Adrian didn't remember falling asleep.
One moment he was pressed against the far corner of his room, the spiral devouring the wall in front of him. The next, he woke sprawled on the floor, the journal beneath his cheek.
The spiral was gone.
The wall was solid again.
Everything looked... normal.
But the air still buzzed. Thin, brittle, like a TV left on in another room.
---
For hours, Adrian pretended.
He showered. He shaved. He made coffee. He even turned on the radio, forcing music into the silence. Anything to drown out the truth.
But the world didn't let him forget.
The coffee tasted like ash.
The shower water ran warm, then icy, then warm again without warning.
The radio stations shifted, melodies bending into static before snapping back.
And every so often, he'd catch his reflection in the mirror—and it wouldn't move with him.
---
By afternoon, his apartment felt like a stage set. Too clean. Too sharp. Too quiet.
He picked up his mother's journal again, flipping to the diagram pages. The spirals stared back at him. Maps, she had called them. Openings. Mouths.
The notes blurred in his vision until the words crawled.
He is not living in one world. He is living between them.
Adrian shut the book, heart pounding. His head ached as though the words had etched themselves inside his skull.
---
That night, he tried to sleep on the couch. He left the light on. He left the TV playing a late-night talk show, the canned laughter filling the room with something almost human.
It almost worked.
Until the walls began to breathe.
The wallpaper flexed with each inhale, sagging outward, then pulling back with a low groan of wood and plaster. The laugh track warped with it, every giggle stretching into a distorted howl.
Adrian pressed his fists against his eyes. "Not real. Not real. Not—"
A knock interrupted him.
Three slow knocks at his door.
His breath hitched. He froze. The TV laughter cut off, leaving silence so heavy it pressed into his chest.
The knocks came again. Louder.
He stood on shaking legs, each step toward the door like wading through mud. He didn't want to open it. He couldn't open it.
But the handle turned anyway.
---
The door swung wide.
No one stood outside. The hallway was empty.
But every door up and down the hall was open. Every apartment.
And from each one, whispers seeped out—layered, fractured, repeating the same words.
"...Adrian... doorway... Adrian... doorway..."
His skin crawled. He slammed his own door shut, locked it twice, pressed his back against it.
When he turned—
All of his picture frames were facing the wrong way.
---
The lights flickered, buzzing, dimming. His shadow stretched across the room, lengthening until it reached the far wall.
But it didn't stop at the wall.
It bent around it, peeling across plaster like a liquid stain, spreading into a spiral of pure black.
Adrian's stomach twisted. His knees gave out, and he dropped to the floor, clutching the journal to his chest.
The spiral pulsed once, twice—like a heartbeat.
Then the voice filled the apartment, not a whisper this time, but thunder.
"...THIN WALLS, ADRIAN... AND YOU ARE BREAKING..."
The lights burst, and everything went dark.
---