“The Man Who Wouldn’t Die”

Alden Richards watched Ambrose Massey through the cracked pane of the bar’s side window, the glass warped enough to twist the man’s head into a mild distortion. Neon from the sign outside bled over Ambrose’s hair as he sat in his usual place near the end of the counter, hunched over a whiskey he didn’t need and couldn’t quite afford.

The place hadn’t changed in a decade. Same wobbly tables, same torn vinyl stools, same amber bulbs humming overhead. The jukebox in the corner cycled through old rock tunes nobody had paid for in years, like the building itself had developed habits.

Alden stood in the alley, breath fogging faintly in the cold. He’d already been there long enough for one leg to go pins-and-needles, but he didn’t move. The air smelled of fryer grease leaking from the kitchen vent and the stale bitterness of spilled beer. Somewhere around the front, somebody laughed too loud and too long, the sound bending as it pushed through brick.

Ambrose lifted his glass again. His hand shook a little. Alden marked it, filed it away with everything else. The tremor, the cheap jacket, the way the man’s eyes slid down to the bar surface between sips, as if there was nothing in this world he wanted to look in the face.

Five years. That was what Ambrose’s betrayal had cost him. Five years of cold concrete, metal bunks, and the particular brand of silence you only got when a cell block decided your name wasn’t worth saying. Five winters. Five summers that blurred together. The number had lodged in Alden’s head and stayed there; he suspected it would be carved into whatever outlasted him.

When he’d finally walked out, there’d been a new world waiting. Different phones, different cars, familiar streets with unfamiliar stores. Men he used to know were either gone or pretending they didn’t remember him. But some things endured.

Ambrose Massey. The bar. The memory of a warehouse in winter, cops shouting outside, and Ambrose already halfway to the door, tossing a single glance over his shoulder before disappearing into the dark.

Alden tilted his head, listening. The vent rattled behind him. Inside, Marla’s voice floated over the general murmur, the bartender’s tone light but tired, the same as it had been ten years ago. She laughed at something Ambrose said and then moved down the rail.

Ambrose rubbed his face and checked the clock above the bar. Alden checked his watch at the same time, mirroring the motion. Outside, the street had gone quieter. The stragglers had thinned. Good. Fewer eyes.

He slid away from the window and crossed the alley to where his car waited in the shadow of a leaning lamppost. No one was parked close. No one loitered at the corner. He pulled the glove compartment open and touched the pistol lying inside—a simple thing, unregistered, clean enough. He didn’t need to check it. He knew the weight. He knew the scratch near the muzzle from the last job he’d walked away from without cuffs on his wrists.

He closed the compartment without taking it. Not yet. Not here.

Ambrose needed to leave the bar, and he would. Men like him had patterns, and Alden had spent two weeks learning this one. Three drinks, never more. A trip to the bathroom where he stared at himself for too long in the cracked mirror. One last glance at the door, as if expecting somebody to burst through it. Then cash on the counter—never a card—and the same unsteady walk out into the night.

Alden watched the front door now. The wind shifted, carrying the muffled thump of music from inside and the sour odor of nearby dumpsters. His shoulders ached with the weight of stillness. A different part of his life might have produced nerves or doubt. That part had burned out somewhere between year two and three, leaving only a factory where decisions came off the line already stamped.

When Ambrose finally emerged, Alden felt the usual thin tightening in his muscles. There you are, he thought. There you’ve always been.

Ambrose stepped onto the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, shoulders drawn up as if expecting rain that wasn’t there. He glanced one way down the street, then the other, and turned toward home. No one called after him. No one hurried to walk beside him. Just another man fading into the dark.

Alden let him get half a block before falling in behind him at a comfortable distance. Too close spooked people. Too far and you lost little details. He moved with the ease of long practice, footsteps matching the city’s rhythm. A bus passed them at the far end of the street, throwing light across parked cars. Ambrose’s shadow jumped ahead for a second; Alden kept to the blind spots.

They walked like that for ten minutes. The bar’s loose hum fell away, replaced by the quieter noise of late-night traffic and the occasional barking dog deeper in the neighborhood. Houses grew closer together, paint peeling, porches sagging. A laundromat sat dark behind its metal grate. The only light came from a corner convenience store whose clerk had taken to sleeping behind the counter, shotgun resting on his lap.

Ambrose turned down a narrower street lined with duplexes. Alden’s memory filled in the rest: the third building on the left, side entrance, second floor. He’d watched Ambrose come and go enough times to draw it blindfolded.

Halfway down the block, Ambrose paused beside a leaning telephone pole and reached for a cigarette. Alden saw the lighter flare, the brief glow cupping the man’s face from below. It made him look older. Smaller. The kind of man who had never meant to be anything but background.

Alden closed the distance by a few steps, just enough to hear the rasp in Ambrose’s breath and the quiet click of his tongue as the first drag hit.

Ambrose shifted, as though about to move on. Then he froze. Slowly, he turned his head to the left, eyes skimming across parked cars, dark doorways, the gap between the duplexes where garbage cans sat. His gaze slid right over Alden’s position without sticking, but something in his posture changed. A tension set up camp in his shoulders.

Alden stayed where he was, half-concealed behind a dented sedan. No need to rush the moment. He had waited five years; he could wait another thirty seconds.

After a heartbeat, Ambrose exhaled and resumed walking. The cigarette tip bobbed ahead of him, a dim ember tracking his pace. When he reached his building, he paused again, this time looking up at the windows as if expecting to see something peering back.

Alden watched him fish out his keys and unlock the side door. The hinges groaned, a sound he’d already noted: old metal, in need of oil. Ambrose slipped inside and let the door close with a soft clack behind him.

Alden counted to twenty, giving the man time to climb the stairs, to believe in the safety of routine. Then he stepped away from the car and approached the door, hand settling on the same handle Ambrose had just used. The metal was still faintly warm.

Inside, the hallway smelled of boiled vegetables and cheap cologne. The single overhead bulb buzzed fitfully, its plastic cover stained and yellowed. The stairs creaked under Alden’s weight, but he knew which spots to avoid from his earlier visits. He moved up along the rail, hugging the side, distributing his weight.

On the second-floor landing, he paused, listening. A television muttered behind one door, throwing moving shapes across the floor through the gap at the bottom. Somewhere downstairs, water ran in old pipes. No voices nearby. No footsteps.

Ambrose’s door stood at the far end of the hall. Light leaked from under it. Alden walked toward it without hurry, each step measured. He took a pair of thin black gloves from his pocket and pulled them on, smoothing them over his fingers until they fit like new skin.

At the door, he tilted his head. Inside, someone coughed. A chair scraped. He could hear the faint clink of glass, the rustle of fabric. He pictured Ambrose setting his keys on the crooked table by the door, shrugging out of his jacket, telling himself that tonight would be like any other. The thought brought no satisfaction, only a sense of a ledger finally nearing balance.

Alden knocked.

There was a small silence, the kind people leave when they’re not sure they heard what they think they heard. Then: “Yeah?”

“It’s Marla,” Alden said, pitching his voice softer, higher. “You left your wallet at the bar.”

Another pause. Alden imagined the calculations on the other side—did I? could I? Then the subtle thump of feet, the shuffle toward the door.

The deadbolt slid back. The chain rattled. The handle turned.

When the door opened, Ambrose’s face appeared in the gap, worry and confusion swimming together. That expression had haunted Alden’s sleep for years. Tonight, he meant to retire it.

The pistol came out of his jacket cleanly, barrel already up. Ambrose’s eyes went wide, but the surprise hardly had time to register before Alden stepped forward and drove the man back into the apartment with the force of his entry, the door swinging shut behind them with a dull thud.

He kicked it closed the rest of the way and slipped the chain on with a practiced flick. Ambrose stumbled, hitting the edge of the small table. A glass toppled and broke, spilling an arc of amber across the floor.

“Alden,” Ambrose said, voice cracking. “Christ. I thought you—”

“Yeah,” Alden said. “You did think.”

He pushed Ambrose further inside, the pistol steady, the distance between barrel and chest hardly more than an arm’s length. The room was cramped: sagging couch, leaning bookshelf, the glow of a muted television painting dull colors over the walls. Everything carried a film of neglect, from the dust on the cabinet to the dishes stacked in the sink.

“I didn’t—” Ambrose began.

“You did,” Alden cut in. “You remember the warehouse?”

Ambrose swallowed. His gaze flicked toward the far side of the room, as if measuring the distance to the kitchen, the hall, any escape at all. Alden took a step to the side, blocking him.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Ambrose said. “They had me on—”

“You had plenty of choices,” Alden said. “You just didn’t like the ones where you went inside instead of me.”

Ambrose raised his hands slowly, palms out. The front of his shirt bore the faint white ring of ringed sweat near the collar, old fear layered over fresh.

“Look,” he said. “You’re out now. We can—”

Alden shot him in the right leg.

The report cracked off the walls, loud in the small room. Ambrose went down with a shout, clutching his thigh. Blood blossomed through the fabric, dark and immediate. He tried to roll away, but Alden followed, keeping the gun centered on him, expression flat.

“You don’t get to talk about ‘we,’” Alden said. “You had your bit part. You decided how that played. This is mine.”

Ambrose’s breath turned ragged, teeth clenched. He stared up at Alden with a look that had more bewilderment than anger in it, as if he’d never entirely believed this day would arrive.

“You want money?” Ambrose managed. “I’ve got some put away. A guy like you—”

“This is not about money.”

Alden crouched beside him, balancing easily despite the years. Prison had hollowed him out, burned away most of his excess. What remained was hard, economical.

“You know what five years feels like?” he asked. “I do. I went over it. Every day. You, walking away through that door. Me, lying there on the concrete listening to boots come closer. You didn’t come back, Ambrose. You never even checked whether I got up.”

Ambrose’s eyes shone with tears he probably wished weren’t there. “I was scared,” he said. “They said if I didn’t give them somebody, they’d—”

“You gave them me.”

Alden shifted the gun slightly, letting Ambrose see the hole staring back at him. He watched the realization settle, the understanding that there would be no bargaining, no arrangement.

“You should’ve finished the story right,” Alden said. “You leave a man breathing, he might come looking for an ending.”

Ambrose opened his mouth again. Alden didn’t care enough to hear the next plea. He pressed the muzzle against the center of Ambrose’s chest and pulled the trigger.

The second shot sounded almost mild to his ears, muted by decision. Ambrose jerked once and went still. Blood spread beneath him, pooling around the broken glass, mixing with the spilled drink into a sticky mess that crawled toward the table leg.

Alden stayed there a moment longer, watching the light fade from the man’s eyes. He had pictured this so many times that the reality felt at once too sharp and strangely distant, like seeing an old photograph finally developed.

When he stood, his knees cracked. He moved around the room systematically, wiping surfaces where he’d touched them, checking for anything that might hold his prints. Gloves helped, but habit was deeper than cloth. He stepped around the blood puddle, careful not to track it.

He checked Ambrose’s pockets long enough to find the man’s wallet, more out of reflex than need. Inside, he saw a worn photo of a woman he didn’t recognize and a folded receipt from the bar. He slid the wallet back into the dead man’s jacket. Whatever life Ambrose had managed to scrape together after the warehouse wasn’t his concern.

When he was satisfied, he opened the window in the tiny bedroom at the back, climbed out onto the fire escape, and made his way down to the alley. No one looked up. No one yelled. The city carried on, indifferent, as always.

