I know how this is gonna sound. Believe me, I've played it back in my head a thousand times, trying to make it make sense. Trying to convince myself I was just tired, or it was the fumes from the oven cleaner. But I know what I saw. I know what he was. I was working at this pizza chain. I won't say the name, but you know the one. Cheap ingredients, heavy on the grease. It was a dead-end job, just something to pay for community college. I was closing shifts mostly, which meant it was usually just me and the manager, a guy named Stan.
Stan was... odd. That's what we all said. He had this skin condition, really dry, flaky skin on his hands and neck. He was always putting lotion on, this unscented industrial stuff he kept in a pump bottle on his desk. And he hated the cold. I mean, hated it. The kitchen in a pizza place is always hot, you know? It's like four hundred degrees near the ovens. We'd all be sweating through our uniforms, dying for a break in the walk-in freezer. But Stan? Stan would wear a long-sleeve thermal under his uniform polo. He kept his office, this little closet in the back, cranked up to like eighty-five degrees. You'd walk in there to drop off the cash drawer and it was like getting hit with a physical wall of heat. He never sweat, though. Not a drop. His face was always dry, kind of waxy.
It was a Tuesday night. I remember because Tuesday is the slow night, so we cut the drivers early. It was the dead of winter, February maybe? It was bitter cold out. I remember I'd had to scrape a layer of ice off the delivery door earlier that evening just to get the trash out. I made sure to close and lock it after because of the cold. So the shop was quiet. Just the hum of the beverage coolers and the ventilation. Stan was in his office. He'd been in there for hours with the door shut. I was mopping the front lobby, getting ready to lock up, when I heard this sound coming from the back. It wasn't a normal sound. It was this... wet, tearing noise. Like peeling the skin off an orange, but louder. And underneath that, this low, rhythmic clicking. Like a throat noise.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]