The Mourning Crow

There was a knock at the door. Three neat raps, more polite than urgent, but wrong for the hour.

Joseph glanced at the clock on the muted television screen: 11:03 p.m. He stared at the muted TV as if the blue-white flicker could explain it. On the screen, a sitcom mouth opened and closed in pantomime while the laugh track, a thing he could almost hear from memory, never came. He hadn't been expecting anyone. He never expected anyone. The apartment around him seemed to hold its breath.

He lived on the third floor of a nondescript brick building whose hallways smelled faintly of warm dust and someone else's laundry detergent. His unit was small but not cramped. It was a one-bedroom apartment with a narrow galley kitchen, a square living room arranged around a coffee table, and a small two-chair dining set that pretended to be a proper table when necessary.

He should have been at work. On nights like this, he usually wore the reflective vest and pushed a wheeled cart down rows of fluorescent-lit aisles, the kind of job that never shows up in dreams because it already feels like one. He was the overnight stocker at the twenty-four-hour big-box store, the quiet figure behind the displays, the pair of hands that returned cereal boxes to their original patterns and faced the labels forward. Sometimes he joked to himself that by dawn he'd put more eyes on pasta sauce than anyone in the city. Tonight his boss had called at eleven minutes past six and said, lightly, that they were overstaffed, "slow night, Joe, take it off if you want."

He sat up from his slouched position on a couch that was more utility than comfort, an overused cushion dented in the middle from years of the same posture. The remote that had been balanced against his thigh fell to the floor. Seconds earlier, he had been cycling through late-night commercials and reruns, with the screen's flicker spilling pale light across the beige walls. No sound accompanied it. Joseph preferred the silence.

On the coffee table, a chipped white plate sat with the remnants of his dinner. Just as he had eaten the night before, his plate had reheated pasta with a slice of plain white bread and a smattering of butter. The fork leaned at an angle, a small clump of sauce stubbornly clinging to the tines. A faint smell of tomato and salt hung in the air, mixing with the scent of detergent from the laundry folded earlier in the evening.

The apartment was tidy, but not warm. Bookshelves lined one wall, their contents sparse. No pictures. The kitchen, a short stretch of linoleum away, was orderly. The same brand of cereal lined in boxes, cans stacked in even rows, a carton of eggs in the fridge waiting for another week of identical breakfasts. It was a home designed by repetition, maintained by habit.

The knock came again.

This time, he blinked, realizing he was still staring at the door. His first reaction wasn't fear but confusion. Who could possibly want him at this hour?

Automatically, he reached for the plate, stacking the fork on top of it. He stood and carried it into the kitchen, sliding it into the sink with the other two dishes from the day. He ran water over them as if whoever was outside might care about dirty plates. The knock had already unsettled him, an intrusion in a life that had no intrusions.

He dried his hands on a towel and hesitated, staring at the door across the small living room.

Finally, he moved towards the door.

The hallway light above flickered when he pulled the door open.

Something was standing there.

It was tall, taller than Joseph by a head. At first, in the shadow of the corridor, Joseph thought it was a man in an outdated suit. A black coat, high collar, and gloves like something out of an old photograph. But then he saw the head.

A crow's head, glossy black feathers reflecting the dull light, a curved beak that clicked faintly as it shifted. Two eyes, large, steady, fixed on him. They were not predatory but unblinking, kind in their stillness, and yet they pierced him with the weight of being wholly seen.

When it spoke, the voice echoed in two layers. One human, low and deliberate, and one the echo of a caw just behind it.

“Good evening, Joseph."

The sound turned the small corridor into something cavernous.

Joseph's hand tightened on the doorframe. His mouth opened, but no words came. He should have shut the door. He should have demanded an explanation. Instead, he only stared.

"May I come in?" the creature asked, tilting its head in a strangely polite gesture.

Joseph hesitated. His instincts screamed against it, but something in the eyes... patient... waiting... made refusal impossible. As though the question itself was a formality, and his answer had been written before he was born.

Without words, he stepped back.

The creature entered, its long coat brushing against the doorway as it ducked inside. The figure moved with slow, deliberate grace, each step respectful of the cramped space. It glanced around the apartment without judgment, then gestured toward the small dining table near the kitchen.

"May we sit?”

Joseph nodded, throat tight. He followed, pulling out the opposite chair and lowering himself down, hands clasped together on the table as though this were an interview or a confession.

The creature folded its gloved hands neatly before it. The crow's beak opened slightly, and the doubled voice came again, soft, almost apologetic. "You wonder why I am here.”

Joseph swallowed. His voice, when it finally emerged, was small.

"Yes."

The creature inclined its head. "You were meant to die tonight."

The words landed without weight, but they filled the room.

Joseph blinked, almost expecting laughter, waiting for an explanation. None came. “Die?” he echoed.

"Yes," said the creature. "I am the Mourning Crow, and I am here to walk with you, because you carry no soul. There is nothing for Death to claim. Only silence. Only return."

Joseph stared at the faint scratches in the wood of the table. He ran a thumb across one. His voice was barely a whisper.

"Why me?"

The Mourning Crow's eyes did not blink.

"You were born this way. Some are. An old inheritance, carried quietly down the bloodline, not through your fault, nor through your choice. You lived without the spark others know. You existed, and that was all."

A small shiver passed through Joseph, not from fear, but from recognition. He thought of his years. His work that paid but never fulfilled, friendships that never rooted, evenings like this one blending into the next. Not unhappy. Not happy. Just… there.

He licked his lips. "What happens to me?"

The Mourning Crow tilted his head slightly, as though considering how to soften the truth, then did not.

"You return to what you came from. Nothingness. No pain, no memory. You will not know it."

Joseph's throat tightened. His hands gripped the edge of the table. But strangely, he did not feel cheated. There was no fire in him to rage against it. Only a hollow acceptance.

"I came from nothing," he said, voice trembling, "so… I go back... to nothing?"

The Mourning Crow inclined its head again, a slow bow of acknowledgment. "Exactly."

For a long time, they sat in silence. The muted television flickered from across the room, the images spilling color into the corner of Joseph's vision. A commercial, a sitcom rerun, another commercial. He thought of the mornings he had woken to the alarm, gone to work, filled the hours, returned home, eaten, and slept. A line of days, indistinguishable. He had never hated them. He had never loved them.

"Do you ever…" Joseph hesitated, then tried again. "Do you ever feel sorry? For the people like me?"

The Mourning Crow's head raised, and it looked deep into Joseph's eyes. Its voice came gentle, doubled still.

"I feel only what is true. There is no sorrow, for there was never joy denied you. There is no judgment, for you lived as you were made. I am not Death. I am only the one who sits with you at the end."

Joseph closed his eyes. A surprising calm settled over him, heavier than fear, deeper than resignation. It was the feeling of something inevitable, like gravity pulling at his bones.

When he opened them, the Mourning Crow was standing. Its coat brushed against the chair as it rose, tall and solemn in the dim apartment.

"It is time," the figure said.

Joseph looked once more around his apartment. The dishes in the sink. The unfinished books on the shelf. The muted glow of the television. No pictures of family or friends hanging on the walls or perched on the bookshelf. Nothing called to him. Nothing held him back.

He stood slowly, pushing the chair in behind him out of long habit.

The Mourning Crow extended a gloved hand, not to grasp his but to gesture toward the door. Its voice, soft and final, echoed with the weight of both human tone and crow's caw.

"Come, Joseph. From nothing you came, to nothing you return."

And as Joseph stepped toward the door, the silence of the apartment closed behind him like a curtain.