Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The weakness City always felt a
little surreal when I crossed the avenue at two in
the morning, but I'd never gotten used to the way
the street lights reflect orf wet, assful, distorting everything beneath
the sodium yellow gaze. It had been a long night.
My brain was still humming with the fragmented sentences of
a legal brief I was copy editing for a client
who I suspected rarely slept. I had left my own
apartment just after dinner time for a change of scenery
at diner the same type of counter seat kerraf coffee.
I stepped back into the lobby of my building with
two bags over my shoulder, rain dripping from my head,
every bone, and my body, aching for nothing more than
tea in the comfort of my desk lamp. The lobby
lights wind as they flick out above the male alcove overhead.
The ceiling sloped downward like a brow, and the green
tile floors showed muddy bueprints, still wet. I stood there awkwardly,
shifting weight from heel to heel, and fumbled through my
pockets for my key card. Mail was scattered in a
box as only three letters from me, all bills, of course,
and a thin envelope that must have crept into my
slaught during the evening. At first I was going to
drop it in the outgoing tray with the rest of
the misdirected prosed, but my name was typed on the front,
just my last initial, no return address. It was a
plain office envelope, the kind supply closets coffered by the
dozen one corner, oddly wrinkled, as if it had been
fidgeted in someone's nervous hand. Inside, the message was brief,
and even the space printed in faded gray ink. Don't
trust the man with the padded briefcase. If you see
him past midnight, turn off all your lights. I stared
at it for a good thirty seconds, paper trembling between
my fingers, feeling the oddest sensation in the pit of mustomach,
as if the floor had dropped out from beneath me
just a fraction of an inch. I squinted at the
signature or initials, but there was nothing else. The back
of my neck went tight, as if a draft was
passing behind me. But I was alone by the mail boxes.
I could still hear my own breathing too loud. Somehow
some one moved up the emergency stairwell quick hurd shoes,
scuffing concrete steps. The door swung shut with the soft
tess of the hydraulic kine. I cleared my throat, shrugged,
pocketing the note, telling myself it was probably a prank.
It wouldn't have been the first time some neighbor got
creative with their warnings heads up about solicitors or a
note about a package thief. Some running dirk Still, a
quiet urgency clung to the words like a smell you
can quite place. The elevators up bun glowed weakly as
I waded the fluorescent bulbsup of buzzed and dimmed the
glass at the entry. We bent the city's lights into watery,
wavering mess. The whole lotty felt suspended, eager for movement.
Someone coughed behind the front desk of the night dorman,
mister Gilroy. He usually wore a grace wet a vest
and tie, even on midnight shifts, but to night his
jacket hung on the back of his chair, and he
looked tired. Under the harsh blue lights, rubbing his hands
together as if to shake something off. Evening, mister r
I said, a little louder than intended. Evening where there's
miserable out, he mumbled, as flickering to the street. I
thought you'd be back before now. His voice had rasped
to it. Not unusual, but his gaze kept skating over
my shoulder, like he was watching for someone behind me.
Long night, picked up some extra work, I smiled, trying
to keep things light, but found myself glancing at the
door too. Anything exciting happened while I was out, He hesitated,
then shook his head. Quiet while quiet in the normal
fuelate deliverers, some folks checking out early upstairs. He know
how it gets before the end of the month. I nodded.
We both knew the drill. He fiddled with something beneath
the counter, his lipped pressed height. Any problems I should
know about something with security or I ventured. His brows
furred and he shook his head again. It had too quickly,
just the usual. Let me know if you see anything strange.
The elevator door slaid open behind me. A good night,
I said, stepping inside, but he only managed a thin
wavering smile. The right sixteen felt slower than usual, the
bulbs and the car blinking once, then twice. My reflection
stared back quickly from the metal panel. Stepping into the corridor,
I was hit by an unfamiliar hush. My shoes made
a soft squeak in the linoleum, the smell faintly of
pine soal and something underneath, maybe old cigarette smoke or
the ink from a printer. Inside my apartment, I dumped
my backs by the door, unconsciously glancing at the second lock,
the one I had started using more regularly since a
spate of break in's last winter. My desk lamp cast
half the living room into shadow. The city pressed against
the windows, rained persistent against the glass, bright offices snuffed
out floor by floor. I set the note down beside
me as I dropped into my chair, opened my lapped
up and stared out at the grid of buildings. I
should have been thinking about my deadline, about overdoing visits
or groceries, but the oddly tide warning cat's surfacing in
my mind to turn off olio lights. Something in those
words dug in and wouldn't let go. I live on
the sixteenth floor of ven eighteen stories lapped tower, built
sometime in the nineteen sevent is one of those half
brittlest numbers that probably look futuristic in black and white.
Developer broughsures to day. It sits just at the edge
of downtown sand which between a renovated Prowore high rise
and a gleaming glass complex of Concier's Service. Sometimes at night,
from just the right angle, a can see both earies
stacked upon each other, the old city and the new,
blinking side by side. My name is Rowenhirsh. I'm forty
four and lately running my life on borrow time. Up
until two years ago, I was a full time copy
editor at a Metea publishing house, surviving mostly unsteady checks
and the patience of an office manager who found my
night all habits unique. Then kim layoffs, downsizing all the
usual fare. Now as gikta gig inverses stretching further than
my attention span, the eyos don't matter much. Suntimes. I
work when it's daylight, sometimes when no one else in
the building seems awake. Routine, even as the months drift by,
is the thing thus kept me anchored. Every morning or
sometimes after midnight, depending on the deadline, I tuck about
a notebook into my coat and head to the diner
around the corner. Then night staff know me by order hashinigs,
black coffee, always with a slice of pies and apology
to my arteries. Most weeks, Missus Samuel's eighty, if she's
a day sharp as she is warm, joins me for
what she calls the only edible breakfast in a twelve
block radius. She lives directly below, on the fifteenth floor,
and claims the secret to surviving apartment life is knowing
just when to speak up and when to feign deafness.
She's not the only friendly face. The tower used to
be its own little universe, work of teachers, social workers, nurses,
oddble grad students, and a handful of quietly wealthy types
who hung on to their rent controlled spots by sheer
force of will. There were holiday potlocks and fire alarm
block parties, little alliances that cross floor lines. Kids ran
from door to door every Halloween, rattling handle after handle,
hands sticky with taffy. Now the population tilts younger suits
from the new finance firms digital Nurma to come and
girl without ever learning each other's names. Some families, but
fewer every year as rents climb. You still see the
regulars together in the laundry room or by the mail
box's sharing advice, swapping warnings about property management, commisserating overburst pipes.
I watch the city every night from my desk as
the light's blink out, tower by tower, like some great
beast slowly closing its eyes. Sometimes if I lean into
the window sill, I'll catch the silhouettes of neighbors on
their balconies, making calls, all waving to friends across the way.
There's a shared civility in those moments, even if no
one speaks. Doors click, shut, locks, hern You hear muffled laughter,
then silence, and for a little while the place feels
almost safe. But there's always been a subtle tension beneath
the surface. The elevators stutter every so often, a shudder,
a clunt that makes you wonder if you will end
up stuck between floors. Sometimes the light stain only for
the maintenance, crude mutter apologies and disappeared behind a marked doors.
The hum of the building changes after eleven. The lobby
grows quieter on rare occasions. A stranger, a real estate agent,
a new prospective tenant will wander holes, trailing some invisible scent.
The old time has keep their doors locked and eyes open.
Gossip lingers here too, but mostly in the harmless side.
Whose dock had an accident in the stairwell, which neighbor's
party ran past midnight? Who paid too much for takeout?
There were occasional feuds with the management over window repairs,
rent hikes, and pest control. I tossed my share of
letters into the building's suggestion box, mostly ignored. Somehow in
all that I found over them that worked. It was much,
but it was predictably mine until the note. I tried
several times not to think about it. Brush my teeth,
fed the cat, who was my cat, really, but stray.
