1 To save a few hundred bucks on rent, I moved into a subdivided four-bedroom apartment. The leasing agent told me the other tenants were all young corporate professionals working in the nearby financial district. He said they left early, came back late, and were incredibly quiet. He wasn't lying about the quiet part. I had lived there for two weeks and hadn't seen a single shadow. That was until the third night, when I was scrolling through a news article about a shady subleaser who made copies of tenants' keys to murder them. The ventilation window above my bed suddenly swung open. A skeletal hand reached down from the darkness and wrapped a coarse nylon cord around my throat. Right before the darkness took me, I finally got a good look at his face. It wasn't some shady landlord. It was a homeless drifter who had been living in the crawl space above my ceiling the entire time. He was one of my "invisible" roommates. I blinked. And then I was back to the very first night I moved in. A searing, electric pain shot through my neck, violently waking me up. I shot up from the mattress, gasping for air. There was no skeletal, grinning face. There was no pitch-black ventilation window. There was only the pale blue glow of my phone screen resting on the sheets. I checked the time. July 15, 2023. 8:00 PM. I touched my throat. There were no ligature marks, but the phantom burn of a coarse nylon cord scraping against my skin was still there. I took huge, greedy gulps of air, the sound of my own heartbeat hammering against my ribs echoing in the cramped room. I was alive. Or rather, I had come back to life. Half an hour ago, or exactly three days from now in my previous life, I died in this exact room. I was strangled to death by a squatter hiding in the crawl space above my head. I scanned my surroundings. It was a windowless, closet-sized room, barely sixty square feet. It held a twin bed and a cheap canvas wardrobe. The walls were painted a sickening, clinical white, clearly a fresh coat of cheap paint used to cover up the black mold creeping up the baseboards. The air was heavy with a lingering, damp mildew smell mixed with the sour stench of cheap formaldehyde. Just to save fifty bucks a week, I had stuffed myself into this literal coffin. My banking app was still open on my phone, displaying a thoroughly depressing number. Available balance: $342.50. That was my entire net worth. It wasn't even enough to cover next month's rent. I remembered exactly what Chuck, the chubby leasing agent, had told me. "Listen, sweetie. You won't find anything this cheap in this neighborhood. It's a four-bedroom unit, and the other three rooms are rented by high-end white-collar workers. They have top-tier etiquette. They leave early and come home late. Honestly, you probably won't even run into them." He was absolutely right. I never ran into them. In my past life, I lived here for two weeks. Even when I got up to use the bathroom at three in the morning, I never heard a single peep from the other three rooms. But I did hear other noises. Every night, right around midnight, I would hear a faint scratching sound coming from the ceiling, like fingernails scraping against plywood. Sometimes, there was a soft tapping, like marbles rolling across the floorboards above me. I thought it was just rats. I even bought sticky traps and put them on top of my canvas wardrobe. Right up until the moment I died, those glue traps sat perfectly clean and empty. Because the real "rat" wasn't crawling on my wardrobe. He was crawling right above my head. I slowly tilted my head up, fixing my eyes on the small ventilation square cut into the upper corner of the drywall. It was a makeshift vent installed to give these windowless, illegally subdivided rooms some air circulation. It connected directly to the drop ceiling in the hallway. In my previous life, that emaciated hand, caked in black grime, had snaked its way out of that exact hole. The initial wave of paralyzing fear began to recede, quickly replaced by the sharp, razor-edge clarity of a survivor. I knew that monster was up there right now. He was pressed against the thin ceiling tiles like a giant, grotesque cockroach, listening to every single breath I took. He might even be peering through a crack, watching me right this second. I had to get out. Even if I had to sleep on a park bench or in a 24-hour McDonald's, I could not stay in this apartment. I slid off the bed, moving with agonizing caution. I quietly shoved my ID, my debit card, and a small paring knife I bought for self-defense into my purse. I left the clothes and the bedding. My life was worth a hell of a lot more than some cheap polyester. I reached out, wrapped my hand around the doorknob, and gave it a gentle twist. Click. The lock gave way. I pulled the door open just a crack. The living room outside was pitch black. It wasn't just dark. It was a suffocating, ink-like blackness. The windows had been completely sealed off with heavy blackout curtains. It was quiet. Dead quiet. The doors to the other three bedrooms were shut tight. Not a single sliver of light leaked from underneath them. I held my breath and tiptoed into the hallway. With every step I took, the cheap laminate