Exit as Entry – Vanessa Serna

May 19, 2026

“Get this started, will ya?” the coroner said. “I’m going to lunch and the family wants the memory downloaded ASAP.”
He’d been dreaming about the leftover dinner fajitas waiting for him in the morgue’s lunch fridge all morning.
“You mind if I plug in?” the coroner’s assistant asked.
“You mind getting a life, you freak?” the coroner said under his breath.
“Pardon?” the coroner’s assistant asked.
“Just don’t come crying to me again afterward,” the coroner said, then left the room.
The coroner’s assistant blushed with embarrassment, as he often did when people looked at him a little too closely. He preferred the cleanliness of procedure, where every detail had its place and nothing extra had to be disclosed.
He excitedly wrapped Subject#867492’s head in a big, blue blanket that had wires sticking out of every direction and connected all the sensors to the big computer screen on the wall.
The coroner’s assistant loved his job. He had direct access to other people’s joy, grief, lust, insecurity, and dysfunction without having to risk being seen himself. He watched them like a really good movie: zoomed in, porous and neutral, extracting what he needed to extract.
The big computer screen turned on when he connected the last wire.
Glowing lines of Subject#867492’s thoughts swelled up and down like a beautiful ocean tide as the machine pierced through LAYER 1 and 2 first. He put on his top-of-the-line headset, sat back in his chair with an ice cold Coke, and pulled out his notepad to reference later at home.

– Subject#867492 screen: LAYER 1 THOUGHTS –
“Whoa!! Her boobs are HUGE. Don’t look. Don’t be weird. WOWZAAA! Don’t look. Don’t be weird. That’s some TITmaxxxxing! My cock!”
“I look old and tired. I need to dye my hair this week.”
“Don’t text again. Don’t check if they’ve been online. Get a hold of yourself!”
“Don’t scratch that. You’re just going to make it worse.”
“Was that too much eye contact?”
“Enjoy the sun today. Forget about Mr. Grovel. He’s a little bitch.”

– Subject#867492 notes: LAYER 1 –
Insecurity. Sexual restraint. Resentment. Self-consciousness. Apprehension. Consistent with prior subjects. Repetitive attention to appearance, behavioral containment, old grudges, social positioning, minor anticipatory fears. Baseline self-monitoring for public life.
No significant abnormalities noted.

– Subject#867492 screen: LAYER 2 THOUGHTS –
“Oh no! Don’t kill it! Please don’t kill that beautiful spider!”
“I love trains. The sway, the hum, the moving, the random people… I could live on them.”
“God. I want her right now. Oh God, please take off your clothes. We had such fun together last time. Please please please take off your clothes.”
“I don’t need to win. I just need him to not.”
“I can’t do this today. I feel like shit. I’m leaving early.”
“That girl’s shampoo reminds me of my mom.”

– Subject#867492 notes: LAYER 2 –
Tenderness. Longing. Spite. Escapism. Comfort. Recognition. Wistfulness. Consistent with prior subjects. Sentimental recursion, attachment-seeking, private soothing rituals, manageable aches for what cannot be recovered. Same system, softer register.
No significant abnormalities noted.

Next came the best part, LAYERS 3 and 4. This was where the Deceased’s disguise completely broke down and every buried thought came to the surface. The coroner’s assistant felt a rush of anticipation when, somewhere down the hall, the microwave let out a loud ding. The coroner’s leftover fajitas were ready. The coroner’s assistant gripped his notes a little tighter. He was making good time.
– Subject#867492 screen: LAYER 3 THOUGHTS –
“I hate my wife. I hate her. If it weren’t for our kids… I hope she calls and it’s bad news. I want something to actually be wrong for once.”
“What if I just swerved the car into traffic?”
“I smiled in the selfie camera but I don’t think my reflection did.”
“I only visit my mother so I can feel like a good person for the rest of the week.”
“I don’t lie much. I just curate the truth until it behaves.”

– Subject#867492 notes: LAYER 3 –
Detected LAYER 3 thought content identical to my own? Such overlap is, by all reasonable measures, statistically impossible.
No precedent in prior observations.
Possible error sources: misread data, faulty wire placement, equipment malfunction, acute neurological event in observer.
Possibility of acute neurological event in observer. Cerebrovascular events present in family history.
Replication necessary before any conclusions.

