Mortem Moratus
By
E.S. Raye
“You know you can’t put this off any longer. You’re going back in a few hours,” Marcus said. He punctuated his point with a finger jabbed into Steven’s ribs.
“Maybe I just, you know, don’t.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Dude, she’s your friggin sister. If you don’t visit her before you go, it’ll hang over you for the rest of the semester. Maybe for the rest of your life.”
“It’s fine. She’s fine. I’ll see her in the summer.”
“You don’t know that!”
Steven leaped to his feet and tossed the Xbox controller down on the couch. “I told you already, I don’t want to fucking see her!”
“Hey—” Marcus started, but it was too late. Steven was already at the door, pulling on his coat. “Come on!” Steven just scowled and slammed the door behind him.
“Asshole doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Steven mumbled to himself. He crunched through unshoveled snow and stalked down the dark sidewalk.
Val had been in the hospital since the week after New Year's. The doctors said she was deteriorating, but they didn’t know why. Hell, they couldn’t even say for sure if she was dying. When it started his parents told him not to come home from school; that it didn’t seem too bad; they expected to have it cleared up before February.
But now it was March Break and she wasn’t getting better. Steven had been home for a week and hadn’t gone to visit.
And with classes starting up again the next day, time was running out.
His hands buried deep in his coat pockets, Steven stomped onto the Arkham Creek bridge and kicked a chunk of icy snow over the edge. It crashed into the half-frozen creek bed and exploded.
“She’s fine. Besides, I gotta pack up and…” He trailed off, picturing Val; her small shoulders laid up in a big hospital bed, monitors beeping, their parents speaking with doctors in hushed voices. Desperate to escape the image, Steven slipped his headphones over his ears and dug his phone out of his pocket.
There was a notification he hadn’t seen--Death on Holiday? 911 Lines Overrun With Calls as… He swiped it away and tried to lose himself in music and social scrolling.
With the headphones blaring and his face buried in his screen, Steven didn’t see the sedan skid through the intersection and fishtail onto the bridge. He didn’t hear its engine rev as its wheels lost traction. He didn’t see the wide look of surprise on the driver’s face as he yanked on the wheel uselessly.
The uncontrolled car slammed into him hard enough to knock him out of his shoes.
With Steven splayed out on the hood like a deer, the car crashed through the guardrail and plummeted to the creek bed below.
#
Steven wasn’t sure what woke him up—the cold, the car horn ringing in his ears, or the pain. But it was definitely the pain that brought the world back into focus.
The car had careened over the edge and was now propped up at an angle, with the rear end resting against the girders running along the underside of the bridge, and the crushed front bumper pinning Steven to the creek bed at the waist. He coughed and spat blood, unsure if the cold he felt in his legs was from injury or water. His cell phone sat in the snow within reach. Steven had a moment to consider how lucky it was that it hadn’t fallen in the water, but when he grabbed it, he found the screen smashed.
The sedan’s driver, a kid about Steven’s age, hung over the hood, halfway out through the shattered windshield. He was caught, probably by the ankle, Steven guessed, somewhere under the steering wheel.
“H-” Steven coughed again and struggled to get a full breath. “Hey!” he shouted over the blaring horn. “You alright?” The driver groaned and shifted. Pebbles of glass rained down on Steven, but at least the horn stopped. “Heh-hey buddy, if you’re alright you gotta go for help. I think I’m-” His voice caught in his throat when the driver looked up at him. His good, right eye looked down on Steven through a fog of blood and confusion. But the left side of his face was smashed in like a rotten melon. Steven gaped.
“Wha-what happened?” the driver asked. Blood oozed from his face onto the hood. It ran through the crumpled creases of metal, mixing with the snow. He groaned and tried to lift himself back over the dash and into the car. “I- ugh- I gotta go. I’m late for work.”
“Buddy,” Steven coughed again and blood ran from his mouth, “I don’t think either of us is going anywhere.” The driver didn’t respond and kept struggling to push himself back into the car. “Hey, can you hear me? You alright?”