Alden walked back to his car, eyes sweeping the street by habit. The lamppost leaned, the same as before. The bar sign down the block still flickered through one of its letters. Everything looked exactly as it had an hour ago.

He drove home with the radio off, the city’s nightscape sliding past his windshield in a series of tired tableaux: closed storefronts, glowing apartment windows, the occasional shape moving along a sidewalk. His hands were steady on the wheel. His heart beat in its usual slow drag. Inside, there was only a quiet sense of correction.

At his apartment, he stripped in the bathroom and checked his clothes for stray stains. Nothing obvious. He showered, hot water pounding his shoulders, steam fogging the mirror. For a moment, he thought he saw Ambrose’s face reflected there, but when he wiped the glass clean with his forearm it was only his own, lined and unreadable.

He dried off, pulled on sweatpants and a t-shirt, and lay down on the bed. The springs complained under his weight. He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred. The apartment’s radiator clanged as it cycled, the sound like an old machine trying to remember its purpose.

Alden closed his eyes. Ambrose Massey was dead, properly this time. The balance had been restored. Tomorrow would be quieter.

Sleep took him without resistance.

XXXXXXXXX.

Morning came with a flat, gray light and the faint smell of fried eggs seeping up from the diner on the corner below his building. Alden woke feeling rested in a way he hadn’t in years. No clenching in his chest, no cold spike of anticipation of a day spent looking over his shoulder. Just an odd lightness, as if someone had loosened a band he hadn’t realized was there.

He dressed, holstered the pistol in its usual place, and headed downstairs. The street was already stirring: delivery trucks, commuters, the distant blare of a horn somewhere uptown. The air held a chill that promised rain later, though the clouds had not yet committed.

At the diner, the bell above the door jingled as he stepped inside. The smell of coffee and grease wrapped around him, familiar enough to pass for comfort. Marla’s cousin was working the counter this morning, a young guy with a shaved head and a tattoo creeping up his neck.

“Morning,” the kid said.

Alden grunted something noncommittal and slid into a booth near the window, the same one he usually chose. The vinyl seat stuck a little to his jacket. Outside, traffic rolled past in fits and starts. Inside, the radio played low, a station half-static.

He picked up a menu he didn’t need and pretended to read. His mind wasn’t on the food. It drifted instead to the image of Ambrose lying on the floor, eyes glassed over, blood spreading. If there was anything like satisfaction to be had in the world, that was it.

The bell over the door jingled again.

Alden glanced up automatically. The air in his lungs felt suddenly too cool.

Ambrose Massey walked into the diner.

Same jacket. Same tired slump of the shoulders. Same faint tremor in his hand as he reached up to push the door fully open. He paused, blinking at the interior, then moved toward the counter.

Alden stared. For a moment, his mind offered weak substitutes—lookalike, cousin, some stranger with unfortunate features—but none of them held. It was Ambrose. The curve of his jaw, the way his hairline receded a little on the left, the tiny scar at his temple from a drunken fall years back. All there.

Ambrose settled onto a stool at the counter, directly facing the coffee pots. The kid behind the counter poured him a cup without asking, like this had happened before, maybe many times. Ambrose wrapped his hands around the mug as if to borrow its heat.

His profile was clear from where Alden sat. The same man he’d shot, the same man he’d watched die on a stained apartment carpet only hours ago.

Ambrose turned his head slightly, as though sensing eyes on him.

His gaze slipped across the diner, over the booths, over the window, and for a moment landed on Alden.

Recognition sparked there, quick and uncertain. Then Ambrose looked away, back down into his coffee.

Alden’s fingers tightened on the menu until the laminated edge creaked.

Ambrose Massey was alive.

Part II

Alden didn’t leave the diner right away. He watched Ambrose from behind the menu until the kid at the counter noticed he hadn’t ordered anything and started drifting in his direction. Alden stood, dropped a few bills on the table for show, and stepped back out into the morning light.

The cold cut through him sharper than before. His thoughts were steady, but his legs carried a faint heaviness, the kind that came when the body ran on certainty while the mind scrambled for a foothold. He crossed the street and took up a position under the awning of a closed hardware store, watching through the diner’s front windows as Ambrose finished his coffee.

He waited for Ambrose to leave first.

It didn’t take long. Ambrose came out with a folded receipt in hand, stuffing it into his jacket pocket. He hesitated at the curb, glancing up and down the street in a puzzled way, like somebody who sensed a piece missing but couldn’t name which one. Then he turned and started walking.

Alden gave him half a block before stepping off the curb.

There was no need to rush the second time. He knew where Ambrose lived, knew the angles, knew the timing. The strangest thing was the normalcy of it—the way Ambrose walked the same route he always took, shoulders set in the same defeated posture, steps falling in the same uneven cadence. If Alden ignored the impossible, he could convince himself this was any other morning.

But the impossible refused to be ignored.

Ambrose reached his building. The same key. The same door. The same slow climb up the stairs. Alden followed close behind, the metal railing cold beneath his hand.

At the top of the landing, Ambrose fumbled with his lock. A small tremor shook his fingers. It wasn’t fear; Alden recognized the difference. This was something subtler. Confusion. A sense of déjà vu trying to claw its way into the open.

Alden moved before Ambrose could sort it out. He shoved the door fully open, grabbed Ambrose by the back of the jacket, and dragged him inside.

Ambrose tried to brace himself, palms skidding along the doorframe. “I don’t— I don’t understand,” he said, voice breaking under the strain.

Alden closed the door with his foot, locked it, and set the chain. The pistol came up with practiced precision.

Ambrose backed toward the center of the room, palms raised. “What is this? I didn’t do anything. I haven’t—”

“Yes, you have,” Alden said. “And you know it.”

