𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍

𝐎𝐍𝐄

Katherine Louise glares up at the ceiling of her apartment building. A hole had somehow been punched into the acoustical tile, exposing the wiring and pipes and tubes. 

This wasn't even a bad building.

Shaking her head and continuing up the eighth flight of stairs, she kept grumbling about how she doesn't pay so much in rent to live somewhere with holes in places there shouldn't be.

The young woman juggles her keys and laundry basket for a moment before shoving the gold key into the front door of 408 and twisted to the right, humming Bob Seger's Beautiful Loser. She left the record playing in the apartment, and she can hear the track playing through the thin walls. That, and her neighbor's...extracurriculars. If Sophia were here, she'd be on the sofa drafting a letter about how this is the third time this week there was a sexual disturbance—good for her, but a disturbance none the less. 

And anyway...screaming? There's no way sex was that good.

Somehow, every front door in the building violated the golden rule of "righty tighty, lefty loosey," which was a big deal to Katherine when she moved in at the tender age of sixteen. How could a door not follow the rules of the only thing in her life that hadn't changed?

The door had always been a heavy thing and creaked—a short and alarming squawk—as it opened and closed. The weight of it slammed into the doorframe time after time. It reminded her of the dozens of dodgy motel rooms she stayed in for years, all with the same creaky door and questionable stains.

The second the shut the door, there was a light noise down the hall, a small clatter, like a glass on her desk. Not broken—set down.

Katherine paused for a brief moment before continuing into her apartment with caution in her step. 

Sophia was definitely not here...

The hair on the back of her neck stands on end, and that quiet ringing seems to intensify, searching for anything that would disrupt it. Another clatter, a floorboard creak, a voice. Katherine glances to the windowsill above the sink—still lined with salt. And the door to her apartment travelled right over the line, so there was no disruption there.

She moves to set her laundry bag on the floor as softly as she can, and toes out of her sneakers, eyes locked on the hallway before her. Her bedroom door is still open, darkness leaching into the dim hallway.

She knows there aren't any weapons out and available—everything she'd need to hide from Sophia is in her room, in false-bottomed drawers and behind her mattress.

So basically she's screwed. Because this is no monster in her apartment—there's no way it got past all the salt, the wards she drew over doorways in invisible marker.

This is a person.

Light-footedness came easily for her. Well...her father drilled it into her from an age that shouldn't be acceptable to start training for the problems of the supernatural variety. And she was able to use that to get a track scholarship and get far, far away from him.

Silent as a lioness on the hunt, she crept down the hallway in socked feet until she was just inches from her doorway, heart hammering in her chest. She can feel the thump all the way into her temple.

So she reaches around the corner and flicks her bedroom light on.

She didn't scream. Her eyes had just landed on the figure by her door. He could see her eyes were wide, with fear or with anger, he wasn't sure. But he opened his mouth to speak—that was his intention, to speak to her—but then the woman swung.