Coffin Drawer Ballet

Raven Ortiz had never considered herself the kind of person who got “nexted.”

She was the person who watched from behind the espresso machine while other people got nexted. Next in line. Next in a bad decision. Next in a group chat meltdown. Next to confess, in public, that they did not understand the difference between darkwave and coldwave and were therefore escorted gently into educational custody by Dev Shah.

But now the broken monitor behind the counter of The Black Candle glowed with three words that made every sugar packet in the café feel judgmental.

RAVEN IS NEXT.

The words flickered over a smear of static and a warped little moth icon. Then the screen went black.

For three full seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Jules Park, night-shift ER nurse, professional emotional support goblin, and 4 a.m. cereal historian, lifted one hand from the booth.

“Okay,” Jules said. “I vote Raven is not next. Motion carried.”

“Strong procedural work,” Moose Bell murmured.

Pixie Adeyemi was standing on a chair, because Pixie had apparently decided height was a form of investigation. Her pastel lavender platform boots were planted on either side of a coffee ring. “Seconded. Raven is extremely unavailable for ominous scheduling.”

Dev Shah didn’t say anything. He stood beside the counter with his black synthwave hoodie pulled over one hand, eyes fixed on the dead screen. The café’s purple neon made the angles of his face look softer than he probably wanted. Raven noticed this, got annoyed at herself for noticing, and began wiping an already-clean counter with the intensity of a person scrubbing a curse off laminate.

“I’m fine,” Raven said.

“You’re doing the counter thing,” Jules said.

“I work here.”

“You’re polishing it like it owes you money.”

Raven stopped wiping.

Outside, the city was damp and shiny from a late-night drizzle. The Black Candle hummed in its usual post-3 a.m. way: espresso grinder cooling, pastry case half-empty, the old jukebox sulking in the corner after its recent supernatural career change. The café smelled like burnt sugar, dark roast, and the cinnamon Moose had accidentally put in his coffee because he’d thought the shaker was cocoa and then committed to the bit.

On the nearest table sat the evidence of the last several nights: the Channel 8 tape, Moose’s marked sticker from The Rusted Halo, a photocopied still of Crown & Halo Media Transfers, and Pixie’s sketchbook full of increasingly unhinged diagrams.

One diagram was labeled: MOTH? CROWN? HALO? VIBES BAD.

“Maybe ‘next’ means next clue,” Moose said gently. He was very large, very metal, and currently wearing a faded shirt for a band whose logo looked like a bramble bush had attempted tax fraud. “Not next danger.”

“Thank you, Moose,” Raven said. “That is almost soothing.”

“Almost is my brand.”

Dev glanced at her. “Do you have any idea why someone would focus on you?”

Raven gave him her most polished deadpan. “My sparkling personality. My employee discount. My ability to steam milk while judging humanity.”

Pixie hopped down from the chair. “Your tapes.”

The café seemed to lean closer.

Raven’s hand stilled on the rag. “My tapes are innocent.”

“Your tapes are a haunted forest made of plastic,” Jules said. “A beautiful haunted forest. But still.”

“They’re vintage horror VHS,” Raven said. “They are cultural artifacts.”

“You alphabetize them by monster motivation.”

“That is a valid system.”

Dev’s mouth twitched. It was not quite a smile, but Raven saw it and immediately wished the floor would open beneath her in a dignified, velvet-lined manner.

Pixie flipped through her sketchbook, bracelets clacking. “Listen. The Channel 8 tape pointed at Crown & Halo. Crown & Halo had drawers. Dev’s lost track was in their archive. Moose’s sticker had a drawer mark. The jukebox cassette was planted here. Lunar_Moth warned Raven is next. Raven’s entire personality is ‘please enjoy my tiny museum of haunted rectangle cinema.’ Therefore—”

“If you say ‘haunted rectangle cinema’ one more time, I’m charging admission,” Raven said.

“—there’s probably something in Raven’s collection that Crown & Halo wants, copied, lost, or hid.”

Jules pointed a spoon at Pixie. “Annoyingly plausible.”

Raven wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to say her apartment contained nothing except black clothes, horror tapes, three dying plants named after silent film actresses, and a throw blanket that looked like a funeral for a disco ball. But the word next sat in her chest like a cold coin.

Because she did have one tape that didn’t belong with the others.

Dev seemed to notice the change in her face. His voice went careful. “Raven?”

Raven folded the rag once. Then again. “There’s a tape at my place.”

Jules leaned forward. “What kind of tape?”

“The kind I don’t show people.”

Pixie gasped. “An embarrassing tape.”

“No.”

“A cursed tape.”

“No.”

“A cursed embarrassing tape.”

Raven looked at Moose. “Control your gremlin.”

Moose raised both hands. “Pixie is a free-range phenomenon.”

Raven exhaled through her nose. “It’s from a Channel 8 late-night local showcase. Years ago. I submitted a short film. I was twenty-two and dramatic.”

Jules blinked. “You made a film?”

“I made seven minutes of fog machine, candlelight, and emotional eye makeup.”

“That’s not a film,” Pixie said reverently. “That’s a thesis.”

Dev was watching her with a focus that made her want to hide behind the espresso machine and also maybe hand him a tiny cup of coffee with a bat drawn in foam. “What was it called?”

Raven looked toward the windows, where rainwater crawled down the glass in silver veins.

“The Heart Has Teeth,” she said.

Jules slapped both hands on the table. “Raven.”

“No.”

“Raven.”

“It was a metaphor.”

“It was absolutely a metaphor, and I respect it so hard.”

Moose smiled into his cinnamon accident coffee. “The Heart Has Teeth sounds like either a doom album or a dental warning poster.”

“It screened once,” Raven said. “Channel 8 did a block of local shorts after midnight. I mailed the tape to them. They mailed it back. I never thought about it again.”

“That,” Pixie said, “is exactly the kind of thing Crown & Halo would have copied if Channel 8 sent tapes out for transfers.”

Raven hated how neatly it fit.

The café’s laptop dinged from the booth. The group froze so fast even the spoon in Jules’s cereal paused midair.

On the screen, Alt Chat was still open to The Hangout, the late-night room where this whole mess had started as a normal collection of tired alt adults talking about music, snacks, and whether ghosts would prefer booths or bar seating.

A new private room invite pulsed at the top.

Lunar_Moth has invited you to: RAVEN_OR_DRAWER_13

Pixie whispered, “Drawer thirteen. Of course. The mystery has a brand.”

Raven’s fingers hovered over the trackpad. “If I click this, somebody please stop Pixie from naming a zine after it.”

“Too late,” Pixie said.

Raven clicked.

The room opened with a black background and pale gray text.

Lunar_Moth: Raven. Don’t bring the tape to Crown & Halo.

JulesInScrubs: HI IMANI IF THAT IS STILL YOU PLEASE USE MORE NOUNS

Lunar_Moth: It’s me.

Dev’s shoulders loosened by maybe one millimeter.

StaticDev: Who else is in the archive?

Three dots appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.

Lunar_Moth: Someone using the old index. I don’t know who. They’re pulling personal reels. Not just music.

Raven swallowed.

RavenousNight: Why me?

The reply took longer.

Lunar_Moth: Because Drawer 13 has your film, Dev’s raw audio, Pixie’s installation footage, and a file tagged MOOSE SOLO.

Moose stared at the screen. “MOOSE SOLO sounds like a terrible energy drink.”

Lunar_Moth: There’s a pickup window at 4:40 a.m. Behind the old Crown & Halo storefront. If you want answers, bring the film. But don’t hand it over. Make them reveal what they have first.

Pixie clapped once, delighted and horrified. “A reverse tape sting!”

Jules pointed at the clock. “It’s 3:52.”

Raven stood. “My apartment is twelve minutes away.”

Dev straightened. “I’ll drive.”

Raven almost said she could take the bus. She almost said she could handle it. She almost wrapped herself in the familiar coat of being unreachable, because unreachable people did not have to admit they were scared or flattered or pleased that someone had offered without making it weird.

Instead, she said, “Fine. But if your car has crumbs, I’m writing a review.”

“My car only has cables.”

“That’s worse.”

Dev’s car was an old gray hatchback that looked like it belonged to someone who could rebuild a synthesizer in the dark but forgot to buy windshield wiper fluid until fate intervened. The back seat contained a milk crate of patch cables, two black hoodies, and a tiny plush bat clipped to the rearview mirror.

Raven noticed the bat.

Dev noticed her noticing the bat.

“It was Pixie,” he said immediately.

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

The bat wore sunglasses.

