They buried me on a rainy Thursday.
At least, that’s what the headstone says.
My name is carved into cold marble, dates neatly aligned, a final punctuation mark at the end of a life that was supposedly finished. People came dressed in black, whispered rehearsed condolences, and cried over a coffin that held something—just not the version of me that deserved to die.
This is a dark psychological thriller about identity, buried secrets, and the terrifying truth that sometimes survival is worse than death.
Because the truth is simple and horrifying:
They buried the wrong version of me.
The accident was reported as a single-vehicle crash on a deserted highway. My car wrapped around a tree. Fire. Screaming metal. Unrecognizable remains.
Closed-casket funeral.
Case closed.
But I woke up three days later in a private ward with no mirrors, no windows, and a doctor who avoided my eyes. My face was bandaged. My fingerprints were burned. My voice sounded unfamiliar—hoarse, cracked, like it belonged to someone else.
I discovered the truth through paperwork left on a metal tray. A death certificate. My death certificate. Signed. Stamped. Final.
Someone had taken my place in the grave.
Or worse—someone had chosen who would stay buried.
When I escaped the hospital, the city felt wrong. My apartment was occupied by strangers. My bank accounts were frozen. My wife—my wife—was wearing black in Instagram photos, smiling faintly beside captions about “healing” and “moving forward.”
She looked relieved.
That’s when the paranoia set in.
Late-night searches revealed something chilling: emails I didn’t remember sending. Phone calls I never made. Evidence of an affair I couldn’t recall. Financial crimes linked to my name. Messages filled with cruelty, manipulation, and rage.
The man the world mourned was not the man I remembered being.
I followed the trail into abandoned storage units, encrypted drives, and therapy recordings labeled Version Control.
That’s where I heard my own voice confessing.
The realization crushed my lungs.
I wasn’t erased by accident.
I was erased by design.
The version of me that woke up—empathetic, remorseful, human—was the failed edit. The dangerous version had built safeguards. Backup plans. A replacement body obtained through unspeakable means.
The corpse in my grave wasn’t a mistake.
It was mercy.
But mercy, I learned, is temporary.
The dreams started after that.
Memories that weren’t mine clawed their way into my head—violent impulses, satisfaction in manipulation, pleasure in control. The buried version wasn’t gone.
It was waking up inside me.
I returned to my own grave on the anniversary of my death. The earth had settled. The flowers were dead. No one came anymore.
I understood then what had to be done.
Some versions of a person should never be resurrected.
I dug until my hands bled. I opened the coffin and stared into the ruined face meant to replace me. But the face was smiling.
Inside the coffin lid, carved from the inside, were four words:
YOU WERE NEVER THE ORIGINAL.
The memories snapped into place.
I wasn’t the better version.
I was the mask—the conscience built to feel guilt, fear, and doubt. The real me had finally found a way to erase weakness.
And now, standing over my own grave, holding a shovel slick with mud and blood, I feel it happening.
Soon, only one version of me will remain.