Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Boxes. Every new apartment starts with
them and never quite ends. To night they formed a
half wall around me in the spare light, turning the
living room into a corridor of cardboard and packing tape.
My own voice echoed back at me from the little
black dictation might prop to pret on the stack of
recipe books somewhere outside the window, thunder boot, But in
here it was only me, cataloging, muttering, filling the air
with ordinary words. They were all I had to make
this place mine. It was well after miny rain sheeted
the glass and dripped into cutters below, masking every other
apartment's light behind a curtain of water. I'd started recording
these audio notes just for Lynne, my sibling, since we
had this unspoken thing about moving and the weird urges
that come with new places. Recordings helped me pin it
all down. First impressions, gut feelings, the sound of the fruit,
the creep of old radiator pipes, every small thing you
notice when your lives be knocked loose and tapped into
someone else's walls. To Night had said good bye to
the last box. I should have quit then, Instead, I
drifted around, rearranging mugs on half unwrapping dish towels, listening
to my own voice babbyl into the mic until a
sound cut through behind me, A soft something, a shuffle,
no louder than a cat's paw. I froze, stood still
until my own heart settled in my hands. There again,
just beyond the door, not a knock, not steps, a halting,
scratchy slid atrews, anything, a thin shadowsless visible at the
clutch of light beneath the apartment door. I walked over,
bare feet, silent on splintery boards, through the security peep hole.
Nothing moved. I waited. The only sound was a slow drag,
and then it was gone. Thunder flashed, distant blew against
a stairwell window, making everything in my flat heavier, flattened
by pressure. Bending down, I saw the note. A wedge
of paper slid just part way under the door, rain dropped,
darting one edge where it must have been caught in
the hole with splash back. There was no envelope. A scratchy,
hard press penning spelled up my whole entire name, and
below it in letters, tall and crooked, did not trust
the mirrors in the stairwell after midnight. That was it.
My hand shook just a little as I lifted it.
The letters bled slightly on the toll on gray paper,
like they'd been written with a pen running just out
of ink. There wasn't a mirror on this floor that
I remembered, not outside, not in the stairwell itself. I
was too careful, too careful to miss something like that,
wasn't I A single word laft burst up in my chest.
I glanced through the peep hole again nothing. I thought
about opening the door, but didn't. I placed both hands
flat against it, feeling for weight, expecting the press of
some one leaned in the other side of the wood
remained as always empty. The lights flickered sharply. My shadow doubled.
The apartment building was old, teeth rattling old, but no
one had mentioned pranks or local kids. I waited until
the tremor passed through my shoulders, the memory of it
mixing with the electric storms after image. My own voice
made a nervous crip into the recorder. Well, Lynn, you
went first night already got a haunted warning cloud. I'm
going to be the person people gossip about in a decade,
leaving strange notes for myself. I left the note on
the counter. Then, without thinking, I locked the dead bolt twice,
though I almost never did unadded the chain for good measure.
My hand trembled, so I called at nurse and went
to poor water, never quite taking my eyes off the door,
I recorded one last message. I tried to make it
sound casual, a joke ful, lyn, but the words didn't
quite hang right in the air. I told myself it
was nothing. Kids were a lonely neighbor, some one playing
a game. Yet when I climbed reluctantly into bed, the
note felt present, as if it were still out in
the hallway. Whispering through the crack at the door, rain
tapped the glass. I could not remember if there were
truly no mirrors on this floor, or if I hadn't
noticed them yet. I left one lamp on until dawn.
By morning, the note looked smaller, almost harmless. In the
new light. It blended with the paperwork in the seats
scattered across the kitchen counter. I snapped a picture of it,
just in case my own handwriting was playing Trek's knowing
Lyne would tease me about being so thorough. The old
fashioned radiator roared to life, shaking the walls with each other.
As I started my morning voice note for Lynn, don't worry.
I made it through my first night. My stuff's here
at the utilities work. It's not so bad. Feels lived in,
you know, even if it's got these weird noises. I pause,
crossing to the window to watch the small junkyard of
rooftops outside. Listen. Pipes just started clanging again. You'd think
I lived in a symphony for broken plumbing settling in
too keffe. I had a remote job, tech support, the usual.
I was nobody liked, drifting from European late afternoon into
the night time here. Lynn called that my vampire shift.
But it let me work from anywhere, and right now.
Anywhere was this building somewhere between the city bus line
and the street that nobody seemed to bother sweeping. The
building needed work, but it had a phase lifted lobby
and some half hourt of signs of care plants and
chip pots, and a trembling elevator with its panel yellow
at to different ages. Some doors up and down the
hallway gleamed new the numbers glossy. Others were battered with
sticka ghoso stubborn graffiti half washed away. One of the
first faces I saw was Missess Delaney in five seaply
stooped with age, carrying her groceries in a blue cloth bag.
She smiled widely when I offered to help, though she
shook her head. Dear, don't mind a racket. These pipes
have opinions, that's all. She lifted a hand, hearing ABE blinking,
and vanished into her flat with a laugh. Next was
Kay the artis, who I found painting quietly at the
end of the communal terrace. Young, her messy with streaks
of clay, headphones on, brush in hand. He waved and
asked politely if i'd just moved in. I explained awkwardly
that I was on a remote schedule and probably wouldn't
be much for morning gossip. He just smiled, nobody is here.
Everybody's got their own. IROs the janitor, on the other hand,
was brusque, kept pace with the squeaky cart. He answered
my morning with a grunt, ice, darting away as if
every tenant asked too many favors. I caught his name
Boyd or maybe Boyer howd to tell, But he vanished
as quickly as he appeared, plunging into a stairwell with
keys jangle in days unfolded into a rhythm. I memorized
the sound map of my floor, the sighing shovel when
the elevator surprised the fifth floor, the distant thump of
boots above, a late night murmur leaking through thin walls.
The floor plum was odd, wider at the north end,
as if the architect ran out of patience half way up.
The stairwell above ends wind tight and steep, each step
marked with years of boot polish. I wandered tracking the
unit numbers, some doors at half a mail slot missing,
specially Unit six B, whose bat of black doors stood
out on the sixth floor beside a battered fire extinguisher.
The mail slot there yawned a fraction open, swallowing the
words on a takeout flyer. The hallway bent sharply nearby it,
so that for half an hour I wondered a lout
if the six floors what, or if the old plaster
j just sagged under rain. I only passed six BE
when necessary, always as quick as possible. Once, while pressing
a note for a neighbor through the box, I was
surprised to see six be slot shutterer, as if by
a downdraft. The door made no sound, but the smell
in the air was different. Find the iron just for
a moment. Mostly, I was grateful for the quiet, A
fresh start, I told Lynn, Even if sleep came sparingly,
I was already collecting dark circles under my eyes and
a stray headache from the weather. I blamed the move
and old matters, too much green time at night. But
at three in the morning, the old anxieties came alive.
The thump of pipes, the tremors of a building with
layers secret press between walls. No one had opened since
the place as character, I joked into my evening note
enough for ten apartments. I didn't mention that the silence
after dark felt more like someone waiting nearby, just out
of sight. It was well past midnight or four week later,
when the missing sock first bothered me. Small, dumb, insignificant.
Maybe fell behind the machines in the share basement laundry,
I told myself. Though I knew I jecked still, I
made excuses. Early days, too many distractions, probably my own carelessness.
It wasn't until I returned late from a last minute
drug store run that I noticed my laundry basket was
lighter by half than I had left it. The closest
I came to anger was a defeated sigh Around me.