The driver managed to climb back into his seat and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Wha- what the fuck?” He sounded more lucid. Finally, he looked beyond the mirror down at Steven. His good eye widened as he acknowledged the person he had run over for the first time. “Holy shit, man! Are you alright? What the fuck happened?!”
Steven tried to shift under the bumper. He stopped when a ripping pain shot across his stomach. “Argh. No, I’m not.” I should be dead. How am I not dead? he thought. “What’s your name? You got a phone?”
“Yeah, yeah.” The driver hesitated and Steven looked into his wrecked face. The whole left side of his head was nothing but a crater. How is he not dead? “Should be here somewhere.” The driver ducked to look for the phone on the floor. “I’m Jon, by the way. Look, man-”
“Steven,” Steven croaked.
“Steven. Look, I’m real sorry. It’s my fuckin’ job. They said I had to come in tonight even though the weather’s shit. I know I should have left earlier, but I hate my job and- shit!”
“What?” The cold in Steven’s legs was spreading. He could feel it in his hands now too, and spreading towards his chest.
Jon reappeared from under the dash with a smashed phone of his own.
Fuck, Steven thought. Fucking Marcus. If he had just kept his mouth shut I’d still be there, not dying in a fucking ditch.
His thought was interrupted by the squeal of a siren that cut through the night. At first, it was distant, but quickly grew to the point Steven knew it wasn’t just one cop car or firetruck, but many. Steven saw desperation rise in what remained of Jon’s face. Once again, he disappeared beneath the dash. Somehow, despite his obscene injury, he managed to struggle enough to rock the car back and forth. Fresh pain rocketed through Steven. “What the fuck are you doing?!” His scream temporarily overpowered the approaching sirens.
“My fuckin’ foot is stuck, if I can just-”
The car rocked again. This time it was Steven’s scream that was lost in the sound of dozens of sirens crossing the bridge above them.
Then, nothing. No sirens. No pain. Not even cold.
Jon reappeared. “It’s no use,” he said. “I’m stuck. Hey, you still with me?”
A strange sense of calm settled over Steven. “Yeah. I, ugh, I think I’m okay. If that wasn’t for us, what was it?”
“I dunno man, but it must be something big. That was a lot.”
“Does the radio still work?”
Silently, Jon clicked it on and turned the volume up.
“—orts are scattered and confused but seem to indicate that the natural process of death has been suspended. Catastrophic injury or illness, even a stopped heart or a lack of brain activity—”
“What the fuck…” Jon said.
“—to have no impact on the sufferers in terms of what conventional wisdom calls ‘life’ or ‘consciousness.’ What this means remains unclear, but it has resulted in mass hysteria as religious leaders talk of—”
“Shut it off,” Steven said.
Jon clicked off the radio. “What does this mean?”
“It means no one’s coming for us. They’ve got too much on their hands.” Steven looked up, beyond the car’s hood to the sky above. The snow was becoming thicker. Fat flakes swirled on the wind.
“But, what does it mean for…” Jon’s hand rose to his ruined head but stopped short of touching it. “It doesn’t hurt... Why doesn’t it hurt? Why doesn’t it hurt?!” Jon started thrashing all over again. “I gotta- I gotta get outta here!” He pulled on his leg and foot and rocked the car’s bumper back and forth over Steven.
But it didn’t hurt anymore; he felt only the ebb and flow of pressure.
“Jon!” Steven shouted. “Jon, it’s okay, it’s-” But a roar from Jon’s lips cut him off, and with one final yank, Jon was free—in a sense. With the sound of tearing flesh and snapping tendons, Jon ripped his leg from his ankle socket, leaving his pinned foot behind.
His roar quickly turned to a shriek of shock. But it subsided along with the surprise, because, “It’s okay,” Jon explained. “It doesn’t hurt.” He climbed through the broken windshield and clamored down the hood. When he reached the ground, Jon leaned against the car and gingerly put weight on his ankle-stump. The snow ran red, but he showed no sign of pain. The good half of his face smiled crookedly. “Let’s get you out of there.” He leaned against the car and shoved. It rocked back and forth again, but wouldn’t budge further. Jon knelt in the creek and grabbed Steven’s forearm. “Let’s try this.” He leaned back and pulled. His stump slid in the snow and ice.
