The apartment was too quiet.
Adrian sat in the corner, knees pulled to his chest, staring at the dead lamp as if it had betrayed him. His pulse hadn't slowed since the whisper. Since the reflection. Since the laughter that didn't belong to any human throat.
He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The same technique his therapist had drilled into him. Ground yourself. Count objects in the room. Identify what's real.
One chair.
One couch.
One desk.
One window—
He stopped.
The window was wrong.
The lamppost outside had gone out. He hadn't seen that happen before. And now the glass didn't reflect his living room at all.
It showed static. Like the fuzzy blur of a broken TV screen, swirling in black and white snow. The sound filled his ears slowly, like an old television warming up: shhhhhh.
Adrian's throat tightened. He wanted to look away, but something in that static pulled him forward. It wasn't random. Not quite. The snow was moving with purpose, swirling, spiraling inward like a vortex.
A shape was forming inside it.
No face. Just the spiral. Always the spiral.
---
The phone on his desk rang.
Adrian jumped so hard he knocked his knee against the wall. His heart tried to claw out of his chest. Who would call him at this hour?
He snatched the receiver, desperate for the voice of anyone—anyone human.
"Hello?"
The static bled through the line, the same sound as the window.
"Who is this?" His voice cracked. "Stop—stop messing with me!"
The static shifted. A voice crawled through, warped and broken, as if traveling from miles beyond the frequency of sanity.
"...you drew me..."
Adrian's stomach dropped.
The phone slipped from his hand and hit the floor.
You drew me.
He looked slowly at the sketch again. The figure's hand had moved further out of the page, now curling over the border, fingers long and spindly as if they were testing the paper's edge like a doorway.
"No," Adrian whispered. "No, no, no—"
The phone speaker crackled violently, the static twisting into words again.
"...let me in..."
---
The bulb in the kitchen popped. Then another. One by one, the apartment's lights died until Adrian was wrapped in suffocating black.
From the corner of the room came the sound of footsteps. Not on the floorboards—inside the walls. Heavy, dragging, moving closer.
Adrian pressed his back against the cold plaster, shaking.
"Stay away," he croaked. "Stay the hell away from me!"
The footsteps stopped.
And then, right by his ear, through the wall—
"…already here."
Adrian screamed.
---
He stumbled for the door, fumbling with the lock, hands slick with sweat. It wouldn't turn. It wouldn't turn. As if the metal itself had decided he wasn't allowed to leave.
Behind him, the static grew louder, flooding the room, filling every corner, vibrating in his teeth, his bones, his skull.
He turned—and froze.
The sketch was no longer on the desk. It was on the wall.
Not paper anymore. Not graphite. The figure was real, its spiraled void pulsing like a wound in the air, sucking the static into itself. The room bent around it, reality warping like glass under heat.
Adrian staggered backward, choking on terror, as the thing reached a hand fully out of the spiral.
Flesh that wasn't flesh. Fingers that stretched like liquid shadow.
And then, as its hand brushed the air of his apartment—
The static cut out.
Silence.
The void in the wall sealed shut, leaving only bare plaster.
Adrian blinked, gasping, drenched in sweat.
The lights flickered back on one by one.
Everything was normal.
Too normal.
But on the floor, where the sketch had been, lay a single slip of paper.
Blank. Except for two words scrawled in Adrian's own handwriting.
"Next time."