute and silly features. It is now just a dark glowing eye, if I can even call that thing an eye, and a hand. The mascot now just touches the new guy and the nightmare vision is now over, but the apartment is clean. The desk where the mascot was is gone, the mascot is gone. But it’s not just this, the furniture is completely different. The paint on the walls had more bright color, the ceiling is in perfect shape and the floor is as smooth as baby skin.
I now have the view of a casal that picks up the camera. They were extremely confused. Just as I was. I looked at the time and to my surprise, it displayed 20:32. That whole scene just took one second. But it felt… No, it was definitely at least ten minutes in there. I swear it was a lot longer than I made it look likes.
After that, I immediately ran to the hospital to check the paycheck account, and it was just as I feared. The new guy wasn’t in there. He never had worked in that hospital ever. In fact, it was a completely different person, and that person had been working on the shift next to mine for the past year. That is what the reports say. That new guy doesn’t exist anymore. No credit card, no family, no birth certificate, no NOTHING!
I don’t want to work there anymore. But I don’t have any other choice. Do I?