“Stop. Stop!” Steven shouted. That tearing sensation again.
Jon slumped down next to him. “I’m so sorry, man. This is all my boss’s fault. I knew I should have just called in.”
Steven said nothing. He closed his eyes and saw little Val in her big hospital bed.
“What do we do?” Jon asked.
“You go. Find some help. Before…”
“Before this, whatever it is, wears off?”
“Yeah.”
Jon stood and stumbled, catching himself on the car. “You sure?” Steven nodded. Jon sighed—a rattling, dry sound—and looked up the creek bank. “Alright.”
#
It had taken Jon the better part of two hours to scale the slick bank and reach the bridge, but he had now been gone so long that his bloody stump prints were filling in with fresh snow. Steven stared up into the flurry and waited. For Jon to come back or for Death to remember him, he wasn’t sure.
With death on his mind, it wasn’t a long road back to thoughts of Val. His only sibling. Memories of their childhood poured over him—the day their parents brought her home, the way she pronounced his name “Stovie” when she was learning to talk, her nagging to be included in everything he did; how she cried when he left for college.
This wasn’t Marcus’s fault. Not really even Jon’s. It was his own. He shouldn’t have even been there. If he had just gone to see Val as soon as he came home…
Now he might never get the chance. Who knew how long this… condition… would last. He was pretty sure his heart had already stopped. His hands were cold, turning blue, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. More like a distant memory of cold.
No. The word crossed his mind like a gunshot. If I’m still here, then so is she. There’s still time. He braced his hands against the bumper and pushed. He screamed against the tearing, expecting pain but feeling none. The snow around him turned scarlet, but with one final effort, he was free from the car. He clawed at the frozen ground and pulled himself away from the wreck.
It was only when he reached the bank that he looked back.
His lower body, from pelvis to toes, was still pinned under the car. His entrails dragged out behind him. Steven waited in horror for shock to set in. But when he realized he only breathed when he thought to, there was no denying the truth. There would be no shock.
With a deep, intentional breath, he pulled himself up towards the road.
Headlights came and went. None slowed. The night seemed to last forever. But hand over hand, he climbed. And tried to ignore the numbness, the snow, the doubts.
What could have caused this? How long would it last? Was he doomed to live--Ha! “Live.” Right, he thought—as half a body for, what? For forever? Until what was left of him fell apart? He pushed those questions aside. None of it mattered. He just had to see Val and his parents one more time. They would figure out the rest later.
After what felt like hours of effort, he reached the road. A truck sped by, far too fast for the weather, and sprayed slush into Steven’s face. He barely felt it. He propped himself up against the guardrail and closed his eyes.
#
Steven’s rest was interrupted by the familiar sound of feet crunching through fresh snow.
“Jon?” he asked and opened his eyes.
“No,” a raspy voice answered. A tall figure, clad in a flowing, hooded cloak, stood over him. “Sorry I’m late.”
Steven raised a hand to shield his eyes. The night had become very dark as if the streetlights had all gone out. All save the one immediately behind the figure. It gave their silhouette a bright aura in the falling snow. “What?” Steven asked, squinting up at the figure.
“I said, ‘Sorry I’m late,’” the figure replied. They knelt next to Steven at the side of the road. “You know how it is when you’ve got something you need to do, but you don’t want to do it.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The last guy retired and I got stuck with this job. I didn’t even want it in the first place. But here I am.” The figure reached for their hood and Steven saw pale, skeletal fingers grip the fabric. “Who would have guessed that putting off my first day would have caused such a big problem.”
The hood was swept back to reveal a clean, white cranium, crooked, naked teeth, and deep, empty eye-sockets. “That’ll teach me to procrastinate, I guess. Let’s get on with it. We can’t put this off any longer.”
E.S. Raye lives in Ontario, Canada, and is a writer of horror and sci-fi short stories, novels, and screenplays. His short stories can be found at alexparkerpublishing.com, and in Rare: A Dark Anthology of Unusual Secrets. His debut novel, a swashbuckling space-western titled Gas Giant Gambit, was published in September 2025. E.S. is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the quarterly speculative fiction magazine Perseid Prophecies.