I'd been content to feeding by the previous Dennen and
tried to focus on editing footnotes in a finance memoir chapter,
but the words nagged at me. The man at the
pad in briefcase, if you see him past midnight, turn
off all your lights. The power for warning, I thought,
wasn't the message itself. It was how it stuck, how
it preyed on the routines you trusted to keep the
world ordered. I let the notes sit beside my keyboard,
feeling its weight every time I glanced up at the
shifting lights outside, wondering what exactly I was being warned about.
The days that followed might have felt like any other
stretch of quiet, anonymous city living, except for the way
small things began to go quietly sideways. Three Doors Dan,
a couple known for playing jazz over this speakers every
Saturday night. Clra and Mason ren V vanished earlier than expected,
leaving the last few weeks of their lease enclaimed. At
first I thought they'd taken a trip, but after the
second day I noticed their apartments, mail slot overflowing and
the shoes that used to line their wholeway missing. The
back on their door was gone. Two one screwed, not
just pride loose. It was the envelope tape crookedly to
their door that made me hesitate. Some one had scrolled
don't open for any one half a Midnight across the
front and blue mark at the tail of the letter
D leaping off the edge. It was signed simply R.
Something about the handwriting seemed oddly frantic. The tape doubled
up over itself, as if applied in a hurry. I
debated knocking, then thought better of it. It wasn't my place.
Not after years of hearing there laughter through the walls,
but never getting beyond pleasantries in the elevator, still the
not date at me. That night, after a I watched
as a renfer apartments day dark, no shadows moving behind
the shears, no clatter from their kitchen. Over the next week,
subtle patterns emerged. More units found my floor, and the
ones above and below looked abandoned, not just untidy. I
passed apartments on fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen whose porch lights
remained off, where some one had upturned door mats and
left cardboard boxes outside neatly labeled houled for pick up.
By Thursday, the sixteen forefelt deserted. After nine at night,
the air seemed heavier, somehow stagnant. The elevators ran less,
often stopping only when cold. Directly, I overheard several neighbors
making vag arrangements and hushed tones in the lobby, will
be back, no whirris, No, it's just for a little while.
Even greeting started clipping themselves short. When I brought up
the subtle emptiness to a woman as sometimes saw on
the stairwell, she shoved, half smiling, and said, people come,
people go. Maybe there's a sail I missed. On Saturday,
I ran into missus Samuel's standing outside the laundry room,
surrounded by a mountain of sheets. Her face was pinched.
I was starting to the corners. She didn't have her
usual mug of Dina coffee. Taking a trip, I joked,
nodding to her stack of rolling bags. Her lips tightened.
Something like that family bakistas about me. You know how
it is. Do you want someone to look after your plants?
I offered? She hesitated overby answer. I cleared them out yesterday,
warded them extra. If anyone asks, I already left. You
were leaving for good. I shouldn't have pressed, but the
question came out sharper than intended. Just away. Awhile, maybe
don't open your door to anyone after dark. Rowan take
care of yourself. She shuffled away before I could ask more.
At her door, she fumbled twice for her keys, glancing
behind her before slipping inside. There was no going away party,
no final laugh down the hallway, just a soft close
of the door and the lock's quiet turn. Mail accumulated
packages stacked and tap gently against an open doors. The
communal fournet stairs rarely used, rang out an echo one night,
and then went dead by the end of the week.
The upper floors felt like a ghost map, where friendly
voices and footsteps had been blotted at. For the first
time in years, I felt genuinely alone on my end
of the corridor. That evening, I dug out old journals
from the shelf above my desk, flipping through memories of
block partters, lists of neighbors' birthdays, recipes exchanged with Missus
Samuel's and the Renfrows. Looking back, it felt like reopening
a shutter. Restaurant menus still posted, but all the tables empty.
The building had always survived on community thrive down small
moments of care now that won't seem to have bled
away in by inch, leaving an echo in its place.
I slept with the whole way light on that night,
the Renfro's blue note floating in my mind, warnings overlapping
each other until nothing made sense. For the first time,
the silence outside my apartment seemed alive. Thick with suggestion.
It started as as a compulsion. I wrote down the
dates and names of everyone I'd seen moving boxes lately.
I charted which lights went out when, not out of paranoia,
but as a way to make sense of the spreading vacancy.
Two apartments, then four. The pace quickened, Alarms set for
eleven and one to check the whole. Page after page
of neat but increasing the anxious lists. After several nights
of watching, I noticed that the pattern wasn't just random
moving dates. Most people who left it so quietly between
midnight and sunrise, carrying only what fit into a backpack
or suitcase. The more I cataloged, the more obsessive my
routines became. My own deadline slipped. As I stayed up late,
peering through the peopole after each elevator chime. The emptiness
on my floor became difficult to ignore. I tried discussing
it during brief encounter as passing in the stowwell, catching
someone returning from grocery shopping. Most shrugged and affected. You
notice everything ruined. Maybe people found cheaper ren uphon. If
you seemed genuinely confused, insisting nothing was unusual. Others grew evasive,
excusing themselves before the conversation could linger. My journals thickened
with clippings. I began holding any note I found left behind,
Once rolled on the back of a ren veil, don't
let them in, another folded into a BADDAGEIM flyer watched
the whole way after midnight. He's not with security mixed
in with reminders tip by doornups to turn off the lights.
Each one referenced some version of the man with the briefcase.
The warnings grew more direct, more frantic. If he knocks,
pretend you are not home. Only the dock keeps you safe.
Some of the residents old chat threads, still lurking in
my phone's contact list showed abrupt sign offs and broken conversations.
People would mention trouble sleeping, then vanish from the chat.
The more recent messages had been scrubbed, entire histories white,
as if some one had gone in and methodically raised
the evidence of their time here. It was an odd
comfort to keep the evidence in a physical note book
as the digital trace is faded. I found myself snapping
foam photos of suspicious packages and writing down details from
the buildings to winning group chat in case those furnished
to Finally, I decided to approach building security. The property manager,
a smooth voiced man I'd only met twice, was away,
so I found one of the security officers. Her accent
was heavy, her smile practiced. When I asked if she'd
noticed anything strange about the upper floors, she laughed, shaking
her head. People move out all the time. But the logs,
do you have incident reports? I press, feigning curiosity about
package theft. She tapped at the tablet scrolling, and nothing
out of the ordinary this month. No complaints, no strange visitors,
all quiet. When I asked for the logs themselves, she hesitated,
records are confidential, but I promise nothing's amiss. She set
her George's a bit, her eyes not meeting mine, and
turned away. Later that night, the elevator let me off
in the lobby, just as mister Gilroy was checking the
security monitors, his hand trembling on the edge of the desk.
The screen cycled through repeats front door, elevator, hallway, then
back again. Everything all right, I asked. He looked up, startled,
then closed one of the windows quickly. Just some technical
issues cam is playing tricks. What can I help you with?
Have you seen any unfamiliar visitors upstairs over night? I
tried to keep my own casual matt his he hesitated,
Not unless you count the cleaners. May be a curer
here there any one was, say a brief gaze. The
word tasted strange as it left my mouth. He paused
for a fraction too long, then forced to smile. Lots
of people carry bags, mister Hirsch, Try not to worry yourself.
He turned the monitors away, as if shielding them from view.
There was something wrong here, I was sure of it.
The more I poked, the more it felt like everyone
around me was playing dumb or worse, actively working to
keep the truth obscured. One night I managed a half
bribe of one of the night porter is common, who
sometimes took shifts to cover her college tuition. She let
me into the old guardroom at the back near the butler,
where this still kept physical tape spoiling ire after ire
never overwritten. We plugged a feet into her battered laptop,
her eyes darting over her shoulder every few seconds. The
footage was grainy shadows collapsing together in monochrome but there
he was a man, tall and neat, moving along the
upper corridors, a briefiss held precisely at his side. He
passed each door, sometimes pausing, always just out of the
brightest patch of light. The briefcase looked almost swollen, a
little bob as at the corners, like something padded inside.
