CHARLIE (V.O.) Most of the time, it’s quiet here. It’s dark. And it’s cold. We wait for the sun most days. Here, amidst the concrete and steel and timber of our labyrinth, it’s easy to forget what the sun feels like. The other buildings overshadow us, towering above our crooked brick edifice, and it’s only for a few moments during the golden hour that we get to feel its warmth. During those precious moments, the light reflects off the sleek, steel-glass skyscrapers a few blocks away, soars over the decrepit streets, and comes in through our single cracked window. It’s beautiful, the way it pools on the floor, reminding us that our world, this tiny, cramped place of right angles and rusted pipes, is but a small part of something greater.
It’s kept me sane, I think, waiting for this small miracle each day. The sun is always warm on the floorboards, and we bask in it for as long as we can. But then, it crawls away, across the floor and up the wall, leaving us in the cold and the dark and the quiet.
I wasn’t always here. I used to dream about a castle, with tall ceilings and windows that sparkled in the sun. There was room enough to run from one end to the other and be out of breath by the time you got halfway there.
Finishing school was supposed to be my first step in getting my castle–or at the very least, a little bit of breathing room. Desperation is what drove me here. Even with a degree and a job offer, I couldn’t find anywhere else that was within budget.
One day, I noticed a yellowed scrap of paper pinned to the notice board in a laundromat. It was small, stained, and written in Sharpie on the backside of an old piece of newsprint. CHEAP APARTMENTS. ZERO DEPOSIT, NO CREDIT CHECK, CASH ONLY. CALL TO INQUIRE. The address was listed as 46 Thewson Place. It was in a dead-end neighborhood in a part of the city I usually avoided. I couldn’t find a street view online, and there were no reviews.
Still, I called the number. An old woman picked up. Her voice was thin and sharp; like wind whistling between reeds.
CHARLIE I’m...calling about the apartment.
SUPER Which one, dear? You’ll have to be more specific.
CHARLIE 46 Thewson. The one-bedroom.
CHARLIE (V.O.) There was a sharp intake of breath, followed by a long pause from her end. I could hear a furious scratching, like a pencil on paper, and I almost thought the call had been cut. It was a long moment until she spoke again.
SUPER How soon can you stop by?
CHARLIE (V.O.) That same day, I emptied my bank account and got on the bus with an envelope containing six hundred dollars, against my better judgment. When the bus hissed to a stop I walked the three blocks to the address, following the directions on my phone. Connection grew spotty as I left the main street, and when I turned onto the dead end that the building sat on it disappeared altogether. The row homes loomed close around me, dozens of broken windows staring out like so many dead, sightless eyes.
46 Thewson was a mere three stories tall. It was thin and narrow, and yellowed twigs of what might have once been ivy clung to the left side, branching and spiraling until they got about halfway up the filthy brick. The whole place looked sickly, like a plant that was dying in the shade. Rusted iron bars were screwed over the ground floor windows, most of which were taped over with plastic sheeting. Trashbags sat against the old stone staircase, leading up to a chipped front door.
The block was nearly deserted, and as I looked around I realized my only company was a battered old sedan idling nearby. One of the doors was a mismatched bone-yellow against the rest of the car’s dusty maroon; a cheap aftermarket replacement.
An elderly woman sat behind the wheel, flipping through a dog-eared novel as the car rumbled beneath her. I stared through the greasy windshield, trying to figure out if she was who I’d spoken to on the phone. She didn’t seem to notice me, too engrossed in the book to look up. Her hands trembled as she turned the pages. I couldn’t tell if it was due to old age or if she was nervous to be out here on her own. I tapped lightly on her window.
She startled, looked up from her reading, and turned her rheumy eyes to me. She sat there for a moment, looking me up and down almost appraisingly. She pointed a gnarled finger at me, then at the building, and I nodded. I supposed that meant she was waiting for me. I finally let myself breathe a little bit as she unbuckled herself and climbed out of the car.