“Very Pixie,” Raven said.

They drove through the wet city with Jules, Moose, and Pixie following in Moose’s car, which had Lemmy’s cat carrier blanket in the back and smelled faintly of peppermint gum. The streets were mostly empty. Traffic lights blinked red over puddles. A closed record shop displayed a poster for a darkwave night Raven had meant to attend and then not attended because staying home with tapes had won.

Dev kept the music low: a pulsing instrumental with soft drums and a synth line like neon seen through rain.

“Yours?” Raven asked.

He nodded.

“It’s good.”

He glanced over, then back to the road. “You don’t have to sound surprised.”

“I sound exactly this surprised about everything.”

“That’s true.”

For a few blocks, neither of them spoke. Raven watched the city slide by and tried not to think about The Heart Has Teeth. The film had been earnest in a way she rarely allowed anymore. A tiny vampire romance with no bite shown, all longing and fog and a cardboard cemetery she had built in her living room while running on gas station coffee. She’d made it at twenty-two, convinced that making something intense and strange would prove she existed.

Then it screened once. Three people commented online. One said the fog was “aggressive.” Raven had put the tape in a coffin-shaped cabinet and moved on.

“Was it important to you?” Dev asked.

Raven looked at him.

“The film,” he said. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”

She could have made a joke. The joke was ready, black-lipsticked and wearing boots. But the rain tapped the windows, and Dev’s voice held no pressure, only a quiet little porch light of curiosity.

“It was,” she said. “I wanted to make something romantic without admitting I was romantic.”

Dev’s fingers tightened briefly on the steering wheel.

“Did it work?”

“No. It was painfully obvious. There were candles in every shot.”

“Candles can be ambiguous.”

“Dev.”

He smiled. A real one, small but there. “Okay. Maybe not every candle.”

Raven turned toward the window before her face could betray her. “Your turn. Were you always this mysterious, or did you take a class?”

“I failed the class. Too much participation.”

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Dev looked so startled and pleased that Raven immediately became fascinated by a passing laundromat.

Her apartment building sat above a closed tailor shop with a green awning and a stairwell that always smelled like dust, incense, and someone’s ambitious garlic. The group reconvened on the sidewalk, Pixie holding her phone like a paranormal meter.

“Your building is cute,” Pixie said. “Like if a Victorian ghost got a rent-controlled walk-up.”

“It hears compliments and raises the heat out of spite,” Raven said.

Inside, Raven’s apartment was exactly as advertised: black curtains, red lamps, framed vintage horror posters, a small shelf of bat-shaped mugs, and one wall of VHS tapes that made Jules clasp their hands like they had found a chapel.

“Behold,” Jules whispered. “The haunted rectangle cinema.”

Raven pointed at the floor. “That phrase costs five dollars now.”

Moose turned slowly, taking in the shelves. “This is incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“Also slightly concerning structurally.”

“Landlord hasn’t asked, I haven’t confessed.”

Pixie drifted to the coffin-shaped cabinet in the corner. It was waist-high, painted matte black, with tiny silver handles shaped like skeletal hands.

“Oh my stars,” Pixie breathed. “This cabinet has main character energy.”

“That’s the private shelf,” Raven said.

Everyone stopped moving.

Jules’s eyes went round. “Private shelf?”

“Not like that. Personal projects. Bad student films. Recordings of local TV horror hosts. Things with emotional liability.”

Dev, who had remained near the door like he was trying not to take up too much room, said, “We can wait outside.”

The offer landed so gently it nearly knocked her over.

Raven shook her head. “No. If this mystery wants to rummage through my old feelings, it can do it in front of witnesses.”

She opened the coffin cabinet.

Inside were fewer tapes than the main shelves, each labeled in her careful silver handwriting. CEMETERY SHIFT TEST FOOTAGE. BLACK CANDLE OPEN MIC 2019. VHS SWAP MEET BLOOPER REEL. And near the back, wrapped in a black scarf with tiny embroidered moons, sat THE HEART HAS TEETH — CHANNEL 8 COPY.

Raven pulled it out.

A folded paper slipped from the scarf and fluttered to the floor.

Moose picked it up. “This yours?”

“No.”

The paper was old, creased, and stamped with the Crown & Halo logo: a simple crown nested inside a ring. Under it was an index label.