He never turned directly toward a camera, always keeping his
face angled away and each as it took place between
twelve thirteen and one seven a m an oddly specific
window we watched transfixed as he paused in front of
the Renfer's old apartment, standing motionless for almost a full minute,
then seeming to glide away in silence. On nights, when
the camera glitched, his passage would be a blur, a
streak of overexposed light. Carmen pushed the laptop away after
five minutes, whispering, I don't want to see any more.
That night, as I lay on my couch, wide awake,
pentapping out frantic notes, another round of shuffling from the
Howa drew my attention. The next morning, apartment seventeen B
was empty. Its former occupant, a grad student with a
well known fondness for model trains, nowhere to be found.
All that remained was a lone backpack by the elevator.
It shouldn't have surprised me anymore, but the cycle had
clearly accelerated. Each sighting of the man with the padded
briefcase seemed to precipitate another quiet, hasty departure. I began
to wonder if the building was being actively called the
tigue Stress, or something worse was cutting into my nights.
During a quiet monitoring session after midnight, I caught my
own reflection in my laptop monitor for just an instant.
It flickered, a glitch perhaps or a stutter in the
back light, and stout of my tired face. I saw
the blurred outline of a figure at my own door coat,
crisp face modged by shadow of padded briefcase in his grasp.
A chill ran up my arms and knodded at my sternum.
I blinked, and the image was gone, replaced by the
ordinary gray of my Google Doc's tab. Rationally, I told
myself it was exhaustion, a trick of low blood sugar.
Perhaps maybe I'd left a programme running in the background,
some half finished video superimposing itself over my reflection, but
the moment would not let go, ignaught at my memory.
Even as I replayed the events to myself, I paced
through my notes, sudden, dry, twisting my stomach. The edges
of the instant were already blurring, as if I'd sleep
or through the last ire. The next day, an email
from an address I didn't recognize slipped into my in books,
marked urgent but with no subject. The language was terse
lines broken with odd gaps rowan I know you've watching.
This is my only warning. Stop looking forget what you've seen.
Don't dig further. There is no one you can trust.
You're making it worse. Get out to night if you can.
No signature, just that tongue, clinical, befrightened. It wasn't quite
like the old neighbor's frantic notes, but the urgency was unmistakable.
A quick search of the address turned up nothing, but
a few headers suggested it belong to someone who've lived
in the tower maybe three weeks before. For the first
time I doubted my own process. I went back through
the timeline i'd written, realizing some interest in the line
with my recollection. A meeting with miss Samuels was listed
on a Thursday, but I remembered it on a Sunday.
A line about the Rimfros last night appayed twice, but
in different handwriting. My own chronology was warping beneath scrutiny.
It dawned on me maybe the briefcase man's influence extended
beyond simple appearances or threats. Perhaps his presence warped something deeper.
If he could raise or blur or confused digital and
physical evidence, then it wasn't just the building that was
being quietly edited. It was our memories, our very sense
of contenuity. Somehow that realization brought a new desperate clarity.
I could not rely on any one but myself, and
I would not leave until I saw the truth with
my own eyes, or until there was nothing left of
me to see. That night, I positioned myself by the door,
camera arm and a log tape recording spinning on my desk, notepad, open,
pen shaking. I was fixed to the peep hole. I
waited for midnight. The building was silent and somewhere on
the edge of sleep. I told myself I would stay
awake no matter what came next. But sleep, as it well,
had its own intentions. I fought the pole, sitting upright
at my desk while tying drive toward the IOA, filling
the silence with the soft mechanical click of my agent
tape recorder and the faint blue glove from my phone
stoppel chap. My apartment was a fortress of reminders, post
is culling like ottumn leaves in the credenda, double checked
peep hole, a line of bottled water to keep me alert,
the email warning still open in a tower, radiating and
unspoken fare from the depths of my screen. I kept
shifting my weight in the rickety desk's chair, moving restlessly
between laptop window, front door. Across the city, intermittent sire
and stitched through the rain, their whales bending and thinning
until only a water hush remained between intervals. The buildings
usual drown, the always on a track. The throaty hum
of elevator motors had faded. I noticed it because absence
is its own kind of intrusion. When something you accustomed
to stops, it announces itself by the very quiet, a
strain for any sound from the corridor, footsteps, elevator doors,
for isz, even the rush of water running through pipes.
At eleven fifty seven p m. I turned off every
light except for a single lamp in the corner. The
notes warning turn off all your lights circulated in my
thoughts like a submerged current. I got up as head
at then flick that lamb off too. My apartment turned
across such a city lit darkness and deeper shadow. I
sat on my folded knees by the people pressing my
face close. Midnight passed. At twelve three, I heard a
shuffle somewhere down the hallway, maybe two floors up, or
maybe just in the stairwell. It was hard to tell,
with the way sounds traveled in these old pipes and walls.
I pressed record on the tape. The tension in my
stomach kept climbing. Time lagged forward second per second. After
a while, the only thing that broke through was the
little purr and shifting crunches. The stray cat Midy saddled
into my lap. At twelve fifteen, fifteen minutes after the
first shuffle, a soft chime rose from the elevator bank.
My heart jerked with it. No voices followed, no doors
opened or closed. A few seconds after that, a more
distant shuffle like a bag of the cloth, brushing the
carpet whispered down the corridor, barely audible, I found myself,
without realizing, coiling tighter, adrenaline making my fingers tingle. I
slid the camera office, trapered and settled awkwardly into a
crouch by the door lends angle for the faintest view outside.
As I waited, A new and very specific fear crept in,
not that someone from the building would find me awake
and vigilant with it. However or whatever, I watched forward,
already know precisely how long I had been perched in
the dark, breath held, camera shaking in my hands. Five
more minutes passed. A flicker of motion far down the
length of the tiny peep hul, a shadow castin and
wavering against the slightly light a grave of the opposite wall.
The shape didn't walk so much as seemed to advance
one frame at a time, like a slide of progressing
by invisible cues. The briefcase, its outline obvious now that
I was looking for its one with impossible stunners at
the figure's side. He paused across from sixteen D Colson's
old place, empty since New Year's A hand rose fingers
long against the contrast of the wall and hovered just
above the door for him, not touching. He turned a single,
deliberate pivot, facing the length of the hallway. I couldn't
see his face, only the impression of suit La pels,
collar neatly pressed, dark hair, close crop a slicked back.
The briefcase was thick, its sides slightly bulging, as if
padded beneath expensive leather. He did not ring the bell.
He did not knock. For a long ten seconds, he
stood as if listening for a sound I couldn't detect.
I raised the camera and snapped a silent picture from
the crack between the door and the frame, expecting him
to startle a look. The shock came out under exposed,
blurred and overwhelmingly gray. Then with the peculiar a fluidity,
the visitor moved to my neighbor's door across the way,
mirror's place vacant for a week. He repeated his silent ritual.
Stan brief kissed forward, head ever so slightly cocked, listening.
He didn't check my door, not yet. The very idea
that A craved his nerdous send a chill down my back,
but I stayed glued to the peep hole, tracking his progress.
After maybe five minutes an eternity measured in heartbeats and
microw movements, he turned down the corner at the far
end of the hall and was gone. I led a
slow breath out, lins prickling, and glanced at the clock
twelve thirty four. There was another twenty minutes in his
usual window, but for some reason I didn't think he
would return. Mitya had burrowed deeper into my blanket pile,
her tail quivering with every shudder I passed into her fur.