OLD LADY You must be here about the apartment, then. I’m the super.
CHARLIE (V.O.) She was all business; no room spared for niceties.
CHARLIE Yes, it’s nice to meet you.
CHARLIE (V.O.) Yes, it’s nice to meet you, I told her, and glanced at the car idling behind her.
OLD LADY Just so you know, your car is still–
CHARLIE I’m aware. I don’t plan on being here very long.
CHARLIE (V.O.) Without another word, she unlocked the front door and I followed her in. She moved fast for an old woman, breezing past the ground-floor apartments and onto the second level and beyond. The steps creaked underfoot, and very few were actually level.
The walls were an aged, off-white color, caked in soot and mildewed fingerprints. There was only a single bare bulb to illuminate the hallway, flickering as it dangled from a cracked ceiling by a frayed cord twenty feet above us. Character. That’s what they called it on the home improvement shows.
Places like this were full of it; the tilted door frames and uneven floors were evidence of a home that had stories to tell, a place where numerous people had lived and loved within its walls.
We had to stop just before the third floor for her to catch her breath. She waved me away when I asked if she was alright, and just a moment later, she pushed past and led me to apartment 3C.
The place was small. Tiny, even; with just one little window looking out onto the street. It had a cramped living space with a kitchenette along one wall.
A pair of doors led to a bedroom with just enough room for a queen mattress and a bathroom with cracked white tile. Every surface dusty, the walls faded and stained. But to me, it may as well have been a palace.
CHARLIE Can I...paint? Hang anything up? I know there’s no deposit, so I–
CHARLIE (V.O.) I trailed off, and she gave me a simple shrug.
SUPER As long as you don’t knock out a wall, you can do whatever you want. The place could certainly use it.
CHARLIE (V.O.) And at six hundred a month, I couldn’t complain.
CHARLIE I’ll take it.
SUPER Great. Did you bring–
CHARLIE Yep. I’ve got it all here.
CHARLIE (V.O.) I fished the envelope out from my bag.
SUPER Thank you.
CHARLIE (V.O.) I couldn’t give her the money fast enough. As she turned to leave, I had one more question for her.
CHARLIE Are there any neighbors? I didn’t see any other vehicles outside.
OLD LADY You didn’t mention having a car--
CHARLIE No, but–I’m just curious. I can’t be the only one here, can I?
SUPER Mm...no...if I recall, a unit on the first floor is occupied. I think...1A? Older gentleman lives there, I forget his name.
CHARLIE Don’t...you live here?
SUPER (laughs)
CHARLIE (V.O.) That got the first chuckle I had ever heard out of her; it was a wheezy, dry sound, as if she wasn’t used to the act.
SUPER No, I don’t. I only come around when I’m needed. New tenants moving in, old ones moving out, that sort of thing.
CHARLIE Ah. ...Thanks.
SUPER Sure. Your keys.
[SFX: key toss.]
CHARLIE (V.O.) Just like that, I had my castle. The super left in a hurry, leaving me to explore the apartment. The place was filthy, and looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years. The faucet in the kitchen hardly worked, the one in the bathroom wouldn’t stop dripping, and a few floorboards were popping up. I also noticed that the walls were stained in a few places. Dried, splotchy reddish marks here and there that had seeped up through the paint and dried. The drywall felt sturdy enough, though, so I hoped that painting was all I would need to do.
Before the day was through I had checked out of the hostel I lived in and brought everything I owned with me. Already, I was daydreaming about what I could do with my new apartment. A tapestry here, a string of lights there, some plants in the window–it could be home.
My first day in 3C came to a close, and I inflated an air mattress for the night.
[SFX: Inflation.]
CHARLIE (V.O.) I finally drifted off to sleep, visions of my castle filling my thoughts. I came to in the dead of night, the street lamp outside the only light in the darkened room. It cast its glow in a pool of luminescent amber on the floor; a dim golden square crawling across the bare wooden boards and up one wall. I sighed, exhausted. It must have been a creak, a settling pipe, some sort of noise from within the bones of this old building that jolted me awake. I rolled over, clamping the pillow down over my face and groaning.
That was when I heard the scratching.
Thin, barely audible, like something soft scraping against something even softer. I listened, holding my breath, trying to make sure I wasn’t making things up. It was definitely there–I could hear it from the leftmost corner of the room, almost as if it was coming from beneath the floor. There was an air vent in that corner of the room, embedded into the uneven boards. Oh god, I thought. Are there fucking rats in the walls?
I stood on shaking legs, grabbing the baseball bat I had brought with me. I closed in on the vent, staring, and the scratching seemed to grow louder, more insistent.
The wall above the vent suddenly shuddered and bulged, moving as if it were pliable, alive. It pulsed obscenely, like something was trapped within, and I stifled a scream as I saw the old paint crackle from the strain. I heard a hissing murmur, then another; harsh, weak, whistling gasps and moans cutting in and out and over each other until I had to clap my hands over my ears.
After a moment the murmurs stopped, the wall settled, and the vent began to rattle.
Something within the vent shifted, an indistinguishable shape that pulsed, then gushed upwards. A gasp of stale, fetid air wafted up from the floor as I eyed the vent, my eyes stinging from the odor. I kept my distance as something dark began to move beneath the metal grille.
Some kind of long, sinewy form began rising out of the vent, bubbling up, ascending from between the slats, defying gravity as it inflated, bulbous, like a balloon.
The thing–the tendril–glistened in the light from the street lamp, and then twitched, swiveling, towards me. I could make it out better now. Its surface was waxy, slick; coated in some kind of oily substance. It did not make a sound, until two long, black slits flared open along its length and I heard a deep, snuffling inhale.
Its form pulsated, then bucked, as if excited. It rapidly began folding in on itself, amorphous and indistinct as it bubbled back down towards the vent.
It disappeared within, and the grille began to shudder. There was suddenly a great thud from beneath. Once. Twice. I watched as a screw from the corner of the vent began to be shaken loose. I drew in a breath to scream.
And then, I woke up again, gasping for air. It was dawn. Sweat drenched my skin, and my hair was plastered to my face. It had been a dream. Thank God, it had been a dream.
I stumbled out of bed, shuffling over to the bathroom and cranking the faucet on. Pipes gasped and clunked within the walls, and I stared at my reflection in the cracked mirror. I looked like shit.
The water finally came, sputtering out of the tarnished faucet in uneven spurts. I rinsed my face, tasting the tinge of copper on my tongue. Already, I was wondering if this place would be worth it. But I was in too deep.
I brewed a coffee and went back to looking for furniture. Even with the little money I had left, I was able to find enough junk to make the space livable.
Over the next couple days I bought a wobbly desk, a tired old couch, and a cheap mattress and bed frame I’d ordered online. It was on the last night before I started work, when I was putting the bed together, that I found an old brass screw. Everything listed in the kit was accounted for. I had a sinking feeling as I looked at it; the screw was tarnished, blackened, and old.
It was from the corner of the vent grille, having somehow popped out of its hole. A chill ran over me, and a knot tightened in the pit of my stomach. I swallowed back the dread and grabbed my drill.
I decided that–fuck it–they hadn’t asked for a security deposit, and I didn’t want anything coming out of that hole, so I found a scrap of plywood and drilled it down over the grate. I still slept with the baseball bat with me, relieved my mattress was no longer on the ground.
I didn’t have any more nightmares, which I convinced myself was due to having finally settled into the new place.
46 Thewson was still a mildewed old cave, but it was starting to feel a little more homey.
In the meantime I tried to locate my downstairs neighbor in 1A. His was the only place I had noticed a light on at night, and a faded welcome mat sat out front of his apartment in the hallway. I rarely saw him leave; the most activity I ever noticed was the coming and going of the occasional delivery man bringing packages or meals to his door. I guessed that he must have worked from home.