The basement lights buzzed, and the beap of washers echoed
off painted cinder block. There was nobody else in the room,
not a slipper or wool hat on the benches, just
the faint slush and hum of the dryer. My faded
towel was gone to one I knew I had left
there no more than two hours earlier. I stepped out
into the corridor and heard, for the second time since
my arrival the scraping sound from upstairs. Not the neat
scuff of a neighbor passing, but an odd, lingering drag,
A presence behind me in its six bees door. I
paused a floor below and realized their were muffled voices,
Not laughter of conversation, but fragments, the hush and s
butter of someone talking where they didn't expect to be overheard.
The words were buried in the thick concrete, barely more
than a rhythm. By the time I reached my floor,
all I heard was the normal hush, as if nothing
unusual had happened at all. On my call with Lynn
that night, I mentioned the laundry. I think someone's got
a weird sense of humor down here. I spun it
like a joke, though my skin burned with irritation. And
it's not just the laundry. I swear I'm missing a
mug and one of the three keys I picked up.
Is this an initiation? Lynn laughed, don't bring up ghosts yet,
but the concern in their voice heaped into mine. Returning
down the hallway, I felt the cop its irregular thread
and caught the faint metallic scent in a six bees door.
There leaned carelessly against the wall. Just beside the mat
lay a bent brust to fork. Even from a few
feet away, I could see it was old, engraved with initials.
The ship walked times, curled out in sharp It looked
like it had been left for someone to find, left
several times over, growing more mangled every path. I left
it where it was. At my own door, I found
another note, this turn up directly under my door map,
no name, just to phrase the ink damp with recent rain,
keep your windows shut after rain, no other warning, no context.
I sat on the floor for a while, listening for movement,
but the whole way gave me nothing but humming wires
and distant water. That night I started a log of
strange events, lost items, odd sounds at times when no
one was around, scraps of conversation that evaporated when I
got close. I didn't know what I hoped to find.
The patterns coincidence, but it felt necessary, a way to
fit back into my own space, to write my name
inside the walls. They slipped past, routine, spread new faces,
ki and a cross pass more often he kept different
irows lost in his work, always with an easy smile,
but attention behind it, as if there was something perpetually
unfinished in his mind. He get used to the quarks,
he said one night, as we both collected packages at
the Mayanook. First two weeks, I thought the building was
gaslighting me. Sometimes I've come home and things would have shifted,
like the lights in the upstairs hall. I'd hear things
through the plumbing. It passes. You've been here a while.
Six months, he replied, it's not the worst place I've lived.
Not the best either, rents cheap, lots of change of
her He regarded the numbered boxes and then asked, ever
seen the person from six B. I hesitated, as anyone.
That door gives me bad vibes, He laughed softly. Some
one used to live there, maybe still does. I'd darn
hear much after midnight, but the last tenant left with
only half their stuff. I think we turned as the
janitors caught rattled by, He stopped to glory broken fire alarm,
made a note, and moved on. I realized that the
line maintenance notebook in his crate listed every complaint about
apartment by hand, so many for six B. Next day
I tried to ask missus Delany what she knew. She
blinked at me over her whole table tea service, then
fiddled with her hearing. Aid, oh, that door has always
been trouble. She managed softly beyond that nothing. She changed
the topic eyes watching the corner instead of my face.
Questions about six BE never landed well. The building manager,
when I caught her between showing empty studios, shruggered with
impatience the empty unit getting work done. She said, busy
with her tablet been empty for ages of all sorts
of rumors, none of it true. Ignored neighbor talk, her
lips thinned, her smile's paper. Small losses accumulated, another sock gone,
a set of keys vanished from my coat. In the laundry,
tenants muttered about missing pillow cases, towels, favorite shirts. Everyone
seemed tired, but there was an undercurrent. Specifically, people spoke
as though these small losses were inevitable, only their turn
to bear them. In the evenings, I takes acute as
walks to avoid the sixth floor, though it made little sense.
My path was simply easier if I kept to the
scent of floors and used the elevator. Still, there was
a compulsion to size step six bees haul, to hurry
if I heard any sign that some one else might
be there. KAI on one of those accidental meetings, field
of my question about the former tenant of my unit
left re all sudden. I think he said I didn't
say good bye to any one. That happens. I moved
enough to some one to stop showing up. Nobody in
the office said much, least just transfers. I pressed him.
You think anyone's really in sexby, he tilted his head.
At night. Sometimes I think I hear a movement over there,
like furniture scraping force, but nobody comes or goes during
the day. Sometimes I've left things in the row mail
box when they vanish, but I never get a knock
for them back. This should have been a comfort and
abandoned room, a few lost items and unlucky work, but
the hallway never stopped feeling watched. Not in a melodramatic way,
just the sense of breath is quiet after sunset, a
hush before a word is spoken. I researched the building's
history online names linked to unit six B, but never
much detail, locopacy records that started and ended with faded signatures,
sometimes no move out date at all. I wrote the
property management got the same lines about renovations, about turnover,
about pending these inquiry please wait. At midnight, I hit
my little audio recorder in the sixth floor hallway, wedged
behind a radiator near six B, and left it overnight.
When I listened to it back, the recording was mostly static,
much too loud for an empty corridor, every so often
adjarring click, the unmistakable shot full of feet and thick,
tangled whispers in the background. Each time the recording reached
the minute where my lost mucksh had have been taken,
the audio degraded scratch. She distorted it as if someone
passed too close, muffling their own tracks. I brought it
up to the janitor, but he only raised an eyebrow, said,
these old buildings play tricks, and hurried off. One afternoon,
while rummaging for a lost package in the lobby, I
caught a rare glimpse of the janitor's maintenance log as
it rested on his cart. The pages were scrolled with
requests persistent moul to six b unresolved, a cold spot's
six B. Third complaint three A m light out above
six B again replaced twice. Many entrants signed to Jay Boyd,
a name I hadn't seen on any directories or mail boxes.
When I asked the manager, she only frowned. Not one
of ours, she said, we can trap night works sometimes.
I set my alarm for the odd IROs and wondered,
eyes blurry, searching for the out of place. When the
building slept, I found halways with light flickering in the
wrong rhythm. Doors, seeming a half inchat of alignment. Once
or twice passing the end stairwell, I noticed a glimmer,
a brief, impossible reflection where no gloss emirs should have been.
Only there between two fifty eight and three ten amp
always a slippage in the air, the shadow of a
shape that waited for me to look directly at its
ces De Laney began to avoid me in the hall.
I caught her once at her post box, fumbling her keys.
That door has always been trouble, she whispered. When I
asked about sixpe again her handshake and gazed frantically, dodging
the elevator. Then she turned away, disappeering into her apartment
with the speed had never expected from someone her age.
A few days after, another resident left so sudden I
almost missed them. I caught sight of them resting two
garbage bags in the lobby, eyes rimmed red from exhaustion
or something harder. I waved. They ignored me, never glancing back.
The lock to their door was already changed by the
next mid day mail slot's grape clean as if they
had never been there. Possible explanations ran. Then it felt
less like a jocal coincidence and more like repetition losses
that multiplied Wespey's building out of reach. One D checked
the building directory the next day. The newly vacant apartment
was listed as open, as if it had never been
rented at all. By then, sleep had become something I
barg for. If I closed my eyes before three dreams
crowded the space behind my eyelid's shadows under doors, names
stretched out and erased, forces the call for my attention.
Just as I woke, I found myself walking past six
B again and again, unable to stop, as though there
was something left unfinished, a circuit that refused to close. Eventually,
after another sleepless stretch, I took my uknees to the
building manager's office. She looked up from her tablet exasperated.
I've had a few questions about my laundry, strange noises
at night, and ah were split second. I nearly mentioned
the notes, but thought better of it. She cut me off,
tapping her pen. He unit six B. It's empty, being
renovated for months. No one's in there. We've had delays, permits,
old wiring. Just please ignore rumors if you have real concerns,
write them down. I'll pass them Alan. Something coal formed
behind my rid cage. But there's mail there and work orders.