I ran my hands through her stripe, felt as if
I could ground myself again. Tried to review what I
captured the forto. When I enlarged it showed only streaks
of shadow and a distorted reflection, a vertical smudge where
his face should have been. The time stamp and file
name on my camera were written in what I could
only describe as falseet minutes were on file sizes listed
in negative bites, displayed in reverse order on my screen.
For a disorienting moment, I thought I'd taken no photos all.
Then they blinked back into existence randomly arranged m on
screenshots from two weeks before. On the tape recorder, the
hissostatic was broken only by my own breathing, rimick and shaky,
and then very faint, a softly mordulate buzz, like someone
tuning in a lost frequency beneath the range of ordinary speech.
I played it back three times, straining past the white noise,
but the sound grew only more insistent. ASTERISKU you imagine patterns, asterisk,
I told myself asterisk, and the patterns re arranged the
evidence to fit asterisk. When I finally called to bed
at almost four late, just starting to seep into the
navy velvet edge of morning, I was no closer to understanding,
but everything felt subtly off balance. The next morning, I
made two pots of coffee and tried to concentrate on
my overdue work, a legal deposition needing a final comb
for consistency, but I could barely keep sentences in line.
My notebook from the previous night had new enters my handwriting,
but forced slanted, as though written in a rush. Half
of one page contained a message I didn't remember composing
twelve twenty one. He's already pasture door. Don't answer, don't answer,
don't answer. Mity prowled the blank edges of the living room,
mewing at the corners as if she could sense a
draft or visit to the rest of us. Missed, determined,
I dressed and marched down two flights, hoping movement would
snap me back to clarity. As I made my way
through the silent always too quiet for this iren. No
doors opening, no cooking, smiles or snippets of TV through
thin walls. I rehearse my questions. On the fourteen, I
knocked one Almos's door, a tex support guy who laughed
off my previous concerns. He answered, eyeing me through a
gap in a chain, you checking up on me? His
joke was thin, more suspicion than humor. I wanted to
ask any one strange knocking on doors here, anyone with
a briefcase. He blinked a little too slowly, as if
for satting. Not that I've seen what kind of briefcase.
The padded kind dark moves around after midnight. He considered
face blanking, then shruked. Some agent came by about rent
renewals last week, then abruptly, sorry, God a call. I
need to take the chain slid back into place before
I could press on. On the twelfth, only one door answered,
a woman in slippers in a battered sweater, eyes ringed
with exhaustion, she listened as flickering to the hole. As
I laid out my theory. People move out all the time,
she murmured, If it's not the rent, it's the cold.
But in the dead of night, without telling neighbors, she
only smiled dimly and shut the door. I tried five
more units, with no answer, one after another, as if
the building itself encouraged withdraw towards closing tight at the
higher I went back in my own kitchen. I poured
another muck, determined not to let the malley saddle. Instead,
I cataloged every point of friction, every glitch, the laundry
room's digital time of stuttering, emails missing from my box,
pictures of the whole we re arranged in my photo gallery.
In a moment of defiance, I wrote a letter to
myself in thick black marker, ah is happening Rowan, and
taped it over my monitor all day. The urge to
forget pressed against me, in itchy compulsion to delee Fhile's
trush notebooks wipe evidence. But something steady kept me, and
could a stubborn streak, perhaps, or the slow, angry realization
that if I surrendered to that itch, I'd never know
where my memories ended. And some one else's revisions began.
That evening, as rain hammered the window again, I called
missus Samuel's number, a stale ring than a robotic voice.
This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service.
I skyried my contact lists for others who might still
answer for smells echoing beneath the hum of static nobody,
picking up each scene to fade like an old tape
left in the sun. Out of options, I dragged my
tape recorder an analog camera to the building's service level.
As I searched for common or another sympathetic staffer, I
passed mister Gilroy at the back office, hunched over paperwork.
This time I didn't wait for him to look up.
Mister Gilroy, I said, gently, what happens in this building
after midnight? His hand jerked pen, leaving a small sharp
crease in the form he filled. Not my place to say,
he replied, without turning, I've seen the man with the briefcase.
I know he comes slate oppressed. Do you remember him?
His face crumbled, not in anger, but in fear. He
looked up, gazed, briefly meeting mine, pleading. Ay. Sometimes I
think I see someone, but then the next day I
remember nothing. It's like waking up after a fever. He
rubbed at the edge of his temple, worry lines spidering outwards.
All I know is people leave, and then so do
The store's management says nothing, Security says less, they change
the logs that I don't want trouble, but people deserve
to know. I nearly raised my voice, tension breaking. He
glanced over his shoulder to the empty hallway, lowered his
tone to a whisper, and pushed a key toward me.
Seventeen four laundry room check the vents. I took the
key with trembling hands, and sure whether to thank him
or apologize. He nodded once more, turning back to his
paperwork as if nothing had happened. Riding the elevator up,
key tied in my fist, the sense of a reality returned,
nothing quite sequential, all details slightly out of joint. The
corridor on seventeen looked identical to my own, but every
apartment on a plate was freshly polished, as if waiting
for new tenants. In the laundry room, he pressed up
from old machines. I found the vent covered loose behind
a rack of dust filtered hampers. Inside, tucked behind a
vent mesh, a small folder. Letters, some torn in half,
pa taped together with careful hands, dated over at least
five years, handwriting sprawled frantic, looped on the verge of tears,
one after another. I read the notes by flashlight. He
knocks where it's almost quiet, and you try to ignore him.
Sometimes he let him in, but you forget if you
talk about it. He follows you. My sister was here,
she's not now. He doesn't use keys, only the briefcase.
The lights inside your mind go out. Not just the bulbs,
not just the bulbs, not just a few pages were shredded,
lines missing with a pen must have taunturre and panic.
The last was a single, unsteady line. It's not enough
to remember. You have to leave where nothing is left
of you. I put the letters back and covered the vent, heart,
hammering with a new fear, not just for what I
might see, but for the stories I must forget even
as I live them. Back inside my apartment, I made
a recording on both tip and phone, describing what I sought,
the details of the man, the keys, the warnings, the folders,
and the fear. I read each note aloud, voice shaking
but insistent. A little past three in the morning, adolfought
came from my own door, package freshly delivered for unwrap,
no return address, inside a single sheet. You are making
yourself seen. Don't let the dark save you this time
underneath in smaller praint. Whoever keeps the records never keeps themselves.
My chest tightened, and not a threat exactly, but a promise.
I wanted to believe. There was a logic to it all,
a chain of calls and effect, some broken well broken,
some head and management file I could dig up in
the basement. But it was clear now this was more
more than just a building turf war, more than urban paranoia.
If the briefcase man adited memories, stores, maybe even identities,
then uncovering what he wanted was a kind of sedition,
the only way to reclaim the lost warm, the vanished
camaraderie of the building. I stared at the city lights
through the window, rain running down like traces on an
exposed film strip. I told myself out loud and onto
the recorder that I would not forget, not this time,
not even if the story tried to raise itself in
the tilling. Somewhere below, an elevator chime rang once, then twice.
Footsteps climbed the stairs, slow and deliberate, trailing the soft
weight of a padded briefcase. If I was seen, now
seen fully, I hoped he had leave behind enough marks, enough
evidence that even if my memory faded, the building itself
would remember what I tried to do. Outside, the rain stopped,
the city grew impossibly still, and I waited, awake for
the moment when what was hidden would decide to make
itself known again. I startled awake before the sun, the
city's light a faint, bluish wash in the ceiling. My
neck stiff from having slept up right against the edge
of my desk for a moment, I couldn't orient myself.
Pen sled from my hand. Nope, had lied at a
shallow handle beside my leg taper cordo, beside a stack
of sticky notes. The air was cold, sharper than expected.