I finally decided to knock and introduce myself with a tin of cookies. The door peeled open, and there he was. He was a balding man, probably fifty or so, in a stained Rutgers sweater, squinting at me skeptically. I gave him a
little wave. His tight-lipped frown twitched even wider, and his voice was gruff.
GREG I’m not expecting any deliveries.
CHARLIE ...Hi. No deliveries. I’m Charlie Thresher; I just moved into 3C. I wanted to introduce myself.
CHARLIE (V.O.) He seemed a bit taken aback, and his frown softened. He gave me a small nod of acknowledgement.
GREG ...Greg. Halbek.
CHARLIE Nice to meet you, Greg. I brought cookies.
CHARLIE (V.O.) I offered him the box, which he eyed briefly before looking back up at me. He paused for a long moment before he spoke.
GREG You’re the first person who’s lived here in a while.
CHARLIE In 3C?
GREG In general. I’ve been here for about a year. Been the only one for most of that time.
CHARLIE Oh. Well...it’s nice to meet you. Hopefully we’ll see each other around.
CHARLIE V.O. I held out the tin. He paused again, his face mistrustful, before he took the box and gave me another awkward nod.
GREG Mm. Thanks.
CHARLIE V.O. We exchanged numbers, just in case, and I didn’t see him for a while after that. As the weeks went by I all but forgot about him. I started my new job, and with a steady source of income I began to fill the apartment. I swapped out the desk with something sturdier, I got some decorations, and even painted the walls. I was finally starting to think of 3C as home.
About a month later, I remembered Greg again. Most of my days had been spent in the office, but even so I realized how long it’d been since I’d noticed any signs of life from his apartment. I had noticed a pattern–Greg was almost certainly a recluse; but like clockwork, he would get groceries sent to his doorstep every few days. It was Friday, and I hadn’t seen any bags sitting at his door this week. He didn’t have a car and he almost never left, so I began to worry. I knocked on his door that evening. I waited for almost ten minutes before I finally called out for him.
CHARLIE Greg.. Greg..
CHARLIE V.O. Nothing. No response, not even after I hollered to ask if he needed any help. He didn’t pick up when I called, and I felt my heart drop when I heard his phone ringing loudly from within the apartment. The ringtone was loud, and as it buzzed, could hear it rattling as if it were laying on the bare hardwood. It continued to ring with no other sound from inside, and no attempt made to stop it.
I gave up and half-walked, half-jogged out to the front of the building.
Greg’s light was on but his blinds were shut save for an inch or so at the bottom. I stooped and bunched up a sleeve, reaching through the iron grate and wiping away the grime on the glass as I peered inside and called his number again.
His apartment was absolutely filled with boxes, newspapers, and miscellaneous junk piled high. Stacks of empty delivery bags were piled up haphazardly along the wall by the door. The only clear spot on the floor was a small circle of bare wood, with just enough room for an armchair and a television. His phone was on the ground, a few feet from the door, its screen lit up as it continued to ring. His TV was on, the screen flashing black-and-white static.
My blood ran cold when I finally spotted him.
He was lying motionless on the ground, still wearing that old stained college sweater. One arm was pinned beneath his body at an odd angle and his legs were splayed out awkwardly. A pool of congealed black-red blood lay beneath his head on the hardwood, and had started to soak into the cloth delivery bags his head was resting on. It looked like he had slipped on something and hit his head badly, and I had no idea how long he had laid there.
I called 911. What else was there to do?
I sat on the stoop outside until the police cruiser finally pulled up. The lights were on, but the alarm was off–the matter apparently not urgent enough to require the use of the siren. I’m not sure what I was expecting–an ambulance? EMTs? The single officer that got out of the car and walked up the steps seemed like an underwhelming response to a call about a man’s death.
The cop was polite enough, though, and asked me to show him to the apartment in question.
