Based on the suspenseful hook provided in the image, here is a full story completion with a psychological thriller twist.
The Night Shift
I stepped outside and froze when I saw him.
He wasn’t walking toward the curb. He wasn’t walking toward the dumpsters at the side of our complex. He was standing in the middle of the backyard, near the edge of the woods, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of the motion-sensor light.
He was holding a black heavy-duty trash bag, but he wasn’t throwing it away. He was burying it.
My breath hitched in my throat, forming a small cloud in the freezing air. The shovel made a rhythmic scritch-thud sound as it hit the dirt. Scritch. Thud.
“David?” I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the wind.
He didn’t hear me. He tossed the bag into the hole and began frantically covering it up. His movements were jerky, desperate. This wasn’t the man I knew—the calm, collected accountant who color-coded his socks. This was a man possessed by panic.
I took a step forward, and the wooden porch board creaked under my weight.
David spun around. The shovel dropped from his hands. His face wasn’t filled with the guilt of a cheating husband; it was contorted with pure, unadulterated terror. He looked at me, then down at his hands, which were stained dark—not with mud, but with something else.
“Go back inside, Laura,” he choked out, his voice trembling. “Please. Just go back to bed.”
“What is that?” I demanded, my fear turning into adrenaline. I marched off the porch, ignoring the cold biting at my bare ankles. “What are you burying at 3:00 a.m.?”
He stepped in front of the fresh patch of dirt, blocking my path. “It’s nothing. Just… rotten meat from the freezer. It smelled. I didn’t want raccoons getting into the cans.”
“You’re lying,” I snapped. I pushed past him.
“Laura, don’t!” he screamed, grabbing my arm.
I yanked away and fell to my knees, clawing at the loose dirt. It was shallow. My fingers hooked into the plastic of the bag. I ripped it open.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. The sound died in my throat.
Inside the bag wasn’t a body. It wasn’t garbage.
It was clothes. My clothes. My favorite blue sundress. My white cardigan. And a kitchen knife.
They were all soaked in blood. Fresh, bright red blood.
I stared at the items, confused. “David… whose blood is this?”
I looked up at him. He was crying now, silent tears streaming down his face. He looked exhausted, aged ten years in a moment.
“It’s not mine,” he whispered. “And it’s not yours.”
“Then whose…”
He knelt beside me, his hands shaking as he reached out to touch my face. “Laura, look at your hands.”
I looked down. Under the dirt I had just dug up, my fingernails were caked with dried, rusty flakes. I looked at my arms. There were faint scratches, hidden by the long sleeves of my pajama top.
“You sleepwalk, Laura,” he said, his voice breaking. “You’ve been doing it for three nights. The first night, it was a stray cat. Last night… it was the neighbor’s dog.”
My stomach turned. The missing trash. The cold side of the bed.
“Tonight,” David sobbed, gesturing to the bag, “I caught you halfway down the street. You were heading toward the Peterson’s house. They have a newborn baby, Laura. I stopped you just in time. I brought you home, washed you off, and put you back in bed.”
I stared at the bloody knife in the bag. A memory flashed—a jagged, red haze, a feeling of hunting, a hunger I couldn’t understand.
“I’m trying to protect you,” he whispered, grabbing the shovel again. “I’m just taking out the trash. I’m cleaning up the mess so they don’t take you away from me.”
He looked me dead in the eyes, the love and horror warring in his gaze.
“Now, please,” he said, lifting a scoop of dirt. “Go back to sleep. I’ll finish here.”
I stood up, numb, and walked back toward the house. As I closed the door, I looked at the clock. 3:12 AM.
I washed my hands. I went back to bed. And as I closed my eyes, I prayed that when I woke up, the trash would be gone again.
