I first saw it happen at work. I’d just finished ringing up a customer when every hair on my neck stood on end. Something in my peripheral vision caught my eye. I work at a board game store, and standing in an alcove peering at the game shelves was a skinny dude with a scraggly beard. His back was to me, but when he turned sideways, right at the edge of my vision I could see his mouth was gaping wide open, like he was screaming.
Weird, right?
I glanced up, ready to laugh and ask him what was up—but the dude was just chilling, totally normal face. A slight wrinkle on his forehead, lips pursed as he read the back cover of Wingspan. He looked at me.
“Yo, I keep hearing about this. Is it any good?”
“Slightly overrated in my opinion,” I replied. “But many people do seem to enjoy it.”
“I’m trying to find a game my girlfriend might play. She’s not really into board games, and doesn’t like competitive stuff. You have any good co-op games?”
“Might I suggest a roll and write? Technically competitive, but you can’t attack or interact with other players and mostly do your own thing on your board. They’re also very beginner friendly…” I turned to grab one of the reserved ones from behind the counter, and as I turned back around I nearly jumped out of my skin, because the man had approached so he was directly in front of the counter—and his mouth was wide open in a scream. Eyes wide. Like he was a zombie about to bite me. But it must’ve been my imagination because as soon as I looked at him straight on, he just looked back at me, mouth quirked.
“You all right there, my dude?” he asked.
“U-um, Cartographers is our top selling roll and write,” I stammered, recovering myself.
But every time I took my eyes away from his face… in my periphery, he seemed to be like one of the undead, a corpse with a gaping mouth.
I decided to ignore his behavior in the hope that he’d stop. He placed an order for Cartographers, and I told him I’d give him a call when his copy came in. As I took down his details, much to my annoyance he did not stop, but continued to stand in my periphery silently screaming.
The next week, when I went in for a haircut, the guy sitting a couple of chairs over was also playing dead. He appeared to be slumped in the barber chair, head lolled to one side, blue eyes wide and unseeing. But the stylist kept flitting around him, scissors snipping, and when I turned to look at him directly, he was no longer playing dead, but instead speaking to the stylist, one hand gesturing from under the cape.
Yet when I looked away a moment later… gone were his gestures. I could hear his voice, but he appeared to be lying motionless in his chair in the corner of my eye. A corpse.
When my haircut was finished and I looked over again, he was gone from the chair.
This just kept happening. Honestly, I thought it must be some sort of online fad, with people randomly pretending to be dead. The internet has spawned stranger pranks. I don’t have much of an online presence and don’t keep up with popular memes or tiktok trends, and in my head, it made sense.
It remained a relatively rare occurrence for me, and mostly happened in large crowds—for example, the airport. That was where I finally figured out the cause. I was on my way to visit family, going through airport security. A little farther behind me in line stood a young couple who were pretending to be corpses whenever I stopped looking at them. It was annoying, and I kept turning my head quickly, hoping to catch them in the act, but they were always behaving normally the moment I looked directly at them. And of course, what should have tipped me off is that no one else in the line was reacting to their behavior. Only I could see it. But at that point I was still acting under the assumption that everyone else was in on some new tiktok prank, and I wasn’t. I’m 42 and definitely give “how do you do, fellow kids” vibes by today’s social media standards.
So anyway, I put my belongings on the conveyor belt, and the couple in my periphery were now 100% normal. Finally, I thought, they stopped pretending! But the moment I collected my stuff and turned around, I nearly shrieked because both of them loomed next to me, standing slouched, faces contorted into death masks. You can’t see sharp details in your periphery, but you can catch when someone is making a terrible dead face. But when I looked at them head-on to tell them to cut that shit out they were both—normal! Staring at me like I was the weird one! The woman actually hid behind her partner.
That’s when I realized two things—one, that I was the source of the weirdness, and two, that more specifically the source was in my stuff. I felt around in my pockets, my fingers closed on cold metal, and that’s when it all clicked for me.
I found my father’s pocket watch.
Now, a little background on this watch. Dad gave it to me the day before he died. It’s cracked and doesn’t run. He’d had it for as long as I can remember, and when I was little, I asked him why he always carried a broken watch. He told me it was a family heirloom and that the cracks didn’t matter because it told time in a different way. Those were his words. When he finally passed it down to me, he looked troubled as he told me, “I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, to be able to see the things it shows. My father told me to sell it, but… I never could bring myself to.”
Dad was always very soft-spoken and polite. He ran an antiques shop that closed after he died. I think he wanted me to run it, but I never had the passion or the interest. Our lives just took different paths. The watch is the one antique he made sure to give to me.
What I’m still trying to figure out is why. Because as far as I can tell, there’s no ambiguity about it. The damned thing is definitely cursed.
See, once I knew the source was the watch, it all fell into place. At the end of that family trip, when I came back to work, I followed my hunch and looked up that guy who ordered the Cartographers game. He never came back to pick it up when it came in. I’d kept it sitting on the shelf for him, even though I should’ve just put it out on the main shelves for people to browse. It still had his name on it, and I searched his details and right away found his obituary from that same week he’d come into the store.
So, THAT’S what Dad meant about the watch telling time in a different way.
If I’d known what was going on back when the customer ordered the game, I could’ve warned him. Could’ve let him know, Hey bud, maybe grab something that’s in stock currently. Better yet, forget the games, go do whatever it is you want to in your last hours of life. Start checking off that bucket list. Maybe buy something more meaningful, since it’ll be your last chance to give your girlfriend a gift.
But…
Would he have listened?
Looking back, I remember when I was a kid how things would happen with Dad that didn’t make sense at the time. He’d get in random arguments with strangers. It was so uncharacteristic, because my father wasn’t a confrontational man. Always polite. But once in awhile, at the antique store, I remember he’d step outside with a customer, and the customer would leave upset, yelling or swearing or hysterically sobbing, sometimes leaving so quickly they’d forgot whatever it was they’d purchased. And once, too, at the mall, Dad was told to leave a store after upsetting an employee. Stuff like that.
Now I realize he must’ve tried to warn people.
But did it actually help those people? Any of them? Is the watch a blessing or a curse?
The watch wasn’t always cracked. Somebody cracked it. Hurled it against a wall, or the floor, maybe in a moment of frustration. Maybe my grandfather. But he didn’t throw it away. He passed it to my dad.
Now, I wish Dad had sold it. Wish he’d given it to someone else. I know it’s not his fault. Everyone has their time. But there are some things that maybe, people are just better off not knowing. And maybe Dad thought warning people was the right thing, but I’m team curse on this one. Knowing is definitely a curse. I’d rather not know. I should’ve thrown this watch away. But like my father, and his father before, I just… didn’t.
Now it’s too late. I’m sitting here at home, and every time I pass the bathroom mirror, every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection at the edge of my vision…
It’s just too late to unsee my own dead eyes, staring back