An odor of sweat and something unidentifiable crawled beneath the door, slow and deliberate, as if it knew exactly where I was. It clung to the air, thick and invasive, settling in my lungs with every breath. I tried to hold it out, pulling my shirt over my nose, but it was already inside me.
It was freezing. Not the kind of cold that nips at your skin and fades with movement.
This was deeper, patient, burrowing into bone. My hands were numb, fingers stiff and useless no matter how hard I willed them to move. I rubbed them together, pressed them under my arms, breathed into my palms, but nothing worked. The cold wasn't just around me. It had claimed me.
I looked up, desperate for anything...
a crack of light, a shift in shadow, something to prove the world still existed beyond this suffocating dark. But there was nothing. Only a wall of absolute blackness, endless and consuming. It felt as though my eyes were open and closed at the same time, as though sight itself had abandoned me.
The light had failed me.
For a moment, panic surged, sharp and electric. My heart pounded so loudly I thought it might echo off unseen walls. I strained to listen past it, to catch any other sound
footsteps, breathing, even the faint hum of something alive
but there was only silence. A heavy, oppressive silence that seemed to press closer with every passing second.
It didn't matter anymore, I told myself. Panic wouldn't help. Nothing would.
I would endure the shadows for a single night.
That thought became an anchor, something small and fragile to cling to. One night. Just one. Morning would come eventually. It had to. Even here, even in this place, time couldn't have stopped completely.
Could it?
The smell shifted again, stronger now. Closer. I froze, holding my breath without meaning to. There... was that a sound? A faint scrape, like something dragging across the floor just beyond the door. Or maybe it was inside. Maybe it had always been inside.
"No," I whispered, though my voice felt strange... strange, thin, like it didn't belong to me. Speaking made it worse. It made the darkness feel aware.
I forced myself to move, to do anything that proved I still could. My legs trembled as I lowered myself to the ground, the cold seeping through my clothes instantly, as if the floor had been waiting for me. I curled in on myself, trying to conserve what little warmth I had left.
Sleep, I thought. Sleep would save me. If I could just drift off, I wouldn't have to feel this, wouldn't have to hear the silence or imagine what might be waiting just beyond it.
I closed my eyes.
It made no difference.
The darkness was the same, behind my eyelids as it was before them. But now, without even the illusion of sight, my other senses sharpened. The smell. The cold. And beneath it all…
Breathing.
Not mine.
Slow. Measured. Patient.
Somewhere in the room.
My eyes snapped open, but it was useless. There was nothing to see, nowhere to focus. Only the sound remained, soft but unmistakable, threading through the silence like a needle.
I stayed perfectly still, afraid that even the smallest movement would draw it closer. My own breath became shallow, controlled, as if I could somehow disappear by matching the stillness around me.
One night, I reminded myself again.
But as the strange breath lingered in the dark, I began to wonder if morning was something I would ever live to see.