The draft stirring from somewhere near the kitchen. I checked
the time, six twelve a m my phone had died
over night, the glass chili under my hand. There was
no sign from the whole, no package, no fresh envelope. Still,
something unfamiliar pressed up my skull from within the fatigue,
less of sleep deprivation, and more of something that had
been drawn out of me. In and a mitty prowled
the room, tail erect, eyes wide and haunted. Street light
through the blinds painted the room and pale stripes. My
hands trembled as I rifled through my notes, checking hastily
in details of the previous night. My handwriting looked strange, tighter,
intentionally slanted, as if ever writing with the gloved hand.
I read aloud the time markers and descriptions, my own
voice deadened by exhaustion and self doubt. I scanned my
ALLOL camera, thro gliding over the casing, but the memory
cod was blank, no images, only as system fold or
marked ear. I stood and circled the apartment, windows locked,
chaine latched, my sneakers pressed against the thresholds, still down
from their vigil. I checked the hole through the people
all nothing but silence, a haze of dust drifting in
the shaft of dawn seeping under the apartment door. It
occurred to me that it should have felt relieving the
man didn't stop at my door. The night had passed
without incident, but the nause my thoughts were sharpened now,
the young realities so thick I could almost taste it.
For a long time, I simply wandered from kitchen to
living room, collecting glasses and plates to keep my muscles moving,
the effort of routine barely keeping panic from blooming. Only
after an hour of this did I realized another note
at appeared to tuck cleanly under my door. Map on
plain paper as before, but the typeface was an exact
mimicry of my own printer, only off by half a point.
No introduction, just another warning you're next leave your keys.
I crouched by the door chest height, we read the
line while my heart beat pounded in my neck. A
half dozen scenarios ran through my mind, all ending with
the same image. The padded briefcase resting on a crooked
hallway carpet, a hand hovering over the door, my own
thoughts turning to static. I moved instinctively, then sweeping through
the rooms all at once, determined to record everything and
to destroy any evidence that could be turned against me.
A scribble, rappa bullet points in three different notebooks, dictated
the knights of Ens into bonafouene, and hid slips of
paper in the bottoms of coffee tins under the edge
of the bathroom tile. My apartment became a museum of reminders.
The defense against would have a powered The briefest man
held outside the building was quieter than I could remember.
By noon, I finally showered in dress, scrubbing my skin
until it tingled. I tried text in common the night porter,
but each attempt returned only eight years enough found calls
to the management office rang endlessly unanswered. I loaded the
security tape from the night before into an old DVD player,
relieving the analog insulated from the building's network. The date
stump flickered, showing random leaps INtime midnight, then twelve seventeen,
then back to eleven fifty one, hallway footage, leaping and studdery.
There were moments when the lens captured a figure lying
just outside the bright band of sealing light, but each
time I strained to make out details, the focus, blood
lines thickening into gray haze. It was as if the
camera itself resisted comprehension. My hands shook as I reaply
the knock on my door. There was a patch of
wavering darkness at the threshold, accompanied by a too faint whisper.
But when I boosted the audio, the words twisted into gibberish,
splintered into hissing, repeating fragments of fowls. My own voice,
as recorded by the tape was oddly tinny, the kitten's
not quite matching what I remembered. I clung to these
stutters of reality, details and erasable, even if meaning was lost.
Desperate for not a point of reference, I composed a
text to the only pres and left whom I trusted
with the truth, Missus Samuels. I waited for a reply,
staring out at the empty balconies below, but nothing arrived.
As the afternoon faded to evening, I paced my rooms
like a caged animal, hands tracing lines on the edge
of furniture, fingers searching for tactile proof of the world's persistence,
as scared emails binding in tie of Red's missing subject
lines blanked out in my photo albums. Faces were erased
once neighborly smiles replaced by smears of gray. I stormed
down to the lobby just after dusk. The place felt abandoned,
the scent of pine saw and old coffee hanging heavy.
Mister Gilway was gone, a cardboard sign staying back in
thirty men, but in his seat a bat of notebook
as pages horn in the center. I opened at graphite scroll,
list of tenant numbers, dates of departure, strange abbreviations I
didn't recognize halfway down one page. Don't trust the sixteenth,
don't trust memory, don't trust doors. The elevator stuttered as
I rode up. I counted the floors by the blinking
number twelve, thirteen, fourteen, each four silence thicker than the last.
On sixteen, every door felt closed by conspiracy. No cooking smells,
no hum of TV, only the hush of abandonment. Even Middy,
always eager for an open window, crouched in the kitchen,
Hurrier's flat gaze fixed on some spot beneath the old radiator.
For the first time, I could almost believe that I
had been imagined into someone else's dream. My entire world
was shrinking, note books, all tapes, fading warnings beneath doors.
Each step became a test of will. I was not
ready to run, not yet. That night, every light in
the apartment remained off. I stared into shadows, daring a
padded briefcase man to return. If he came, I swore
to myself, I'd be awake watching leaving foot prince deeper
the memory, every part of misstraining through the darkness for
the next move. The one nut might shift this week's
long siege from quite dread into open war. But in
that pre dawn are alone, book, vigilant and new resolve
took rut deeper than fear. Next time he came, I
would not simply observe. I would act. When true morning arrived,
it came harsh and britle light, hardening every edge in
my apartment. The rhythm of my habits was gone. I
left coffee forgotten on the stove, mail and opened by
the door, my emails multiplying only as error messages. It
was as if the city, the routines themselves, were grinding
me down for noticing, for refusing to turn away. They
urged to delete. Everything was stronger than before, a compulsion
like Nausa, a flashing need in my bones, and I
fought it by writing reminders everywhere, on labels, on the
backs of utility bills, on the inside of my closet door.
Remember Israel. Remember they all left by noon. The building's
exodus was unmistakable through the slit windows in the starewell.
I could see Moover's wheeling boxes from the far corner,
hands moving too quickly, phases fevers and turned away. A
trickle of residence from the upper floors hurried past on
the landing, none returning my greeting. I tried to flag
down a man with a push up, but he ducked
his head, refusing to look me in the eye. I
called a property manager and again, demanding to know why
so many tenants were leaving early. The line clicked, transferred,
then dissolved into static. The office downsters sat, empty windows,
fog the security desk command. When I checked the online
tenant directory for familiar names, entire lists were gone. Renfro, Carson,
Samuels all wiped their entriest drop up to blank lines.
The group chat where jokes and minute grouts once flickered
was now a flat grid. Past posts replaced with the
simple this conversation is no longer available. The escalation was physical.
Now Any trace of communal memory was fading. By the day,
I redoubled my efforts to collect evidence physical analog unerasable.
I filled note brioks with descriptions, hand drawn floor plants,
timelines stitched together from whatever scraps of paper still felt authentic.
I assembled a bundled memory kit, the battered analog tape recorder,
an old polaroid, a kitchen timer, spare pens, even a
stamped letter to myself that I left for the dormant
if he returned, asking him to deliver it back in
a weak proof that something had changed or that I
was still here to claim it. My next move was
desperation mixed with calculation. At recruit help from within the
winnowing building. I remembered a resident mentioned in older chat locks,
Diana Tamblin, retired high school I tea teacher lived here
since the nineties, known for tinkering with cameras and routers
an unpredictable schedule. I found her door at sixteen j
half way down from the elevator, knuckles trembling as I knocked,
She answered, after a delay, chain in place, She looked cautious,
but not unfriendly. Ash white hair, clip clothes, told to
show glasses a deeper in collage between her eyes. She
left me standing in the corridor too long before speaking.