DRAWER 13 / R. ORTIZ / HEART TEETH / DUPLICATE RETURNED / MASTER RETAINED

Raven’s stomach dropped.

“They kept a master?” Jules said.

Dev’s face had gone still in a way Raven now recognized as anger trying to be polite.

Pixie, unusually quiet, looked at the label. “Raven, did you ever agree to that?”

“No.”

The room felt smaller.

Then Moose cleared his throat. “There’s more.”

On the back of the paper, in newer ink, someone had written:

4:40. Bring the romantic one. She’ll fold.

Raven blinked.

Jules made a noise like a kettle achieving moral outrage. “She’ll what?”

Pixie’s eyes flashed. “Oh, absolutely not.”

Moose’s gentle voice went flatter. “That’s unkind.”

Dev stepped closer, then stopped, as if unsure whether closeness was allowed. “Raven.”

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

Jules gave her a look.

Raven stared at the handwriting until the letters blurred. She wasn’t embarrassed that someone knew she had made a romantic film. She was furious that someone had turned it into a lever. That they’d looked at her little candlelit proof of tenderness and decided it made her predictable.

She picked up the tape.

“She’ll fold,” Raven said.

Her voice was calm enough to frost glass.

“Oh, I am going to become very inconvenient.”

Pixie grinned slowly. “There she is.”

At 4:31 a.m., five alt adults stood in the alley behind the old Crown & Halo storefront pretending not to look like five alt adults standing in an alley behind the old Crown & Halo storefront.

It was not their most subtle work.

The building had been empty for years, wedged between a tax office and a shuttered tanning salon whose sign still promised SUMMER FOREVER in faded orange letters. Crown & Halo’s front windows were papered over from the inside. Around back, a metal door sat beneath a security light that buzzed like an angry insect.

Raven held a decoy tape in her bag: an unlabeled copy of a public-domain monster movie she had sacrificed to the cause. The real Heart Has Teeth was safely tucked under Moose’s jacket because, as Moose put it, “No one expects the big metal guy to be the feelings vault.”

Jules wore a black cardigan over scrubs and had insisted on bringing cereal in a lidded container “for stamina and spite.” Pixie wore a pink faux-fur jacket, black mesh gloves, and a tiny backpack shaped like a tombstone. Dev had a small audio recorder clipped inside his hoodie and looked as if he was ready to vanish into the nearest shadow, which Raven found both concerning and aesthetically strong.

“Plan review,” Moose whispered.

Raven counted on her fingers. “One: I approach with decoy tape. Two: we see who shows. Three: Dev records. Four: nobody hands over the real tape. Five: Pixie does not improvise unless necessary.”

Pixie raised a hand. “Define necessary.”

“No.”

A phone buzzed.

Everyone checked theirs.

Alt Chat. The room RAVEN_OR_DRAWER_13 had a new message.

Lunar_Moth: They’re already inside.

The metal door clicked.

It opened six inches.

A voice from within said, “Raven Ortiz?”

Raven stepped forward before anyone could stop her. Her boots splashed softly in a puddle. “Depends who’s asking.”

The door opened wider. A person in a dark raincoat stood just beyond the threshold, face half-hidden by the angle of the light. Not Imani. Too tall. Wrong posture.

“Bring the tape?” the figure asked.

“Bring your manners?” Raven replied.

Behind her, Jules whispered, “Ten out of ten.”

The figure held out a hand. “We can make this easy.”

Raven tilted her head. “That’s what people say when they’re making it weird.”

“We only need to verify the label.”

“Who’s we?”

No answer.

From somewhere inside came a faint mechanical whirr. Old equipment. A VCR, maybe. Or a transfer deck.

Dev’s gaze sharpened.

Raven hugged the bag closer. “I know about Drawer 13.”

The raincoat figure went very still.

Moose shifted behind her, a mountain pretending to be casual.

Raven continued. “I know Crown & Halo kept masters without permission. I know someone is pulling files. I know Dev’s music was in there. Pixie’s installation footage. Something labeled Moose Solo. And mine.”

The figure’s hand lowered.

“You don’t understand what you’re stepping into,” they said.

“That line is so tired it needs a nap,” Jules called.

Pixie waved cheerfully. “Workshop it!”

The figure leaned forward. “Give us the tape, and Raven’s file disappears.”

Raven smiled.

It was not her café smile. It was sharper, older, and had excellent eyeliner.

