r/RealHorrorExperience

“Daddy, Daddy, I’m back!”

I reached down to pick up my daughter Irina at the school bus stop right after she climbed down. She just started kindergarten, and I still missed having her at home every day. 

“How was your first day, sweetheart?”

“Awesome! I met a bunch of other kids, and we colored in coloring books, and we had recess, and we had nap time, and the teacher gave us cookies!”

“Cookies?” I asked with an exaggerated face. “She let you have cookies?”

“Yes! Chocolate chip! I had two!”

“Did you bring me one?” I asked, wearing my best hopeful face. 

“No, Daddy. There weren’t any left - we ate them all!”

“Oh, well, I guess that’s ok then. So I can eat all the cookies at home, then?”

“No, Daddy!” she replied, giggling. “Those are mine, too!”

“Ah,” I said, buckling her into her car seat. “I guess you do deserve lots of cookies - you are a kindergartener, now, after all.”

“Yes I am!” she squeaked excitedly as I drove us home. She was so smart - maybe she’d be a doctor like her mother. 

We arrived home and Irina ran off to put away her things. When she came back, I put on her favorite after school cartoon while she got settled on the sofa. 

“PAW Patrol!” she screamed, clapping her hands excitedly and singing. “PAW Patrol, PAW Patrol, We’ll be there on the double…”

As she sang and giggled, I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was perfect. I think back to the time before I had her and it’s like it was another life. A lesser one. 

After a couple of episodes, she turned to me. 

“I’m hungry, Daddy!”

“What would you like, honey?”

“Can we have macaroni and cheese?”

“We’ve had macaroni and cheese three times this week already, sweetheart.”

She gave me the adorable pout I can never say no to. “But I really want it. Please, Daddy?” 

The puppy dog eyes get me every time. “Alright, sweetheart. But you have to eat some veggie sticks too, ok?”

“Yay!” she said, going back to her cartoon while I made the food. When it was ready, she climbed into her chair. “Let’s eat, Daddy!”

As she began to eat her macaroni (and I ate the pasta I’d made for myself), I thought back to that day years ago. My wife and I had been so excited to have our first child. We’d done everything - set up a nursery, taken classes, put in for maternity and paternity leave (me from the bank and her from her elementary school), everything recommended in the parenting books. When Jill’s contractions had started, we’d rushed to the hospital, looking forward to greeting our child. 

Then things had started to go wrong. Prolonged labor. Excessive bleeding. The baby presenting abnormally. Crashing blood pressure. Fetal distress. The doctors had said they did everything they could. The baby’s vitals had started getting better. But Jill’s hadn’t. 

Then she was gone. 

I was devastated. It was like my world had ended, because it had. But I had to keep going. It’s what Jill would have wanted. 

And now, five years later, things had started to feel normal again. My daughter (who I’d named Irina because Jill loved the name) was thriving. I was starting to feel normal. I’d even thought about dating again, though I’d likely wait until Irina was older. I wouldn’t say all was right with the world, but things were better. And I planned to make sure they stayed that way. 

The next morning, I dropped Irina off at the bus stop. 

“Have a great day, sweetheart!”

“You have a great day too, Daddy! I love you!”

I waved at her until the bus was out of sight. Then I drove to a long term parking lot and, making sure I wasn’t on camera, parked, got out, and took another car that I’d previously stored there. I drove three hours out of the city to a small town I’d identified in advance. From there, I went to a random out-of-the-way mailbox that I’d chosen because there were no cameras nearby and dropped off a letter. Finally, my goal accomplished, I drove the three hours back to the lot, cleaned my decoy car of fingerprints and DNA, switched back to my jeep, and drove back to town. 

As I sat at home that night, Irina asleep in her bed upstairs, I imagined my target opening my letter. 

“Hello, again. I bet you’ve missed me. My daughter turned five earlier this month. She had a very happy birthday, with cake and lots of presents. She was so thrilled. You should have seen her. 