flooring let out a faint groan. In the dead silence of the apartment, it sounded like a gunshot. I didn't dare look back. A cold chill crept up my spine, screaming that something was lurking in the dark, watching my every move. I finally reached the front door handle. It was an old-school deadbolt that required two full turns to unlock. My palms were sweating profusely. I gripped the latch and twisted hard. It didn't budge. I tried again. Still locked. My stomach plummeted. The door had been deadbolted from the outside. With these old security doors, if someone locks it from the outside with a key, you can't open it from the inside without your own key. And Chuck had only given me the key to the lower handle lock. He never gave me the deadbolt key. Who locked it? Chuck? The sub-landlord? Regardless of who did it, I was now officially trapped inside this giant wooden coffin. Right at that moment, I heard a noise. It was incredibly faint. Very subtle. It sounded like someone slowly rubbing the pads of their fingers against wallpaper. The sound was coming from right behind me. Specifically, from the ceiling directly above the hallway leading back to my bedroom. I stiffly turned around. In the darkness, I could just barely make out the square outline of the ceiling access panel at the end of the hall. It shifted upward, just a fraction of an inch. 2 The access panel had definitely moved. Something had pushed it up from the inside, exposing a pitch-black crack. A sickening, putrid stench immediately wafted out from the gap. It smelled like sour rot, stale urine, and the heavy, greasy musk of someone who hadn't bathed in years. It was the drifter. He was watching me. He knew I had just realized the front door was locked. He was waiting for me to panic. He was waiting for me to scream, perfectly content to toy with me like a cat cornering a mouse, soaking in my absolute terror. The hairs on my arms stood on end. I dug my fingernails so hard into my palms that they nearly broke the skin. I had to force myself to stay calm. I couldn't scream. In a hellhole like this, screaming would only get me killed faster. I took a deep, shaky breath and pretended I was just heading to the bathroom. I turned around and walked toward the bathroom door, intentionally making my footsteps a little heavier. "Stupid door. Gotta tell the agent to fix that deadbolt tomorrow," I muttered to myself. I kept my voice low, but loud enough for the thing in the ceiling to hear. I stepped into the bathroom and immediately locked the door behind me. There was a window in here that looked out into the building's stairwell, but it was completely covered by heavy security bars. I could never squeeze through. My only way out was the front door. Since I couldn't open it from the inside, I had to wait for someone to open it from the outside. Or I had to lure someone here. I pulled out my phone, my fingers trembling as I opened my texts with Chuck, the sleazy leasing agent. The guy was a total creep who always stared at my chest when he talked to me, but he worked for a legitimate real estate agency. Surely he wouldn't boldly assist in a murder. "Hey Chuck, the front door is stuck. I have an emergency and really need to run out for a bit." I hit send. No reply. I tried calling him through the app. It rang twice, then the call was manually declined. A second later, a text popped up on my screen. "It's late, sweetie. Where are you rushing off to? The door is just jammed, I'll bring a guy to fix it tomorrow. Just go to sleep. Building security is top-notch, you're perfectly safe." Building security? This rundown slum didn't even have working streetlights. What security? And how did he know I was trying to leave right this second? How did he reply so fast? Unless he was standing right outside the building. A fresh, biting chill shot down my spine. I remembered a tiny detail from my past life. Right as the squatter was strangling the life out of me, I swore I heard a noise coming from the front door. It sounded exactly like a key turning in the lock. Was this whole thing a setup from the start? The agent lures in the prey, the landlord collects the cash, and the squatter handles the disposal? No, that didn't make sense. If it was a highly coordinated murder ring, they would have been busted ages ago. It was far more likely that Chuck knew something shady was going on, but turned a blind eye to pocket the commission. Or worse, he was actively using this squatter to terrify tenants into breaking their leases early so he could pocket their security deposits. I gripped my phone, my knuckles turning white. Since he was perfectly fine throwing me to the wolves, I had zero reason to play nice. I opened my dial pad and typed 911. Before I could even hit the call button, the bathroom lights flickered wildly. Bzzzt. The bulb died. The entire bathroom was plunged into total darkness. Immediately after, that familiar, sickening scraping sound echoed from right above me. It wasn't in the hallway anymore. It was coming from the aluminum drop ceiling right inside the bathroom. Those flimsy aluminum panels could never support the weight of a grown man. But he didn't need them to support his weight. He just needed to push them