By
E.S. Raye
“You know you can’t put this off any longer. You’re going back in a few hours,” Marcus said. He punctuated his point with a finger jabbed into Steven’s ribs.
“Maybe I just, you know, don’t.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Dude, she’s your friggin sister. If you don’t visit her before you go, it’ll hang over you for the rest of the semester. Maybe for the rest of your life.”
“It’s fine. She’s fine. I’ll see her in the summer.”
“You don’t know that!”
Steven leaped to his feet and tossed the Xbox controller down on the couch. “I told you already, I don’t want to fucking see her!”
“Hey—” Marcus started, but it was too late. Steven was already at the door, pulling on his coat. “Come on!” Steven just scowled and slammed the door behind him.
“Asshole doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Steven mumbled to himself. He crunched through unshoveled snow and stalked down the dark sidewalk.
Val had been in the hospital since the week after New Year's. The doctors said she was deteriorating, but they didn’t know why. Hell, they couldn’t even say for sure if she was dying. When it started his parents told him not to come home from school; that it didn’t seem too bad; they expected to have it cleared up before February.
But now it was March Break and she wasn’t getting better. Steven had been home for a week and hadn’t gone to visit.
And with classes starting up again the next day, time was running out.
His hands buried deep in his coat pockets, Steven stomped onto the Arkham Creek bridge and kicked a chunk of icy snow over the edge. It crashed into the half-frozen creek bed and exploded.
“She’s fine. Besides, I gotta pack up and…” He trailed off, picturing Val; her small shoulders laid up in a big hospital bed, monitors beeping, their parents speaking with doctors in hushed voices. Desperate to escape the image, Steven slipped his headphones over his ears and dug his phone out of his pocket.
There was a notification he hadn’t seen--Death on Holiday? 911 Lines Overrun With Calls as… He swiped it away and tried to lose himself in music and social scrolling.
With the headphones blaring and his face buried in his screen, Steven didn’t see the sedan skid through the intersection and fishtail onto the bridge. He didn’t hear its engine rev as its wheels lost traction. He didn’t see the wide look of surprise on the driver’s face as he yanked on the wheel uselessly.
The uncontrolled car slammed into him hard enough to knock him out of his shoes.
With Steven splayed out on the hood like a deer, the car crashed through the guardrail and plummeted to the creek bed below.
#
Steven wasn’t sure what woke him up—the cold, the car horn ringing in his ears, or the pain. But it was definitely the pain that brought the world back into focus.
The car had careened over the edge and was now propped up at an angle, with the rear end resting against the girders running along the underside of the bridge, and the crushed front bumper pinning Steven to the creek bed at the waist. He coughed and spat blood, unsure if the cold he felt in his legs was from injury or water. His cell phone sat in the snow within reach. Steven had a moment to consider how lucky it was that it hadn’t fallen in the water, but when he grabbed it, he found the screen smashed.
The sedan’s driver, a kid about Steven’s age, hung over the hood, halfway out through the shattered windshield. He was caught, probably by the ankle, Steven guessed, somewhere under the steering wheel.
“H-” Steven coughed again and struggled to get a full breath. “Hey!” he shouted over the blaring horn. “You alright?” The driver groaned and shifted. Pebbles of glass rained down on Steven, but at least the horn stopped. “Heh-hey buddy, if you’re alright you gotta go for help. I think I’m-” His voice caught in his throat when the driver looked up at him. His good, right eye looked down on Steven through a fog of blood and confusion. But the left side of his face was smashed in like a rotten melon. Steven gaped.
“Wha-what happened?” the driver asked. Blood oozed from his face onto the hood. It ran through the crumpled creases of metal, mixing with the snow. He groaned and tried to lift himself back over the dash and into the car. “I- ugh- I gotta go. I’m late for work.”
“Buddy,” Steven coughed again and blood ran from his mouth, “I don’t think either of us is going anywhere.” The driver didn’t respond and kept struggling to push himself back into the car. “Hey, can you hear me? You alright?”
The driver managed to climb back into his seat and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. “Wha- what the fuck?” He sounded more lucid. Finally, he looked beyond the mirror down at Steven. His good eye widened as he acknowledged the person he had run over for the first time. “Holy shit, man! Are you alright? What the fuck happened?!”