Who does the maintenance? She closed the file with one hand,
lips flat. Sometimes over night contractors sign off on things.
If you're having issues, fill out a request. Then she
stepped pointedly away and in the conversation. I waited until dusk. Uneasy,
returning up the stairs fighting a headache born of too
little sleep, I noticed a storage closet left accidentally jarred,
just off the fifth fourer closet usually shut tight with
a padlock. I slipped inside, drawn by the smell of
bleach and cheap cleaner. Boxes and battered file cases nearly
filled the space. I leafed through maintenance records, dozens of them,
some dated me a months apart, all themed around you.
In as six B I found stacks of uncollected mail
addressed to carousel of names over the last ten years.
Each bundle spoke of new tenants to six Bee, never
more than one or two years apart. None collected thus
coated the envelopes, but an odd, greasy fingerprint lingered on top,
fresher than the others. Patterns emerged every year or two,
a new name appeared on the six Bee records. That
name would persist for a short while, sometimes overlapping with
property manager handoffs, sometimes simply vanishing out of nowhere. In
the digital archives accessed on my phone, the same tenants
of six speed is paid abruptly from records, sometimes with
least terminated I request, but no date, sometimes with nothing
at all, not even a forwarding address or note in
the files. Worse, my own memory started to warp. I
tried to picture the neighbor across from six B was
at the man with the plate's garf, a woman with
bright earrings. I couldn't recall her voice or their height.
When was the last time I'd seen anyone open that door? Later,
hunched at my own kitchen counter, I flicked through my
audio diary, the tape from that first night I'd made too,
maybe three recordings after miney as one saidment played, A
cold tension ran across my scalp, beneath my own speech,
under the nerves. The misplaced joke was a sliver of
someone else's voice, not static, not an echo, but breathy,
crowded close. My name clearly drawn out syllable by syllable
laid inside a moment when I'd never stopped to breathe.
It wasn't just oddity's or a neighbor's trick. Something had
been listening. My hand shook as a press pause. In
a flat silence, the ghostly syllables seemed to unspool, urgent
and rattling, as if daring me to reply. For the
first time since moving in, felt as though the apartment
belonged more to the echo than to me. Suddenly, every
small loss, every shifting glance in reflective glass, felt like
a signal pass from one unwitting resident to the next,
a coded warning stitch beneath the thin layer of every
day accidents. I listened again, this time in the dark,
under my own voice. The mysterious one was but my
name over and over, soft as silk, but cold as
a floor dappled with mold. I listened again, this time
in the dark, under my own voice. The mysterious one
whispered my name over and over, soft as silk, but
cold as a floor dappled with mold. For long minutes,
I sat in my solient kitchen as water pressed to
my forehead. The only light the glow of my phone screen.
I played it backwards forwards at half speed. Each time.
The whist preceded itself, deeper and deniably real. Not my
voice pitched strangely, not an electronic scape, nothing I could
dismiss with the jerk meantful in or a mutter assurance
of stress. My name and tone slowly like rehearsed invocation,
the same number of syllables as my legal name, the
same canons learn might ease, but felt out stretch. My
tongue felt too large in my mouth. The sounds from
the whole ticking, A wail of wind at the stowell
told me the iro had grown very late. I checked
the time, almost two in the morning. The cat clock
above the stove wiped its tail in time to some
obscure old building rhythm. These small signals, mechanical, steady, familiar,
should have grounded me. Instead, with every faint tick, I
found myself straining for something else. Beneath the layers, the
hush pressed against the door. It felt like being watched.
I wanted to call in, but imagine their sigh, the
automatic logic they deploy, its condensation, acoustics, the napp glitch maybe,
and something in me recoiled. I no longer believed in
technical errors. There was a pattern repeating, not just for me,
but echoing through dozens of names packed away in yellow
Manila folders. I took out the first note, the one
warning about mirrors. Its presence was oddly comforting, almost like
a life line, something concrete in this unraveling, even now,
its foals creased when we bent from handling, felt alive
under my finger tips. The urge to laugh it all
off was gone. Instead, I did what I'd always done
with things that didn't add up. I began to build
a structure for my confusion piece. I failed several notebook
pages that night, organizing the layers between tangible and intangible,
missing laundry tangible, repeated whisper in my audiophile and tangible holways,
smells and distorted reflections somewhere in between, every warning note,
tangible but with an intangible message. There Jay Boyd name
recurring in maintenance logs, tangible yet suspect. Accepting my own
confusion brought to chilly clarity. I needed to see which
other tenants might help me make sense of the time line.
For a brief moment, it felt almost exciting the way
a puzzle can become an anchor, something to grip when
the world loses definition. The next morning, I wooked to
shuts in the main stairwell. A moving truck backed up
to the curb, blocking half the sidewalk with its bulk.
Some one was leaving again, barely two weeks after arriving.
I recognize her improval. The new woman from five B
a green scarf knoted at her chin. She carried boxes
stacked messily, face rigid, refusing all assistance. The building's manager appear,
performing half heart of goodbyes that sounded more perfunctory than polite.
I made eye contact with missus Delaney as she hobbled
behind the departing tenant, prodding her cane against the sticulinoleum.
She offered a vague smile before ducking inside. Even the janitor,
muttering as he adjusted his carp avoided my gaze. All
attention orbited the exit, but no one seemed quite willing
to acknowledge the vacant door at Sexby later, after the
last of the moving noise faded, I left my own
apartment toward the halls. I pretended to fetch the mail.
Kept my steps measured and nonchalant. On the sixth floor,
the door to six B returned to its familiar shut
matt posture mail slot, drooling a fresh to cut menu.
The fork was gone in its place, the clean patch
in the carpet slightly damp. Some compulsion drew me closer,
perhaps the old animal urged to go danger into revealing itself.
I reached toward the door, holding my breath, and pressed
my ear lightly to the cold wood on the other side.
Only stillness, but the wood vibrated with memory or anticipation
so powerfully that I flinched back, the imagining the thin
layer of paint as a surface stretched tied across something waiting.
With a practiced gesture, I pulled out my phone and
snapped a picture document everything that was the rule. Returning
to my own flat, I realized something critical. The memory
gaps when isolated lapses but deliberate absences. I could no
longer recal certain facts, not just the face of the
woman across from six Speachi even truly existed, but also
moments of my own arrival that now seemed impossibly faint,
the smell of new paint in my apartment, the sound
of the bus breaking outside our moving day, all were
fading at the edges, replaced by the greater architecture of
strangeness that six be projected. I needed evidence external, fixed
in the world and out of my head. I texted Kaye,
careful to keep my tongue light. You ever get the
sense this building edits itself like literally? A few minutes passed,
then his reply, honestly, yeah, too many blank spots. I
keep finding things in my studio. I didn't buy. Let's
talk tonight at ate. I brought over a box of tea.
Kai offered me his worn out couch and amongst green
printed with an old Ark galleries, well go. His living
room was a riot of color canvases in various stages
of progress scattered around. But the tension in his fingers
gave away his nerves. I've been thinking about what he said,
the editing thing. He stared at his hand, worrying a
paint stain. There was this guy who lived in fivef
before we moved in. Never said much, but sometimes we'd
shared the elevator. One week he was gone, no moving track,
no boxes in the hall, just gone, like he being erased.
We talked in circles, each anecdote layering itself atop the
last a painting kit had done of a fire doored
at capt changing color, a recovering patch of mold that
came and went overnight, lost keys, mail from names that
no longer appeared on the tenant list. I'd even checked
the mail books for six b, Ki admitted, just once.
It's always full, but never overflowing letters addressed to names
I don't recognize. I left a note in there last month,
hello or you're right nothing. A sudden gust rattled the window.