“I don’t—I swear, I don’t. Look, if this is about the money—”

Alden shot him in the chest.

He didn’t wait for a speech this time. He didn’t want one. Ambrose staggered backward, hit the table, and collapsed. The sound of his body striking the floor was dull, final.

Alden stood there long enough to be certain. Then he wiped the doorknob, stepped through the bedroom, climbed out the same window as the night before, and disappeared into the alley.

His heartbeat stayed steady. His thoughts remained crisp. The world outside even looked ordinary. Delivery trucks, pedestrians, a dog barking somewhere behind a fence. No one glanced at him twice.

By the time he reached his apartment, the whole thing had settled into a clean finish in his mind—tidier than the first time, almost routine.

He slept well.

XXXXXXXXX.

Alden woke the next morning to sunlight pressing through the blinds. He stretched, dressed, and moved through the room with a calm that felt almost earned. He made coffee, drank half of it, poured the rest down the sink. There was nothing unusual in the air, no hint that today would skew differently.

He left the building and headed toward the diner.

Inside, the same kid worked the counter. The same smell of frying eggs drifted through the room. The same booth waited near the window.

Alden took his place.

He didn’t know what he expected. Maybe nothing. Maybe something he didn’t want to name.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The bell over the door jingled.

Ambrose Massey walked in. Same jacket. Same faint tremor in his hand. Same tired way he took the stool at the counter. Only this time, he paused before sitting, like he sensed a shift in the room.

A moment later, he turned his head sharply toward Alden’s booth.

Their eyes met.

Ambrose blinked once, confusion clouding his face. Then something colder slid into place—subtle, but unmistakable. A flicker of recognition. Not the full weight of memory, but a residue. A remnant.

Alden felt something tighten behind his ribs. It wasn’t fear. It was the first sliver of something he disliked more: uncertainty.

Ambrose turned back to his coffee. His shoulders remained tense, as though bracing for a blow he couldn’t identify.

Alden stood, left money on the table he didn’t owe, and walked out without looking back.

He followed Ambrose again that night.

He killed him again.

He slept again.

And the next morning—

XXXXXXXXX.

Ambrose Massey sat in the diner, stirring sugar into his coffee with a slow, methodical movement, as if he’d always done it that way.

This time, Alden saw something new. Ambrose didn’t just glance around the room; he studied it. His eyes traced the booths, the street outside, the reflections in the glass. He held himself with more awareness, a little more composure. Like a man stepping into a conversation he only half remembered.

Alden stayed outside, watching through the window.

Ambrose lifted his cup to drink—and stopped mid-motion. His eyes drifted toward the glass, zeroing in on the faint reflection of Alden standing on the sidewalk.

He didn’t turn around.

He just smiled. It was a small, uncertain thing… but it shouldn’t have existed at all.

Alden felt the world tilt a fraction.

He followed Ambrose again that night.

Ambrose kept glancing over his shoulder.

Not out of fear, but curiosity.

The fourth death was messier because Ambrose ran. Not far and not fast, but far enough to break the rhythm. Alden caught him by the collar and slammed him into the stairwell wall before firing the shot. Ambrose gasped something—Alden couldn’t tell whether it was a question or a warning.

The fifth morning brought another shift.

Ambrose walked into the diner not like a man starting a day, but like a man stepping onto a stage he finally knew the layout of. He looked down at his coffee. Then out the window. Then at the booth where Alden sometimes sat.

He didn’t smile this time. He furrowed his brow. He touched his chest, right where Alden had shot him in the last loop. His fingers hovered there, uncertain.

Alden waited until the sixth night before doing it again.

It didn’t bring clarity.

It didn’t restore order.

Ambrose died quietly, but his final breath carried something it hadn’t before—words that curled into the air and settled deep into Alden’s skull:

“You’re… not learning.”

Alden stood over him afterward, unsure whether he’d heard it or imagined it. The room felt smaller. The shadows seemed thicker. The air held a faint hum, as though something unseen vibrated just at the edge of perception.

He left. He washed. He slept.

XXXXXXXXX.

The seventh morning arrived darker than the others, a low bruise in the sky.

Alden reached the diner early, taking his usual booth.

Ambrose arrived five minutes later.

He didn’t sit at the counter.

He walked straight toward Alden’s booth.

Not hurried. Not hesitant. With purpose.

Ambrose stopped beside the table. His face looked paler than before, features sharpened by some new understanding, but his eyes were the thing that froze Alden—clear, alert, almost serene.

Ambrose placed his hand on the chair across from him.

“If I sit,” he said softly, “will you kill me here, or wait until tonight?”

Alden didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Ambrose studied him for a long moment. No accusation. No fear. Just a man taking stock of the rules of a game only one of them had believed he understood.

“You don’t know what’s happening,” Ambrose said.

It wasn’t a taunt. It wasn’t triumphant.

It was pity.

Alden’s jaw tightened.

Ambrose pulled the chair out, sat down, and leaned slightly forward.

“This isn’t your loop.”

His voice carried a calm certainty that sent a slow chill up Alden’s spine.

Then Ambrose lifted his coffee cup, took a sip, and looked out the window at the passing traffic—like a man settling in for the next move.

Part III

Alden didn’t let Ambrose finish his coffee.

He stood up from the booth before Ambrose could say another word and walked out of the diner. Not hurriedly, not with the crisp precision of a predator stalking prey—just moving, refusing to give Ambrose the courtesy of seeing hesitation.

Outside, the cold met him with the same mild bite as before, but something in it felt off. Not colder. Not heavier. Just off. As if the air around him was listening.

Across the glass, Ambrose watched him leave. Not through the corner of his eye. Not by accident.

He turned his head and followed Alden’s movement, gaze sharp, deliberate.

