Detective Sam Rourke had seen plenty of suicides.
Jumpers, overdoses, gunshots to the temple—death didn't surprise him anymore.
But this case was different.
Because every victim had whispered the same final words before they died:
"I see it now."
It started with a businessman who leapt in front of a train.
Witnesses said he had been standing still, eyes wide, lips moving as if he were talking to someone.
Then, just before he jumped—
"I see it now."
The second was a college student.
She left a voicemail for her mother before stepping off a rooftop.
"I see it now."
The third—a nurse.
Security footage caught her walking into a lake, calm as a summer breeze.
Just before the water swallowed her, she whispered:
"I see it now."
Five deaths became ten.
Ten became twenty.
No connection. No shared history.
Only the words.
Rourke pored over the evidence, desperate for a pattern.
The autopsies were clean.
No drugs. No foul play.
Nothing but the lingering echoes of those last whispered words.
"I see it now."
See what?
Then came the survivor.
The first and only one.
A man named Daniel Price.
He had tried to slit his wrists in a motel bathtub but had been found before he bled out.
Rourke rushed to the hospital, heart pounding.
If Daniel knew what was happening, he had to talk to him now.
Daniel was pale, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Rourke sat beside the bed.
"Daniel," he said carefully. "Why did you try to kill yourself?"
Daniel didn't answer.
His fingers twitched against the sheets.
"What did you see?" Rourke pressed.
Daniel's breathing hitched.
Then—
Very slowly—
He turned his head.
And smiled.
A horrible, knowing smile.
"You will too," he whispered.
And then—
His body arched, his mouth opened wide—
And he screamed.
A raw, gurgling, inhuman sound.
The monitors flatlined.
Daniel Price was gone.
Rourke barely slept after that.
He dreamed of wide, unblinking eyes.
Of something watching.
Waiting.
He drank too much coffee, chain-smoked through his breaks, tried to convince himself it was all in his head.
Then, one night, he got a call.
His partner, Ramirez.
"Rourke," she said, voice shaking.
"What is it?"
"I think… I think I get it now."
His blood ran cold.
"Ramirez," he said, "where are you?"
A long silence.
Then, softly—
"I see it now."
The line went dead.
They found her the next morning.
Face-down in the river.
Rourke stared at her lifeless body, stomach twisting, bile burning his throat.
The case had taken his partner.
And now, it was coming for him.
Because that night, as he sat alone in his apartment, flipping through his notes—
His eyes blurred.
His vision twisted.
And then—
For the first time—
He saw it.
The next morning, Detective Sam Rourke was found in his car with a bullet in his head.
The case was never solved.
But if you go through the reports, dig deep enough into the files—
You'll find something chilling.
The very last words Rourke wrote in his notebook, scrawled in shaking, desperate handwriting:
"I see it now."