I glanced up at Greg’s window–and I felt a chill when I saw that the blinds were fully closed. The officer nudged me forward, and I finally showed him to the door to 1A.
His knock was much louder than I would have liked. I stood several feet back, staring intently at the door, feeling a bead of sweat run down my neck.
Even at that distance, I could hear something stirring within the room. A shuffling, a faint scratching, and the sound of a whumph, like the gust of air let out by an old couch cushion when you settle into it.
Then, a series of slow, plodding footsteps that paused right by the door. To my surprise, the door opened a sliver, stopped short by the chain. The room belched warm air, carrying with it an awful scent–dense, palpable, humid, with the strong taint of copper and iron.
I saw the man who, less than an hour ago, had been slumped motionless on the ground while the tv flashed static at him. His apartment was dark now, but I could just make out his silhouette within the blackness. He was squinting against the dim light of the hallway, his face glistening with what could have been perspiration. He had a dark black splotch on his temple, where I guessed he must have hit his head.
He stared at the officer, then at me, his eyes filmy, his skin pallid, and his expression inscrutable. The officer cleared his throat, wrinkling his nose at the stench.
OFFICER Sir, Mr...Halbek? I’m here to perform a welfare check. I received a call that you might be in distress.
CHARLIE V.O. The officer could tell that something was wrong. I know he could. Something was off about Greg. Even with the baggy sweatshirt and stained joggers he was wearing, I could tell that he looked different, almost swollen, like there was suddenly too much of him for far too little skin. Like a sausage casing about to burst. He blinked at the officer, slowly, like it cost him a great deal of effort. Then he turned to look at me. His pupils were dilated, unfocused, eyes tinged yellow around the edges. I tried not to meet his gaze. When I had seen him last, he had been suspicious at first, but we had parted on good terms. There was no sign of recognition here, not even the faintest unspoken acknowledgement of our rapport.
His stare was vacant, lacquered over, lifeless; a doll’s eyes with something else swimming just under the surface. Anger? Unease? Hunger? This was not Greg. The man who opened the door turned back to stare at the police officer. The officer asked him again, more slowly, if he was alright. The man in Greg’s apartment shook his head yes; a slow, shaky movement up, and then a sudden, violent jerk down.
Satisfied, the officer wrote something down on his notepad and tipped his hat. He thanked me for my time and gave me his card before heading for the open door.
I followed him out onto the stoop, not wanting to be left alone with those lifeless eyes looking out from Greg’s front door. Fear turned to rage as I yelled after the officer.
CHARLIE That’s all you’re going to do?! He’s...you saw him! He’s not well!
CHARLIE V.O. The officer turned, halfway into his cruiser. When he realized I had followed him outside, his demeanor suddenly sharpened. He pocketed his little notebook and turned to look at me, his gaze hard.
OFFICER Ma’am, I am responding to a wellness check about a man who was reportedly unconscious on the floor of his apartment. Said man was mobile and responded to my questions when asked. I don’t know what else you want me to do.
CHARLIE You’re kidding me! You saw the gash on his head–
OFFICER I’m not an EMT. It’s not my job to make assumptions.
CHARLIE You know something is wrong with him! I saw the way you looked at him!
CHARLIE (V.O.) He stared at me for a long moment, one arm resting on the top of his police cruiser and the other on the handle of the car door. He worked his jaw, his eyes squinting, and he took a moment before he next spoke.
OFFICER Off the record, do you have anyone in the area you can spend some time with? It might be a good idea to get away. Just get some time to...cool off.
CHARLIE ...Fuck off. You’re useless.
OFFICER You have a good night, miss.
CHARLIE (V.O.) He stooped down, closed the door, and drove away with the lights off. The man in Greg’s apartment, however, did not move. The front door to the building was still open, and I could still feel those vacant yellow eyes boring into me. He did not shut the door to 1A, and his hand silently crept along the doorframe, his fingers clutching it as he watched me re-enter the hallway. It was only when I turned for the staircase that he withdrew, leaving glistening, oily prints where his bloated fingers had clenched the doorframe.
