The Death Contract

I recognized the voice whispering my mother's name through the bedroom wall—because I'd zipped her into a body bag two weeks ago in the hospital morgue. My landlord swears it's just old recordings left by the previous tenant. But that tenant died on my shift, and now her face is bleeding through my reflection in the mirror. He won't enter the house after dark. The neighbor says no one's lived here in three years. And every night, the whispers get closer, calling me by a name I've never told anyone—the name my mother used before she drowned. He knows what this house wants. He's known since the first time he handed me the keys with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. The contract doesn't need my signature—it needs my breath to stop.