out of the way. Clack. The sound of the first metal panel being popped out of its frame echoed in the dark. In that exact moment, I could literally feel a wave of hot, foul breath ghosting over my scalp. I didn't dare look up. I yanked the bathroom door open and bolted into the hall. Being trapped in a tiny bathroom with that thing dropping on my head was a death sentence. If I was going to fight, I needed the open space of the living room. I rushed back into my bedroom, slammed the door shut, and threw my entire body weight against the wood. I gripped the paring knife tight, aiming the blade straight at the door. But I knew this flimsy door wouldn't stop him. The cheap spherical lock could be popped open with a credit card. And more importantly, he didn't need to use the door. The ventilation window. I whipped my head around. The vent was still just a dark, empty square. But I knew exactly what was happening. He was crawling through the ceiling space right now, skittering like a massive gecko, making a beeline straight for my room. I had to find a way to save myself. Aside from this door, the room had zero exits. The only real window faced an interior air shaft. Jumping out meant a four-story drop into sheer darkness. I would either die or break both my legs. Wait. This apartment was illegally subdivided. To squeeze out maximum profit, they had built all these extra walls using cheap metal studs and thin gypsum drywall. The walls had zero soundproofing, which meant they were incredibly fragile. My room shared a wall with Room B. If I could smash a hole through this drywall and escape into the next room, I might have a chance. As long as someone was in there, I could scream for help. Even if I hadn't seen anyone in two weeks, Chuck promised me these were young professionals. Having even one person on my side was infinitely better than fighting a monster alone. I looked at my canvas wardrobe. Right behind it was the shared partition wall. I didn't care if the noise alerted the thing in the ceiling anymore. I shoved the flimsy wardrobe out of the way. Facing the pale, sickly white wall, I raised my leg and kicked it with absolutely everything I had. Thud! A dull, heavy impact. The wall vibrated, but it held. The crawling sounds above me instantly stopped. He was right above my head. He was listening. He was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. I gritted my teeth, took two steps back, and launched another brutal kick. Crack! This time, the cheap drywall let out a satisfying crunch, caving inward to form a noticeable dent. It was working! I went completely feral, kicking the dent over and over again like a madwoman. Pure adrenaline completely masked the pain in my heel. Only one thought looped in my brain. Break it open! Crash! My foot finally punched completely through the drywall. Ignoring the jagged, chalky edges, I reached in and began violently tearing away the pink fiberglass insulation, widening the hole as fast as I could. A cloud of drywall dust filled the air, making me cough violently. Through the jagged hole, I finally saw the inside of the room next door. Catching the faint ambient light bleeding in from my side, I saw a bed. Someone was sitting on the edge of the mattress. It was a woman with long, dark hair flowing over her shoulders. She was facing away from me, completely motionless. "Help! Please! Someone's trying to kill me! Call the police!" I screamed at her back, my voice shaking uncontrollably. She didn't move. She didn't even twitch. Panic took over. I didn't care that the hole was barely the size of a dog door. I forced my head and my right shoulder through the jagged gap. "Hey! Wake up! Call 911!" I reached out, grabbed her shoulder, and yanked her backward. Her body was incredibly light. She spun around effortlessly. The moment I saw her face, the blood in my veins turned to ice. It was a rigid, chalk-white plastic face. She had cartoonishly exaggerated red lips, and her eyes were just two solid dots of black paint. It was a retail store mannequin. She was dressed in a neat corporate blazer, her cheap synthetic wig slightly askew, staring blankly back at me. Only then did I realize that aside from the bed and this plastic nightmare, the room was completely empty. A thick layer of dust coated the floor. There were no high-end white-collar professionals. There never were. "Hehehe." A soft, raspy chuckle echoed from the ceiling right above my room. It didn't sound human. It sounded like a stray cat with a throat full of phlegm, sharp and entirely deranged. A skeletal hand reached down through the ventilation window on my side of the wall. It was gripping a frayed nylon rope. He dangled the noose right in front of me as I remained hopelessly wedged in the drywall, completely trapped. 