Alden walked three blocks before he realized he hadn’t decided where he was going. His muscles carried him on memory alone—down a narrow one-way street, past the alley where he’d once shaken down a dealer, past a laundromat he’d used as a meeting spot years before. The city’s usual morning shuffle spun around him: car engines, conversation snatches, distant sirens. None of it felt solid.

He ducked into an alley beside a shuttered hardware store and leaned against the wall. The bricks felt cold through his jacket.

Ambrose Massey was alive again. And this time, he had questions.

Alden closed his eyes. This isn’t your loop.
Ambrose had said it with a certainty no living man should have. No resurrected man, either.

Why would Ambrose know anything? Why would he remember anything?

Alden took a long breath through his nose and pushed off the wall. Answers would come later, if they came at all. For now, one thing remained familiar: Ambrose Massey still needed killing.

He circled back toward the diner, keeping his distance and watching through the café windows as Ambrose paid for his coffee and stepped out into the street. Ambrose didn’t look around this time. He didn’t hesitate. He started walking toward his neighborhood like he’d done every loop so far—same route, same pace.

Except he wasn’t hunched today. His gait wasn’t timid.

Ambrose moved with a quiet assurance, measuring the world in a way Alden didn’t like at all.

Alden waited until they were a block from the diner before falling in behind him, sticking close enough to track him but far enough to avoid notice.

Ambrose didn’t look back.

Not once.

If anything, he walked as though he expected Alden to be there.

XXXXXXXXX.

By late afternoon, the city had settled into its usual rhythm of tired shops and sluggish foot traffic. Ambrose spent most of the day wandering. Not running errands, not working—wandering. Through alleys, into side streets, down dead ends, as if marking lines on an invisible map.

Twice, he stopped and stared at things Alden couldn’t see—empty corners, fire escapes, patches of sidewalk where nothing unusual lay. He would stand still for a few seconds, breathing slowly, then resume walking.

The third time it happened, Ambrose turned his head just slightly toward Alden’s position behind a parked van. Not enough to make eye contact. Just… aware.

Alden didn’t like the feeling twisting inside him. He knew how to track men. He knew how criminals, cowards, and cornered rats behaved. Ambrose fit none of those categories anymore.

As the daylight thinned, Ambrose finally made his way home.

Alden followed him up the stairs, slower this time, listening to each creak of the old building.

Ambrose didn’t lock his door behind him.

He left it slightly open.

A small wedge of light spilled out into the hall.

Alden stared at it. Was it a trap? Or did Ambrose simply not care anymore?

He pushed the door open a little wider.

Ambrose stood in the center of the room, waiting with his hands in his pockets.

He didn’t flinch when Alden entered.

“You knew I’d come,” Alden said.

Ambrose nodded. “Of course.”

His voice held a steadiness that didn’t belong to the man Alden had known. Calm. Even. Like someone accepting an unavoidable truth.

Alden raised his pistol.

Ambrose didn’t move.

“You think this ends it,” Ambrose said. “But each time I return, I remember more. That should tell you something.”

“What’s that?” Alden asked.

Ambrose tilted his head slightly. “That I’m not the one trapped here.”

The floor under Alden’s feet felt unsteady—not physically, but in the sense that something beneath the veneer of the room shifted its weight.

Alden fired.

Ambrose collapsed backward, hitting the wall hard before sliding to the floor. His body twitched once and stilled. Blood seeped outward across the cheap laminate.

Alden kept the gun raised for a moment, watching. Waiting. Ambrose didn’t stir.

Good.

He holstered the weapon and left through the bedroom window, same as before.

He told himself this loop would break the pattern.

It didn’t.

XXXXXXXXX.

The next morning arrived with a strange stillness clinging to the city. Alden walked into the diner expecting dread, or maybe stubborn relief.

What he found instead was Ambrose.

Sitting at the counter.

Looking directly at him.

Not startled. Not confused.

Ambrose’s eyes were clear, calm, focused.

Alden stopped inside the doorway, hand brushing the edge of his jacket where the pistol sat. The kid behind the counter didn’t notice anything odd; he was too busy wiping down a coffee pot.

Ambrose lifted his mug. “Took you long enough.”

Alden said nothing.

Ambrose tapped the counter twice with his fingers, as if testing the sound. “Every time you kill me, I wake with more of it intact. The memories. The understanding. The shape of the place we’re in.”

Alden stepped closer. “You’re not making sense.”

“That’s the thing,” Ambrose said. “I am.”

He leaned forward a little, lowering his voice. “You should run.”

“Run from what?”

Ambrose’s expression shifted—something soft, something sympathetic, something Alden despised instantly.

“Run from him,” Ambrose whispered.

Alden’s jaw tightened. “Who?”

Ambrose’s gaze drifted past Alden’s shoulder, toward the door behind him, as though expecting someone—or something—to step through it.

“You,” Ambrose said. “Eventually.”

Alden didn’t ask another question. He left the diner, pushing through the door with more force than he intended. The cold struck him again, sharper than before.

He set out toward the edge of the city.

He didn’t look back.

XXXXXXXXX.

He reached the county line by mid-afternoon. The highway stretched ahead, empty as bone, the asphalt shimmering faintly in the waning daylight. It should have been an easy escape.

Alden drove until the mile markers blurred past.

Then something shifted.

The highway bent subtly. A curve he didn’t remember. A rise that hadn’t been there yesterday. He slowed, checked the map in the glove compartment, traced the route with his finger.

He drove another fifteen minutes.

Another curve.

Another rise.

A gas station appeared—same one he’d passed an hour earlier.

Alden’s jaw clenched. He drove past it again. And then again.

On the fourth pass, he pulled into the lot, nearly clipping the rusted air pump.

The building’s windows were dark. “Closed” hung crooked on the door.