Steven tried to shift under the bumper. He stopped when a ripping pain shot across his stomach. “Argh. No, I’m not.” I should be dead. How am I not dead? he thought. “What’s your name? You got a phone?”
“Yeah, yeah.” The driver hesitated and Steven looked into his wrecked face. The whole left side of his head was nothing but a crater. How is he not dead? “Should be here somewhere.” The driver ducked to look for the phone on the floor. “I’m Jon, by the way. Look, man-”
“Steven,” Steven croaked.
“Steven. Look, I’m real sorry. It’s my fuckin’ job. They said I had to come in tonight even though the weather’s shit. I know I should have left earlier, but I hate my job and- shit!”
“What?” The cold in Steven’s legs was spreading. He could feel it in his hands now too, and spreading towards his chest.
Jon reappeared from under the dash with a smashed phone of his own.
Fuck, Steven thought. Fucking Marcus. If he had just kept his mouth shut I’d still be there, not dying in a fucking ditch.
His thought was interrupted by the squeal of a siren that cut through the night. At first, it was distant, but quickly grew to the point Steven knew it wasn’t just one cop car or firetruck, but many. Steven saw desperation rise in what remained of Jon’s face. Once again, he disappeared beneath the dash. Somehow, despite his obscene injury, he managed to struggle enough to rock the car back and forth. Fresh pain rocketed through Steven. “What the fuck are you doing?!” His scream temporarily overpowered the approaching sirens.
“My fuckin’ foot is stuck, if I can just-”
The car rocked again. This time it was Steven’s scream that was lost in the sound of dozens of sirens crossing the bridge above them.
Then, nothing. No sirens. No pain. Not even cold.
Jon reappeared. “It’s no use,” he said. “I’m stuck. Hey, you still with me?”
A strange sense of calm settled over Steven. “Yeah. I, ugh, I think I’m okay. If that wasn’t for us, what was it?”
“I dunno man, but it must be something big. That was a lot.”
“Does the radio still work?”
Silently, Jon clicked it on and turned the volume up.
“—orts are scattered and confused but seem to indicate that the natural process of death has been suspended. Catastrophic injury or illness, even a stopped heart or a lack of brain activity—”
“What the fuck…” Jon said.
“—to have no impact on the sufferers in terms of what conventional wisdom calls ‘life’ or ‘consciousness.’ What this means remains unclear, but it has resulted in mass hysteria as religious leaders talk of—”
“Shut it off,” Steven said.
Jon clicked off the radio. “What does this mean?”
“It means no one’s coming for us. They’ve got too much on their hands.” Steven looked up, beyond the car’s hood to the sky above. The snow was becoming thicker. Fat flakes swirled on the wind.
“But, what does it mean for…” Jon’s hand rose to his ruined head but stopped short of touching it. “It doesn’t hurt... Why doesn’t it hurt? Why doesn’t it hurt?!” Jon started thrashing all over again. “I gotta- I gotta get outta here!” He pulled on his leg and foot and rocked the car’s bumper back and forth over Steven.
But it didn’t hurt anymore; he felt only the ebb and flow of pressure.
“Jon!” Steven shouted. “Jon, it’s okay, it’s-” But a roar from Jon’s lips cut him off, and with one final yank, Jon was free—in a sense. With the sound of tearing flesh and snapping tendons, Jon ripped his leg from his ankle socket, leaving his pinned foot behind.
His roar quickly turned to a shriek of shock. But it subsided along with the surprise, because, “It’s okay,” Jon explained. “It doesn’t hurt.” He climbed through the broken windshield and clamored down the hood. When he reached the ground, Jon leaned against the car and gingerly put weight on his ankle-stump. The snow ran red, but he showed no sign of pain. The good half of his face smiled crookedly. “Let’s get you out of there.” He leaned against the car and shoved. It rocked back and forth again, but wouldn’t budge further. Jon knelt in the creek and grabbed Steven’s forearm. “Let’s try this.” He leaned back and pulled. His stump slid in the snow and ice.
