Guilt
They were seventeen. Children.. really
There were three of them that night—Lina, Sami, and Youssef—walking along the edge of the town where the buildings stopped pretending to be maintained. Past the closed shops. Past the broken streetlights. Past the places adults said not to go, which was exactly why they went.
The factory sat behind a torn fence.
No sign. No name. Just concrete, rust, and silence.
Lina was the last to climb through.
Something about the place already felt wrong, but not in a way she could explain. It wasn’t empty like abandoned buildings were supposed to be.
It felt paused.
Like something had just stopped happening inside it.
Youssef joked anyway, because that was what he did when he didn’t understand his own nerves.
Sami followed quietly, flashlight shaking slightly in his hand.
Inside, the air was heavy and damp, carrying a strange clean undertone beneath the dust. Not rot. Not mold. Something sharper. Almost chemical.
The deeper they went, the more the building seemed to organize itself around them.
Straight corridors that didn’t match the outside shape.
Doors that looked too new compared to the walls.
And marks on the floor—drag lines that didn’t belong in an abandoned place.
Lina noticed them first.
Then she stopped noticing anything else.
Because the building wasn’t just abandoned.
It had been used.
Recently.
Below them, somewhere deeper than the structure should’ve allowed, a faint sound echoed upward.
Not machinery.
Not wind.
Something rhythmic.
Intentional.
They followed it without deciding to.
Downstairs.
Then further.
Until the world above them felt distant.
And the air changed again—cleaner, colder, controlled.
That was when they saw the light.
A room ahead, glowing too brightly compared to everything else. White illumination spilling into the corridor like it didn’t belong there.
And inside it—
movement.
A man stood over a table.
Calm. Focused. Precise.
Not rushing. Not hiding.
Just working.
It took Lina a few seconds to understand what she was looking at, because her brain refused to label it properly at first.
Then Youssef whispered:
“Oh my god.”
The man stopped.
Not startled.
Not confused.
Just paused.
Slowly, he turned his head toward the doorway.
And in that instant, everything changed.
Because he saw them.
Not as trespassers.
Not as kids.
As witnesses.
For a moment, nobody moved.
The silence stretched too long.
Then the man reached for something on the table.
And Youssef grabbed Lina’s arm.
“Run.”
They ran.
---
The building didn’t feel the same after that.
Doors that had been open were now closed.
Paths they remembered became wrong.
Like the structure itself was rearranging to contain them.
Footsteps followed behind—but not in a chaotic chase.
Controlled.
Measured.
As if whoever was behind them knew exactly how fast they needed to move.
Sami fell first, scraping his knee hard against concrete. Lina pulled him up without thinking. Youssef ran ahead, shouting for them to keep going.
Then—
a sound.
A door closing somewhere behind them.
Too close.
Youssef turned a corner ahead of them.
And disappeared.
There was no scream that lingered.
Just a sudden cut of sound, like the world had swallowed him for a second.
Lina froze for half a heartbeat.
Sami pulled her.
“DON’T.”
They kept running.
They never saw Youssef again.
---
They made it out by accident more than survival.
Through exits they didn’t remember entering.
Through gaps that shouldn’t have been there.
Until suddenly—
air.
Rain.
Streetlights.
Normal streets that felt unreal after what they had just left.
They didn’t stop running until Lina’s house came into view.
Only then did their bodies collapse into something like relief.
But it wasn’t relief.
It was shock waiting for meaning.
---
The next days were worse.
Because nothing happened.
No alarms. No police. No explanation.
Just silence.
The world continued as if the factory had never existed at all.
But Youssef was gone.
Not missing in a dramatic sense.
Just absent in a way that didn’t allow closure.
Sami stopped speaking about it entirely.
When Lina tried to mention going back, he looked at her like the idea itself was dangerous.
“We shouldn’t have seen that,” he said once.
That was all he ever managed.
---
Time passed.
But the memory didn’t fade.
It repeated.
Always the same image:
white light.
stillness.
the man turning his head.
And the feeling that he had understood them instantly.
---
Then one evening, Lina’s father decided to do something normal.
Dinner.
Something simple. Something safe.
He brought home raw meat from the butcher and placed it on the kitchen counter like it was just another ordinary part of life.
The smell hit Lina immediately.
Not because it was bad.
Because it wasn’t.
It was too clean.
Too similar.
Her mind snapped backward without warning.
White-lit room.
Metal table.
Controlled movement.
The rhythm of something happening just out of view.
Her stomach tightened instantly.
Her father began preparing the food, completely unaware.
Knife against board.
Water running.
Plastic rustling.
Each sound layered over the memory until she couldn’t separate kitchen from underground room anymore.
And then—
Youssef.
Standing still.
Turning too late.
The silence after.
Lina stepped back.
Then again.
Her breathing broke before she could stop it.
“No…”
Her mother looked up.
“What’s wrong?”
But Lina couldn’t answer.
Because she finally understood what her brain had been refusing to complete.
They hadn’t been chased for no reason.
They hadn’t stumbled into nothing.
They had seen something that wasn’t meant to be interrupted.
And Youssef—
Youssef had been the one who didn’t get out fast enough.
Her legs gave out.
She dropped to the floor, shaking violently, sobbing without control.
Not just fear.
Not just memory.
Grief that had nowhere to go.
Because there was no ending that explained where he went.
No body.
No truth.
No closure.
Just the image of a door closing too cleanly behind him.
It never changed in her memory—only became more accurate each time she returned to it.
And that was the first time she understood that nothing about it had ever been uncertain.
Hey guys so.
I'm horrible at writing stories but this particular one actually happened in my mind.
Lived through it entirely.
I can't write for shit so I just had an ai help with phrasing(sorry)
The ai didn't improvise on the details of the story it just did a little rearrangement lol
Hope you like it and maybe could give a few tips about story-telling.
It's overly dramatic but it's fun ig😭