“No,” she said. “Show me the file first.”

A pause.

Then the door opened all the way.

Inside, the old transfer shop was a cave of shelves, dust, and obsolete machines. The front counter remained, though the register was gone. Behind it, rows of narrow metal drawers lined one wall from floor to ceiling, each labeled with numbers and letters. Some drawers hung open. Others had fresh stickers on them.

On a rolling cart sat a monitor showing frozen footage from Raven’s short film: candlelight, cardboard cemetery, a younger Raven in black lace looking dramatically into fog.

Jules, from behind her, whispered, “The fog is aggressive.”

Raven hissed, “I know.”

The raincoat figure stepped toward the cart. “You see? We have it. You trade yours, we remove the public-facing copy.”

“Public-facing where?” Dev asked.

The figure looked at him for the first time. “Dev Shah.”

Dev flinched almost imperceptibly.

Raven’s anger, already awake, put on boots.

She stepped between them. “He asked you a question.”

The figure laughed softly. “Archive drops. Private collector streams. Scene nostalgia channels. People pay for lost local material.”

Pixie’s mouth fell open. “You’re selling people’s work?”

“Preserving it.”

Moose’s voice rumbled. “That is a very shiny word for stealing.”

The figure reached toward the VCR.

Dev said, quietly, “Don’t.”

Maybe it was the voice. Maybe it was the way everyone moved at once. Moose stepped in front of the cart. Jules lifted their phone, recording openly now. Pixie darted to the wall of drawers and found the one labeled 13 before anyone could blink.

“Pixie,” Raven said.

“Necessary!” Pixie chirped, and yanked it open.

The drawer shrieked on old metal tracks.

Inside were index cards, USB drives, and tapes with neat labels. Raven saw her name. Dev’s. Pixie’s. Moose’s. Imani’s. Saint Static. The Rusted Halo. The Black Candle.

And one label that made them all go quiet.

LUNAR_MOTH / ORIGINAL ACCOUNT EXPORT / THE HANGOUT

Jules lowered their cereal container. “They have chat logs?”

The raincoat figure lunged for the drawer.

Moose blocked them with one arm, not touching, just being immovable in the doorway of their bad choices. “Nope.”

The figure swore and backed toward a side exit.

Raven grabbed the nearest index card from Drawer 13. Dev snapped a photo of the monitor. Jules kept recording. Pixie scooped one USB drive into her tombstone backpack, then looked at Raven with wide eyes like she had just adopted a cursed hamster.

The side exit banged open.

The raincoat figure bolted into the alley beyond.

For half a second, everyone looked at everyone else.

Then Jules said, “I am not chasing a noir intern in work clogs.”

“Agreed,” Moose said.

Raven turned to the monitor. Her younger self stared back from the frozen frame, romantic and ridiculous and brave in a cardboard graveyard.

She had expected to feel humiliated.

Instead, she felt protective.

Dev stood beside her. “They didn’t get the real tape.”

“No,” Raven said. “They didn’t.”

“You okay?”

She looked at him. The question was simple. The answer was not, but for once she didn’t hide the whole thing behind a joke.

“I’m angry,” she said. “And embarrassed. And weirdly proud of the fog.”

“You should be. It’s very committed fog.”

Raven’s laugh came out soft.

Pixie appeared behind them, holding the USB drive between two gloved fingers. “So. Good news: I found a thing.”

Jules stared. “Please never start a sentence like that again.”

“Bad news: the thing says PIXIE SHOW FINAL INSTALL.”

Pixie turned the drive around.

A tiny crown-and-halo sticker gleamed on the side.

Moose’s phone buzzed.

Then Jules’s.

Then Raven’s.

Then Dev’s.

Alt Chat. The Hangout. A new public room had appeared at the top of the late-night list, filling with users too quickly to be normal.

ROOM LIVE NOW: PIXIE’S OPENING NIGHT

Under it, a system message blinked.

Hosted by: Halo_Crown

Pixie’s smile vanished.

Raven reached for her hand without thinking and squeezed once.

From the dead monitor behind them, Raven’s frozen film flickered. The cardboard cemetery dissolved into static.

Then a new image appeared: Pixie’s art studio, lit bright and clear, with tomorrow night’s unfinished installation in the center.

Across the screen, someone had typed in pale letters:

SEE YOU AT THE SHOW.