My new house has too many hallways.
In fact, I think it may have an endless amount of hallways.
That’s the thought drifting through my head as I wander down another one, hands loose at my sides, in no particular hurry about anything. The floor is the same bare hardwood but the walls keep branching off in directions that don’t make architectural sense, corridors splitting into more corridors, each one identical enough that I can’t tell if I’ve been down this one already or if this is a new one that just looks exactly like the last one.
I yawn so wide my jaw pops.
The layout is weird, sure. But the rent makes it worth it.
I turn left at a fork I don’t remember from the walkthrough, and the hallway ahead of me runs out into two more hallways, and those probably run out into two more each.
I drag one hand along the wall as I walk.
I yawn again.
And then I hear it. Crying. Somewhere ahead of me, or maybe to the left, or maybe both, the acoustics in here are make it hard to track. But it’s there. Soft and uneven, the kind of crying that’s been going on long enough that the person doing it has mostly run out of steam and is just coasting on fumes now.
I follow it, still dragging my fingertips along the wall, taking lefts and rights based on nothing more than which direction sounds slightly louder.
The crying gets clearer as I go. Exhausted.
The last hallway dead-ends at a Black door. Closed, but not latched. There’s a sliver of purple visible through the gap.
I push it open.
The room is a disaster. Not messy-lived-in, not just-moved disaster. Something older and more total than that. Posters pulled halfway off the walls, some torn, some just hanging by one corner, curling at the edges. A Garbage poster, a No Doubt poster, something else I can’t read because the bottom half is gone. The furniture is all still there but none of it seems like it’s been used in a long time. A desk with the chair pushed sideways. A dresser with one drawer half-open. Purple walls, deep and dark.
And everywhere, in between the posters and above the dresser and along the baseboard and wrapping around the window frame is writing. Carved in, like it was done with someone's fingernails.
The Voices Won’t Stop.
Over and over. Different sizes. Some cramped and small, some taking up a whole foot of wall space. The same four words, hundreds of times, floor to ceiling, filling every gap.
I stand in the doorway for a second.
Then I notice her.
She’s in the corner between the dresser and the wall, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, face turned down. Black hair hanging over everything. Skin so pale it’s almost uncomfortable to look at. Flannel shirt, open over a dark skirt. I also can’t help but notice she’s insanely busty.
She’s the one crying.
“You hear voices too?” I say.
It comes out genuine because it is. I’m looking at that wall and doing the math and it’s not complicated math.
She looks up.
Her eyes are white. No iris, no pupil.
Her face changes. One second she’s just a woman with impossible eyes looking up at me, and the next something else is wearing her face. The pale skin pulls tight, the mouth opens, and what comes out of her isn’t one voice. It’s several. Stacked on top of each other like a chord, all of them hers, all of them furious.
“GET OUT!”
The walls seem to agree with her. The carved words pulse in my peripheral vision.
I don’t move. I don’t step back. I’m not trying to be brave about it, it’s more that my feet just don’t get the message. I’m looking at her and I’m thinking, underneath all of that, whatever that is, her eyes still look sad. White and pupilless and wrong in every technical sense, but sad.
“I struggle with it too,” I say. “The voices. I hear them. And sometimes I see things that aren’t there, or I think they aren’t, and my memories have this way of just…” I make a vague gesture. “Going soft in the middle. Like I can’t always trust the order of things.”
She stares at me with a confused look. Then she screams again.
“I SAID GET OUT!”
She comes off the floor fast. Her fingers suddenly look too sharp at the tips. I cant help but notice her massive bust seeping out of her shirt. She’s crossing the room aiming her fingers at my face and I’m still not moving because my brain is about three seconds behind the situation…
The clattering noise from the living room is loud enough to physically startle me.
I blink at the ceiling of my new bedroom. Then at the window. Still dark out.
I look at my phone.
3:55 AM.
I’m already sitting up before I’ve made any decision about it.
My feet hit the floor. I drag the back of my hand across my face and stand, moving down the hall on autopilot.
The living room comes into focus. I blink at it.
The Olivia Rodrigo case is on the floor.
Just lying there face-down on the hardwood, a couple feet from the counter where I left it. The Alanis Morissette case is exactly where I put it. Just the one.
I pick it up off the ground, turn it over. No damage. I set it back on the counter and stand there for a second with my hand still resting on top of it, half-asleep, thinking about white eyes and purple walls.
“Don’t just hate on it because you haven’t tried it,” I mumble at the room. My voice sounds like gravel. “Give it a chance, Nicole.”
The house doesn’t respond.
I shuffle back down the hall, fall into bed, and I’m asleep before I’ve finished pulling the blanket up.
Nicole: