Elena dragged her last box into the studio apartment, the door scraping against the warped floorboards as it swung shut behind her. The space was minuscule, barely twenty feet square, with walls painted a peeling beige that seemed to absorb the dim light from the single window. She wiped sweat from her brow, the air already thick and stale, like breathing through a damp cloth. Rent was cheap for a reason—this old building on the edge of town had a reputation, whispers of previous tenants vanishing without a trace. But Elena needed the savings; her job at the diner barely covered bills.
She unpacked quickly, trying to ignore how the ceiling pressed low, the beams groaning as if sighing under an invisible weight. The bed was a narrow cot against one wall, the kitchenette a sliver of counter with a sink that dripped incessantly. She tested the faucet; rusty water sputtered out, smelling of earth and decay. Shaking it off, she made the bed and collapsed onto it, exhaustion pulling her under.
That first night, sleep was fitful. Dreams of constricting vines wrapping around her chest, squeezing until her ribs creaked. She woke gasping, heart pounding, convinced the walls had inched closer. Rubbing her eyes, she measured the distance from bed to wall with her arm—surely the same as before. Paranoia, she told herself. Just the stress of moving.
Morning brought no relief. The air felt heavier, the window stuck fast despite her prying. She jimmied it open with a knife, letting in a gust of cold wind that carried distant city noise. Downstairs, in the lobby, she met Mrs. Hargrove, the landlady, a frail woman with eyes like polished stones. ‘New, eh? Keep to yourself,’ she muttered, handing over keys. ‘Building’s got moods.’ Elena nodded politely, but as she climbed the creaking stairs, she felt eyes on her back.
Days blurred into a suffocating routine. Work, home, the apartment’s confines gnawing at her sanity. The dripping sink grew louder, a rhythmic plink-plink that echoed in her skull. At night, scratching sounds from within the walls—rats, probably. She stuffed rags into cracks, but the noise persisted, closer each time, as if whatever lurked was burrowing toward her.
One evening, returning from a double shift, she found a note slipped under her door: ‘It’s starting. Get out while you can. -4B’ Her neighbor below. Heart racing, she knocked on 4B. Mr. Kessler answered, a gaunt man in his sixties, skin sallow and stretched tight over bones. ‘You hear it too?’ he whispered, pulling her inside his identical cramped space. His walls were damp, black mold veining the plaster like infected flesh. ‘The building… it breathes. Feeds on us. I’ve seen it—tenants waste away, walls claim them.’
Elena laughed nervously. ‘Mold poisoning, maybe? We should call someone.’ But Kessler grabbed her wrist, his grip clammy. ‘Look.’ He peeled back his shirt sleeve. Beneath the skin, dark tendrils pulsed faintly, like roots seeking soil. ‘It started months ago. Itches, then burns. Now… it’s inside.’ Horror gripped her; she fled back to her room, barricading the door.
That night, the itching began. A faint prickle under her arms, her scalp. She scratched until skin reddened, but it spread, burrowing deeper. Mirrors showed nothing unusual, yet her reflection seemed dimmer, as if fading into the wall behind. The room shrank perceptibly now—the bed touched the opposite wall when she stretched out. Panic set in; she packed a bag, determined to leave at dawn.
But dawn brought rain, and the door wouldn’t budge. It rattled in its frame, the knob slick and unturning. Windows sealed shut, the building’s ‘mood’ locking her in. Pounding on walls yielded hollow thuds, no response from neighbors. Kessler’s words echoed: it feeds.
Desperation mounted. She pried at floorboards, revealing dust and wires, but no escape. The scratching intensified, now from ceiling and floor, a chorus of tiny claws. Her skin burned; examining her arm, she saw it—faint blue lines beneath the surface, spiderwebbing outward. ‘No, no,’ she whimpered, clawing at them. Blood welled, blackish and viscous.
Hours stretched into eternity. The air thickened to molasses, each breath labored. Walls wept condensation, pooling on the floor that softened underfoot like rotting fruit. She hammered the door until her fists bruised, screaming for help. Silence answered, save the scratching, now accompanied by wet, sucking sounds.
In delirium, she dreamed of the building’s innards: endless corridors of pulsing flesh, tenants reduced to husks embedded in walls, eyes pleading silently. She woke to find her cot sodden, mattress bubbling with foul liquid. Her body ached, joints stiffening, skin tightening like shrink-wrap. Looking down, the veins had thickened, bulging, pushing against flesh.
Mustering strength, she smashed the mirror. Shards revealed the truth in fragments: her face distorted, cheeks hollowed, eyes sunken. The mold from Kessler’s room—hers now too, creeping from cracks, mirroring the veins in her flesh.
The final assault came at midnight. The walls shuddered, closing in with a grinding moan. Plaster cracked, revealing not brick but glistening membrane underneath, veined and throbbing. The door burst inward—not from her efforts, but the building contracting. Beyond lay not hallway, but a tunnel of meat, undulating.
Elena crawled into it, the walls brushing her shoulders, hot and slick. ‘Help!’ she cried, but voices answered—Kessler’s, Mrs. Hargrove’s, a chorus of the lost: ‘Join us. It’s home.’ Deeper she went, body convulsing as veins ruptured, spilling ichor. Pain blinded her, but clarity pierced through.
In the heart of the tunnel, a chamber pulsed. No exit, only a mirror-like surface. Gazing in, she saw not her face, but the apartment—tiny, walls pressing on a tiny figure inside: herself, shrunken, veins feeding into the walls that were her arteries, the scratching her own cells rebelling.
The realization hit like suffocation: there was no building. It was her body, corrupted from within by a cancer she’d ignored—symptoms dismissed as stress. The ‘move-in’ was diagnosis day, the apartment her tumor, growing, claustrophobic prison of flesh turning against her. Neighbors? Memories of doctors, twisted by denial. The closing walls her organs failing, lungs collapsing.
She—no, the tumor’s illusion—screamed as the chamber contracted, crushing the tiny self within. Reality reasserted: beeps of machines, distant voices. But too late. The body convulsed once, then stilled, the mind’s final horror complete in silence.