The Night Shift at Stillwater

It was the summer before eighth grade, and my mom, a nurse, had to cover the night shift at Stillwater Correctional Facility, a sprawling complex of low-slung buildings and razor wire that sat on the edge of our town like a held breath. My dad was working out of state, and we had no one to watch me, so she brought me along, a stack of comic books and a sleeping bag in tow. The facility was old, built in the 1950s, and it smelled of bleach, stale coffee, and something deeper, like old iron and regret. My mom settled into the infirmary, a small, sterile room with a row of cots, and told me to stay put. But I was thirteen, curious, and the place was a labyrinth of locked doors and forbidden spaces. As soon as she was busy with paperwork, I slipped out and started exploring.

I wandered through corridors lined with worn linoleum, past empty booking stations and storage rooms cluttered with file cabinets and dusty equipment. I peeked into the laundry, the visitation room, even the control booth where a bored guard watched a bank of flickering monitors. He didn’t notice me, or didn’t care. I made my way deeper into the facility, where the walls seemed thicker and the air colder. I found a door marked ‘KITCHEN’ and pressed my face to the small, square window set in its frame. The kitchen was vast and dimly lit, with stainless steel counters and huge pots hanging from hooks. It was silent, still.

At exactly midnight, the silence was broken by the sound of metal scraping metal. I peered in and saw a large soup pot on the stove, its lid rattling. Then, the lid turned slowly, as if an invisible hand was twisting it. My breath caught. Then the shape of a man began to shimmer into existence beside the stove. He was tall, gaunt, with a pockmarked face and thinning hair, wearing what looked like an old, stained cook’s uniform. He picked up a huge ladle and began to stir the pot. I watched, frozen, as he raised his head and looked straight at me. His eyes were hollow, dark, like two tunnels. He smiled, a slow, hideous grin, and then he faded, dissolving like smoke, leaving the kitchen empty and silent again.

I stood there for a long moment, my heart pounding, waiting for him to reappear. He didn’t. I backed away from the door, my legs shaky, and sprinted back to the infirmary. My mom was still at her desk, and I didn’t say a word, just crawled into my sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling until dawn. I told myself it was a trick of the light, an old building playing games. But I couldn’t shake the image of his face, the way his lips moved as if he was whispering something I couldn’t hear. I never went back to that kitchen, and I never told my mom what I saw. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the spoon turning, and the man’s hollow eyes, and I knew that some places keep their secrets, and some doors should never be looked through.