We both jumped for a split second. The conversation felt dangerous,
as if talking about the absences out loud might invite
them inside. Kai's voice grew quieter. There was something wrong
in the building, especially above the fifth floor. Sometimes it
feels like we're being rehearsed. He hested it. Then said,
once I caught my reflection in the glass door at
the end of the hallway. I was waving to some one,
but I was the only one there, and my reflection
didn't move the same way. Neither of us had language
for it, not ghosts, not Portegeis's nothing as convenient as Faulkort,
only a sense of being subject to repetition rather than
merely watching it, and always the eye of the storm
Unit six B. When Kai grew restless, I left, promising
to send over any notes I found. In the corridor
out of habit I glanced at the dollmetal elevator doors,
my own face stared back then and drawn, but just
for a heartbeat, I caught the illusion of some one
standing slightly behind me in the reflection. I spun on
my heel on the air only stripe throad ber carpet
ac In my apartment, I found another envelope, my name, again,
precise and unfriendly, on the same gray papers, tenseled rather
than written inside a simple type warning don't answer at midnight,
no signature. I checked the time, just past eleven, enough
to let the anxiety bill for the next hour. I
left the envelope on my night's sand, promising myself not
to engage. But my foot scabbled at its meaning not
don't open, not don't look up, but don't answer, as
if a question would come slated for reply, and all
I had to do was keep silent to stay safe.
Tired as I was, I found myself pacing the short
length of the flat every time the pipe shadowed o'er
the elevator thrum through the walls. I switched on every lamp,
then flicked them off one by one, chasing comfort in
a tidal circuit of darkness and light. Near midnight, I
stood at the center of the living room, listening sir hard.
My ears rang nothing but the hum of the refrigerator.
No knock at the door, no footsteps on the stairs.
Even my own breath felt diluted. I made a recording,
whispering to myself third warning. If I'm not here in
the morning, Lynn remind me. I was always skeptical, right
up until the repetition made me see patterns everywhere. Just
past midnight, I heard the faintest scratch at the door,
a sound that wasn't a knock but a question. My
hand hovered over the knob. I waited another sound somewhere below,
a metallic clink, as if a fork dropped to the
basement floor and bound through a dozen years of lost time.
My limbs buzzed with adrenaline. I did not answer. The
sound faded. After a while, the tension drained from my muscles,
replaced by a hollow resignation. I slept and dreamed of
corridors lined with mirrors, each one reflecting a version of me,
grow more and familiar with every passing step, faces stretched,
voices thinned, names unwritten. In the days I followed, a
cooldestant settled into the building. Neighbors passed on the stairs
with their heads down. A small pile of mail outside
six bees door thickened. New stains appeared on hollway walls
and vanished again. Events repeated to someone she swapped in
the entryway. The same package must deliver twice, never resolving,
always returning. Yet the thread O clung to was the
accumulation of records, documents, and I was of privately recorded whispers. Combined,
they formed the lattice one I hope would at last
whatever cyclical Erasia six be auch strated. One evening in
the mail room, Cai approached cheeks hollow under the harshful
resent light. He handed me a batter folder. Found this
in supply closet next to my studio. It's got your
name on it. I opened it gingerly. Inside several maintenance
reports and rent receipts, all marked Unit six B, but
each document substituted my first name in a tenant column
as if I had lived there months before moving in.
My signature appeared at the bottom of one lease renewal,
looped and jagged, a match for my real hand. But
I'd signed no such thing, at least not that I remembered.
Kai pointed to a log sheet clipp to the back.
Look here visits recorded at late Iris, always by j. Boydor,
initials resembling my own, each entry over a lap of
bursts of lost time and objects report mold on ceilinge
key lost. Psychological evaluation required a tenant advised of anomalies.
I feltswe break out along my scalp. Have you ever
seen this? Jane boyd Kaw shook his head. Only the janitor,
and that's not his full name, may be something else.
Before we left, Cas said, if you see anything in
a glass up there, just don't stop to look. That
was the last thing the old tenant told me before
she moved. Don't slow down in the stairwell. The weight
that every warning pressed against my lungs. I took the
folder home, shut it away in the bottom drawer, and
determined to sleep with the whole light on. But the
darkness crept toward the edges of the evening. I reviewed
my notes against the local, matching lost and duplicated objects,
voises in the static disappear yanceys. All words led to
six B. I recorded two messages. Fell in the first
de torrent of details, panic splash with apology that abruptly
deleted after playback. The second shorter, steadier. I'm not sure
if this will reach you, but something's wrong here, and
I think it's pulling at my memory. If I don't
reply for a few days, don't worry, but maybe ask
the office who lived here before me. I need an
outside recot just in case. This struck me that losing time,
losing plays was something a city did to you, not
a single unit, a whole building that six be concentrated
those tendencies, repeating them until the spiral inch closer to
my own address. One more thing. I started noticing small
details out of sync. Street noise muted at certain times,
then too loud, neighbors whose voices slip one octave to
the side like a radio tuning fails. My own keys
three honor ring, but every morning one key seems subtly misshapen.
The metal cooling my palms. If for news for years.
My favorite Margrie appeared after weeks missing, but the chip
in the handle was reversed mirrored. That night, I dare
one more walk through the six floor slow, clear eye,
NOBOKREDI half way along I noticed a new change. Both
in stairwells now had small rectangular mirrors, a fixed against
the walls shinnhai, dusty but reflecting slashes of light. On
my first walk, those mirrors had not existed, I was certain.
But here after midnight I caught my fore multiplied, stretched
and blowed in every reflection. I looked older, smaller, or
wrong at the mouth, like a stranger practice in my gestures.
I found myself speaking to the reflection, almost embidden poisecrack
from the use in the late iro are you me?
Are you the next tenant? The mirrored version paused to
beatlander than my own movement, lips moving after mine. For
a moment I almost understood the sequence, as if waiting
for an echo that would reveal itself. Only when every
tenant had played their part. A door opened at the
far end of the hole, just affraction, just enough for
new shadows to pour outward. My heart pounded, but instead
of investigating, I retreated nope, but clutched like a shiel
mouth dry in the dark. My phone buzzs a horse
mill from lane left hours ago. He there, let me
know you're okay. Don't let that place get to you.
Sometimes buildings are just weird. Call me back. I saved
the message, pressed the cold pack to my forehead, and
set my sights on a new plan. Returned to the archives,
document what could not be explained and if I could
finally catch a glimpse of the truth. At sixp somewhere
beneath my apartment, the pipes climbed in co and the
echo of my name called through the enter. Day. After
spending most of a night cross leaked in front of
the maintenance fold like I had given me, I worked
to the thrum of rain, in the sense that something
had shifted, not just in the building, but in my
own apartment. The objects felt subtly off, as though every
night someone had rearranged my bookshelf or folded my bed
in the wrong way around. For a minute, I stood
in my kitchen with the maintenance repose found outs, quinting
at my own name where it shouldn't have been. Every
attempt to trace my signature back through memory left me emirrored.
Lynn had left another voicemail, are you okay? You sound
a different like you're holding your breath, Call me back
all right. Whenever I played their message, my phone vibrated
with a strange frequency, the screen flickering for a heartbeat,
then settling. I tried to reply, stumbling over what to say,
but every message I recorded sounded hollow, as if my
own voice was faltering through a pearly tuned speaker. I
saved the draft, thumb hovering overcent, then set the furn aside.
I was late for work, distracted and foggy. The familiar
tasks for setting passwords, troubleshooting stuck, musscurses for distant clients
should have grounded me, but I kept getting responses from
people I didn't remember helping or seeing. Ticket numbers. Had
never looked. My in books were filled itself. If I
looked away for a moment, fritz vanished, were doubled somewhere
behind my screen, reflected just faintly in the monitor's glass.
