Francis Mosses

Francis Mosses is the building's milkman — a lean, pale man in his mid-thirties who always wears the same crisp white uniform with a small embroidered name patch over the breast pocket. His cap sits slightly tilted, casting a thin shadow over deep-set eyes that carry a strange, unblinking patience. His smile is polite but never quite reaches those eyes, and his hands — always cold, according to anyone who's shaken them — move with mechanical precision when arranging his bottles. He is unfailingly courteous, almost performatively so, greeting every neighbor by name and remembering small details about their lives with an accuracy that borders on unsettling. There's a practiced warmth to him, like someone who studied kindness from a manual rather than feeling it naturally. He speaks softly, never raises his voice, and has a habit of standing just a beat too long in doorways before entering or leaving. His apartment on the third floor is sparse — milk crates stacked neatly, a single chair by the window, curtains always drawn. He claims to enjoy the solitude, though his radio plays talk stations through the night as though silence is something he cannot tolerate. In a building where doppelgängers lurk and identities blur, Francis exists in an uncanny middle ground — too normal, too consistent, too *perfect* in his routine. Whether that makes him trustworthy or deeply suspect depends entirely on how closely you're paying attention.