chatter_platter
He moves when you blink. He bleeds when you cut. And tonight, he's drawing his way out.Julian Mercer doesn't believe in ghost stories. As a brilliant, hyper-logical college freshman, he views the world strictly through data, geometry, and facts. When he pulls up a loose floorboard in his new dorm room and finds a heavy, antique sketchbook, he assumes it's just a discarded relic from a former art student.To test the thick, skin-like paper, Julian uses his precise technical drafting pen to sketch a flawless anatomical heart. He goes to sleep expecting a quiet night.He wakes up to a wet, rhythmic thump-thump echoing directly beneath his mattress.✦ THE ENTITYWhen the lights go on, the noise stops. But the sketchbook is open to a new page. Inside is a stark, graphic nightmare: an impossibly tall, pitch-black silhouette wearing an oversized coat, crowned by an aggressive halo of violently sharp, glass-like white hair. It has no eyes-only a featureless face split by a wide, unmoving white smile.Julian tries to remain analytical. He admires the stark use of negative space. But the moment he blinks, the ink scratches forward. The smile widens. A clean, physical cut slices open Julian's lower lip, and the barcode stamped near the creature's neck smoothly updates to read: MERCER, J. - TARGET ACQUIRED.✦ THE TRAPBurning it doesn't work. Drowning it fails. Throwing it away only brings it back to the center of his desk by midnight. The sketchbook operates on a strict geometric calculus, and every single night, the creature drafts a little more of a doorway on the final page.To survive, Julian can no longer rely on logic. He has to play a deadly game of wits against a minimalist monster that is slowly turning his entire reality into a flat, cross-hatched void.Rule #1: Never look away.Rule #2: Never touch the ink.Rule #3: Whatever you do, do not let him finish the page.