I know you, she said, softly, recognition dawning. You are
the one asking about midnight. Yes, I Diana. My voice
cracked with nerves that would not settle. She unlatched a chain,
stepped aside. Her apartment was a hoarder's paradise, bundles of cabling,
old monitors, analog clocks, posted sanderton, and layered on every
inch of free surface. She gestured me in with the
flick of her wrist. I told her as concisely as
possible what I'd witnessed, the man, the notes, the easies,
the rooms entering over night. When I finished, she just nodded,
let's press thin on sheet tears, making her wet. I
lost a year, she whispered, woke up and thought it
was still twenty twenty two. My daughter was wedding. That
whole album gone. I searched everywhere, my computer at Bachp's,
but the fhrotos were corrupted. I talked to others. There's
no accident. He comes and the evidence fade, and then
you can't be sure what you ever really saw. She
moved to her dining table, where rows of tape cassette sat,
labeled in a rigid code. Briefcase knob edits midnight er set.
Flipping through a batted ledger, she showed me prints of blueprints,
architectural diagrams, some rooms marked by jagged pencil lines. There's
a service corridor behind seventeen and eighteen. She offered ball designs,
supposedly for maintenance, but keyed entrances were breaked over. I
think it's how he moves without anyone seeing. She handed
over a crumpled scrap of her seat paper whole with
smuled of ink and burning rubber. Last night lights buzzed
and then went out. I hid in a broom closet.
When I came out, my phone was were set, pictures
all gone. I nodded, breathing, shellar. Did you see any
one else? Talk to anyone who? Only the ones who
stay up late, only the ones asking questions? She gave
me a blaque smile. Some of them leave, some just
stop talking. We sat for an hour, cross referencing her
tapes against my notes of blueprints against my calendars, trying
to pin real moments at analog clocks, stacking the artifacts.
The building on paper should have been bustling. In reality,
it felt hollowed out, a skin stretched too tight over
hidden machinery. When I asked why she stayed, Diana only said,
if I leave, I'll lose everything. If I say, maybe
there is enough left to remember who we are. Her
conviction resembled my own fear. I recognized my own desperation
in her expression. That night, together we drafted a plan.
She lent me a working analog tapeer, corder, extra batteries,
hand labeled sets. We agreed to monitor the service corridor
to document smells, footsteps, any anomaly, always between twelve thirteen
and one seven, always in pairs analog and digital, so
there be at least some cross check of reality. We
parted around midnight. The silence in the hole as I
returned to my door was nearly absolute. Only the faintest
tom from her apartment two rooms down told me that
any one still resisted. I wired up my own fairsaves
cameras trained at angles to catch any passage by my door.
Polaroids of the whole snapped every five minutes. In my journals,
I left dated entries with the phrase romin awake, Notice everything.
Remember darkness is not empty. I set an alarm for
twelve ten. When it rang, I moved into the corridor,
pressing my back to the wall beside the service closet tape,
a corridor spinning. The first sign came not as a sound,
but as a scent, acrid synthetic like melted plastic, mingled
with ammonia and gun oil. The bulb above my door
flickered so hard I thought it would burst. At twelve eighteen,
footsteps padded up the stairs, slow and witless. The corridor
thickened with darkness. The briefcase man rounded the stable, landing
codmaculate briefcase swinging in perfect count, tempert his stride, he
passed my door without pausing, crossed to the service corridor,
reached for the lock, and without seeming to touch anything,
slid through. The overhead lights snapped off with a near
audible click. I pressed against the wall, struggling to match
the rhythm of my own breath, teeth chattering despite the
sweat beating at the small of my back. From inside
the service tunnel, I caught a glimpse of pale brilliance,
like a flourcing watch face flickering alongside a fan of
PaperWorks bread in the floor. His hands moved methodically, sorting, arranging, discarding.
Foder's shuffled forms, wrinkling as if he was racing signatures
one after another. Each action made the darkness denser at
the air stailer. Every piece of documentary evidence I had
compiled seemed to cul in, memory less, sharp, less reciprocal
with the world. Suddenly there was a second shape in
the corridor, Diana, stepping out from her perch. Determined and unsteady.
She held her own tape or corder aloft, trained at
the open doorway. Her voice rose, restrained but imperative. Stop
Let us remember. The figure did not look at her.
He kept rearranging, indifferent to being witnessed. But the briefest
lay open on the ground, lined with rows of what
looked like memory cards, keys, sheets of highly polished metal
covered in stamped codes. On one card in the uppermost row,
my own handwriting blacking in the spiral from my note book.
Another Diana's minuscule architect's print. Diana stepped forward. We know
what you were doing. It ends now, he paused. Hans
spended above the car ards, his head cocked at an
unnatural angle, face, indifferent, lips form me No, who was
but a feint of re viberration, like the after image
of his struck belrose between us. Then, with a calm smoothness,
he lifted the briefcase, rising to full height. He turned
to meet my gaze directly. For just that instant, I
saw his features blank, elegant, smooth as glass, except for
the eyes, which shimmered with the deep distortion, reflecting not
my face but a swirl of faces. Many lay as
deep eyes with an eyes. The weight of memory pressed
so sharply A staggered back, dropping my own tape recorder.
He stepped forward, placing a single cold hand to the
nearest wall, and the darkness in the corridor thickened until
it blanked out everything behind him. An i urge, primal
and senseless, kipped me ron escape, tear down every art
fact I owned, erased myself one step ahead of his
patient methodical advance. Diana's voice got across the chasm. She
flaked on a heavy duty flashlight beam slicing through the
corridor's dock. The briefcase man recoiled only slightly, but the
effect was seismic. The cards scattered, clattering to the ground.
In that moment, the static in my head a bitted
at the edges. I lunged, grabbing one card as it
slid toward my shoe. The plastic sank, cold and sharp
under my fingers. A sliver of something solid my name.
The briefest man snapped the lid shut with bretinatural composure.
He straightened, fixed his gaze beyond us, and moved past,
vanishing into the stairwell with impossible silence. In his wake.
The service corridor a light returned, old orange safe. I
clutched the card as if it could, and commit to
the world. Diana crutched by the scattered notes, sweeping them
into her coat. The smell of ink can burn, plastic faded,
replaced by nothing but the muss of old dust. Somewhere
behind us, the building's ancient plumbing groan, and we set
a mechanical exhale. Neither of us spoke as we hurried
back to her apartment, bolting the chain breathless and dry
him out. We poured over the evidence, hand shaking my card,
a data chip, brittle with my full name, and the
burned in a print of my face, half memory, half rasure,
hers and audio tape, the loop of one sentence she
had written in a forgotten journal, frek mendary voice, repeating,
they will take as much as you'll give. Don't open
the door. We set about cross referencing, place king tapes,
mashing dates, chasing patterns, strew dread and adrenaline, trying to
string together a timeline. The evidence called and Sure in
our hands felt at once like a lipline and a
warning proof that something in human work to prune our lives, selectively,
deleting not only our memories, but our variability to recount,
to war and to escape. We pressed the artifacts together,
as if their union were create a bulwalk against oblivion.
As the first ambers of morning bone between the sky
line towers outside her living room window, I wrote a
final note in marker, one letter after another, I'm rowinhersh
this is sixteen floors up. I am not erased. Diana
was shivering a shudder that would not fade when at
last we split the cash of salvaged evidence and slept
separately back to our darkened apartments. A long tense truce.
We agreed to check him by a summarize. If either
of us failed, the other would post the package to
some one on the outside, any last ditch rescue from memory.
But as I reached my door, something had changed on
the threshold. Four more sticky notes costed in my own handwriting,
all with the same warning, don't answer again, don't look
at the brief kiss inside the apartment fell altered, pictures
in the walls subtly off angles, the smell of cyinge
fabric near the bedroom, My journal stacked in reverse order
on a kitchen counter. The envelope that had worn me
weeks earlier now bore distions in shake eer ink. Yet
it's not just what's seene, but what possible You are,
what you remember, Leave while you can. I locked up
hart knocking and sat by a single window, the city
hazy and slow beyond its glare. It was just me
and Middy now, no neighbors, no dorman, only scattered notes
that scene moment by moment to shift their wording if
I didn't stare directly at them. On impulse, I locked
the memory card and the polaroid inside a tea tin
wind taper round the lid, shoved it behind the less
brick in the closet, my last safeguard. The next evening,
a terce coded message bust on the engine landline, a
number not in the book. Diana's voice clipped and hurried,
I'm leaving. Don't follow, destroy your notes. This isn't worth it.