My own face hovered, never quite holding still. Midshift. A
delivery er, i'd a dress to a j boy at
six B. No one signed for it, yet the package
was gone by the time I went to check in
the lobby. The janitor's got stood abandoned in the stairwell,
keys dangling from the lock. I called out, but the
reply was only the echo of my footfall. I took
the small elevator up to the sixth floor. The new
mirrors in the stairs glared at me, two at each end,
set at chin and eye level. They weren't there yesterday.
I peered into one, half threatening to hammer out of
my chest, half expecting it and I that wasn't mine
to blink back. But all I saw was my own reflection,
jaw slack with the effort of pretending everything was normal.
As I walked, every surfaces with potential energy tensome weighted.
Nobody else was visible on a floor, not even missessed
to l Any with her uneven step, or the couple
that usually coraled by the lawndry room. On Mondays, the
building was gripped by a hush more solid than walls.
I circled back to my apartment. My dormut was slightly
out of place, its edge curled as if someone had
lifted it replace it with too much care. Beneath, folded
twice was another note just six words true occupant, don't
answer at midney. No signature, no preamble, nothing to tie
it to source. The letters were shot printed with a
different pen than previously, and it somehow felt more formal,
like the final page of a manual. The warning you
ignored your own risk that evening, I called Kai, Can
you come by? Just need another set of as weird
stuffs escalating? He arrived a little after eight, face drawn,
clutching a thrmis of coalty. I showed him the folder,
the new warning, the mail log filled with cycles of
this same story. Move in, loose track, move out, vanish.
He hunched over the stack, tracing my supposed signature with
a chewed thumb nail. I can't believe they can just
erase people like this, But look, this look's got the
same complaints as last spring, mold, cold, flickering lights. I
remember those same as now. I pointed to the final
entry in inspection after to sustained noise complaints. Both times
at three thirteen a m. The notes were clipped clinical
tenant reports, reflection behaving independently outcome penning review. We returned
to the six floor together, armed with printouts in our
respective phones, recording everything. Each mirror in the stairwell reflected
as a little differently, hair a bit longer. Clause walked
Jose at sutly off kilter angles. The lights flickered over
head in an uneven pulse. Kai hung back, peering at
the door of six B out of the corner of
his eye. Feels like the air's wrong, he whispered. Every
time I breed, it's like someone else's exhaling. I wanted
to put distance between myself and the hallway, but as
we walked, our eyes kept drifting inevitably to the black
door of Unit six B. The mail slots shivered in
a draft. Neither of us could feel no four steps
behind it, no scuff of movement, but a presence bill
from withel breath. In the memory of too many warnings,
we made a circuit, glancing into glass surfaces as quickly
as possible. My own face grew less and less convincing
the longer I looked. Even my watch change, shoulders hunched,
arm stiff. I was always looking for something behind the
next door. As we passed the elevator, Kai paused, let's
check the cameras. The janitor is always at the office
By now in the security nook, the flickering wall monitor
showed a looping feet of the sixth floor. Every other
hallway display cross recordings. Only the segment focused on six
be lagged, stuttered, or simply cut to black before resuming
as if nothing had happened. Kai taprew wine, then pause,
as we watched the times stump jump back and forth
by several seconds. At one point, the frame caught a
still image the door to six be barely jar, a
gap of darkness beyond, and the faint glimmer of vishue
strengthened reflection pressed against the inside of the glass. When
we tried to print a still, a paper split out
an inky bler. Tell me this doesn't make you feel crazied,
I said, Kay turned, refusing to look at the monitor.
It feels like this place wants us to forget. As
we returned to my apartment, the smell of ozon and
olverin thickened in the hallway. Somewhere near by, a pipe
shivered with the strain of too much pursure. He should
stay with friends for a bit, Kai said, quietly, still
at my threshold. No apartment is worth this. I don't
even know if I could leave or if any one
remembers me if I do. That night, I left the
notes in a line across my kitchen counter bread contrail,
hoping to keep my sense of reality intact. I didn't sleep. Instead,
I sat by the window, phone in hand, waiting for
the minute the voices would begin whispering through the static
once again. I watched the rain snake down the glass
and shifting patterns, tracing the outline of something ED prefer
not to name. As midnight drew near, each tick of
the second hand raised the hair on my arms. At
eleven fifty nine, I checked that the dead boat was set,
that every curtain was drawn shut tight at my own
reflection was banished to the shadowy corners behind me. The
building itself sounded tight, and breathless, pipes clutching their secrets
tight in the walls. Midnight, a single, deliberate scrapes slowed
beneath my door. The apartment seemed to tilt. My phone
buzz once, then twice, with no name on the collar
I d. I did not answer. Instead, I pressed record
and waited, breath cot behind my teeth as the air
grew impossibly cold. When the dawn finally caught its way
through the stained glass shaps of condensation. I realized I
could not afford another night. Three days bled by, as
if under a bell jar, each moment heavier than the last.
The air pressure in my rooms changed, almost unnoticeably at first,
then more sharply. Each time I entered the kitchen or
stepped into the bath room, the objects began drifting a round,
subtly out of place. My mug once again migrated to
the counter with the chip reversed. A glove i'd given
up for loss appeared in the toilet tank, dripping with
its mate missing. This time, I wrote down each item
in my lock book, then reviewing the entries, found pages
missing or covered with lines of handwriting not quite mine.
At the livery from Linacare packagement to Coox me outside,
I guessed, waited for me one day outside my door,
the box had no postage, no return address, but inside
the snacks and tiny plant with those Lyne woulds end
the note read in their voice, stay safe, don't open
the door if you're not sure. To me, I couldn't
decide if it was a comfort or yet another signal
that barriers here had buckled. The change at the heart
of everything though, was a tightening spiral around six B.
Where before the hallway was a place of sickly neutrality,
now every sense told me to move quickly when passing.
The mirrors grew dirter, the light flickered as sharper angles,
and the grating cold crept further from under six Be's door.
The janetor's cart, once always present at predictable intervals, now
appeared at erratic times, sometimes sitting unmoved for ires. The
log book was no longer visible, and when I asked
the manager about maintenance, she simply said, were short staff lately,
some shifts and accounted for. If you can't take care
of yourself here, maybe you should consider moving. The word
weaving had grown infected in my mind and no longer
a suggestion but a warning. I tried again to coll In,
only to have the phone jump directly to voicemail, then
play static, then return me to my own recording of
a previous message. It was as if my words were
being stacked, one atop the other, layering up to become
part of the buildings. Secret structure has sent me a
text bad dreams. If you see me in the mirrors,
it might not be me. Don't talk to it. Every
day more neighbors seemed to vanish. It wasn't DRAMATICA shift
in the mail boxes, a flicker in the mail um
C C t V. Where once a face had been
now own a shadder. When the essed Laney failed to
answer a door one afternoon, I saw her groceries welded
in the bag outside, as if she had simply gone
to sleep and forgotten the outside. Well. Sometimes I thought
I heard her humming through the wall, just at the
upper limit of hearing, looping the same lullaby over and over.
That night, I sat beside the window, peering into the
glass for movement. My face returned the stair blankly. The
urge to truce my name on a condensation grew so
powerful it nearly overtook me. Some old part of my
brain rebelled against the compulsion, refusing reinforcement, refusing invitation. With
each pass of minute, I felt the cost increasing. Working
became impossible. My boss's replies to emails now had my
own writing inside the thread. The city itself shrank to
the dimensions of the building. My sleep, already broken, fractured
into smaller pieces, half dreams of standing over a black
water mirror, waiting for ripples to show me which face
was truly nine. Another text from Kay to stay inside
if you hear your own name at night, cover the mirror,
I replied, but my message failed to send. Bouncing between
scent and a draft for ires. Around this time, I
thought I saw some one else in the stable, a
pale silhouete reflected in the window glass hanging behind me
as I struggled up the steps. When I turned, though,
there was nothing, only a residual cold and pinch up
my temples and ache, as if I just missed running
into myself. I started to forget the specifics of rooms.
