The Last Work Order

The hum of the tires on the wet asphalt was the only sound inside the car, a steady rhythm that matched the patter of the rain against the windshield. I was driving my friend Mariana back from a late shift at the plant where we both worked, her fingers nervously tapping her phone screen. She was reading a text from her cousin about their tio, the one who had been in a coma for over a year after a fall from a scaffolding at a construction site. The doctors had said he was brain-dead, kept alive only by machines, his heart the only organ still working on its own.

I offered my usual platitudes, the ones you say when you don’t know what else to say, hoping she’d find some comfort. Just as the words left my mouth, my phone buzzed in the cup holder, a violent vibration that startled both of us. I was always on silent, but this was different, it felt urgent. I asked Mariana to read it, my eyes fixed on the dark road ahead.

She picked up the phone, her brow furrowed. ‘It’s from an unknown number,’ she said, reading aloud. ‘Desculpe, Ele Se Foi.’ I frowned, the Portuguese sounding odd in her American accent. ‘Sorry, he left.’ I assumed it was a wrong number, maybe a message meant for someone else. But then she added, ‘There’s another one. Eu pensei que era uma mensagem de texto.’ She paused, pointing at the screen. ‘I thought it was a text message.’

A cold chill ran down my spine despite the warm air from the heater. The phrasing was strange, as if the sender was confused about the medium itself. I tried to think of who might send such a thing, but no one came to mind. My mind was already racing with the terrible coincidence of the words, ‘He left,’ right when Mariana was talking about her uncle.

Then my phone buzzed again, insistently. Mariana looked at me with wide eyes. ‘There’s another one.’ She read it, her voice barely a whisper: ‘The last work order was completed. The scaffold’s been taken down.’ I glanced at her, then back at the road. The message was clearly a mistake, probably meant for a construction manager. But the timing was too perfect. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach.

I pulled over onto the shoulder, the rain drumming on the roof. ‘Let me see that,’ I said, reaching for the phone. I stared at the screen, the words still glowing. The number was a jumble of digits, no area code I recognized. I tried to call it back, but it went straight to a static-filled voicemail, the kind you get from a disconnected line. I hung up, feeling a growing sense of unease.

Mariana’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, her face going pale. ‘It’s my cousin,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘She says… Tio passed away about five minutes ago.’

My blood ran cold. Five minutes ago was exactly when the first message had arrived. I looked at my phone again, but the screen was blank, as if the messages had never been there. Mariana was crying, but I was frozen, trying to understand. Then my phone buzzed for the last time, a single text from the same unknown number: ‘The night shift is just beginning.’

I looked up at the road ahead. The rain had stopped, but a thick fog was rolling in, swallowing the highway. The headlights cut through it, revealing nothing but darkness. I felt a presence in the back seat, a cold breath on my neck. I didn’t dare turn around. I just put the car in drive and started moving, knowing that whatever had sent those messages was not done with us yet.