“Oh, was that insensitive? I don’t regret it. Speaking of regrets, do you regret going to work that night straight from the bar? Scrubbing into the operating room with your faculties still impaired? Cutting open my wife with unsteady hands? Perhaps if you’d been sober, she would have lived. We’ll never know; your colleagues on the hospital review board made sure you were cleared and no real investigation took place. But I do know this - since you took my family from me, it’s only fair that I took yours from you. I hope you hurt every time you remember finding your husband’s bloody, dismembered body in the park and your child missing. Then you’ll know how I felt. So enjoy these letters, knowing that they’re the only contact you’ll ever have with your daughter again. She doesn’t even remember you. Maybe one day, I won’t, either. 

“See you next year.”

My girlfriend has always been a creative type. When we first started talking, it seemed like the conversation would always shift towards either sketching, drawing, or painting.

I found it admirable. I loved that she had something that meant so much to her. Something she could be passionate about. The more time went on, the more that passion grew.

It wasn’t until we started dating that she felt comfortable enough to show me her work, though. I love her more than anything in the world, but good lord, I hate to say it… she was not good.

Her shades were off. Her lines were crooked. Her portraits bordered on stick figures.

Of course, I didn’t want to let on exactly what I thought of what she was showing me, but I can only pretend so much.

That’s the thing, though, any time I offered her advice, she’d just get so defensive. She was just so convinced that she was gonna be “the next big thing” in the art world.

I wanted her to succeed. Of course I wanted her to succeed. But in order to do that, she just had to listen to me. I’m not an artist myself, but even as just an everyday Joe Shmoe, I could still see where she was falling short.

I’d nudge her. Critique her in the nicest possible way I could muster. And it only led to her becoming more closed off with her work.

Unfortunately, the more closed off she became with her work, the more closed off she became in general. It was like her main talking point. And here I was, feeling like an asshole for taking that away from her.

I tried apologizing to her and explaining that I was just trying to help her, but she’d just keep that same blank expression on her face.

“I’ll try to get better for you.”

That’s all she’d tell me.

I wanted to believe her, but it seemed like she wasn’t even trying anymore. I never saw her sketching. I never saw her drawing. I never saw her painting.

It created this friction in our relationship that made every situation feel tense. We didn’t even argue. We’d just try and converse awkwardly before we both went back to our phones.

At the peak of her withdrawal, that’s when she started taking classes. She didn’t seem excited about it. She didn’t seem eager to be better. She seemed like she was doing it out of spite. Like she was defeated but ready to prove me wrong.

She’d be gone 3 days a week from 5 PM to 10 PM, and after about a month of this, she started bringing home her work.

She never showed it to me.

I’d just find colorful canvases hanging up around the house. In the kitchen. In the living room. Hell, even the bathroom had a few.

She had definitely been improving. Her lines were straighter. Her shades were more on point. Her paintings wowed me rather than making me force out a fake smile or a “that’s so good, honey!”

At first, she was bringing home paintings of landscapes. Mountain ranges. Ocean horizons. Forests.

Then it turned into infrastructure. Castles. Mansions. Shacks and sheds.

Then it was people. The most detailed portraits she had ever produced. Her mom. Her dad. Her teacher from class.

I wish that’s where it would’ve stopped. She had proved me wrong. She had convinced me. She had nothing else to prove. But it didn’t stop there. She couldn’t have just been happy with the progress she had made.

I came home from work one day to find the first painting she had done of me personally. It had been hung up along with the dozens of other random paintings in our living room. I saw it and immediately became sick to my stomach.

It was me just… disassembled. My head was in one part of the canvas. My legs and arms sprawled out across the painting, with the most gruesome depictions of gore I had ever seen her produce.

I heard her humming to herself in our bedroom.
I approached her carefully as she sketched wildly in her sketchbook.

“Honey,” I whispered. “Why did you do that painting of me?”

Continuing to hum without even looking up from her sketchbook, she responded, “Eh, just how I was feeling today,” as she continued scribbling on her page.

In the weeks that followed, more and more pieces began to pop up around the house. Each one depicting different versions of my death.

She never seemed angry or agitated. She just seemed distant. Distant but at peace, and that’s the part that hurts me.

She seemed to have this obsession with dismemberment. In every piece, I was dismembered in some way or another. Held together by wires. Forced to be a scarecrow. One showed me to be ornaments strewn about a Christmas tree.
At this point, there’s at least a dozen of them. But that’s not the part that concerns me.

What concerns me is that I’ve been waking up with outlines drawn around the circumference of my legs and arms. My neck and torso. Like she’s figuring out a design.

She always denies any involvement whenever I question her, but who else could it be? Does she think that I’ll believe I’m just doing this to myself?
I don’t know what to do.

I just wanted her to be the artist I knew she could be.

I did some research about the person that sadly died. And I’ve reached a few conclusions. I don’t want to cast blame right away or claim that’s exactly how it happened. However, I do have suspicions about the killer. I discovered that the person who was killed is @/Homurcia—the same username used on TikTok and Twitter. Of course, I first made sure it was the right person, and yes—the tattoo on the arm matches, as do the piercing and facial structure. I found that she did her Alastor tatoo in 2024 and showed on Twitter.

While watching her TikToks, I noticed that she only films with one person—her girlfriend Kira, who goes by the nickname @/yukira.707 online. I noticed Homurcia’s description – “Living our happy sugar life♡” We’re together forever, @/yukira.707."

I naturally went to the profile of said yukira and it’s private, but she has almost 30k likes. The only comments under Homurcia’s TikTok is by said Yukira, that said that her girlfriend was going by the name – Yuki May. She identified her girlfriends corpse.

Let’s start from beginning. They both are from Poland, but they got together when one of them was underage. The younger girl’s mother didn’t allow to be in the relationship, so they both ran away to Germany. Their relationship is strange… very strange.

For a long time, they had promised each other they would commit a double suicide—that this was how they wanted to leave this world.

They used to say that Happy Sugar Life ending was “them.” And what does that ending look like? One person sacrifices themselves for the other, leaving the survivor to live on, traumatized.

I checked the location of the convention, and the distance to the place where the body was found amounts to an eight-hour journey. And that's where I begin to be suspicious of yukira.

Homurcia's last Twitter post was on May 31st—the final day of the convention, and the day she likely died. I thought on the beginning that it is a murder motivated by transphobia and hatred of cosplay, but I think I was wrong, why would someone go after her for 8 hours? And I don't it's coincidence. Espiecially when I read through Homurcia's post on X. They are in the attachment, but I'll bring the most important here with qoute
"I'm so happy she's enjoying her birthday today and I'm glad she likes the cake I made <3
Creating our last memories before I will be gone ♡ only few days left :(" - May 26 2026.

Not only, she had mental problems, beacuse of hard time to accept herself born into wrong body but also I noticed that in almost every post she was saying something about death, resting together and etc. Her love for Kira wasn't unnoticable. Sadly I think it got a bit too obsessive, they both have their own mental problems, they were taking drugs.
The love Homura had for Madoka from her favourtie anime also unhealthy and obsessive, is that a reason for this cosplays? Or the ending of "Happy Sugar Life?"

I noticed also the post that She made, i am sadly not sure where. Homurcia is talking there about merging souls with Kira to live together through her and then when she dies they both will reincarnate and have happy childhoods and lives.

I think it can be her girlfriend's doing that, beacuse they both agreed on it. But it is very suspicious because of things Homurcia was talking about. Their unhealthy way to see things, that their relationship is here to save them and reincarnate together. Such strong words with things from Twitter. She knew when she's gonna die. The question is how no one noticed it? And if her girlfriends is truly her killer.

What do you guys think about this?

A woman has been charged with the murder of her newborn son more than 41 years ago in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Dianne Curry Peck, 59 has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Tuesday and was released on $10,000 bail. She is going to have a huge uphill battle in court as it was proven to be her baby who was alive and well right after birth only to be left in the freezing winter which lead to his death.

According to prosecutors, Joseph Horner, a 27-year-old Long Island music teacher, allegedly killed his 25-year-old sister-in-law, Victoria Castle, after harboring a sexual obsession with her since 2017. They say he waited until his wife was away on a bachelorette trip, lured Castle upstairs by asking for help moving a piano, then allegedly placed her in a chokehold until she lost consciousness, sexually assaulted her, and called 911 to report that she wasn’t breathing. Castle, a PhD student at Stony Brook University, died at the hospital. Horner has been charged with second-degree murder, pleaded not guilty, and is being held without bail. The allegation that he had desired her since 2017 comes from prosecutors’ statements at his arraignment and has not been proven in court.

[supprimé]

Do you know how many pieces of luggage are checked onto flights each year? I’m talkin’ in the whole world. It’s 4 billion. 

I’ll say that again.

4 billion.

And of those 4 billion, do you know how many pieces of luggage are lost, damaged or otherwise ‘mishandled’ by airline personnel in the good ol’ US of A? 

2 million.

Won’t repeat myself again, but that’s still a lot. And while most of those suitcases and rollers are eventually reunited with their rightful owners, there’s still over 20,000 pieces of luggage that go unclaimed each year. Not to mention bags left on buses, on trains, in taxis or hotel rooms. 

Ok, last question.

Where do you think all that lost luggage ends up? Most folks couldn’t tell you, but when you're a kid growing up in northeastern Alabama, you know exactly where it goes.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Around Scottsboro, we just call it Unclaimed Baggage. 

Every year, thousands of customers pass through our doors looking for deals on clothes, electronics, jewelry, and just about anything else you can imagine. Before any of that stuff reaches the sales floor, though, it comes through us.

I work in intake. 

When a truckload comes in, we're the first people to touch it. We unload the bags, log ‘em, sort ‘em, and decide what can actually be sold. 

Most bags are boring. Sure, you’ll get the occasional wedding dress or taxidermied squirrel, but really it’s just lots of clothes and chargers. I say ‘most bags’ because some bags get flagged, and not because of drugs or weapons. Because they contain things no one can explain. 

Ask anybody in intake. 

They'll have a story. 

My girl Tammy found a passport from a country that doesn't exist. The Republic of Vir. It had a flag and everything. 

Cody swears on his mama that the same blue Samsonite shows up every year around Christmas. Not the same model. The same suitcase. Same cracked handle. Same missing wheel. Same four-leaf clover sticker peeling off the side. Last year it was full of ladies’ wigs. Year before, empty picture frames. 

Cody’s a nut, though. He moved away after the thing with the postcards. 

My story? 

My story started with Flight 702.

Well, it started with a suitcase actually. I didn’t find out about the flight until later. 

It was July. Humid. The kind of weather where your shirt’s sticking to your back before you even finish your coffee. 

I was working the receiving dock when the truck backed into Bay 4. The driver, Trey, was a buddy from back in the day and, unfortunately, an Auburn fan. While we unloaded, I took the opportunity to remind him the Tigers didn’t stand a chance against ‘Bama that year. Then I rolled the first pallet of suitcases inside. 

For each bag, the process was always the same. Assign a lot number, slap a sticker on the side, then line it up all nice and pretty-like for the next guy. And that’s what I was doing when I noticed the bag.  

It was a roller. Seafoam green.

Looked like a kid’s bag. 

But I’d seen a million of those. 

What really caught my eye was the condition it was in. Beat to hell. Like a pack of wolves had used it as their own personal piñata. Deep gouges ran all the way down one side and dark rust-colored stains coated the wheels. 

Now, airlines damage luggage all the time. This wasn’t that. 

I tried the zipper. It was crusted shut, so I grabbed the cutters from my workstation, busted a new seam and pried the bag open. At first it looked like standard-issue kids’ fare. 

Books. Pajamas. A stuffed unicorn. 

And a camera. 

A cheap-looking, unicorn-themed digital camera, to be exact. 

I found the power button and turned it on.

You may think I was being nosy, and that’s fair. But you'd be amazed how many times we're able to reunite a bag with its owner because of some tiny detail in a family photo or, hell, a name scribbled inside a coloring book. 

Plus, I am nosy.

Back to the camera:

The first image was of a young girl smiling a gap-toothed smile straight into the lens. Couldn’t have been more than eight. 

The next, taken from the backseat of a car, showed a middle-aged couple in the front seats, eyes on the road ahead. The mom looked annoyed. The dad looked lost. 

The next three were of nothing in particular. A shoe. A passing billboard. The roof of the car. 

The sixth picture was of an airport. 

The girl stood next to an old sedan filled with luggage, a unicorn backpack slung jauntily over one of her shoulders. A giant glass and concrete terminal loomed behind her. 

She looked almost impossibly happy. 

“Cheeeese,” said a voice beside me. 

It was Brian, one of the new guys, striking a ridiculous pose for the camera. He had already earned a reputation around the store as a complete goof. 

I pantomimed snapping a pic of him, then looked at the screen.

“Sorry. Says too ugly.”

“Ha, ha,” he said sarcastically before noticing the bag at my feet. “Oh shit, that thing go through a wood chipper?”

I shrugged, tell me about it, and Brian headed outside for his own pallet. 

I turned my attention back to the pictures. 

The girl was inside the airport now. There was a shot of the ticket counter, the departure screens, and one of a grumpy TSA agent at security that made me chuckle. 

The next photo was of the entire family at their gate. Must’a been taken by another passenger. The girl was still smiling that same smile, while her parents wore the relieved expressions of folks who were ready to start their vacation.

The screen behind them said: 

UNITED 702 - ORLANDO

I figured they were going to Disney World. That’d explain the girl’s smile. 

The following pictures documented the family’s journey down the jet bridge, past a blonde flight attendant with bright red lipstick, and to their seats at the rear of the plane.  

Wait a sec. 

I scrolled back to the picture at the gate. 

Flight 702.

The number tugged at something in the back of my brain.

I'd heard it before.

Just then, Brian returned with a fresh load of luggage. 

"Brian."

"Yeah?"

"Flight 702 mean anything to you?"

Brian scratched his head. 

"Pretty sure that was the Orlando flight."

"What Orlando flight?"

He looked at me.

"The one that crashed."

Now I’ve heard people say their blood ran cold, but I’m tellin’ you, at that moment? My blood might as well have had ice cubes floating in it. 

“Hey. You alright?”

“Yeah,” I stammered. “Just need a little air.”

I couldn’t get outside fast enough. A thousand thoughts were runnin’ through my head all at once. As soon as I turned the corner of the loading dock, I pulled out my phone and did a search. The headlines came rushing back –

UNITED FLIGHT 702 CRASHES NEAR NASHVILLE

NTSB INVESTIGATING CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE

CHILDREN AMONG 238 DEAD IN UNITED CRASH

I felt like I was going to pass out. 

That little girl. 

Her parents. 

All those people on the plane. 

They were all dead. 

Then another thought hit me, something that really got my head spinning. 

What was their bag doin’ here? 

I found my supervisor Shelley in the break room, futzing with the coffee pot.

“Hey Shel?”

“Go for Shel.”

“Is there, like, a protocol or something for when we get bags from… uh…”. I trailed off, steadying myself against the counter. 

“The heck you tryin’ to say?”

“From plane crashes,” I spat out. “For when we get bags from plane crashes.”

She stared at me like I had sprouted a second head.

“We don’t.” 

“Never?”

“Not in the seventeen years I’ve been here.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I… I was just curious.”

“Weird thing to be curious about.”

I forced a laugh and returned to the warehouse floor, convinced I had been imagining things, or misread the flight number, or… or… 

The camera was still sitting on top of the open bag, just where I had left it. I picked it up and navigated to the next image. But the next image wasn’t an image at all.

It was a video. 

I hit play.

The camera was pointed out the window as the plane picked up speed and lifted off the runway. “Whoa!” It was the girl’s voice. Hearing it made my heart sink. The camera swung around and settled on her parents in the seats beside her. Her dad winked and said, “Hold onto your butt!”. The girl laughed. 

The video ended. 

Before I knew it, I’d hit play on the next one. 

The girl was in the lavatory now. She waved at herself in the mirror, then focused in on the toilet. She pressed the flush button. The air WHOOSHed and she giggled, delighted. 

My hands were shaking. Watching the final moments of these people’s lives play out on a two-inch screen felt wrong. I wanted to warn them, like if I screamed Stop! Turn back! at the top of my lungs, then maybe somehow they’d get the message.  

The next video picked up right where the last one left off. 

The girl pushed open the lavatory door. She was moving through the galley when a nasty-sounding cough drew the camera’s attention. It was that same blonde flight attendant with the red lipstick, sitting all hunched in her jump seat with a paper towel balled up in her fist. “Are you ok?” the girl asked. “Yes, fine, just a little air sickness.” The flight attendant managed a smile. “Do you like chocolate milk? Our drink service is starting soon.” 

The girl must’ve nodded because the flight attendant smiled again and the video ended. 

More photos now: 

Clouds. 

The seat belt. 

Hemispheres Magazine. 

With each press of the button, I hoped I had reached the end, but the images just kept comin’. 

And I couldn’t look away. 

Another video:

The girl's parents dozed in their seats. The camera turned toward the front of the plane, showing rows of seatbacks and passengers' heads, and the blonde flight attendant working her way down the aisle with the drink cart. She stopped at the girl's row and fished out a carton of chocolate milk. "Just for you," she said. The camera zoomed in on the carton. "Mmm, thanks." Then the girl tilted the camera back up. 

And that's when I saw it.

A thin line of blood ran from the flight attendant's nostril and down into the corner of her mouth. She didn't seem to notice. "Your nose," said the girl. The flight attendant frowned. Then she touched her face. Her fingers came away red and, for a moment, she looked genuinely frightened. She grabbed a napkin from the cart, pressed it to her nose, and hurried back up the aisle, quick as anything. 

“The hell?”

I replayed the last few seconds of the video. The blood. The look on the flight attendant's face. A real strange feeling started forming in the pit of my stomach. 

Then a nerf football hit me in the shoulder. 

“Blue! 42!”

It was Brian again. 

He was squatting over a duffel bag full of sports equipment. He threw another wobbler at me and I swatted it away. 

“I hit you right in the hands! You gotta catch that.”

“Not now, man.”

He clocked the camera. 

"You still messin' around with that thing?"

"Yeah."

"Find out who it belongs to?"

I hesitated. "Maybe."

Brian smirked.

"Hope they ain't expectin' it back."

He didn’t mean anything by it, but I could feel my face getting hot. “Yeah,” I muttered. 

As soon as he was gone, I pressed play on the next video. 

I wish I hadn’t. 

The camera bobbled as the girl climbed over her sleeping parents and lowered herself into the aisle. Up ahead, the flight attendant disappeared into the galley, pulling the blue curtain shut behind her. 

The girl paused, probably gathering her nerve. Then she started creeping down the aisle towards the galley. All around her, the other passengers were sittin’ snug in their seats, eyes glued to their screens. 

The weird thing was the flight attendant’s feet were still visible beneath the curtain. They hadn’t moved. 

The girl took another step. 

Then another. 

BONG. The camera jumped. 

Then the captain’s voice on the intercom, "Folks, if you look out the left side of the aircraft, you'll be able to see the Cumberland River winding through downtown Nashville." 

Our girl just kept moving forward. 