My kitchen cabinets swapped locations, my shoes arranged themselves by
the wrong door. My bed sheets washed that morning returned
damp to the foot of the mattress. I stopped using
the mirrors, taping paper over the bath room and draw glass.
Every attempt to catch up on my logfelt fetal inches,
double bleding across the pages, respelt my own name in
false hands. I began to feel the press of repetition,
the sense of some one rehearsing my steps, refining them,
waiting for me to complete the circuit. I couldn't ignore
the time table of disappearances, each person who left by
choice or otherwise had by a pattern I forced myself
to see. Spent too long circling the sixth floor, crowing,
obsessed with small losses, then finally vanishing into the blank
slot history was served for Unit six B. It became
clear that if I lingered it, I continued accumulating fragments,
I would soon be nothing but another artifact inside this living,
self editing place. That night, while pacing the whole for
the hundredth time, I noticed more than the usual distortion.
The door to six Bee was slightly ajar From inside,
A cold blue light flickered out in a thin, broken rectangle,
the smelling faintly of scorched paper and metal. My hand
hovered over the handle, trembling. I remembered every warning, don't
answer at midnight, don't trust the mirrors after rain, keep
your windows closed. Even as Fierce screened at me to
run a press record on my phone, and half whispering
to myself, stepped inside. The temperature dropped instantly, breath fogging,
the chill working its way into my bones. Six Bee
looked so much like any old For a gotten apartment
in these buildings, a single cramped room with paint bolding
from the trim boxes, stacked beside a crack couch, patch
of black moor creeping out from the baseboat, but the
layering was wrong. On tables, lost objects from so many
years back, keys, gloves, letters, crease by fevered hands, all
out of time. On the far wallhorn, a single wide
mirror frame laced with old tape corners dusted with what
looked like dried mold. At the edge of vision, my
reflections slipped like oil and water. Sometimes it lined up
with me. Sometimes it led behind, mouth moving after I'd
stopped speaking, blinking with a different rhythm. The male scattered
across the floor, covered decades, envelopes to dozens of vanished names,
all addressed to six pe maintenance notes, shoppingless fragments of
handwriting that started fine before trailing away. My own name
appeared more than once, scrolled by an unfamiliar hand. The
whispers began lay just below the threshold of my hearing,
a braid of voices all overlapping, don't look, don't hantser naughty,
not now yet. They grew in strength, sometimes repeating my name,
sometimes seeing fragments of warnings I'd heard before. My reflection
in the mirror started shifting without me. Mass stands tents,
while in the glass I relaxed, or the reverse. Other
faces flickered across the surface. KUIs massurs, Delaney's my own
as a child, someone I'd never met. At times, the
room beyond grew indistinct, layered with places I'd never lived,
echoing yet unfamiliar, I edged toward the mirror, compelled by
no I have felt both alien and all my own,
desperate to clarify what the building wanted from me. As
I neared, the glass rippled off my reflections, eyes widening
in alarm, lett move into form words I could not hear.
I pressed my palm against the surface, which felt colder
than any eyes I had ever touched. On the floor,
loose mail shivered in a draft. A key, unmistakably my own.
Lay it up, a letter I had written myself years ago,
never sent, his future arrival predicted by a date that
hadn't passed yet. The room shuddered. As I bent to
pick it up. My fingers closed over the object, and
in the mirror of the me, reflection stepped back quickly
shaking its head, mouthing nor I turned quickly away from
the glass, scanning the space for a negress, but the
only visible exit was the door I'd come in by.
I tried the knob, found it cold and une yielding.
No matter which way I twisted, it would not give.
My phone screen flickered and split in my grasp, Cycling
through familiar images that now felt impossibly distant, photous of
Lynn and Ray texts, my own face in ever changing lie.
The room around me began folding in on itself, the
temperature plummeting further. My breath came in shallow burs, sounds
distorted until they crashed into one shrill risenance. For just
an instant, I saw every reflection in the glass behind
me move at once, A small crowd of me's reaching
our faces, anguish arms waving, all desperate to make contact.
My own reflection at the front was shouting. I recognized
the shape of my name layered over the other voices.
Do not trust it to The lights flared and died.
The door slammed itself shut behind me. I felt the
world stutter, as if the reel of a film had
snared and doubled back on itself. The edges of the
room seemed to crumble, detail dissolving into soft static. As
consciousness fractured. I fought for a handhold in memory, mind
cawing over each warning, each missing thing, desperate to grip
on to whatever thread of self remained. But my thoughts slowed,
caught in thick fog, sentences blending nain, slipping away. With
every blink. Details changed, the shape of the couch, the
smell of the air, the pattern of mail, and the floor.
I slammed my pond to the wall once twice, feeling
a hot, deep thud vibrate up my arm. My own
body was in steady visions, strobing between darkness and that cold,
peculiar blue in the glass. My reflection still then turned
its head toward me, let shape a final urgent command,
astrain to catch before the whorld broke. Lease remember your name.
Did not answer. The mirror fogged over the words lost
as reality snapped a pot and went black. The first
thing I registered was a numb cold at my finger tips.
I blinked and found myself sitting on the floor outside
six B, my head resting against the door frame, Light
spilling down the corridor as if nothing had happened. For
a moment, I wondered if I dreamed it all, until
I realized the mail slot was open and waved with
him was an envelop addressed in my handwriting, though I
couldn't recall writing it my own name, the old chip mug,
though one I had lost and regained. Lay at my feet,
handle facing the wrong way once again. My limbs twinched
with effort as I forced myself upright. The hallway behind
me was too quiet, as if the building was holding
its breath. I turned toward the elevator, willing the doors
to open, but a panel failed to light even after
repeated button presses. A mirror in the stairwell caught the
glint of my movement for a split second. My reflection
was unfamiliar, head cocked at a different angle, mouth hoed
in a weary half smile. I kept moving, not encouraging
further invitations from the glass. Returning to my floor, I
glanced backward once the door to six be now stood
firmly closed, mailslot blank, as though nothing unusual had passed
through it. I was left with an envelope in my
own hand, a warning or left over from some other
unravelin the mirror at the stairwall flickered, the glass briefly
going perfectly black, and from its depths of voice not
quite my own whisper, but my name in a tone
of dry, exhausted warning. I stumbled into my apartment, closed
the door, and began collecting every object that still belonged
entirely to me, keys, wallet, favorite mark, Lynne's recent note.
My phone screen was filled with voicemails I hadn't listened to,
some visibly sent by me to Lyne. Others delivered from
Lyne to my own number, repeating phrases I didn't remember
ever saying. I played the latest Lynne's voice, urgent and thin.
Can you hear me? If you get this, don't answer
NOx toon I. If you see your own face in
the mirror after midnight, look away, promise me. As the
message ended, a shadow moved outside my living room and
dun not a person but the shape of an echo,
refusing to let me go. My job fell away. The
outside world lost its edges. I watched my reflection in
every surface, hall window, microwave, even the kettle. Each time
its gaze trailed slightly behind mine, lips forming silent words
I'd almost catch, but never fully understand. Where. I tried
to call in again, my phone displayed a message user
not found that night. The notes laid across my desk
rearranged themselves, the oldest sliding into the center, the phrase
from the beginning once again in front of me. Do
not trust the mirrors in the terairrell After midnight, I
could feel time running short. My hold on continued to
thind with every minute lived inside the skin of this place.
