The Cemetery Shift

Maggie's hair had started falling out in clutches three months after the promotion. Stress, her doctor said, prescribing vitamins she never remembered to take. Now she ran a hand through what remained—a thinning curtain she'd stopped bothering to dye—and considered the irony of caring about appearance at 3 AM in a corporate mailroom.

She wasn't supposed to be here. Richardson was. Richardson, with his ful some sales forecasts and mechanical bull-riding stories that somehow always made their way into quarterly reviews. But Richardson's wife had gone into labor six hours ago, and Maggie—ever the reliable friend, ever the one who couldn't say no—had covered his shift.

The automation project had launched yesterday. The company called it 'synergistic workforce optimization.' Maggie called it what it was: a machine that sorted mail faster and cheaper than any human ever could. Standing in the fluorescent-lit room, watching the mechanical arms sort envelopes with surgical precision, she felt like a ghost haunting her own replacement.

Then she saw it—a package, misshapen and leaking, stuck in the machine's gears.

The emergency stop button did nothing. The automated voice cheerfully announced a jam while conveyor belts kept straining, motors whining like dying animals. The package tore open, spilling contents across the floor: photos, handwritten letters, a child's drawing of two stick figures holding hands.

Maggie knelt, hands trembling. The letters were dated 2018. This was someone's lost correspondence, years of it, accidentally mailed to the wrong department and sitting in limbo until tonight. The return address had faded, but she recognized the name on one envelope: her own college roommate, lost contact after graduation.

She opened it. 'I'm getting married,' the letter read. 'I wish you'd come back.'

Outside, dawn broke pink and indifferent over the parking lot. Maggie sat on the curb and cried until her makeup ran, then packed the letters into her purse. The machine hummed behind her, sorting whatever remained.

Her phone buzzed. Richardson's text: 'It's a boy.'

Maggie typed 'Congratulations' and hit send. Then she opened a new message to a number she'd memorized a decade ago, fingers hovering over the keys like something resurrected, like something that had forgotten how to be alive.