The Sawdust Heart. Indestructible Fractal Shadows - IFS, #37

Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec. 1995. Mill foreman Raymond Leblanc arrives before dawn for another shift at the aging Leblanc lumber mill, a collapsing timber relic buried beneath frost, pine dust, and decades of hard labor. By sunrise, he is dead beside his lathe. The coroner rules cardiac arrest. The autopsy says otherwise. Raymond's lungs are found packed solid with fresh sawdust despite no active cutting, no airborne dust cloud, and no explanation for how the material entered his body.
The town calls it work stress. The mill keeps breathing. Soon workers report hearing a dry cough echo through the rafters before dawn. Dust drifts from unplugged machines. The old lathe spins backward in locked rooms while words appear carved into steel guards:I'm still here. As Raymond's widow Marie tries to abandon the mill and the memories buried inside it, sawdust begins appearing in mirrors, under doorframes, inside sealed drawers.
Initials form in drifting dust across abandoned floors. And every morning the mill exhales another name. The Sawdust Heart is a slow-burning dread novella about labor, grief, industrial decay, and the terrifying possibility that old places remember every life spent inside them. Filled with frost-bitten lumber yards, spinning lathes, resin-heavy air, and breathing timber walls, it blends rural industrial horror with supernatural existential dread.
Some mills process wood. Others process people.