“Stop. Stop!” Steven shouted. That tearing sensation again.
Jon slumped down next to him. “I’m so sorry, man. This is all my boss’s fault. I knew I should have just called in.”
Steven said nothing. He closed his eyes and saw little Val in her big hospital bed.
“What do we do?” Jon asked.
“You go. Find some help. Before…”
“Before this, whatever it is, wears off?”
“Yeah.”
Jon stood and stumbled, catching himself on the car. “You sure?” Steven nodded. Jon sighed—a rattling, dry sound—and looked up the creek bank. “Alright.”
#
It had taken Jon the better part of two hours to scale the slick bank and reach the bridge, but he had now been gone so long that his bloody stump prints were filling in with fresh snow. Steven stared up into the flurry and waited. For Jon to come back or for Death to remember him, he wasn’t sure.
With death on his mind, it wasn’t a long road back to thoughts of Val. His only sibling. Memories of their childhood poured over him—the day their parents brought her home, the way she pronounced his name “Stovie” when she was learning to talk, her nagging to be included in everything he did; how she cried when he left for college.
This wasn’t Marcus’s fault. Not really even Jon’s. It was his own. He shouldn’t have even been there. If he had just gone to see Val as soon as he came home…
Now he might never get the chance. Who knew how long this… condition… would last. He was pretty sure his heart had already stopped. His hands were cold, turning blue, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. More like a distant memory of cold.
No. The word crossed his mind like a gunshot. If I’m still here, then so is she. There’s still time. He braced his hands against the bumper and pushed. He screamed against the tearing, expecting pain but feeling none. The snow around him turned scarlet, but with one final effort, he was free from the car. He clawed at the frozen ground and pulled himself away from the wreck.
It was only when he reached the bank that he looked back.
His lower body, from pelvis to toes, was still pinned under the car. His entrails dragged out behind him. Steven waited in horror for shock to set in. But when he realized he only breathed when he thought to, there was no denying the truth. There would be no shock.
With a deep, intentional breath, he pulled himself up towards the road.
Headlights came and went. None slowed. The night seemed to last forever. But hand over hand, he climbed. And tried to ignore the numbness, the snow, the doubts.
What could have caused this? How long would it last? Was he doomed to live--Ha! “Live.” Right, he thought—as half a body for, what? For forever? Until what was left of him fell apart? He pushed those questions aside. None of it mattered. He just had to see Val and his parents one more time. They would figure out the rest later.
After what felt like hours of effort, he reached the road. A truck sped by, far too fast for the weather, and sprayed slush into Steven’s face. He barely felt it. He propped himself up against the guardrail and closed his eyes.
#
Steven’s rest was interrupted by the familiar sound of feet crunching through fresh snow.
“Jon?” he asked and opened his eyes.
“No,” a raspy voice answered. A tall figure, clad in a flowing, hooded cloak, stood over him. “Sorry I’m late.”
Steven raised a hand to shield his eyes. The night had become very dark as if the streetlights had all gone out. All save the one immediately behind the figure. It gave their silhouette a bright aura in the falling snow. “What?” Steven asked, squinting up at the figure.
“I said, ‘Sorry I’m late,’” the figure replied. They knelt next to Steven at the side of the road. “You know how it is when you’ve got something you need to do, but you don’t want to do it.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The last guy retired and I got stuck with this job. I didn’t even want it in the first place. But here I am.” The figure reached for their hood and Steven saw pale, skeletal fingers grip the fabric. “Who would have guessed that putting off my first day would have caused such a big problem.”
The hood was swept back to reveal a clean, white cranium, crooked, naked teeth, and deep, empty eye-sockets. “That’ll teach me to procrastinate, I guess. Let’s get on with it. We can’t put this off any longer.”
E.S. Raye lives in Ontario, Canada, and is a writer of horror and sci-fi short stories, novels, and screenplays. His short stories can be found at alexparkerpublishing.com, and in Rare: A Dark Anthology of Unusual Secrets. His debut novel, a swashbuckling space-western titled Gas Giant Gambit, was published in September 2025. E.S. is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the quarterly speculative fiction magazine Perseid Prophecies.