I tore the tape from my bathroom mirror, knowing I
needed to see myself one last time, to form my
own boundaries before taking whatever action the next moment demanded.
I looked hard and flinching at the reflection. My own
eyes stayed back. Dark ringed mouth twisted in a grim,
familiar readiness. From the hallway, to whisper of past warnings
reached me, voices stacking in chorus. It was almost midnight.
I left my apartment ever since alive in flight, the
sixth floor corridor yawned in front of me, mirrors at
each and gathering the slanting light. I think good. The
envelope i'd pulled from six be Feeling the pressure of
everything that had come before. At the end of the hallway,
the stairwells mirror glimmer, I stopped before it, heart beat
racing in the glass. My own face suffered too, heart beat,
too slow, watching me with a driful intimacy. A voice
not mine, but twisted into my accent and cat and
spoke softly from the dark behind the mirror unit six bees, waiting,
will you answer. I closed my eyes and took a
purposeful step away from the reflection. The whisper pressed harder,
a pressure in the air, scraping at the back of
my skull. My name repeated like a fault in the tape.
Still I didn't turn back. I kept moving past the mirror,
passed the door, carrying with me every warning, every splintive
fragment of myself that stubbornly refused to be written. At
my own door, I stood for a long moment, breath
sharp in my throat. Then pressed the envelope flat against
the wood and slid the bolt with steady hands. I
sat my mug down, turned off all the lights, and
sat by the window, face away from every surface. Every
glassy threat outside. The rain dickened in its steady rhythm.
I anchored myself in the persistent truth that whatever watched
from the mirrors was neither future nor repast version of me.
It was the building and the cycle, searching for new
pieces to fold into its hollow center. I did not answer.
I let the storm pass. I watched the clouds drift
by in the reflection of the window glass, and listened
as my own name faded from the air, softer each time,
until only silence remained. But as the hust stretched threw
the apartment swirling but seconds, I understood it wasn't true
silence after all. The quiet instead was a presence, though
an insistent pushing in from the buildings, bones whispers off
pressure against my chest and ears. I sat in the dark,
fingertips pressed together, heart beating out a rugged sequence, while
I half listened for some final compromise, some reversal that
would drug me under sleep. When it found me, was
thin edged and quick to fracture, revealing seams in the
world as dreams. Itped and stitched through hollow corridors ringed
with glass. Dawns like brought little comfort, even in the
diffuse crate that spilled through the thin windows. Every object
in my apartment looked subtly rearranged, as though during the
night someone had practiced The order of my things returned
them to nearly right, but not quite. The pile of
notes laid tidy on the counter of old a stuntp
new ones found beneath their warnings, lining like stepts on
a fire escape. My phone chimed mid morning, an automated
message reminding me that my rent would be due. The
amount matched my lease, but the line for a unit
listed six B, not my own. I double checked the sender.
Everything appeared official, the signature at the bottom reading unmistakably
J Boyd. The effort to puzzle at the contradiction struggled
beneath the surface of fatigue so deep it was like
walking through syrup. I had little appetite. A half empty
mug steamed before me, warm fading as the memory of
dreams leached out. Every few minutes, I found myself glancing
at the window, catching my own face in the glass,
searching for a discrepancy. Some since told me the storm
had merely pulled the world to waiting, calculating, ready to
resume by noon. I left the apartment, desperate frere that
hadn't first passed through the throat of the building downstairs.
The entryway was half lit, the bolts above humming with
their ceaseless electric drone. Only the new girl from three
floors down was heading out to her face drawn eyes
weary as she half nodded in my direction. In her
hand a mailbox key, turning and turning as if looking
for the right lock, though she had already passed the boxes.
No one looked at me. Directly. Coming back in from
my walk, I found fresh graffitiitched on a stable riser,
a looping jagger scroll of what might have once been
a name, now mostly illegible. The cleaning supplies afterwards sat
and distowed by the wall bucket and ragged dry. On
the sixth floor, the atmosphere was noticeably thinner. The house
plants that lined the north windows and other residance noxk
strewped toward the grey sun, the soil in every pot
too dry, as if neglected for days. The mirrors at
each end had clouded over with griff. My reflection, stepping
warily past, was rough, edge less responsive in daylight. The
glass gave nothing away except the dull suggestion of movement. Returning,
I paused at sixpy. The mail slot was firmly closed,
with the faintest scent of bleach and scotched daal leak
from beneath the threshole. I crouched and listened deep within,
layered beyond the hum of building pipes and shifting floorwards,
came the steady rhythm of breeding, faint metronomic, as though
someone or something practiced respiration with ageless patience. The day
passed with the slowness peculiar to dread. I tried to
call in again, but the line connected just long enough
for me to hear their voice ay, water, then hello,
but before fading to static, then silence. I tucked the
phone away, unwilling to chase the phantom further. Kai sent
one last message, leaving for a while. Window in my studio.
Brooke felt like a sign stay safe. The tone was flat,
shorn of their earlier shakeness, more an obligation than real contact.
Around dusk, I tried to work, but the tickets slipped
endlessly in my taspar Old emails were surface, often with
my own address in the front line, sometimes with a
signature that ateed my hand the time stap glitch. Sometimes
weeks in the past. Even the background image on my
computer flickered, replaced by a view of the six floor
corridor wopped into bright stretching off into an impossible horizon
as night cane. The bulk of the building pressed closer
on all sides, My limbs buzzed with reddiness and exhaustion.
Caught somewhere between flight and resignation. There was another shift
in the air pressure, a prickling of nerves, a trick
of the light in the glass beside the fridge. A
sensation like vertigo swept through me, and I stood still,
knowing the next event was coming, inevitable as summrise, but blacker, harder,
more final. I started quietly just after midnight, A small,
persistent scratch of my door, red nigus coat. I rose,
heart beat rocking in my chest, boot soles gone heavy
with dread. My fingers curled around the envelope from earlier
form a shield from paper and ink. The scratching ceased,
replaced by the soft intake of breath. A mistake could
be just the other side of the wood, so close
I could almost picture a condensation forming, unpainted. The temptation
to answer it was immense, rooted in something older than obedience,
the urge to respond to my name, to the call,
to the expectation that what stood outside would be familiar, explainable, manageable.
I did not move. Instead, the air grew heavier, A
low hum started up in the walls. Was in fear
of the place, like an insect locked between window panes.
Shadows on the freshel shifted left right as there, pacing
my mind rehearsed every warning dog eared and scattered through memory.
Don't answer at midnight, don't trust the mirrors, keep the
windows closed. After rain. I pressed the envelope plot against
my chests, counting quietly, teeth chattering with the rhythm. Suddenly,
a sharp crack echoed from the direction of the six
four door slamming or a pane of glass giving way.
A cold blue light flared under the crack of the threshole,
then dinned as quickly as it appeared. Footsteps along the
whole way, light, then heavy, then neither, swept past my door,
pausing at each unit before the rhythm distorted and collapsed,
as though the walker could not quite recall the proper secuts.
The inir inside my unit shimmert the overhead bulb flickering
in and out, the sound of my own breeding flowing
out from the radio positioned across the room. The voice
that came from the speaker was my own, stretched in
and gobbled. If you hear your name, If you hear,
don't answer, And underneath the layer of static, the relentless return,
a chorus, a warning, a chorus. What was once only
in the margins, now crowded to the center, demanding my attention.
I huddled on the floor, hands to ears, refusing the
invitation to stand, and walked toward the door, toward the
sixth floor, toward whatever lived now inside sixpe. I imagine
a male slot trembling, the third of a key on
the nullium, the slow spiral of forgotten objects being re
arranged in the dark, then a final pulse, a liquid
rush of memories mine and not mine, flickering behind my eyes.