This was quite the abnormal event for the coroner’s assistant but, like any good scientist, he needed to replicate what happened before he drew any conclusions. He recorded his own thought content in his notebook while waiting for Subject#867492’s LAYER 4 THOUGHTS data to appear.

– Subject#867492 screen and notes: LAYER 4 THOUGHTS –
“I don’t feel guilt the way I’m supposed to. I fake it well.”
OBSERVED IN SELF.
“I don’t think my mom loved me. Maybe it’s because I’m unlovable.”
CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR THIS.
“A stranger apologized for a thing I only thought.”
REPLICATION DEFIES EXPLANATION.
“Sometimes my body doesn’t feel like mine like I’m just wearing it and any second it could slip off.”
OBSERVED IN SELF.
“Sometimes I feel disappointed when a crisis ends. I like the power of coming to the rescue.”
WHAT THE FUCK?!

Subject#867492’s glowing brain waves went flat. The coroner’s assistant’s heart pounded. A voice spoke through the headset, or seemed to.
“I’m here!”
The coroner’s assistant’s skin tightened like his insides were expanding outward. At this point in his practice, he’d usually be floating somewhere outside himself, enveloped in the Deceased’s sadness or madness or happiness or… But Subject #867492 violently shoved him back into his own body. A place he normally avoided.
“There are others here too.”
He looked around the room. The walls were the same. The blue blanket was the same. The wires, the screen, and the Coke sweating onto the metal table beside his notepad were all the same. But something was different, almost suffocating.
Voices came out of everywhere.
“I’m here too,” another voice said.
“Me too,” another voice said.
“I’ve been here for a while.”
“Don’t forget me!”
He couldn’t figure out how to turn the voices off. It was like a switch flipped. Like something shifted in the Earth’s core and he was in an alternate dimension. This place wasn’t just the last stop on the heaven highway anymore. The coroner’s assistant had turned it into something else.
He skimmed through every page of his notepad, his hand a hummingbird blur. Every note he’d ever taken suddenly read like his own confessions.
He backed into the wall and pressed both palms against it to make sure this was real.
The voices kept coming, but after the initial wave of terror, something else happened. He began to recognize them. Not who they belonged to. That would have been easier. He recognized their texture: The little flare of fire after a crushing disappointment. The hot-like-fire rush when you like someone new. That childlike wish for a fun moment to last forever. The private thrill of Spring after a long, hard Winter. The constant desire for the next person, the next blood test, the next book, the next T.V. show, or the next therapist to finally explain everything.
He had spent years treating his patients like data that fit into neat, little categories. Something to be extracted, sorted, and studied from a safe distance. But now his notes didn’t feel far away. They felt common. Ancient. Shared. They made him feel less alone. Maybe they always had.
On the screen, Subject#867492’s LAYER 4 thoughts disappeared. In their place appeared a single line the assistant knew, with absolute certainty, he had not yet thought until he read it.
You are human.
His hand moved before he decided to move it. He picked up his pen and wrote one final note beneath all the other notes in his notepad: Consistent with prior subjects. Then he circled it with a red marker.
The coroner walked back into the room, wiping his mouth after his delicious lunch, and asked, “Everything normal?”
The coroner’s assistant looked at the computer, now back to its normal intake graph. Then at the dead man. Then at the coroner.
“Yup,” the coroner’s assistant said. “I just need some air.”
“That’s more than Subject #867492 can say!” the coroner said, pleased with himself.
When his shift was over, the coroner’s assistant sealed Subject #867492’s download in the proper container for the family and put it with the rest of the outbound data. He tore the last page from his notepad, folded it once, then twice, then dropped it into the trash with the rest of his evidence.
He sanitized his hands. The gel went cold between his fingers. Clean, clinical, procedural. He rubbed until his palms shone. Then he sanitized them again. Until they stung. Until every part of him looked untouched.
Outside, the day was bright. People moved through the streets with their faces on, carrying lunch bags, grudges, grocery lists, dead mothers, private cruelties, little wishes, bad knees, and secret weather. The coroner’s assistant stood there with his clean hands open at his sides, unable to decide what to do with them.
Somewhere inside him, and everywhere outside him, someone said, “I’m here too.”
And this time, he did not write it down.