3 When fear reaches its absolute peak, it morphs into total numbness. I was stuck in the wall. Half my body was in my room, the other half in the dark with the plastic mannequin. In front of me sat a lifeless plastic doll. Behind me was a serial killer. The nylon rope swayed in the air like a venomous snake preparing to strike. I violently violently jerked my body backward. I didn't care as the jagged edges of the drywall sliced deep cuts into my waist and ribs. The sharp sting of pain brought a wave of absolute clarity. I scrambled back on all fours, retreating to the farthest corner of my room, my fingers clamped in a death grip around the handle of my paring knife. The hand slowly retreated back into the ceiling. But that didn't mean he was giving up. He was enjoying this. Just like a cat torturing a wounded bird before finally snapping its neck. He knew I had nowhere left to run. Room B was a fake. What about the rest? Were all of Chuck's "high-end, quiet professionals" just plastic dolls propped up in empty beds? They faked a full house just to trick naive, broke, and paranoid girls like me into signing a lease. This entire apartment wasn't a home. It was a carefully constructed hunting ground. I needed to know for sure. Even if knowing wouldn't save my life, I refused to die ignorant. I charged out of my bedroom. The living room was still engulfed in suffocating silence. I sprinted straight to Room C and violently twisted the knob. Locked. I took a step back and kicked it. These hollow-core wooden doors were basically made of cardboard. Three kicks later, the wood around the strike plate splintered and gave way. I crashed into the room. Using my phone's flashlight, I saw the exact same setup. An empty room. A bed. A "man" sitting in a desk chair. He was wearing a cheap suit and wire-rimmed glasses, a permanent, lifeless plastic smile plastered across his face. Another mannequin. I moved to Room D. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and gagged. This one was even more twisted. There were two "people" lying in the bed, a man and a woman, tucked neatly under the covers with only their plastic heads exposed. The "couple" Chuck had told me about. It was all completely fake. In this entire four-bedroom apartment, I was the only living, breathing soul. No, wait. There was one more. Up in the ceiling. I stood in the dead center of the living room, sweeping my flashlight across the doors of this deranged wax museum. In that moment, the fear completely evaporated. I just felt sick. A profound, violent wave of nausea washed over me. They played me for an absolute fool. Just to pocket a few hundred bucks in rent, they built a tomb for the living. Drip. A drop of liquid splattered onto the laminate floor right by my shoe. I looked down. It was a cloudy, yellowish drop. The sharp, foul stench of ammonia immediately hit my nose. I slowly tilted my head up. I aimed the flashlight beam straight at the center of the living room ceiling. The large maintenance hatch had been completely pushed aside. Hanging upside down from the opening was a head so emaciated it looked like a skull wrapped in thin leather. Greasy, matted hair hung down like dead weeds. His cloudy, jaundiced eyes squinted against the harsh glare of my flashlight. He stretched his lips into a wide, grotesque grin, revealing a mouth full of rotting black teeth. He was holding a dirty plastic water bottle, slowly tipping it over the edge, letting drops of urine fall to the floor. He was mocking me. He was pissing on his territory to remind me who was in charge. This was my "roommate." Every night, when I thought I was hearing rats, I was actually listening to him. A massive, human-sized rat. "Come down here!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. My voice was so raw and feral it even startled me. "If you have the guts, come down here! Hiding up there makes you a coward!" I raised the paring knife and slashed the air aggressively toward him. His sunken face twitched. He clearly hadn't expected the cornered prey to snap back. He pulled his head back into the darkness. A second later, I heard the frantic, heavy thudding of him crawling rapidly across the aluminum tracks. He was heading straight for my bedroom. I knew exactly what his plan was. The ventilation window. It was his favorite ambush spot. I couldn't go back into that room. But I desperately needed to use that room. My brain kicked into absolute overdrive. Adrenaline flooded my system. If he wanted to play dirty, I was going to burn his entire world down. I bolted into the kitchen. There was no gas stove, just a cheap electric hot plate. But I vividly remembered seeing a discarded metal gallon of paint thinner sitting in the corner under the sink from when they did the cheap renovations. Highly flammable. I grabbed the metal tin by the handle and shook it. It was half full. More than enough. I sprinted back toward my bedroom, lugging the tin with me. The ventilation window had already been pushed open. That grimy, skeletal hand was just starting to reach down. When he saw me barrel into the room, his hand paused in mid-air. He was probably wondering why the prey was stupid enough to run back into the trap. I let out a cold, venomous laugh. I unscrewed the cap of the metal tin, aimed right for the bed directly beneath the vent, and violently splashed the paint thinner across the mattress and the wall. The sharp, chemical fumes instantly choked the tiny room. "You want to come down?! Then come the hell down!" I pulled a cheap gas station lighter out of my pocket. Click. A small, bright flame sparked to life. The eyes peering out from the darkness of the vent widened