The second floor is where it all starts to go wrong. The walls up here are cinderblock rather than drywall, and the floor is black and white linoleum, but it’s rough as though covered in a layer of masonry dust. Yet, unappealing though the level looks, it’s clearly finished. Its fluorescent lights are always on, and always flickering at a painful frequency, but that’s not why being on this floor raises the hairs on the back of one’s neck.
Perhaps the fact that the halls meet at a 135-degree angle, one that the building’s exterior design shouldn’t allow, has more to do with that.
By the numbers of the apartments on either side of the lobby, there are fourteen apartments on this floor. Again, they’re around the outer perimeter of the floor, and there are windows overlooking the courtyard; they’re thicker than the ones on the first floor, they’re slightly milky, and their surface is uneven, distorting the dimmed view through them. While plant runners are visible coming up from the courtyard, their thorny leaves swaying slightly in the nonexistent breeze, there’s a mist that combines with the slight opacity of the windows to make it difficult to see the ground.
The door to apartment 201- the first apartment in the north corridor - is locked; attempts to kick it in will reveal that there’s something heavy, yet somewhat spongy and yielding, behind it.
Apartment 202 is unlocked, and the lights come on when the switch is flipped, glowing dull orange and illuminating grungy black and white tile. The kitchen, to the left of the entryway, has rust-streaked steel counters and mustard-yellow tiles with mildew in the grout, and there’s a strange blackish crust around the edges of the sink. Every so often, the lights flicker to a weird, flat, dim gray, and when they do, it looks as though there’s some kind of translucent, amorphous black mass in the sink, several pairs of round red eyes shining out of it. The refrigerator is open, a small colony of mold occupying the shelves and crisper drawers, and the cabinets are empty except for a few saucers and a serving platter.
The darkness gathers in the edges of the living room like a live thing, creeping furtively out of its corners when the lights flicker. The room is uncarpeted, the floor concrete with brownish stains that have a different texture from their surroundings and strange ridges here and there, but it’s furnished, with a cheap crappy glass and metal table whose paint is flaking away from the rust, an olive paisley lounge chair, and a beat-up, yellow and orange striped wraparound couch from which there has been a very determined attempt to scrub several dark stains. There’s also a faux oak cabinet in front of which a television lies screen-down, shattered.
The hallway back to the two bedrooms is still carpeted; the guest bedroom appears to have been used for storage, as there’s a hardwood table that might have been worth some money back before it was sporting the multiple gouges and scuffs visible on its surface, an empty armoire, a cheap, proto-Ikea desk, two typewriters, and several boxes of very ‘70s clothing in there. Laying out on the floor is a ouija board, missing the planchette.
The carpet from the living room has been nailed to the walls of the master bedroom, and if you pull it aside and put your ear to the wall, faint scraping and breathing noises are audible from apartment 203. The master bathroom is trashed, all the fixtures broken off near the floor, which may be where the water damage on the floor below comes from, except for the fact that there’s no water up here and the room smells like mildew with a hint of sulfur, not the corpselike sickly sweet smell on the floor below.
The door to apartment 203 is somehow fused into the wall, and judging from the way it feels when kicked, there’s solid cinder block behind it as well.
There’s a little alcove on the corner, between apartments 203 and 204, with a window looking out into the branches of a pine tree that doesn’t exist when one views the building from the outside. There’s a sobbing, gurgling noise audible through the wall of 203, and there is something faintly and disturbingly human about it; there’s intermittent knocking as well, and the sobbing intensifies with it until finally both quiet again.
Something about the west hallway makes it feel like a killing floor. There are no windows onto the courtyard on this side, and the doors of apartments 204 through 207 are fused into the wall the same way the door of 203 is. The lights don’t work in this hall, and there’s the constant feeling of something watching you - something inhuman and hostile. The light coming through the branches of the pine tree throws constantly moving shadows across the floor, but something about them seems off - too dark, too active, and if one concentrates for long enough, one might notice some slow flutter of movement of the walls themselves. There are faint animal scrabbling and groaning noises at what would be the corner between apartments 207 and 208.
The door to apartment 208 is missing entirely. Where it should be, there’s a blank space in the wall.
The door to 209 is set back in a hallway that shouldn’t exist, according to the building’s outer geometry, and opens with a squeaking noise that sets one’s teeth on edge. There are hand-sized bubbles of faintly yellowish fluid suspended in the squamous tissue of the windows, and across the living room wall is a wide crack, full of oversized and poorly aligned human-looking incisors - though it may be difficult to spot behind the bulge of veiny tissue with skin almost like chamois leather hanging from the ceiling to within four feet of the floor. It’s disturbingly warm to the touch, pulsating slightly. The kitchen is in only slightly better shape; the countertops are warped, the stove is badly rusted, and there are long, unnaturally thick hairs protruding from the gaps between the cabinets, and between the stove and the counter. There’s no refrigerator, and the cabinets are empty; squeezing past the fleshy bulge on the hallway wall that’s similar to the one on the living room ceiling will confirm that the apartment was uninhabited, the bedrooms completely devoid of furniture.
The back half of apartment 210, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are located, is covered in the same fleshy substance, and there’s the sound of something pacing back and forth in one of the bedrooms. The front half is more normal, with gray faux-leather furniture in the living room, and atop one of the cabinets there’s a set of encyclopedias dated 1969; inside the cabinet is a set of doo-wop records and a record player - still functional, but the sporadic power fluctuations alter the speed of the record, distorting the sound eerily. In the kitchen, the refrigerator is empty, and most of the drawers and cabinets are filled with abnormally thick hair, but there’s a forgotten, completely full bottle of dish soap under the sink.