Alden stepped inside. Shelves of stale snacks and dusty automotive supplies lined the aisles. A clock on the wall ticked softly, its hands stuck between numbers.

No clerk. No movement.

The room carried the strange sense of a place abandoned mid-breath.

He turned to leave—and froze.

Ambrose Massey stood in the doorway.

Not winded. Not sweaty. Not surprised.

Just present.

“You can’t leave,” Ambrose said. “Not yet.”

Alden took a slow step back. “How did you—”

Ambrose didn’t answer.

He reached out, placed his hand against a nearby display rack, and ran his fingers along the dusty wire.

“Every loop teaches me more,” he said. “But it does something else too.”

He looked up, meeting Alden’s eyes.

“It teaches him.”

Alden steadied himself. “Teach who?”

Ambrose’s expression softened again—pity, unmistakable this time.

“You.”

The word hung in the still air like a verdict.

Alden felt a cold ripple pass through him, as if the world had pulled in a breath he couldn’t hear. The lights overhead flickered, casting the shelves in a momentary wash of disjointed shadow.

Ambrose stepped back into the doorway.

“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “you’ll wake somewhere different.”

He hesitated, almost compassionate.

“And when you see it… you’ll understand.”

Alden took one step forward, hand moving toward his pistol.

Ambrose didn’t flinch. He didn’t run.

He simply stepped back into the fading daylight—and was gone.

Alden reached the door in two strides, yanked it open—

The highway was empty.

The sun hung low, bleeding thin light across the pavement. No footprints. No motion. No sign Ambrose had ever stood there.

Alden scanned the horizon, waiting for some recognition, some pattern he could trust.

Nothing came.

XXXXXXXXX.

That night, for the first time in many years, Alden Richards had no plan.

Sleep eventually dragged him under, slow and muddy. He drifted through it without dreams, without a sense of the room around him, without any of the certainty that had always anchored his life.

When he opened his eyes the next morning—

The room wasn’t his.

The bed dissolved beneath him like dust falling through water.

Red stone rose around him.

A canyon.

Silent. Endless.

And Ambrose Massey was waiting on a boulder ahead, calm as a man finishing the last page of a book he’d reread a hundred times.

Part IV

Alden didn’t remember falling asleep the night before. He didn’t remember lying down, or closing his eyes, or letting the weight of the day settle across him. What he did remember—what he couldn’t forget—was Ambrose standing in the doorway of the abandoned gas station, telling him he would wake somewhere different.

He tried to push the thought aside, but it returned like a nail pressed slowly against skin.

When he opened his eyes, the room he expected—the cramped apartment, the radiator, the chipped paint—was gone.

Instead, he lay on something that felt like a bed only until he tried to move.

The moment he shifted his weight, the surface rippled and collapsed beneath him, crumbling into dry flakes that sifted downward and drifted apart like loosening sand. He rolled instinctively to his hands and knees, breathing hard as the last remnants of the “bed” thinned into nothing beneath him, leaving him kneeling on solid stone.

A wall of red rock towered above him.

He rose slowly, eyes adjusting to the strange, muted light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The sky overhead looked smeared, a dull wash of pale color without any distinct sun to anchor it. The canyon stretched outward in two directions, both paths winding between towering sandstone walls that curved unnaturally, almost as though carved by an unseen hand with peculiar ideas about geometry.

The air carried a faint echo—a distant ringing that came and went, each arrival slight enough to question whether he’d heard it at all.

Alden turned in a slow circle.

Where the hell was he?
What had happened between the gas station and now?

A shape sat on a boulder thirty or forty yards ahead, legs crossed, posture relaxed. The silhouette was unmistakable. Even here, even in whatever this place was, Ambrose Massey maintained his unhurried composure.

Alden started toward him, steps steady despite the tremor beginning to crawl up his neck.

The canyon floor felt firm beneath his boots—too firm, in fact. No loose dust. No gravel. Just one unbroken sheet of stone, as if the ground had grown from a single thought.

Ambrose watched him approach. His expression held neither fear nor triumph. He looked like a man who had been waiting a long time and had made peace with the wait.

Alden stopped a short distance away. “What is this?”

Ambrose studied him for a moment. “It’s the seventh loop.”

“That doesn’t answer anything,” Alden said.

“It does,” Ambrose replied. “Just not in a way you recognize yet.”

Alden took another step, jaw tightened. “Explain it.”

Ambrose rose from the boulder with a fluid motion, dusting his palms as if brushing off an afterthought. His eyes held a clarity Alden hadn’t seen before—not in life, not in any of the loops. This wasn’t the jittery coward from the first night. Nor the confused man drinking coffee. Nor the half-aware one following invisible lines through the city.

This version of Ambrose Massey carried certainty.

“It took you seven tries,” Ambrose said softly. “Seven deaths. Seven mornings. Seven resets. That’s how long you needed to notice the parts that didn’t match.”

Alden’s hand hovered near the pistol holstered beneath his jacket. The weapon suddenly felt inadequate, like a relic from a world where the rules had made sense.

Ambrose didn’t move toward him. He walked past him instead, trailing his fingers along the canyon wall. “You thought you were chasing me. You thought your choices set the rhythm. But each time you killed me, the loop didn’t start with me. It started with you.”

Alden spun toward him. “I woke up each time. I remembered what I did.”

Ambrose nodded. “Because the loop was built around you.”

The words hit Alden with a force he didn’t want to name.

Ambrose turned and pointed deeper into the canyon. The stone walls shifted subtly, their surfaces curving inward in a way that made the perspective feel unstable. What had been a straight passage now bent gently into a long arc, vanishing into a haze that shimmered like heat mirage despite the cool stillness.

Something echoed down the length of it. A faint, rhythmic pulse that almost resembled—

Alden stiffened.

It was the sound of a gunshot.

Then another.

