Chapter 3: The Coward's Commission

Chapter 3: The Coward's Commission

The bruise on Sofia’s arm was a galaxy of mottled purple and black, a phantom handprint burned into her skin. She traced its edges with a trembling finger, the ache a grim anchor to reality. It was real. The man with the scarlet cave for a face was real. The shove that had cracked her head against the steel pillar was real.

She’d stumbled home from the subway station in a daze, the city lights smearing into a nauseating watercolor painting. She hadn’t bought the drugs. The encounter had shattered her resolve, replacing the gnawing need with pure, heart-stopping terror. But terror was a fleeting fuel. As the hours passed in her locked apartment, the familiar agony of withdrawal began its siege.

It started as a cold sweat that left her clothes clinging to her gaunt frame. Then came the shaking, an uncontrollable tremor that started in her hands and radiated through her entire body. Her stomach churned with acid, and a low, persistent hum of anxiety vibrated behind her eyes. Every sound from the hallway was a footstep. Every shadow in the corner of her vision was the shape of a man in a brown raincoat.

She had to get out. She had to score. But the thought of returning to the subway, of descending back into that tiled underworld where he had been waiting, was paralyzing. She was a prisoner, trapped between the ghosts outside and the demons within.

Her laptop chimed.

The sound was a gunshot in the tense silence. Sofia flinched, her gaze snapping to the screen. It was another commission. A lifeline. A temptation. She crawled to the desk, her body aching, and clicked open the email.

This one was different. It wasn't from a grieving family member.

The sender’s name was Arthur P. Wells. The subject line was chillingly simple: Before I go.

To whom it may concern, the message began, the tone formal and disturbingly calm. I have followed your advertised service with interest. I require a final letter to be written for my wife, Eleanor. I have the pills and a bottle of scotch. I intend to complete the act tonight, around midnight. I wish for her to have something that will ease her guilt. A letter that speaks of peace, not pain. That this was my choice, and my choice alone.

Sofia’s breath hitched. This wasn't an echo for hire. This was an accessory. He wasn't dead yet. He was a man sitting at his own computer, calmly outsourcing the last words he would ever speak. She could call the police, send an anonymous tip. She could reply to him, plead with him, tell him some empty platitude about life being worth living. She could do something. She should do something.

Then she saw the last line of the email.

I have taken the liberty of pre-paying your highest listed fee. The funds should already be in your account. Please provide the letter within the hour.

She fumbled to open her banking app. The number glowed on the screen, obscene and beautiful. Two thousand dollars. Enough to make the shaking stop. Enough to buy silence from the screaming beast in her veins. Enough to keep the eviction notice at bay for another month.

The choice was laid bare before her: a stranger’s life, or her own immediate salvation.

Her body made the decision for her. A wave of nausea so intense it made her vision swim washed over her. Her skin felt like it was crawling with insects. The pain was everything. Arthur was just words on a screen. His pain was an abstract concept; hers was a physical reality, a screaming, undeniable torment.

He’s going to do it anyway, the addict’s voice whispered in her mind. Your letter won't change anything. It will just make it kinder for the one left behind. It’s a mercy. And the money… the money will be your mercy.

Cowardice settled over her like a warm, heavy blanket. She was a coward. She was a ghoul feeding on sorrow. She accepted it.

With a sense of detached, clinical precision, she opened a new document. Her hands, slick with sweat, trembled over the keys. She became Arthur. She wrote to a woman she’d never met, Eleanor, and spun a beautiful, tragic lie. She wrote of a long, tired struggle, not a sudden surrender. She wrote of finding a quiet place beyond the pain. She used words like ‘release’ and ‘serenity.’ It was the most profound, monstrous piece of fiction she had ever created.

She attached the file. Her cursor hovered over the send button. This was the final line. Crossing it meant she wasn't just transcribing grief anymore; she was enabling it. She was punching a stranger’s ticket to the void.

Her stomach heaved. The tremors were convulsions now.

She clicked send.

The moment the email vanished from her outbox, the world fractured.

The single, bare bulb hanging from her ceiling flickered once, twice, and then went out with a sharp pop. Her laptop screen, her only source of light, glitched violently—a chaotic mosaic of her desktop icons—before it too went black.

Plunging darkness. Absolute silence. Even the ever-present hum of the city outside seemed to have been erased. The air grew heavy, cold, and thick with a sudden, oppressive pressure.

Sofia sat frozen in her chair, her heart hammering a frantic, silent drum solo against her ribs. This wasn’t a power outage. This was a response. A consequence.

Click.

The sound was tiny, but it was as loud as a cannon blast in the dead quiet. It came from the corner of the room.

From the closet.

The latch she had slammed shut. It had just been undone.

With a low, protracted groan of ancient wood, the closet door began to swing open. It moved with a slow, deliberate purpose that defied any notion of a draft or a settling house. It opened onto a patch of darkness that was somehow blacker than the rest of the room, a void carved into reality.

A shape began to form in the doorway.

It wasn’t the tall, imposing figure of the Raincoat Man. This form was slighter, smaller, achingly familiar. The pale, round face of a boy. His eyes were wide, dark, and utterly vacant. A phantom of teenage despair.

It was Brandon.

Sofia’s scream was a raw, strangled thing, swallowed by the suffocating silence. He shouldn’t be here. He was just a story she’d invented, a lie she had sold.

But the boy in her closet was horribly real. He was dressed in the faded band t-shirt and jeans his mother had described. But around his neck, cinched tight beneath his chin, was a noose. It wasn't made of real rope; it seemed woven from shadow and faint, flickering light, a spectral thing that pulsed with a cold energy. His skin had a bluish, waxy pallor.

He took a shuffling, unnatural step out of the closet, his dead eyes locked on Sofia. He moved with the jerky, broken gait of a marionette whose strings had been cut.

And then he raised his hands.

In them, he held the other end of the noose. The loop was already tied. A perfect, waiting circle of ethereal rope. He held it out to her, an offering of damnation.

He took another step, the floorboards groaning under a weight that shouldn't have been there. The phantom noose swayed gently, a pendulum marking the final seconds of her life. He wasn't there to haunt her. He was a delivery service, bringing her the same quiet peace she had so poetically written for him.