The apartment was a steal, or so Sarah told herself as she dragged the last box through the narrow doorway. Nestled in the bowels of a crumbling tenement in the city’s forgotten district, it was tiny—a single room with a kitchenette squeezed into one corner, a bed shoved against the far wall, and a bathroom so small she could touch both sides with outstretched arms. The air smelled of damp stone and something faintly metallic, like old pennies. But rent control had frozen the price at a laughable sum, and with her job barely covering basics, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
She unpacked methodically, hanging faded posters to brighten the beige walls, which seemed to lean in just a bit too closely. The single window was painted shut, its view blocked by a brick wall mere feet away. ‘Cozy,’ she muttered, forcing a smile. That night, sleep came fitfully. The ceiling creaked as if breathing, and every shift of her body on the lumpy mattress sent echoes bouncing off the low beams. She woke drenched in sweat, convinced for a split second that the walls had inched closer.
Morning light barely filtered through the grimy pane, casting long shadows that clung to the corners. Sarah brewed coffee on the hotplate, the steam curling lazily in the still air. Work was a slog—data entry in a cubicle farm—but returning home felt heavier each day. By the third evening, she noticed the mold. Black spots bloomed along the baseboards, fuzzy tendrils creeping up like fingers testing the surface. She scrubbed with bleach, the fumes burning her eyes, but by morning, it was back, darker, spreading higher.
‘This place is a tomb,’ she joked to her coworker over lunch, but the words lodged in her throat. Nights grew worse. Lying in bed, she’d hear scratching—faint at first, like nails on wood, then deeper, as if something burrowed within the plaster. She pressed her ear to the wall, heart pounding, and whispered, ‘Hello?’ Silence answered, broken only by her ragged breaths. The room felt smaller; the bed took up more space, the kitchenette crowding the door. Paranoia, she thought. Stress from the move.
A week in, the itching started. Tiny pricks on her arms, like invisible insects. She scratched, drawing blood, and under the harsh fluorescent of the bathroom mirror, saw faint red welts forming patterns—swirls that mimicked the mold’s growth. ‘Allergy,’ she diagnosed, popping antihistamines. But the air thickened, heavy with humidity that seeped into her lungs, making each inhale a labored pull. Windows wouldn’t budge; the front door stuck, requiring a shoulder slam to open. The landlord, a gaunt man with eyes like polished stones, dismissed her complaints over the crackling intercom. ‘Old building. Toughen up.’
Isolation set in. Friends stopped inviting her out—’You sound off,’ they’d say. She stopped calling. Days blurred. The mold climbed the walls now, veiling posters in fuzzy black veils. It pulsed faintly when she stared too long, or was that her imagination? The scratching evolved into whispers—indistinct murmurs slithering from vents, words she almost understood. ‘Stay… grow… one…’ Her skin itched fiercer; welts darkened to bruises, spreading across her torso. Peeling back her shirt, she gasped: black threads laced beneath, mirroring the mold exactly.
Panic clawed at her. She packed a bag, yanked the door—it held fast, the frame warped inward. Pounding, screaming, no neighbors stirred. The walls groaned in response, dust sifting from cracks. She attacked the window with a screwdriver, glass shattering, but behind it was solid brick, mortar fresh and unyielding. ‘Help!’ Her voice muffled, swallowed by the room. Hours passed; exhaustion dropped her to the floor. In the dimness, she saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror across the way—distorted, elongated, as if the glass curved.
Sleep came unwillingly, dreams of suffocation: buried alive in soil that writhed with roots, chest compressing until ribs snapped. Waking, the room had shrunk again. The bed pressed against the opposite wall; to reach the kitchen, she sidled sideways. The air was soup-thick, tasting of rust. Food from the mini-fridge rotted overnight—bread furred black, milk curdled to chunks. She ate anyway, hunger gnawing deeper than fear. The whispers clarified: ‘Join us… fill the spaces… become.’
Her body betrayed her. Legs weakened, skin sloughing in patches to reveal glistening darkness beneath. Mirrors fogged constantly now, but glimpses showed eyes sunken, veins black and throbbing. She clawed at the walls, nails splintering, uncovering not plaster but fibrous membrane, warm and yielding. It bled black ichor that burned her fingers. ‘What are you?’ she rasped. The response vibrated through the floor: laughter, wet and multitudinous.
Desperation peaked. In a frenzy, she smashed the bathroom mirror with the hotplate, shards flying. Behind it, no pipework—just throbbing flesh, veined and pulsating. The room shuddered, contracting. She seized the largest shard, drove it into the wall opposite the door. It sank deep, eliciting a bellow that shook her bones. Black ooze poured forth, flooding the floor ankle-deep, viscous and alive with wriggling specks.
Stumbling through the tide, she hacked again, widening the gash. Light—no, a sickly glow—emanated from within. Tearing at the edges, she squeezed through, emerging into a vast cavern of meat. Walls undulated, vast and endless, dotted with door-shaped protrusions, each sealed with remnants of furniture, bones protruding like macabre decorations. Screams echoed distantly—faint, eternal.
Crawling forward, Sarah retched. The ‘apartment’ was a cell in something immense, a colossal organism masquerading as a building, digesting tenants slowly. The mold was its feeder roots, corruption its saliva. But as she pushed deeper, a chamber opened: a nexus of veins converging on a heart-like sac, beating sluggishly. Inside, suspended in fluid, floated faces—neighbors? No, her own, multiples, younger versions staring back in terror.
Realization crashed: She hadn’t moved in. Weeks ago, walking home, a grate in the sidewalk had yawned, swallowing her into this maw. The ‘apartment’ was her initial chamber, memories fabricated as it probed her mind, replaying a normal life to ease digestion. The landlord’s visits? Phantoms. Friends? Echoes. Every itch, every shrink—the slow melt into nutrient slurry. The final twist: the sac burst, tendrils lancing out, pulling her in. Her screams joined the chorus as the beast sealed her fate, the ‘building’ above sated for now, waiting for the next.