**HEADLINE**
THEY TOLD ME HE WAS DEAD, BUT I SAW HIM AT THE GROCERY STORE
**STORY BODY**
My hands started shaking so hard I almost dropped the box of cereal. I can’t be seeing things, can I? I swear to god…
It was him. Same stupid baseball cap. Same worn-out leather jacket. But everyone at the funeral… they all said… it was a closed casket. “Too gruesome,” they told me. The air-conditioning in the store was blasting, and I could feel a cold sweat slicking my back as he grabbed a carton of milk.
He turned. I swear, he looked right at me, but his eyes…empty. Like a goddamn robot. And then he was GONE. Just…vanished into the crowd near the produce section.
My head is throbbing. “Ma’am, are you alright?” the cashier just asked. I need to find him. This can’t be real.
**CLOSING TAG**
👇 Full story continued in the comments…
I just shook my head numbly at the cashier, abandoning the rattling cart and sprinting towards the back of the store, my eyes scanning frantically. He was just *there*. Near the avocados? Or was it the tomatoes? My breath hitched in my throat as I weaved through shoppers, muttering apologies, my eyes wide and wild.
“Excuse me! Did you see a man in a baseball cap? Leather jacket? Just now?” I grabbed the arm of a startled woman inspecting bell peppers. She looked at me like I was crazy, shaking her head and pulling away.
Panic clawed at my throat. I circled the produce section, then moved down the adjacent aisles – dairy, bread, deli. Nothing. It was like he’d melted into the fluorescent lights and linoleum floor. Was I losing my mind? Was the grief finally breaking me?
The funeral director’s words echoed: *”Closed casket. For the family’s sake… it was quick, but… violent.”* Violent. That explained the casket, maybe, but not… *this*. Not him, walking around, buying milk, looking through me.
I leaned against a refrigerated case, gasping for air, the cold seeping through my thin shirt but doing nothing to quell the fire in my chest. My reflection in the glass showed a pale, frantic face I barely recognized. Was that just a random shopper I saw? Someone who *looked* like him? But the cap, the jacket… the way he moved…
No. It was him.
But how? *Why?* Why the empty eyes? Why vanish? Had he seen *me* and run? But if he was alive, why would he run from *me*? Unless… unless something was terribly wrong.
The store manager approached, a concerned frown on his face. “Ma’am, is everything alright? You seem distressed. Can I help you find something?”
I stared at him, unable to form words. Find something? Find a man who was dead? Find an explanation for the impossible? The question hung in the air, thick with unspoken terror. I just shook my head again, tears blurring my vision. There was nothing anyone here could help me find.
I stumbled out of the store, leaving my abandoned cart and groceries behind. The sunlight felt harsh, unreal. The world outside was the same, cars driving by, people walking, but *my* world had just shattered into a million pieces. He was dead. They buried him. I saw him.
My head pounded with the terrifying, irrefutable truth: either he was alive, and everything I thought I knew was a lie, or I was hallucinating, teetering on the edge of a breakdown. And looking back at the mundane grocery store, the automatic doors sliding open and shut for anonymous shoppers, neither option felt less terrifying than the other. The mystery of his ’empty’ eyes and sudden disappearance was a cold knot in my stomach, a chilling puzzle piece that didn’t fit anywhere in the reality I had accepted just hours ago. I didn’t know what I had seen, but I knew, with a sickening certainty, that my life would never be the same.