I pounded up the stairs and shut myself in my apartment.Despite it all, I ended up taking the officer’s advice. I threw some clothes and a toothbrush into a duffel and rode the bus back to my dad’s place that night, working the last two days of the week remotely. I told him it was a surprise visit; I was homesick and I wanted to get away. That, yes, I would invite him and my siblings over soon enough! Just had to get the place ready. But he knew something was wrong. He always did.
I could only stay there for so long, though. By Sunday night, I was dreading my return to 46 Thewson Place. I found the building and my apartment just as I had left it, furniture and all. Greg’s light, however, was now off, and his welcome mat was gone.
The first night back in 3C, the nightmares returned with a vengeance.
I dreamt of a roiling, pulsating mass of colors; of angry reds, sinuous whites, sickly yellows and throbbing blues coiling and twisting over each other in a macabre and grotesque kaleidoscope of fleshy convulsions. At times, I thought I saw forms: shapes, faces, hands, arms and torsos knitting themselves together out of the mass of shapes only to disappear in an instant, subsumed back into the undulating cauldron of sinuous viscera.
Right before I woke up, I smelled it again–that noxious, rank copper and iron scent that had rolled out of Greg’s apartment and sent my stomach somersaulting.
And though the mass of colors was indistinct and always shifting; I felt a rumble as the colors began to pulsate faster, faster, and I instinctively knew that they were bubbling up and towards me; threatening to boil up out of my dream and spill over into the waking world.
The next morning, I got an email that the company would be going through a round of layoffs. As HR, I was expected to sit in on these meetings and deliver the news to the sacked employees. And of course, it would all be done over video call, so no need to come into the office.
I got to spend all day, every day in my castle.
It was on the third day that the walls began to leak.
It was small at first. It began as a bubble near the ceiling; a small pustule beneath the paint that only caught my eye after the fifth or so video conference of the day had concluded.
I stared hard at it, watching as rust-colored condensation collected beneath the bulb before a droplet freed itself and fell. It left a small blotch on the hardwood, an orange-red stain that I couldn’t get out no matter how hard I scrubbed. There was work to be done, though, and so I placed a bowl beneath it and returned to my calls.
The leak continued to grow. It blossomed out from that spot near the ceiling, swelling grotesquely beneath the paint, bulging larger and larger as the day crept on. A second, smaller bulge grew next to it; a polyp budding off of the main mass when it had grown too full. The bubbles sent out spiderwebs of rust-colored stains beneath the paint, like swollen veins from a livid bruise.
It finally ruptured with an audible squelch, and I smelled the odor of copper, iron, and spoiled meat as reddish fluid streamed down the wall and splashed onto the floor.
I finally caved and called the super. She hadn’t given me her number, so I was forced to use the one from the listing. The phone rang for a full minute before I heard it abruptly stop. I dialed again, and was met with a message telling me the number was no longer available.
I resolved to fix the leak myself, before the ping of a new conference call drew my attention back to my laptop.
I spotted the next leak in my bedroom. Then, the bathroom. All around me, rust-colored rivulets had begun running down the walls, and it wasn’t long before I had covered every square inch of my floor with tarps and painters’ cloths.
The dreams continued. Some nights, it was that horrible mass of colors and shapes and sinews. Other nights, I was in my bed, but the thing sealed in the vent scratched and scrabbled at the plywood sealing it in, thrashing and pounding with increasing ferocity.
The walls around me grew more and more saturated, the paint sloughing off in places to reveal the grayish, sodden drywall beneath. As I grew more haggard and sleep-deprived, I tried to spend less and less time in that place. I spaced my lunches out, took longer breaks; I even took a few video calls at a cafe in the next neighborhood over. Still, the stains and the stench grew, and still, my calls to the super went unanswered.
