Whatever You Do, Don't Wake Michelle

Content warning; This story contains themes of death and loss.

If you are sensitive to these topics, you may want to skip this reading or proceed with caution.

I kept thinking that I couldn't wait to go home as I sat at the dining room table of the foster care shelter in which I worked. I stared at the clock, eleven p.m.; that meant three more hours left of my shift. Even three hours had felt like forever.

I got up from the table and pushed my chair in. I couldn't be reckless because all the residents were supposed to be asleep. One wrong move and I could wake the entire house. Been there, done that. So, I tiptoed.

In the living room, on the couch, sat my supervisor Michelle. She had her phone held closely to her face, dozing off. She usually started yawning and head bobbing around this time of night.

Alice, my coworker, held the remote. She was watching some trash reality TV show.

I snickered at her choice of entertainment and grabbed my headphones.

I let myself sink into the beanbag in the corner of the room, the closest thing to comfort I'd get--then the noise happened.

I jumped up, pulled my left earbud out, and looked over at Alice. She was already looking in my direction. Michelle, passed out with her face in her phone, was unfazed by the sound.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered.

She nodded, grabbed the tv remote, and pressed mute.

We sat there in silence for a moment.

"We should do a check on the residents."

Radley, who had been processed that day, resided in Room 1A. Grace resided in Room 2B. We agreed to split the room checks. Alice would check Room 1A and I would check Room 2B.

Alice used her phone flashlight to peer into Room 1A, which woke Radley up.

"Alice? What? It's the middle of the night!" he groaned.

Meanwhile, I checked on Grace, who was already awake. Her lamp on the bedside table was turned on.

"What's the matter? Still having trouble sleeping?" I asked warmly.

She stared blankly at me before she answered.

"Yes, I can't sleep because the house feels strange. And... it smells. Something-"

"...bad is going to happen here? I know, you keep saying that." I interrupted.

I'd been trying to convince her all week that she was safe here. Normally, I would bend the lights-out rule and let her sit on the porch with a warm cup of milk, but at this point, I was under the impression that she was taking advantage of me.

"How about I bring you a cup of warm milk?" I suggested.

She smirked, "Can we go out on the porch like we did last time?" She asked excitedly.

Michelle wouldn't be too happy about me bending the rules again. "Playing favorites," she called it.

"Not tonight Grace, I'm sorry."

She frowned.

"How about first thing tomorrow, we go for a walk around the neighborhood? Just me and you?"

She smiled and nodded in agreement.

I grabbed the doorknob and began slowly closing the door.

"I'll be right back with your cup of milk," I said and shut it completely.

Turning into the dark hallway, I made my way back to the living room and met Alice at the coffee table. To my left was Michelle, completely laid out on the leather couch like it was her bed. Her wrinkled mouth open, eyes closed, phone gripped in her right hand hanging off the edge of the cushion.

I nudged Alice and used my head to point toward Michelle.

She looked up from the sleep log, "It's better if we leave her. I heard her snoring, poor thing.” she brought her attention back to the coffee table and filled in the sleep log.

"How was Grace?" She asked.

"Grace is still awake. I offered to make her a warm cup of milk."

Alice sighed.

"Okay. Well, you should probably make it now before Michelle wakes up. Shift change is at one a.m.," she scoffed.

As I walked toward the kitchen, she quietly called to me, "I guess the noise could've been Grace, right?"

"Yeah," I breathily responded back.

As I got closer to the kitchen, I felt a rush of cold air. The temperature in the house was fairly warm, but as I got closer and closer, the air got colder. At first, I thought maybe someone had opened a window.

Then, I noticed it in the corner of my eye.

To my left, the front door stood wide open. The blue curtains whipped violently in the cold wind.

The front door was supposed to be locked.

The door had a code that only the staff knew. Whenever someone needed to leave or enter, they had to punch the code into the keypad.

It made a high-pitched beeping noise with every number pressed, followed by another loud beep when the code was accepted.

I stared at the open door. The noise—that had to be what we’d heard. Somehow, neither Alice nor I had realized the door had opened.

“Alice.” My voice came out quieter than I expected.

She called back from the living room, “What?”

“Come here.”

Without taking my eyes off the door, I listened to her footsteps approaching me.

“What did you do?” she asked, concerned, her voice getting closer. “Did you burn the milk again?”

I didn’t answer.

When Alice rounded the corner, her face dropped. For a moment, neither of us said anything. The wind continued to push the blue curtains around, making them whip against the wall.

“You think that’s what we heard?” Alice wondered.

“What else could it have been?

Alice slowly walked toward the door. She was in the military and it showed in moments like these. She didn’t freeze when something went wrong, she assessed it, and she acted.

“Stay here,” she ordered.

She stepped into the entryway and looked around before reaching for the door. She checked the handle, then the keypad, pressing it once.

Nothing.

