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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Adomanzius on 2026-08-04 13:45:16+00:00.

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When someone who lives in a city-owned apartment dies, and they’ve got no immediate family, who gets to keep their stuff?

That’s the question Jared asked me two years ago. We weren’t that close, just part of the same friend group. We’d mostly see each other at parties sharing cigarettes, and this time was no different. We were leaning on the balcony’s rusted railings, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other. Nighttime traffic and the occasional shouts of other partiers echoed through the streets below.

I shrugged my shoulders–it wasn’t exactly the kind of question I was interested in when I was buzzed at 1 AM.

“It goes to the dump,” he said with a smile.

I took a drag of my cigarette. “So?”

“So I’ve been thinking, what if someone were to… peruse through all that shit before they get rid of it?”

“You mean steal whatever’s valuable?”

Jared knew I’d done some stuff that had gotten the attention of the police before. Just to be clear, I’d never stolen anything, I had just helped other people steal, and they’d pay me in cash. It felt a bit less wrong that way, although I knew it was the same exact thing. But hey, ethical branding for the win, right?

He also knew that I was between jobs at the moment; so this wasn’t just another bullshit conversation.

“Whatever you want to call it,” he said. “But if one were to hypothetically do something like that, they’d need a decent lockpick.”

“Stealing from the dead, huh?”

“Dude, it’s not really stealing, even. Some guy dies, and their family is either not around, or they don’t want the guy’s shit. The city’s like, okay, we’ll need to clear out the apartment, but of course they can’t just take it and sell it on eBay. So they get rid of it.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Spoke to some guy at Chrissy’s party last week who worked maintenance for the city. Boring guy, kind of an idiot, but anyway… there’d been a death in one of the buildings recently. He was telling me all about it, since he was the one who found the old lady. I asked some more questions, and he said they just keep the place empty for a while, and after a certain amount of time has passed they clear it out. When I asked if they take anything for themselves, he got kind of queasy and said that they’re not allowed to. Buuut… I’m guessing if they find something nice, they’re not gonna just throw it away, either.”

“Right. Still, it is someone’s property.”

“Well, it becomes the city’s property. Anyway, what I’m saying is, if hypothetically one could get info on such… passings, wouldn’t it be beneficial that instead of all that stuff going to the landfill, it would instead be used to keep someone else alive? Besides, I know you’re not exactly the most law-abiding guy I know.”

I laughed. Jared was kind of a dick at his heart–someone who doesn’t really care whether something’s right or not, as long as he can get his own. But the more I thought about it, the more it sounded, well, not so bad. If what he said really was true–that all that stuff would really just be thrown out anyway–I could find no reason for someone not to grab some of it. It was taboo, sure, and an unfair system, but so are a lot of things. If some poor asshole like me could keep himself fed and a roof over his head, I didn’t really see why not.

“So if you’ve got that maintenance guy on board, I’d assume he has the master keys. What do you need me for?” I asked.

Jared froze up for a moment, as if surprised that I could glean his “master plan” from his very obvious insinuations. I guess he thought I was much dumber than I actually was. When he replied, his voice had lost all of its jovial qualities; now we were talking business.

“He’s a pussy. Said that they’d definitely catch him on site, or from stealing the keys, or whatever. I negotiated that he’d get twenty percent if he just give me a time and a place whenever a new… opportunity came up. In reality I’ll give him ten or so. He won’t know the difference anyway. And you–”

“Twenty for the maintenance guy, split fifty-fifty on the rest.”

“Fuck no! Twenty’s way too much. And fifty-fifty on the rest is way more than a lockpick should get.”

“Fine,” I said, playing it cool. I stubbed out my cigarette and glanced back at the apartment, signaling that I was done with the conversation. “Find someone else.”

Right as I took a step toward the door, he grabbed my shoulder and said “Fuck you. Fine. But you better be good.”

“You won’t have to worry about me.”