He comes for those who try to remember too much.
The dial tone was harsher than usual, a lon ex ail.
As I hung up, the lights in the building blinked again,
floor by floor, a pattern that traced itself through the circuits,
stair walls, and empty units. On my phone, a system
notification contacts updated zero valon. In my journals, entries were
overridden in places by lines of static. Not just thing
scraped out, but takes shape shifting on the pages. I
watched sentences rewriting themselves, as if some hidden hand guided
their change. The urge to evacuate Paul's strong air craving to vanish,
to leave nothing but blank space in my wake. I
resisted by doubling down, taping more notes in every corner,
stacking my analog reminders, pinning polaroids above the windows I
counted iyres allowed to preserve them, narrating a record that
might resist his extraction. The building's management shove newly's contracts
and the doors shorter, stricter, each with a dense non
disclosure at endum one line in faint gray by signing
ten and agrees not to record a report an approved
activity between the iyres of twelve zero a M and
six zero a M in the margin, a phrase lingered
freer safety and ires on the few occupied floors. Residents
side me with suspicion, some angry, some fearful, all moving quietly,
bows packed for swift departures. Children once were umbunctious, and
the holes now crept silently from apartment to elevator. No
one smiles, no one lingers. The fabric of the old
community was dissolved freight by something more profound than theft,
more hollowing than ordinary loneliness. My phone glitched every few minutes,
time stemps slipping. Ten twenty minutes of the stretch files
I encrypted were a knock. Title scrambled. The analog notebooks
my back up, became my last anchor. I clung to
them as I moved for each day, like an expatiated
a conquered city, dodging glances, documenting everything, fighting the aged
to race. Some nights I could hear the padded briefest
man moving above me on seventeen, then eighteen, then descending
one floor every few weeks, his passage, leaving behind a
growing trail of eenttness. My list of remaining neighbor shrank.
Late at night in the laundry room of stairwell, doors
creaked open and closed for no one. The building itself
seemed to bend under a burden of secrets. After a week,
I found myself sleeping in shoes, bag packed, taper corder
carefully hidden beneath my pillow. Letters to myself, placed daily
in random spots, became a chain proof that I had
survived another day, that I was not yet unwritten. But
the whisper in my head, quick and venomous, urged leave,
stop erase. They all left, and you should too. The
only respit, the only whiff of resistance left was of
cash and a closet, my memory kit, a scavenge card
with my name and faded black Diana's taped two polaroids
of the corridor. Each time I touched them, they urged
to destroy, lesson memory, sharpening for a moment, the desperate
clarity of knowing what was real and what was not.
On the eighth night after the failed confrontation, as I
returned from scavenging for groceries in the deserted hall, I
discovered a new note tucked beneath my door mat. You
saw him, you stayed. Now you're part of it. The
tremor in my hands was sharper than night felt in days.
My reflection in the elevator's mirror doors looked normal at first,
but for the briefest moment, Maya seened out of alignment.
One iris blurred the other, flickering, almost as if someone
else were staring out through the glass. I pressed my
face close, willing those eyes to staddy the after image, lingering,
a vertical band of darkness at my shoulder, a flicker
in the depth of the mirror, as if a second
figure waited just out of frame. I blinked and my
sight cleared, but the unees held fast. The hallway was empty,
or so I believed. Halfway to my apartment, I caught
sands softer than foot steps, but amistakably human. Looking over
my shoulder, I saw a motion at the far end
of shape and distinct but hauntingly familiar. It did not approach.
I only watched, head cocked, perfectly silent, as if evaluating
whether I was now one of them. I entered my apartment,
closing the door with careful deliberateness, turning both locks. All
my post its, layers deep, were still in place. Still,
the lighting felt subtly wrong. Shadows two dense at the corners,
colors flattened on my desk. The latest warning note casts
a shadow across the blue line pad letters already fading
at the ages. I sat and opened my journal to
a blank page, pen poised in a trembling hand. The
words threatened to evaporate even as I wrote. Memory now tenuous,
flickering with every breath, But I did not destroy my notes. Instead,
I packed the memory, kid card, tapes, polaroids into an
old messenger bag. I checked and double checked the contents,
taping my name, address and date to the inside, then
sealed it shut. I left out a single letter, addressed
to whoever came next. On the outside, I scrolled the
last warnings I could. If you find this, do not
trust the midnight silence. Do not erase if you see him,
stay awake. The dark is not empty. With the package ready,
I went to the nearest mail books at ground level,
I felt watched every step of the way, the sensations strongest.
As I passed the security desk, the camera overhea hummed
lins now turned directly at me, but I did not hesitate.
I opened a panel and shoved the bag deep into
the outgrowing slot, letting the metal flat clang shot with finality.
Upstairs again, I shut myself in. I turned every light
in the apartment on, then, remembering the warning, turned all
of them off. The city watched, and through my rain
streak window the sky lines rhythm and broken. I set
my tape running, where sited the names of those hutgum missing,
and traced the outline of the memory card one final time.
That's I. The lights are nearby buildings flickered on, off,
on again, in a pattern that pulls along the grid,
unfamiliar and arresting. It was as if the city beyond
my window pollsed with a new coded message, seats of
ambiguity germinating in the heart of what once was harm.
I stood at my desk, hand braced on the plywied surface.
I was pressed shut to the darkness. First band of
breathless seconds. I hovered on the edge of forgetting, the
urge to erase myself almost all consuming, but I refused. Instead,
I pressed the last polaroid flat to the desk, weighing
it down with the rock from my childhood home, swearing
to retain every memory fragment, no matter how. The world
around me bent to a lte Mitty brushed against my ankle,
prayring her warmth, grounding me. In the moment outside, the
rain started again, tapping out steady coat against the glass.
The building was silent, the upper floors empty, shadow at
my door. But for now I remained, And in the
hush that followed, I told myself, I am here. I
will remember. And in the hush that followed, I told myself,
I am here, I will remember. For a while, there
was little else to hold on, to accept that simple assertion.
Day and night blurred, IROs s ditched together, but restlessness,
tension pulsing behind my eyes. I began existing by road,
waking two clock set in triplicate, one old wind up,
one battery powered, one blinking digital, all with tape reminders
to compare times. Every hour, any slip might terrorld the
next rasure. Every slippage through time, every shadow in the
corner threatened to tip me into forgetting. So I fought
methodically for proof. Barely a dozen tenants seemed to remain.
The halls walked steadily toward vacancy, mail slots untouched for days,
the drone of voices from televisions and radios gone. At times,
it was worse to hear something too normal, a laugh
in the stairwell, t V game shows, applause echoing from
a distant floor. Because I could never be certain what
was proof of others and what was just a memory
severed from its root, each night I added stray notes
to doors on sixteen and seventeen. On some mornings they
were gone, no sign of disturbance. On others, I found
them shuffled, written over, returned with single scold words no,
or go or remember. One morning, after a sleep was stretch,
I found a sticky note on my own door, printed
in a faint type face and familiar this is not
your story. It crumbled when I touched it, disintegrating before
my eyes. I spent what remained of my afternoon's compiling documents,
least coppies, correspondents, faded photos, the detritus of life in
this place, anything that felt uneditable. I started calling old
friends outside the city, even though I hadn't spoken to
in years, telling them improbable stories about an unremarkable apartment blows.
