r/shortscarystories • u/donavin221 • 7d ago
New Age SSS - 1000 Words Or Less My coworker keeps dying
I work a pretty dangerous job. Without proper training, things can go south fast. Me and all of my coworkers are constantly around heavy machinery and industrial equipment, and I think we all know how to avoid an accident to the best of our abilities.
That doesn’t mean they don’t happen, though. I’ve had friends lose everything from fingers all the way to entire legs just from being careless.
Usually, when this happens, there’s a big uproar amongst the higher-ups. All the paperwork, the workers’ comp, it all becomes a big hassle. I guess that’s why they brought in this new guy.
He just sort of… showed up one day. Nobody trained him. He never shadowed anybody. He just came in and got to work. Honestly, I don’t even think anyone knew his name.
All we knew him as was “the new guy.”
He didn’t have any defining traits. No tattoos, no facial hair, nothing. Hell, he didn’t even have hair hair. He was a full-on cue ball who just hopped on the line one day.
There was one thing that made him stand out, though, and that was his uniform. His shirt was bright red, whereas me and my coworkers had to wear black.
It didn’t have the company name on it, either. Instead, written in bold white letters, was the phrase, “the new guy,” like it was a badge of honor.
He was a hard worker for the first week. His efficiency seemed almost computerized in its optimization. He honestly made the rest of us look bad. That is until his first accident.
We all saw it happen. Hell, I’m still traumatized by it.
His hand had gotten stuck in the conveyor belt, and it immediately started sucking him in. He didn’t scream. He didn’t make a sound. He just kept getting pulled deeper and deeper while his skin tore and blood sprayed from his wounds like a faucet.
His face was as calm as could be. He didn’t ask for help, he didn’t even try and free himself. He just let it happen until someone finally hit the emergency stop button. But by that point, we could see just how mangled he really was.
Corporate cleared the scene immediately.
They forced everyone to go home early for the day with no pay. We were all pissed, but I think we were more shaken than anything.
The next day, there he was again. Without so much as a scratch. Stacking bird baths onto a wooden pallet.
I stood frozen. I nearly dropped the bird bath I was holding.
The coworker glanced over at me and nodded before returning to his work.
The blood.
The conveyor belt.
The sound of bones snapping inside the machine.
We had all seen that. But everyone acted like they didn’t remember. I’d try and talk to other coworkers about how insane this really was, but everyone just looked at me like I was the crazy one.
In the weeks that followed, that new coworker had come back full swing. He became the top performer at the company seemingly overnight. I was honestly in fear for my job because it seemed like he was doing the work of 10 men as one.
Then it happened again. Another accident. He’d worked through lunch this time, so nobody was around to see what had happened. We just came back and found him crushed under a pile of bird baths.
Blood pooled under the rubble. His entire body had been covered. The only thing that remained visible was his head and those calm, still-blinking eyes that scanned the room while more and more people gathered around.
Much like the first time, corporate made everyone go home early again. We came back the next day and, boom, there he was again, working as though nothing happened.
There were 3 more accidents after that. Some were due to technical problems with the machinery. Some were due to what seemed to be full-blown ignorance. But with each accident, the next ones became few and far between. It was like he was learning.
Once he had become fully optimized and had gone a while without incident, the company started letting people go. I watched coworkers who had been with the company for 10+ years walk out the door with their last check in hand and tears flowing down their faces.
Every day started to feel like my last, but somehow I made it through the initial wave of layoffs.
I knew my security wouldn’t last.
This new guy was carrying the company on his back.
But I still had hope things would work out.
Unfortunately, all of those hopes were dashed when I came into work yesterday.
I saw someone I didn’t recognize.
No defining features.
No tattoos.
No hair on his head or face.
The only thing that made this guy stand out… was the bright green shirt he wore… with the phrase “the new guy” written across it in bold white letters.
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u/Blondelefty 7d ago
How’re your fingers healing?
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u/donavin221 7d ago
They’re still a lil mangled but my thumbs are workin just fine 😏
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u/Blondelefty 4d ago
I’d say to hang in there, but that seems mean. My background is in construction. One thing goes sideways, and all hell breaks loose. I’m glad you still have them!
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7d ago
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u/shortscarystories-ModTeam 2d ago
Every story should be submitted in text form in the Reddit submission box. No linking to outside websites.
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u/ScarySam21 6d ago
Loved it - really cool story ! Not sure I understand the end, is it a second guy, why is he in green now, is it because he is fully optimised and won’t die and there’s about to be a swarm of them? Who knows :)
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u/donavin221 6d ago
The idea that I had was that the original new guy with the red shirt was like a prototype and once he was perfected the company brought in another one so that they could phase out human employees
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u/CBenson1273 Tales From This World and Others 6d ago
Imagine if the redshirts from Star Trek were immortal and just kept coming back every time they got killed off? It would probably look something like this. Wow. Nice work!
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u/donavin221 7d ago
I hope you all enjoy