Mrs. Calder knocked softly, the way people do when they don’t want to be remembered. I almost didn’t answer. It was just after two in the morning, and the hallway light behind her flickered like it was struggling to stay conscious.She didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped past me, closed the door, and stood facing the wall, listening. Only when she seemed satisfied that nothing was moving inside my apartment did she speak.
“You hear it breathing too,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t afraid in the usual way. It was exhausted—like someone who had been afraid for so long that terror had become routine.
She told me she’d lived on the sixth floor for twenty-three years. That when she first moved in, there were more tenants. Families. Children. People who laughed too loudly in the halls. They didn’t last.
“When it gets hungry, the walls thin,” she said. “People go missing, and the building settles again.”
I asked her what it was.
She shook her head. “Names give it attention.”
According to her, the seventh floor wasn’t removed or hidden. It was constructed last. Everything else was built around it, reinforced to distribute pressure. The building wasn’t meant to stand tall—it was meant to hold tight.
“And we help,” she said quietly. “Living here. Sleeping here. Breathing here. We keep it calm.”
She left without another word.
That night, I dreamed of concrete ribs tightening around a beating heart.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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