She was only ten steps from the curtain, lens trained on the flight attendant’s feet. A passenger stood to get something from the overhead bin and the girl had to squeeze sideways to pass. 

When she refocused, the feet were gone. 

Five steps now.

Three.

The girl’s thin hand reached out and pulled the curtain aside, ever so slowly. The area directly behind the curtain was empty. Just the lavatory door and another curtain leading to business class. 

The camera peeked around the corner into the galley.

The flight attendant’s jump seat was empty.

In fact, the entire galley was empty. 

The camera floated for a beat, like the girl was unsure of what to do, then she must’ve seen something because she zoomed in on the floor of the galley. 

It was a pool of blood.

Drip.

Drip-drip.

The camera pulled back, searching for the source. 

The jumpseat? 

No. 

The counter? 

No. 

With shared dread, I watched as the camera tilted up towards the ceiling.  

The flight attendant was up there. 

Pressed against the hull of the plane like a spider. 

Her face was turned away from the lens and for a second, neither she or the girl moved. Then the flight attendant’s head began to turn.

Her eyes were black. 

Completely black. 

And when those dark pits settled on the camera, I swear…

She was lookin’ at me. 

Blood pooled at the corners of her mouth.

Drip.

Things started happening really fast now. 

The picture whipped around and took off down the aisle, bouncing so violently I could barely make out the passengers jerking upright in their seats.

Then a sound.

Oh my god, that sound. 

It was like a cross between a woman’s scream and metal being torn in half. 

The cabin lights flickered and - BONG - the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom, speaking too fast for me to understand before dissolving into static. 

Then the whole cabin lurched hard to the left.

The image rolled sideways then snapped towards the ceiling. Oxygen masks dropped and dangled. Luggage rained into the aisle. And the flight attendant’s pale form scuttled across the overhead compartments on all fours.

Now everyone was screamin’. 

The picture blurred, tumbled across the carpet, and came to rest just inches from the seafoam green roller bag.

Then a window exploded and the world turned white. 

***

The video ended. 

And I just stood there. 

All around me, the warehouse kept humming along like nothin’ had happened. 

Eventually I left work. Told Shelley I was gettin’ a migraine. Truth was, it did feel like my head was gonna split open. I drove to Scooter’s in a daze. After my fifth beer, Carrie gave me a ride home and I fell asleep in front of the TV. 

The next morning I was pretty sure I’d imagined the whole thing. 

Flight 702. The flight attendant. It felt impossible in the cold, hungover light of day.

But I had seen it. 

Hadn’t I? 

That’s when I decided I needed to show someone the camera. 

I got to work early. 

Most of yesterday’s luggage was still in the warehouse. Any items of value would have been cleaned, priced and set in the staging area, waiting for the floor staff to arrive. 

I scanned the shelves for the camera. It wasn’t there. 

I checked the salvage bins. 

Nothing. 

I saw Shelley pulling into her spot and jogged over.  

“You look like shit,” she said as she cut the engine. 

“Thanks,” I deflected. “Hey, did you happen to see a little unicorn camera that came in yesterday?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

I let out a sigh of relief. 

“Where is it?”

“Some lady from the airline came by yesterday lookin’ for it.”

She brushed past me. I struggled to keep up, panic rising in my throat.

“A lady? What lady?”

“How should I know? Some blonde lady.”

“Tell me you didn’t give it to her.”

Shelley stopped walking.

“Why d’you care?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Shelley stared at me. 

“What’d you expect me to do? She said it was hers. And the poor thing sounded awful, so –”

“Awful how?”

“She couldn’t stop coughin’.” 

Shelley started walking again, but I stayed rooted to my spot, unable to move. 

“Weird thing was she didn’t care whether the camera worked.”

I looked up.

“Just wanted to know if anybody watched it.”

“What’d you tell her?” 

Shelley pulled open the warehouse door.

“Brian said you’d been lookin’ through it, so…”

She shrugged.

“I told her you had.”

[removed]