Alice looked outside onto the porch and found it empty. She stepped out anyway. Anxiety crawled up from my knees to my shoulders. I watched as she checked the porch.

Nobody.

She stepped back inside and pulled the door shut. The lock clicked into place. For a second, I felt relieved. Then, Alice turned toward me. Her eyes narrowed, and I could tell she was about to say something.

“Did you lock it before?” She challenged me. I stared at her, a little offended by the implication that I’d been careless. Of course I had locked it.

“Yes,” I snapped.

I could sense where her mind was going now. Neither of us needed to say what we were both thinking: someone could have come inside, and if someone had come inside, we had no idea where they were. Our eyes moved toward the hallway.

The residents.

Then I looked toward the staircase. The office was upstairs. Confidential files were kept up there, along with information about every resident who came through the shelter. The residents’ medication was locked away there, too.

Alice stopped. She looked at the stairs too.

“I’ll check upstairs. You should go check on the residents again.”

I agreed, although a part of me wanted to crawl into Alice’s back pocket. Before Alice walked away, she stepped closer and leaned in, lowering her voice like she was trying to soothe me.

She placed her hand on my shoulder before saying, “Make sure Radley is still asleep and make sure Grace stays put in her room. Don’t mention anything about the door; don’t worry her.”

I nodded again. “Okay,”

“And whatever you do, don’t wake Michelle.”

Of course that was still one of our biggest concerns. Even with an unexplained noise, an open front door, and the possibility that someone had gotten in, waking Michelle somehow felt like the worst thing we could do.

“I’ll try.” I affirmed.

Alice straightened up and glanced toward the front door again. “I’m serious, Lynn! We’ll figure this out on our own,” she whispered. “It’s probably nothing. Just the strong winds.”

I looked toward the door again. “Hopefully,” I quietly agreed.

“We might not even have to tell her about the door,” Alice continued. “It’s harmless. Nobody’s outside, the residents’ are in their rooms, and we don’t know that anybody came in.”

Alice nodded toward the staircase.

“Please, don’t forget the sleep log.” She insisted over her shoulder as she walked away.

I headed to Radley’s room first. I stood in the doorway for a moment, listening. I couldn’t hear anything. It was a dark void until I reached for my phone and turned on the flashlight, slowly shining it into the room. The beam landed directly on Radley’s face. He squinted immediately.

Radley sighed heavily and mumbled something under his breath before aggressively turning away from the light and covering his face completely.

“Sorry,” I murmured and stepped back into the hallway. I quietly closed the door behind me. One down. Now, to Grace’s room. I slowly opened the door to find Grace still awake. The warm light from the lamp spilled into the dark hallway. She looked over at me with the same knowing expression she’d had earlier in the night.

“Finally, I've been waiting.” Then she pointed toward the open window.

“The smell’s getting worse. I opened my window.” I still couldn’t pinpoint this smell.

“Okay, that’s fine.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed when she realized I wasn’t carrying anything.

“The milk,” she demanded.

“I know.”

Her face dropped, yet there was still a lingering suspicion in her eyes.

“I’ll be right back with it,” I promised. “I just have something to do first.”

“What?” she questioned.

I paused.

“I have to… make sure the milk is still… milk.” I stammered. It was a ridiculous excuse. She didn’t look convinced either.

If Alice had actually found someone upstairs, I figured I would have heard something by now. If there was someone, she would’ve yelled, fought, or at the very least warned us that something was wrong but I hadn’t heard anything.

Unless something had happened to Alice. I immediately pushed the thought away. No. That was ridiculous. She was probably just checking around the office and would be back down to meet me any second.

“Just stay here and I’ll be right back.” I told her as I gently closed the door before she could question me again and walked back down the hallway.

The house felt different now. Quieter. I reached the coffee table where the sleep log was sitting and picked up the pen. I looked at the clock. Half past midnight, twelve-thirty a.m. Thirty minutes until shift change.

When I finally finished signing my initials, I just stood there. It felt like the entire house had just stopped. My eyes slowly moved toward the leather couch. Michelle was still there, asleep and before I could talk myself out of it, I started to walk toward her.

As I got closer, I tilted my head, studying her. Alice had mentioned something about hearing Michelle snoring earlier so I listened for it but heard nothing. I looked at her chest and waited for it to rise. Was she breathing? I really couldn’t tell.

“Michelle?” I took another step. Then—

The keypad at the front door beeped again, a shrill, mechanical chime that made my stomach drop. Someone was entering the code.

“Lynn.”

Alice was calling me from the staircase. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I walked through the kitchen and dining room toward her voice. Alice was standing at the top, looking down at me.

“You scared me,” I said.

“What?”

I leaned against the railing of the staircase at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at Alice.

“Never mind, I thought you were down here.”

Alice shook her head.

“I found a window open upstairs,” she said. “And there was printer paper everywhere. I’m guessing the wind blew it out of the office.”

“Well, everything's fine down here. The kids are still in their rooms.” Alice relaxed slightly.