Then another.

The canyon threw back the echoes unevenly, repeating them at wrong intervals, overlapping in a pattern that felt familiar only because Alden had lived it: the report of violence, the collapsing body, the silence after.

Ambrose let the echoes fade before he spoke again. “You kept searching for an ending. That was the mistake.”

Alden’s pulse ticked faster. “What does that mean?”

Ambrose walked a bit further, then stopped and faced him fully. “You’re not being punished for what you did to me. That’s just the part you can accept. This place—” he gestured around them “—is built from the things you refuse to look at.”

Alden scanned the canyon walls. For a second, the red stone flickered—not because it changed color, but because shapes surfaced beneath the smooth exterior. A warehouse door. A chain-link fence. A stairwell. An alley. Places Alden had been. Places he had done things he didn’t like to remember.

The images vanished as soon as his eyes locked onto them.

He steadied himself, refusing to let uncertainty show. “You’re dead,” he said. “I killed you.”

Ambrose nodded again. “Yes. Properly. In the real world. That never changed.”

“Then what the hell are you?”

Ambrose smiled—not smugly, not cruelly, but with the kind of grim acceptance reserved for truths that couldn’t be softened. “A witness.”

“To what?”

Ambrose didn’t answer directly. He stepped closer, stopping just out of reach. “This isn’t my revenge. My part ended with the first death. Everything after that was yours.”

Alden felt something press inward—not physically, but in a way that left his thoughts searching for solid ground.

Ambrose’s next words came quietly, with the precision of a man reciting from memory.

“It took you seven loops to realize the roles were reversed.”

Alden didn’t reply.

Ambrose leaned in slightly, voice dropping to a near-whisper. “You were never the hunter.”

The canyon responded to the words. The stone tremored under Alden’s boots, a shallow vibration running through the ground like something stirring below the surface. A fissure opened a few feet away, thin and dark, then sealed itself as though the rock were soft clay.

Ambrose stepped back and nodded toward the passage stretching deeper into the canyon. “You should see the rest.”

Alden didn’t move.

Ambrose began walking, unhurried, following the curving path as though he’d walked it many times before. He didn’t look back, didn’t check whether Alden followed.

He didn’t have to.

Alden felt the canyon closing around him—not from the sides, not from above, but in the quiet certainty that forward was the only direction left.

He followed.

The walls around them shifted as they walked. Not dramatically, not in a cinematic fashion—just subtle adjustments in angle, in texture, in the depth of carved grooves. One moment they resembled natural erosion. The next, they held the impression of stair rails, doorframes, or the faint outline of a fire escape.

Places he had been.

Scenes he had made.

Each flicker vanished as soon as he tried to focus on it.

Ambrose spoke without turning. “This is what happens to men who think they can outrun themselves.”

Alden kept his eyes forward. “Where is this leading?”

Ambrose didn’t slow. “To the part you’ve been avoiding.”

“And what part is that?”

Ambrose’s shoulders rose and fell in a steady breath. “The end of your story.”

Alden stopped walking. “My story’s not finished.”

Ambrose did stop then. He turned, expression unreadable.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “You came here because you wouldn’t let it finish.”

The words lingered between them like drifting ash.

Ambrose extended a hand—not offering help, not asking for trust, but pointing down the canyon’s winding path.

“It’s time, Alden.”

Alden stared past him, into the red stone corridor that bent out of sight. The echoes there felt familiar in a way he didn’t want to recognize.

He took a step forward.

Then another.

The canyon accepted him.

Ambrose followed in silence.

The stone under their feet began to pulse with a slow rhythm—as though preparing a welcome for the one who had finally realized the truth.

And somewhere far ahead, in the deepest part of the canyon, something waited.

Part V

The canyon narrowed as Alden followed Ambrose deeper into the winding red corridor. The walls rose higher here, leaning inward with a subtle pressure that suggested intention rather than erosion. Shadows clung to the grooves and indentations in the stone, shifting slightly whenever Alden tried to understand their shapes. For a moment, a pattern resembled the cracked walls of a stairwell from a job he’d done a decade ago. Another flicker suggested the reflection of an alley he’d once dragged a man through.

Each image dissolved before it fully formed.

Ambrose walked with quiet confidence, as though he recognized every turn. His steps echoed just enough to make Alden aware of how silent his own felt in comparison. Alden kept one hand near the pistol, though he already knew the weapon’s purpose had grown as fragile as the world he thought he understood.

After several minutes—or hours; time seemed loose here—the canyon widened into a circular clearing. The ground dipped slightly in the center, forming a shallow basin. The stone surface there was darker, streaked with lines that spiraled inward like the grain of a massive tree trunk. The air felt still, though not dead; more like a held breath.

Ambrose stopped at the edge of the basin. He didn’t look tired or afraid. If anything, he carried himself with a calm that suggested acceptance of something long known.

Alden stepped beside him. “What is this place?”

Ambrose took a moment before answering. “It’s what you built. Piece by piece. Loop by loop. Everything you did, everything you tried to bury, everything you denied—this is where it ends up.”

“I didn’t build anything,” Alden said.

Ambrose turned his head slightly. “You did. You carried it with you for years. The violence, the grudges, the choices you kept telling yourself didn’t matter. You killed me, Alden. Properly. In the real world. But what dragged you here wasn’t my hatred.”

Alden narrowed his eyes. “Whose was it?”

Ambrose stepped into the basin. The stone didn’t crack under his weight; it accepted him the way the sand accepts a familiar tide.

“Yours,” Ambrose said. “You’re the one who couldn’t let it end.”

Alden moved after him. “I killed you. That should’ve been the end.”

Ambrose shook his head. “You made it the beginning. You kept returning to it in your thoughts. You replayed that night in your mind. You didn’t regret killing me, but you couldn’t release the part of you that needed that story to keep going.”