in sheer terror. It was the primal, animalistic fear of fire. He tried to yank himself backward into the crawl space. But I wasn't going to let him escape. I tossed the lit lighter squarely onto the soaked bedsheets. Whoosh! A wall of fire erupted instantly, roaring like a beast as it climbed the drywall, curling viciously toward the ceiling. The ventilation window acted like a chimney, pulling the flames and the blistering heat straight up into the crawl space. "AGHHHHH!!!" A horrific, blood-curdling shriek echoed from the ceiling. It was a sound that made my skin crawl, like a pig being slaughtered alive. I took a step back into the hall, watching the tongues of fire lick the edges of the vent. But I knew this wasn't going to kill him. A quick flash fire like this would only give him severe burns. And if this entire slum went up in flames, I'd burn to death right along with him. I didn't want a murder-suicide. I just wanted to smoke the bastard out. I wanted to force him out of his dark little fortress and drag him down to the floor, where I could look him in the eye and fight him to the death. Right on cue, a frantic, violent thrashing echoed from the ceiling panels. The crawl space was filling with thick, toxic smoke and searing heat. He couldn't take it anymore. Crash! A massive explosion of noise erupted from the hallway. The entire maintenance panel was kicked completely out of its frame. A dark, thrashing mass of burning rags and limbs plummeted from the ceiling, slamming brutally against the hard floor. He had landed. He was a frail, emaciated man, barely five feet tall, wrapped in layers of filthy, shredded cotton coats. His matted hair was literally on fire. He was screaming in agony, rolling wildly across the laminate floor, frantically slapping at the flames eating at his clothes. I gripped my paring knife tight and stepped out into the hall. He was no longer the apex predator lurking in the shadows. He was just a pathetic, burning rat. I didn't hesitate. I lunged forward, aimed the blade at his exposed thigh, and drove it down with everything I had. Squelch. The blade sank deep into the muscle. He let out another agonizing wail. His cloudy eyes finally registered pure, unadulterated fear. He tried to scramble backward, but I drove my boot squarely into his grotesque, rotting face. "That was for strangling me to death!" I ripped the knife out. Dark blood sprayed across the floor. I raised the knife to finish the job. But right at that second, the sound of metal scraping against metal echoed from the front door. Click. The deadbolt turned. The door swung open, and Chuck's massive, fleshy frame filled the doorway. He was heavily out of breath, clutching a solid aluminum baseball bat. He had clearly heard the screaming and rushed upstairs. But when he saw the bloodbath in the hallway, he froze. I froze too. I figured he might show up, but I didn't expect him to be armed to the teeth. And more terrifyingly, when he looked down at the bleeding, burning squatter on the floor, there was absolutely zero surprise in his eyes. Only... pure, unbridled rage. It was the rage of a man watching his expensive property being destroyed. "You useless piece of trash!" Chuck spat, turning around to slam the front door shut, firmly locking the deadbolt behind him once again. He turned back to face me. Those beady little eyes, usually squinting with a sleazy smile, were now blown wide open, radiating absolute malice. "Damn, you're a vicious little thing, aren't you?" He slapped the baseball bat against his open palm, taking a slow, heavy step toward me. "This retard might be missing half his brain, but he's been my loyal guard dog for six months. He's saved me a ton of headaches. You just crippled him. How the hell am I supposed to run my business now?" His tone was incredibly casual, like he was complaining about a broken vending machine. But the truth hit me like a freight train. This drifter wasn't some random squatter who broke in. He was Chuck's attack dog. He was kept on a leash, intentionally used to terrify tenants so they'd break their leases and forfeit their deposits. And sometimes... he was used to dispose of the tenants who didn't play nice. I gripped my blood-soaked knife, slowly backing away. I was trapped between a wolf and a grizzly bear. And this bear was bigger, stronger, and infinitely more dangerous. "Stay back! I already called the cops!" I screamed, keeping the knife raised. "The cops?" Chuck let out a wet, ugly snort. "I installed a military-grade signal jammer in this shithole. Who did you call? The grim reaper?" No wonder the call failed. "I was just gonna let you stay a month, keep your deposit, and kick you to the curb. But you just had to play the hero." The fat on Chuck's face jiggled as he curled his lips into a sickening, predatory smile. "Since you figured out the game, you can stay here permanently and keep them company. I was getting bored of looking at those plastic dolls anyway. A real corpse will really spice up the room." He raised the aluminum bat high over his head, aiming a lethal swing straight at my skull.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "446001", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel