The Face in the Morgue
"The woman they buried yesterday opened my front door this morning... wearing my face."
The sentence sat in the center of Elara's sketchbook. She stared at it for a long moment before dragging the edge of her charcoal stick across the page until the words vanished beneath a smear of black.
"Morbid," she muttered.
The habit had started years ago. Strange sentences appeared in her head without warning, demanding to be written before they disappeared again. Most of them made no sense. She never shared them with anyone. She snapped the sketchbook shut.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown caller. Elara answered while pulling on her coat.
"Elara speaking."
"We need you at Saint Rowan's Medical Center." The man's voice was clipped, professional. "We've recovered an unidentified female. Facial trauma is extensive. You're the closest forensic illustrator available."
Elara checked the time. 6:12 a.m.
"You couldn't wait until daylight?"
"If you saw the body, you'd understand."
The line went dead.
The morgue smelled the way it always did: disinfectant layered over cold metal, and beneath both, a silence that never quite felt empty.
Dr. Mirek waited beside Drawer Twelve with his hands buried inside his lab coat. He looked as though he hadn't slept.
"Morning."
"It isn't."
"No," he admitted. "It isn't."
He pulled the drawer open. White fabric covered the body from neck to toe. Only tangled dark
hair spilled across the stainless-steel tray.
"What happened?" Elara asked.
"No identification."
"Cause of death?"
"We don't know yet."
She frowned. "You don't know?"
His eyes lingered on the body longer than necessary. "Nothing about this case is ordinary."
He folded back the sheet.
Elara had reconstructed victims after explosions, house fires, animal attacks. This was worse. The woman's face was almost unrecognizable: deep lacerations crossed her cheeks, the bridge of her nose had collapsed, one eye was swollen shut, and her jaw had fractured in several places.
Yet something tugged at Elara's attention. Not horror. Recognition. She couldn't explain why.
Dr. Mirek handed her the case folder.
"No belongings?"
"None."
"Witnesses?"
"No.""Where was she found?"
His silence stretched."In Blackwood Forest."
Elara looked up. "The forest's been closed for years."
"I know."
She didn't ask another question. Instead, she carried her equipment into the reconstruction room.
A bright lamp illuminated the damaged face. She slipped on latex gloves, measured the skull, marked anatomical landmarks, built muscle depth with practiced precision. Her pencil moved almost without instruction, tracing nose, lips, cheekbones, eyes, each stroke sharpening the woman's identity a little further.
An hour passed. Then another. Outside, rain tapped steadily against the narrow windows.
The reconstruction neared completion. Elara leaned back. Something wasn't right. She picked up a mirror and held it beside the drawing.
The blood drained from her face.
"No..."
Her whisper barely reached the walls. The woman on the paper had her eyes. Her mouth. Her nose. The tiny scar beneath her left eyebrow she'd gotten falling off a bicycle when she was eleven.
Impossible. She grabbed another sheet, started again, measured everything twice, then three times. Every calculation ended in the same face.
Her face.The office door opened. Dr. Mirek stepped inside.
"Finished?"
She slowly turned the drawing toward him. His expression froze. Neither of them spoke. Finally he crossed the room, looked at the sketch, then at Elara, then back again.
"That's impossible." "I thought I made a mistake."
"You don't make mistakes."
She swallowed. "Run a DNA comparison."
His head snapped toward her. "We don't have anyone to compare"
"You do now."
******
The laboratory felt colder than the morgue. A nurse swabbed the inside of Elara's cheek, and she watched the cotton tip disappear into a plastic tube like it belonged to someone else's hand.
Dr. Mirek carried both samples through a secure door.
"We'll have preliminary results soon."
"How soon?"
"An hour."
An hour became ninety-three minutes. Elara spent every second of it staring at the laboratory clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Finally, the door opened. Dr. Mirek walked out holding a single sheet of paper. His face had gone completely white. He didn't speak. He simply handed it over.Elara read the report once. Twice. A third time. The letters refused to change.
DNA MATCH: 99.99%
Subject A. Elara.
Subject B. Unknown deceased female.
Genetic identity confirmed.
Her fingers loosened. The paper slipped onto the floor.
"No."
Dr. Mirek looked equally shaken. "The test has already been repeated."
"There has to be contamination." "There wasn't."
"My sample was switched."
"It wasn't."
"This isn't funny."
His voice dropped. "I assure you, nothing about this is funny."
Silence settled between them. Elara took a slow step backward. Then another.
"I need to leave."
"You shouldn't be alone."
"I said I need to leave."
She hurried down the corridor before he could stop her. Automatic doors slid open. Rain hammered the pavement outside. She barely noticed. Her hands trembled as she dug through her coat pocket for her car keys, and when they finally slipped from her fingers, the sound of metal on wet asphalt seemed impossibly loud.
She bent to pick them up. A reflection shimmered inside a rain puddle at her feet. Someone stood behind her. Dark hair. Hospital gown. Bare feet.
Elara spun around.
Nobody. Only empty parking spaces, rain falling through the space where a person should have been standing.
She laughed once, a brittle sound. "I'm losing my mind."
She unlocked her car. Before climbing inside, she looked back toward the hospital. The lights in the morgue flickered. Once. Twice. Then every window on the lower floor went completely dark.
A scream tore through the silence. Not loud. Not long. Just one sharp cry, stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
People rushed toward the entrance. Security alarms erupted. Elara stood frozen. Another scream echoed from inside. Then another.
A nurse burst through the hospital doors, stumbling into the rain. "The body—" She couldn't finish. Her lips refused to form the words.
Two security guards ran past her toward the morgue. Moments later, they ran back. One of them was pale enough to look sick.
Dr. Mirek emerged last. His coat was splattered with blood. His eyes searched the parking lot until they found Elara. He didn't wave. He didn't call her name. He simply stared. Then he shouted with every ounce of air in his lungs,
"Run!"
Before Elara could move, a woman's hand slammed against the rear window of her car. She spun around. Her breath caught.
Standing behind the glass was the dead woman. She tilted her head. And slowly opened her eyes.