Some listened, humoring me with skepticism. Others grew nervous and
changed the subject. Never once did anyone suggest visiting. Sometimes
I tried to reach Diana, finding nothing but silences or
harsh mechanical feedback in the line. Once a voice answered
it might have been her, but sounded small, lost layers
of static, stripping meaning from words. I tried to hold
the memory in place, but it slipped away even as
I wrote it down, leaving only the daytime and a
single phrase he Yet, it's not just what's seen in.
I learned quirky to avoid other tenants. A young woman
from fifteen once caught me on the stairs as wide,
mouth moving as if wanting to say something. I offered
my name a greeting. She only shook her head, clutching
an envelope close to her chest. If you know, she
whispered soft as moss wings, don't share it then she
turned away, descending to the lobby, her footsteps out of
sync with the world. Soon the management replaced entry codes
with new ones. I noticed when signing the annual renewal
a hidden box at the bottom of the digital lease,
a conformation window with a warning by proceeding acknowledge ongoing
surveillance and consent to all necessary edits to the digital
record for the safety of all tenants. The text faded
if I tried to screenshot, vanishing as soon as I focussed,
a sleight of hand that left me cold. Outside was
no relief. The city kept blinking through the night, the
silent lights now flickering and syncnly, not with human activity,
but with some subterranean clock know only to the buildings
shadowed machinery. I caught myself watching patterns in the skyscraper grade,
searching for meaning in the off unsequence, the way particular
floors darkened together, then reignited, as if the city itself
participated in a memory game I could never quite win.
After a midnight anise pressed in the urged purge files,
notes memories rose to refever pitch. Goaded by phantom anxiety.
My apartments swelled with less and tape warnings. Yet some
nights I had weak to find my handwriting altered, whereas
crooked or scrawled at the margins. More than once I
discovered enterest, I could not remember composing grim repetitions don't
open the door, don't leave the light on. He comes
when you believe you are alone. It was in the
tenth evening after Dana's departure that I resolved to force
a decisive confrontation. I laced every surface with warnings by
pan tape, even scratches, and the doors paned. Then sat
with recorder, polarared memory card, and my own growing exhaustion
as company. I waited for the rhythm in the building,
the slow elevator at the timed click of heat rising
and falling to resume his midnight pattern. The moment the
hum shifted, I moved. I eased into the corridor, tape
running camera prepped, The air vibrated with the energy, as
though every wall was ready to decompose and build its alvenue.
Nearer the surface corridor, the door gave slightly open, and
from inside the now familiar sent synthetic like scorched insulation
or melted tape rolled out in a single heavy wave.
He was there, not shrouded, not headen, but present, tall
sued it brief kiss raised in one hand like an embum,
his head tilted as I entered, the faintest suggestion of
a smile, pulling the corners of an unreadable mouth. In
the other hand, he clutched a stack of noot cards,
each stamped with numbers and a faunt had never seen
outside this building. I lifted my camera, but it jammed
with a grind, stubbornly refusing to fire. Even the taper
corder emitted only a stat of clay swine. Despite the darkness,
his face shone in distinct shimmering, but being beneath it
in subtle relief. I coughed flickers of the people who
had left, faces layered and peeling, the Renfroes, Missess Semmels,
even Diana. For a blink my own feature. Serf threw
a mass just out of phase, his gaze coal and detached,
tracked me as I leaned against the wall for support.
He never spoke aloud, not in the way humans do,
but a series of images flashed through my mind, blank directories,
rooms filling and emptying, mail boxes, overflowing the clean locks
that relentless exodus. The briefkis snapped open. The interior, constructed
like a ledger, rose upon rows, each thought, holding what
looked like id cards, faded driver's licenses, keys, At the center,
a small square of mirror glass. I caught my own
reflection for an instant face flickering, jaw clenched, my lips moved.
I'm sure if I was willing the prisons away or
inviting it closer. I will not forget. I am not yours.
The man regarded me, the edges of his form vibrating
in and out of focus, as if he could not
decide whether to exist in the flesh or as a
suggestion in the periphery. Each second polled at the glue
holding me to myself. Then, without warning, he extended the
brief briefcase, not as an offering but as a threat.
The mirrored glass pulsing, called against my skin. At the
same time, the light straight the corridor dimmed, every surface
ticking on the color of static, the world shifting in
and out of alignment. The urge to step forward, to relinquish,
to give over the memory, to permit the erasure surage
genuine and absolute in the moment before my hands could
betray me. I close my eyes and resided allahd and
too myself a catalog of what I knew, my address,
my cat's name, the number of steps from my bed
to the window, names of all those lost. A simple
refusal leaped endlessly, a shield of ridiculous specificity. My mind
clung to these details. As the pult to forget pressed harder,
his arm trembled, the resonance became an abrasion at the
edge of consciousness, and then, with a slow, almost ritual precision,
he slid one card to blank, one smooth, heavy, cold
as a coin, into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
For the first time, I heard his whisper, not a voice,
but the unmistakable causereus of countless erayed Stoor is a
hush full of sorer. You are what you remember. Then
he stepped back, retrieved the briefcase, closing it with a
click that sounded like the severing of synapses. The world rided,
the light thickened, the man was seated into the gloom.
I watched as the corridor reassembled itself behind him. Familiar
Mundane entered a mystery for an air. I sprinted to
my apartment, hot sacking. Under the weight of what had
almost been taken. Every object in my haven felt imposed upon, violated,
a world invaded by rasure. Fumbling with the card in
my hand, I dropped it on to the desk, waited
for some change, some overt sign of what had just transpired.
But it only sat there, resolutely blanke, a totem of
uncertain faith. My head ached, I sat heavily pressing my
palm around the card, then dropped it and wrote as
quickly as possible everything I could remember. I read the
notes aloud, hoping to reinforce the time line, the slow
spiral of exodus and resistance, the terror and the compulsion.
The sound of my voice echoed in the small space,
a raw, necessary proof. I realized, as a roe that
the real war was not just about memories what was lost,
but what processted in spite of the Collie. The urge
to flee was real, but so too was the possibility
that any departure would not be an escape, but a
kind of over it and self finale. Maybe that was
the price every one else had paid, not just moving out,
but being rewritten in absence, cut from the communal record.
I could still hear the echo of a briefcase man's
presence reverberating in each surface, but I was no longer
compelled to run. I braced myself alone, but stubborn to
turmintanka one thing in the world, something irreducible and uneditable,
no matter how many threats orientations came. I spent the
rest of the night at my desk, lights on, writing
this cross, referencing photos. The city outside kept blinking, rain,
pulling on glass patterns, ever shifting and fear it all.
I waited until the first real morning, with all its bruise,
light and uneasy quiet, confirmed that I remained. It was
not a victory, not entirely, but somewhere in the hidden
flows of the old walls, the memory caches, the old evidence,
a name scratched and marker I had left, a record
I had not yielded e erasure, not this time, and
that for now was enough. The next evening, hestant but compelled,
I placed the blank card inside the tea tinnel on
side my other remembrances, rewrapped the entire bundle and sealed
it in a crawl space behind the boiler in the basement.
It felt vain ritual against an implacable erasure, but it
was all I had, my stubborn artifacts, slivers of continuity
pulled from the vortex. On my way back up, I
found the corridor quiet, each door closed except mine. As
ever re entered my apartment, I paused in the doorway,
noting a city's sky line pulsing through the fault window,
the street lights flickering with precise regularity. I pressed the
last remaining polaroid flat on the desk, spread my notes
for the evening, and unlocked the thickest note book. Somewhere
between the lines, evidence remained a story not yet erased.
If the briefcase man ever returned, I would greet him
with a litany of names, with the RECORDAU lived forgetting
with a certainty, however modest, that something of us resisted,
persisted his breath. So I waited at outside. The city
kept blinking. The pattern and the lights were shuffling itself
for code I might never decipher, but a rhythm I
now knew I could endure. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.