“Good.”

“Radley was asleep,” I continued. “And Grace is still awake. She was waiting for the milk.”

Alice nodded, listening.

“Oh, and Michelle—”

Alice interrupted me. “Oh, yeah. You must’ve noticed she isn’t here anymore.”

I stopped.

“What?”

“Michelle came upstairs.”

I stared blankly at Alice, she continued like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“She apologized for falling asleep. She helped me pick up some of the papers, actually. Then she said she should probably head home to her family. She was exhausted, so she decided to leave a little early.”

My stomach dropped.

“She told me to tell you goodbye.”

“Michelle hasn’t left the couch.”

Alice scoffed at me, almost laughing.

“Lynn, she came upstairs.”

“I was just looking at her.”

“I just talked to her.”

“Lynn, I’m telling you, Michelle came upstairs.”

“And I’m telling you she didn’t.”

Neither of us moved. Alice looked genuinely confused. So was I. I had been standing downstairs watching Michelle. She hadn’t come upstairs. And yet, Alice was standing in front of me completely convinced that Michelle had.

Before either of us could say anything else, the keypad at the front door beeped again.

“See?” Alice questioned, “Maybe she forgot something.”

I stood there paralyzed, staring at the handle, terrified. If Michelle walked in, it meant Alice was right. She had just come upstairs. It meant that the Michelle I had been looking at, laid out on the couch, was nothing but a trick of my own mind.

The front door swung open.

“Good grief,” Emily said as she stepped inside.

“The wind is brutal out there tonight.”

Lucille followed her in, shedding her heavy coat. “Tell me about it. I thought I was going to—” Both of them stopped dead in their tracks.

“Okay…” Lucille said slowly. “What’s going on?”

I couldn’t speak but Alice didn’t hesitate. She threw her hands up as she looked at the incoming shift.

“Did you guys happen to see Michelle leave just now?” Alice demanded from the top of the staircase, casting a pointed, irritating glare in my direction.

“Leave?” Lucille asked, frowning. “No. We didn’t pass anyone.”

“Yeah, her car is still parked right out front in the driveway,” Emily added, tossing her keys onto the dining table.

Slowly, Alice’s head snapped over to meet my gaze, her irritation evaporating into terror. Michelle’s car was outside. She hadn’t left. Which meant what I saw wasn’t a trick of my mind.

Lucille caught the look on my face. She stepped closer, her brow creasing. “Are you girls okay?”

Before I could answer,

“Is Michelle asleep?” Emily called out from the kitchen, her tone lowered.

The question snapped Alice out of her trance and into action. She slowly made her way down the stairs, her face a mask of sheer terror. Lucille, Alice, and I drifted into the dining room.

From the kitchen, Emily's voice faded into mere background noise. "How was the night?" she asked.

We came around the corner together.

Michelle lay completely limp, her arm dangling listlessly over the side, her hand still gripping the phone right at the edge of the leather cushion.

Alice stopped a few feet away.

“Michelle?”

Alice took a hesitant step closer to the black leather couch. She reached out, her hand trembling, and nudged Michelle's shoulder to try and wake her up. Michelle’s body shifted heavily and slid from the couch onto the floor. A thick, sickly odor filled the room.

Lucille let out a scream of pure fear, her hand instantly covering her mouth. I didn’t even turn. Deep in the background of the dark hallway, the click of a door being open echoed. My eyes stayed entirely fixated on Michelle’s lifeless body.

From that moment on, everything’s a complete haze.

I felt Emily enter the room, then move like a shadow in my peripheral vision. I know now that Grace had been peeking out into the dark hallway at us. Emily rushed over to her, attempting to keep her from what she had been anticipating

In the muffled distance, I could hear Grace’s voice.

“ What’s wrong? Did she burn the milk again? Did something bad happen?”

The 911 dispatchers came. They checked for a pulse, but it was just a formality. Michelle was officially pronounced dead right there on the floor, having passed away hours earlier. Looking back on it now, after all these years, the true horror isn't just the body. It’s the timeline.

It took me a long time to piece together the puzzle of what really happened that night. The loud noise we heard. The front door we found wide open. I don't think a person opened that door. I think it was the Dark one, the Collector— he who comes for you when it’s your time —crossing the threshold at eleven p.m. to take her. When Alice and I first saw Michelle, she was sitting perfectly upright—but when we looked later, she was sprawled out. I still can’t help but wonder if that was the exact moment her soul had finally left her physical shell.

And what Alice saw? The Michelle who walked upstairs, looked Alice in the eye, and claimed she needed to leave and go home? I knew it had to be Michelle's ghost, finally checking out of her shift, typing in her code one last time as she left the building for good.

To this day, the shelter management could never actually explain to us what happened that night. They ended up blaming her death entirely on a quiet, sudden medical failure. I couldn't stay after that.

Sometimes, I drive past that old house. I look up at the windows, and I can't help but wonder.