Sagapic · Lore · Journal

Blackline

The Count

Chapter 4 · free to read

If counting them was what staffed me, then tonight nobody counts. Thirty-eight was enough.

Three forty-seven came and went in a room where nobody was watching. It was the longest four minutes of my life.

Nineteen gone and not one of them had a face. No photograph, no name, nothing to file. Nobody had counted them, so there was nothing for the city to miss.

Three nights. Fifty-seven people. And at the foot of my own tally, in my own handwriting, one mark I do not remember making, with my initials next to it.

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Artwork and narration generated with AI.