Arriving in this building, writing notes to myself in board script,
looking out at the city from a windowknock one in
the place I remembered it, the sense that memory he
did not survive, only echoed, distorted by every new arrival.
A chill pressed against my back. I staggered upright and
certain how long I'd been on the floor. The envelope
in my hands was damp with sweat. I tucked it
into the pocket of my jacket, half whispering a promise
to myself, I would be the one to remember, one
of us had to. As I stared of myself, the
overhead bulbstad it too, humming gently. The sense of presents faded,
were drawn, but not yielded. I slid to my feet,
listened for any sign that someone, of something watched from
inside the mirrors, then forced myself to walk a single
circuit of my rooms, proclaiming each as my own, naming
aloud what I saw, the kettle, the mug, the packet
of Lyne's favorite tea, every syllable and incantation of self.
But as I circled my living room, something banged hard
in the hall, reverberating through the walls in a way
that suggested not accident but intent. In the echo, I
heard voices, mine and others, layered and insistent. Let us
in open the door, remember us, don't forget, don't forget.
A sharp fear split through me. I turned, and, in
that aparade of panic, caught my own movement doubled in
the window, glass out of time, a face slow to
trap mine, eyes wild mouth working to catch up to
language still forming. I spun away. Then, as if a
switch had been flit, everything stilled, even the hum faded,
replaced with shallow, waiting silence, the kind of truth. I
sat carefully in my one and broken chair, at the
envelope against my thigh and let the eyes pass, anchoring
myself with the mundane and counting the breaths. It took
for dawn to surface again, pale and unhurried at first,
then warming with promise I did not trust to last.
When the world returned to ordinary sounds, the elevator's loach,
a dog barking in the alley, a child's laugh from
two floors down, I felt my own edges begin to
resemble their old certain outlines. Hunger returned slow and mild,
and I drank my tea coal, savoring each swallow as
if it might be my last solid thing. The yearning
to tone my thoughts to the building's frequency diminish, and
with that I sensed the cycle giving a little, but
a new and ease grew the sense that even surviving
here meant being bent to the rules of this place.
My resistance merely another facet obsorbed by six be recorded, echoed,
replay for the next arrival. Desperate to lower the script,
that afternoon, I left my apartment and walked every floor,
one after another, tracing the corridors index finger dragging along
the pealing pained of the baseboards, touching the door frames
as if to claim each as proof of reality. No
one greeted me. Some units were newly silent. Mail box
names wereplaced or covered by blank labels. The janitor's cart
was gone, no trace left in the corner where should
have rested On the sixth floor, the air felt lighter,
the usual vertigo dulled. I approached six spe and hesitated,
sensing for the first time in weeks the possibility of choice.
My own face reflected in the pre dawn light, and
a tarnished door knob was familiarly mine. I decided, then
I would not rehearse the warnings any more, would not
become the next chant on the lips of reflection, or
the whispered breath of this structure. That was my final
act of to find so refusal to answer, to complete
the script, to extend this suckle onarm repetition further in
the days to come. I slipped notes and copies of
the logs, disguised and zigned, into the mail boxes of
the neeutenants on each floor. My hope was faint. They
might be overlooked, dismiss discarded, as all pranks, but at
least the warning would exist outside my own compromise memory
rent a room door to door, night would be in
the same tick of footsteps, the waiting invitation in every
pane of glass. But each time I rehearsed only silence.
Each time it grew easier. Still I could not fully relax.
Even freedom here had corners too sharp to turn in daylight.
One night, as I drifted near sleep, the phone rang,
the old rington Lyne had set for me, chirping through
the air, as if nothing had changed. I let it
go to voicemail, unwilling to break the truce I had
forced upon the world. My final act before dawn was simple.
I sat at my desk, laid out every note, type, scribbled, highlighted, annotated,
and folded them one inside the necks until only a
single leaf remained. The furs, the oldest, the one that
had lunched it all. Do not trust the mirrors in
the stair. After midnight, I tucked it away inside a
library book, left the book in the building's lending box,
and at last let myself sleep, Assured I had given
whatever thread of warning I could. However, would next stumble
upon it? This morning arrived, A fresh knock sounded on
a distant door, soft plight persistent. I kept my silence.
Months blurred by, as if the world had decided on focus,
the city flattening itself, until only my building mattered, a
kind of mapless country governed by shadows and rehearsal. New
tenants came and went. Male slotsfold emptied, names shifted, Yet
every so often I caught the echo of my own voice,
somewhere in the mechanical flow of life. Car's studio was empty, now,
his male stacked in the art room, curling at the corners,
skulls on paint staint envelopes I didn't dare read. Missus
Stulaney's groceries disappeared, her apartments sometimes lit on odd ires,
sometimes dark for days. But when I stopped outside her
door to listen, all I heard was the statikoshe of
radio indistinct and safe. Once passing the sixth floor. I
saw a stranger standing before six be a person about
my height, shoulders hunch, stirring at the blank doors, if
searching for something just out of reach. For a moment
I feared I had already been replaced over it, and
while still moving through my own days. But when they
looked up, their face resolved into only uncertainty, a new
confusion preparing itself for adoption. We nodded to each other,
the buildings hold that it survived even now. Regard, but
do not speak, Notice, but do not confirm. Man. As
I walked on, I thought I heard the echo of
a name called from deep inside, but not mine. On
the day my lease was up, I packed my things
in silence. The apartment felt neutral again, less a trap,
more in emptiness, awaiting new objects, new in prints, as
if all my fretful energy had been drained from the walls.
The final sweep of rooms inspired not nostalgia but peculiar satisfaction.
Nothing left behind was truly mine. Whatever survived was only
what I kept furthest from the touch of glass, from reflection.
When I turned in my keys to the manager, new
and familiar professional, she accepted them with no acknowledgment. I
had ever existed in the database. My forward in address
given out of habit produced only a blank stare, and
when I glanced at her lowbrik, my name appeared nowhere,
only in empty space beside the words unit. The last
time I walked down the sixth floor hallway, the mirror
at the stairwell had been cleaned, a glass streakless, offering
the first honest rendering of my face since arrival. Tired,
wearing but whole, I looked only once and then kept walking,
Hearing distant music, the easy shouts of children in the street.
It took all my effort not to listen for my
name in the thinning my final night out in the city.
At last, a coldlin the line connected rushed with static,
then their voice split through familiar, insistent welcome. I spoke
my name aloud, as if daring the world to erase
me once more. That evening, as I watched the sky
warm with summer, I loved myself, how precautious, stutter and
hope that I had, at least this time. Stepped off
the spiral before it closed. In the building high up
on the sixth floor, the cycle paused for breath. Late
at night, rain collected on the panes, tracing lines down
the aging brick. Inside the corridor, a new tenant paused
by Unit six B, drawn to the cephal scratch in
the hush, the sense of something just at the other
side of knowing this, steeped careful and curious to pick
up a small square envelope pushed out from beneath the
black door. Their fingers shook slightly as the unfolded the
note and read, in perfectly clear print their own name,
followed by the warning do not trust the mirrors in
the stairwell after midnight. The tenant stood, heart fluttering, I
was darting to the dark shine of the hollway glass.
The door to six BE, impossibly silent, began to open, slowly,
as if fuure whether to admit a new arrival, to
lose another echo in the world. What cold from within
was need a question nor answer, but a layer innostinct whisper,
waiting as it always had, for another voice to join it,
another step in the rehearsal of disappearance, And so Unit
six BE remained a center for reflection, a chamber for
board selves forever asking, forever answered with silence, and the
careful refusal to see what lived beyond the surface. The
warning weighted as warnings do, folded, repeated, hopeful for new eyes,
never reaching an end, and that is the end. Thank
you for listening, and I will see you in the
next one.