For the next two years we made the easiest money of our lives. It was like a get-rich-quick scheme was real. I mean, of course it was technically illegal and all, but it only felt like that for the minute or two it took me to unlock the door. We never got even close to getting caught, and it honestly felt like living the dream.

Everything changed with the Booker place.

The Booker job was no different from any other. We got the info from Jared’s maintenance guy: old guy in his 80s, lived alone, no family they could track down. Apartment would be empty for two more weeks. We made a plan for our visit at 2 AM on a Saturday; generally we’d found between midnight and three to be the best time, as it was the quietest then, but also if someone noticed us, we could pretend that we’d come straight out of a bar and just trying to find our way home.

The apartment building itself had a door code, which the maintenance guy had provided, so we got in with ease. Three floors up and we found the unassuming door that held a plastic placard that had “Booker” written on it. Jared kept watch as I made quick work of the old lock. Probably took me less than thirty seconds–I’d become a pretty good lockpick over the last two years. And just like that, we were in with our backpacks hungry, ready to stuff them up with whatever valuables we could find.

Once we got in, I closed the door behind me. The place was completely dark, and Jared clicked on his flashlight as I found mine. Once we both had light, Jared pointed to the first two rooms along the hallway, and I nodded. It meant he’d be taking those two, and I’d go further in.

We’d finetuned the whole process so well that we worked with calm efficiency, like we were doing any normal job. After two years, it frankly didn’t feel that much different.

It was a hot summer night, and these old concrete buildings didn’t fare well in the heat. Despite this, the apartment was cool to the skin, and as I walked further in, it felt like it only got colder. Old wallpaper covered the walls, yellow from age or maybe even from smoking inside. The air smelled like rotting wood and tea. It was unusual for the kind of building we were in, and for the fact that nobody had been inside the apartment for weeks.

As I walked through the hallway, I could hear Jared opening and closing drawers, looking for jewelry, tech, collectibles–anything that held lots of value, didn’t weigh much, and could be easily sold online or at a pawn shop.

The hallway opened up into a wide space with a small kitchen to my right, and a living room to my left. At the back wall was what I assumed to be a bathroom, which was closed.

First I went for the living room. At the back were two windows, covered with crinkled curtains. The tight beam of my flashlight was the only source of light, and outside its cone of light was pure black. It was an eerie kind of dark, since there weren’t even the usual LEDs of a laptop charger or a TV hanging around.

Dust coated everything, and as I walked around it came flying through the air like a thousand tiny critters. Usually I was calculative when assessing where to look for (desks, odd-looking storage boxes and display items were top priority) but this time was different. Every wall besides where the windows were had bookshelves that reached all the way up to the ceiling, yet each one was a little bit different: different wood, shelves, depth, color. Together they made a Frankenstein’s monster of walls that surrounded everything, slanting in places from the sheer weight of all that those shelves held.

And there was a lot of shit. Candles burnt halfway, held in all kinds of ornate candelabras painted silver and gold. Books bound in leather, inscriptions along their spines. Stacks and stacks of papers, yellowed by time and coffee.

There was no television, no sofa, no lazy chair. Nothing that a normal person might have in their living room. The most normal thing there were two wooden chairs, and in between them a coffee table filled to the brim with more books and papers, pencils and matchsticks, and a plethora of cups with coffee stains.

Hoarder was the first word that came to mind. This wasn’t good: hoarders usually didn’t own much of anything valuable, or if they did, it was impossible to find.

The scene made me feel sad, like the guy had filled up his life with all these books and papers when he didn’t have anything else. Of course there was no way to know if that was even true, but that’s just the feeling I got. It was strange; I’d learned to be quite detached from the people whose apartments I visited.

Still, I had a job to do. With the flashlight in my left hand I started to pore over each shelf one by one. The candelabras were too large and heavy to take with, the books weren’t anything I could see making money (one time I’d found a first edition The Hobbit, which was neat, and quite expensive), and all the rest of the knick-knacks strewn about seemed more sentimental than anything...

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