The final round of layoffs was almost complete; I was approaching the end of the scheduled calls. Meanwhile 3C was falling apart around me, rotting from the inside out, and I couldn’t take it.
The life I had always wanted for myself was caving in, putrefying, turning limp and reddish-whitish-yellow and stinking of iron and copper and blood.
Bowls, plates, and buckets lined the walls at all the major points of leakage; I had been emptying them almost hourly for days. It had not rained once, and yet still the walls were saturated and buckloing1.
When the wind blew–I thought that must have been what it was, since it had been so long since I’d left the apartment–the walls bulged, then sagged; sighing, almost like they were breathing.
I looked away from the shuddering, exhaling wall to look at my laptop screen. Another notification, this time from my manager.
Hello! Are you available for a call? There’s something I’d like to discuss. The same tactless message I had seen sent to so many other employees; that I had sent to so many other employees. I knew what was coming next.
I roared, slamming my laptop shut and hurling it at the wall across from my desk in anger.
Rather than the sharp clatter of plastic and stucco, I heard a wet squelch.
My laptop hadn’t bounced off the wall and shattered into a dozen pieces. No...it had sunk into the wall. It sat there, protruding as more liquid gushed out from where it had penetrated the soft surface. And from within, I heard a...scratching. Like something trying to get out.
The stench was unbearable again. I stepped out from behind my desk, peering into the dark void that the laptop had created. I reached out, my hand shaking, and I picked at it with my finger.
The wall suddenly tore, rupturing like a water balloon filled past its limit. Behind it, the apartment...shuddered.
Within was a fleshy, floor to ceiling mass of exposed nerves and veins and sinew and muscle and blood. The same blue and red and yellow and white from my dreams.
Bundles of reddish-white tissue quivered, expanding and contracting; malformed, shuddering lungs. The whole mass undulated between the framing, shifting the sodden timbers as it let out a stinking, quivering exhale.
The roiling mass behind the wall pulsed once, twice, three times; I heard the murmurs again. They crawled out from the silence, resolving from incoherence into something comprehensible. Leave. GO.
The shifting, streaked tendons behind the wall shuddered, and from them emerged the shape of a screaming, anguished face. Greg’s face.
Then other faces, all in agony. The wall moaned, gasped, gurgled; then began to bulge outward. Pillars emerged from its surface, taking on the same waxy, bloated, misshapen form I had seen in my dreams on my first night in 3C. These stretched out, unfolding like the jointed poles of a tent, each tendril resolving into a bloated, pallid fingertip with a soft, pulpy fingernail embedded within.
I backed up, bile rising in my throat, and I slipped in the fetid liquid pooling on the ground. I fell backwards, and my shoulder went straight through the wall. It was soft like damp cardboard, and as I made contact with the thing beyond the drywall–the thing that was inside my apartment; was my apartment, I screamed.
It burned. Then, everything burned.
I was nothing; then nowhere, everywhere, and I became aware of every space and square and right angle within the bowels of the building. I felt myself stretched, compressed, forced into impossible shapes as the entirety of my being was torn apart and reformed; misshapen, malformed, a human body reduced to wet, shuddering clay. I was dimly aware that I was not alone; am not alone; no longer a single soul craving solitude from the overwhelming crush of humanity.
I am still in my castle. There is no huge grand hall, no glimmering tall palace. There is only a small grimy window looking out onto a sickly yellow street lamp, and a vent covered with plywood soaked through with putrid rust-colored liquid. There are pipes and vents and voids containing something, some building-spanning thing that only knows malice and growth and hunger.
I don’t fully know what it is. I know what it has done; what it has done to Greg, to I, to the others that have dared call this place home. But still, even now, I do not know what writhes and pulses and and undulates in between spaces, the voids between the spongy timbers and sodden drywall and rusted, ruined screws of 46 Thewson Place.
I know only that I am there, we are there, and that for a few moments a day we get to know what warmth feels like.