Alden felt something twist beneath the surface of his thoughts, a slow turning motion like an object shifting in deep water. “I don’t believe this.”

Ambrose kneeled and touched the spiraling stone with the flat of his palm. The pattern pulsed faintly beneath his hand. “You don’t need to believe it. You’re already inside it. This canyon, these loops, these resurrections—they weren’t punishments from me or from anything outside. You dragged yourself into the pattern because you couldn’t walk away from the story you thought you owned.”

Alden shook his head. “No. You came back. You were the one learning more each time.”

“So were you,” Ambrose said. “Each loop gave you a chance to see what you were doing. To stop. To turn away. You never did.”

Alden’s jaw tightened. “I finished what you started. That’s all.”

Ambrose rose to his feet. “You didn’t finish anything. You kept sharpening it. You kept adding to it. You didn’t want closure—you wanted purpose. And when you lost the real world’s version of it, you recreated it in here. Over and over.”

Alden took a step forward, closing some of the distance. “Why tell me now?”

Ambrose let out a slow breath. “Because the loop can’t hold you anymore. You’ve stretched it to its end.”

The stone beneath Ambrose’s feet rippled gently, the spiral deepening. The ground wasn’t sinking; it was unfolding, peeling back its layers like a slow-turning gear. A soft vibration spread across the clearing.

Alden drew his pistol and pointed it at Ambrose. “Tell me how to get out.”

Ambrose didn’t flinch. “You kill me again, and you’ll wake up in another version of this place. Maybe a city street, maybe an alley, maybe a room you think you recognize. But each time you do, you lose something. A bit of memory. A bit of clarity. Eventually, you’ll forget the idea of escape altogether.”

Alden steadied the gun. “Then what’s the real way out?”

Ambrose took one careful step toward him. His tone carried no challenge, no anger. Just a quiet understanding of something Alden hadn’t yet admitted.

“You let the story end without trying to force the last page.”

Alden tightened his grip. “What does that mean?”

Ambrose met his stare fully. “It means you stop killing me.”

Silence gathered around them. The canyon walls seemed to lean closer.

Alden didn’t lower the gun.

Ambrose sighed—not with frustration, but with tired sympathy. “You think you’re trapped with me. But I’m the one who’s been trying to help you see the walls you built.”

Alden took a step back. The ground beneath his boot shifted slightly, as though reacting to his indecision.

Ambrose continued. “You can end this right now, Alden. Walk away. Let the loop dissolve. If you do, I go on. And you go wherever men like you go when they finally stop dragging their own ghosts behind them.”

Alden’s throat tightened with something he couldn’t name. His hand trembled around the pistol grip. Not fear. Not hesitation. Something older. Something he’d spent decades refusing to look at directly.

Ambrose took another step. Now they stood only a few feet apart.

“You’ve spent your whole life hunting,” Ambrose said. “But the only thing you ever chased was the part of yourself you couldn’t face. This place is the end of that hunt.”

Alden’s voice came low, almost strained. “What happens if I don’t stop?”

Ambrose looked genuinely saddened. “Then you stay here. Until the loops aren’t loops anymore. Until there’s nothing left of you but the act of chasing.”

Alden tried to steady his breathing. “And you?”

Ambrose offered a small, tired smile. “If you let it go, I walk out. This place holds me only because you won’t stop pulling me into it. I never asked for it. But I can leave once you do.”

Alden stared at him. At the man he had killed seven times. At the man he had blamed for years of pain he’d never learned to release. At the face that had become the fulcrum of every violent urge he’d ever justified.

Slowly, painfully, Alden lowered the gun.

Ambrose watched him with something like relief.

But Alden didn’t drop the weapon.

He lifted it again—toward his own chest.

Ambrose’s eyes widened. “Alden—”

A shot cracked through the canyon.

The recoil buckled Alden’s knees. He staggered, fell to one side, landing hard against the spiraled stone. Warmth spread beneath him, not quickly, not with panicked urgency, but with the measured slowness of something inevitable.

Ambrose rushed forward and caught him under the arms, lowering him onto the ground. The canyon walls wavered, then blurred, their colors washing into a diffuse haze that looked almost like dawn.

Alden’s vision dimmed around the edges. He searched Ambrose’s face for anger, triumph—anything familiar.

He found none.

Ambrose looked at him with genuine pity. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Alden forced the words out. “I… ended it.”

Ambrose’s voice softened. “Not the way you think.”

The canyon trembled under them. The spiral beneath Alden pulsed, each beat duller than the last.

Ambrose leaned close, his voice level. “You came here because you couldn’t stop the pattern. What you did just now… that keeps it alive.”

Alden’s fading gaze flicked upward. “Then what happens?”

Ambrose’s expression shifted—grief mixed with resignation.

“You wake up.”

Alden’s grip on consciousness slipped. The canyon dissolved around him, the red walls melting into formless color, then into nothing at all.

XXXXXXXXX.

Alden opened his eyes to the dim light of a shabby apartment. Not his own. The wallpaper peeled in long strips. The floor was cluttered with old newspapers. A faint smell of stale liquor hung in the air.

A figure stood over him.

A stranger. Middle-aged. Shaking slightly, holding a pistol with both hands, trying to aim.

The man’s voice cracked as he spoke. “Alden Richards?”

Alden tried to move, but his limbs resisted, sluggish and unresponsive.

The man swallowed hard. “You don’t know me. But you ruined my life. You killed someone who mattered to me. I’m—I’m here to finish this.”

Alden managed a faint exhale. There was no panic. No plea.

Just recognition.

The shape of the loop had changed.

The center had not.

The man raised the pistol.

Alden met his eyes, understanding the truth Ambrose had tried to warn him of:

He had become the one who wouldn’t die.