Apartment 211 has nothing noteworthily wrong with it, but it was also uninhabited prior to whatever happened to the city. There’s no furniture, and nothing in the cabinets except for a forgotten roach motel under the master bathroom sink, in which there’s a severed, shriveled human toe.
The interior of apartment 212 is pitch black, and the lights don’t work. Shining a flashlight around it reveals that everything’s in place - the living room is comfortably (and gaudily) furnished, there are a few small knives in the dish rack next to the sink, and the faint smell of rotting food is wafting from the refrigerator. However, the tissue of the windows is completely opaque, and something about this apartment makes you feel sick and feverish the moment you step through the door. The darkness seems to slink angrily away from the flashlight beam like an animal, and the batteries drain unnaturally quickly; in the dimming light, the shadows seem to pull themselves up into shapes like people wearing long, hooded cloaks. The further you head into the apartment, the worse the fever and nausea and dizziness become, and the more cloying the darkness is, though eventually one might notice a faint tinge of light at the back of the apartment - one coming from beneath the door of the master bedroom.
The bedroom is fully lit, revealing an impossible phantasmagoria of massive, curved bones and raw-looking exposed tissue. There’s something moving back and forth in the middle of it, but back here, the headache is almost literally blinding, making it impossible to tell exactly what it is, aside from that it’s wet and bloody and too suggestive of the human form for comfort.
Anyone in a frame of mind to toss the apartment for supplies will find a few towels, an extra set of sheets, and several travel toiletry kits in the hall linen closet, and several cans of tuna, vegetables, and fruit salad in the pantry.
There’s a cyclical buzzing audible through the door of apartment 213. Upon opening it, heat and moisture and the scent of decaying meat and plant matter roll out. Apparently whoever owned the apartment had a serious botany hobby, as there are planters full of dead plants, along with blown-out grow lights and drip tape - long ago clogged by the tissue fragments that sometimes emerge from the building’s pipes - all over the place. Surprisingly, none of the plants seem to have been marijuana, but instead were probably orchids or lilies. Here and there, a few shoots are poking up between the dead plants, but the few leaves they sport are thorny, like those of the plants in the courtyard. Despite the buzzing, there’s a disturbing lack of any signs of insect activity in the apartment. Its inhabitant seems to have taken poorer care of themselves than of the plants, as all that’s left in the refrigerator is plant food, and the cans of soup and potted meat in the cabinets are all store-brand; the few clothes left in the closet are worn and threadbare, and there are only a few cheap disposable razors next to an unopened travel-size stick of deodorant in the bathroom cabinets. In the guest bedroom, used as a study in this apartment, the bookshelves are mostly bare, with a few haphazardly strewn books on some of the more obscure points of botany remaining to attest to the fact that most of the shelves’ contents were probably hurriedly shoveled into boxes before the inhabitant left.
Apartment 214, like apartment 201, is inaccessible because of something heavy and yielding - probably another one of those growths of flesh - blocking the door.
Second Floor
Perhaps the fact that the halls meet at a 135-degree angle, one that the building’s exterior design shouldn’t allow, has more to do with that.
By the numbers of the apartments on either side of the lobby, there are fourteen apartments on this floor. Again, they’re around the outer perimeter of the floor, and there are windows overlooking the courtyard; they’re thicker than the ones on the first floor, they’re slightly milky, and their surface is uneven, distorting the dimmed view through them. While plant runners are visible coming up from the courtyard, their thorny leaves swaying slightly in the nonexistent breeze, there’s a mist that combines with the slight opacity of the windows to make it difficult to see the ground.
The door to apartment 201- the first apartment in the north corridor - is locked; attempts to kick it in will reveal that there’s something heavy, yet somewhat spongy and yielding, behind it.
Apartment 202 is unlocked, and the lights come on when the switch is flipped, glowing dull orange and illuminating grungy black and white tile. The kitchen, to the left of the entryway, has rust-streaked steel counters and mustard-yellow tiles with mildew in the grout, and there’s a strange blackish crust around the edges of the sink. Every so often, the lights flicker to a weird, flat, dim gray, and when they do, it looks as though there’s some kind of translucent, amorphous black mass in the sink, several pairs of round red eyes shining out of it. The refrigerator is open, a small colony of mold occupying the shelves and crisper drawers, and the cabinets are empty except for a few saucers and a serving platter.
The darkness gathers in the edges of the living room like a live thing, creeping furtively out of its corners when the lights flicker. The room is uncarpeted, the floor concrete with brownish stains that have a different texture from their surroundings and strange ridges here and there, but it’s furnished, with a cheap crappy glass and metal table whose paint is flaking away from the rust, an olive paisley lounge chair, and a beat-up, yellow and orange striped wraparound couch from which there has been a very determined attempt to scrub several dark stains. There’s also a faux oak cabinet in front of which a television lies screen-down, shattered.
The hallway back to the two bedrooms is still carpeted; the guest bedroom appears to have been used for storage, as there’s a hardwood table that might have been worth some money back before it was sporting the multiple gouges and scuffs visible on its surface, an empty armoire, a cheap, proto-Ikea desk, two typewriters, and several boxes of very ‘70s clothing in there. Laying out on the floor is a ouija board, missing the planchette.
The carpet from the living room has been nailed to the walls of the master bedroom, and if you pull it aside and put your ear to the wall, faint scraping and breathing noises are audible from apartment 203. The master bathroom is trashed, all the fixtures broken off near the floor, which may be where the water damage on the floor below comes from, except for the fact that there’s no water up here and the room smells like mildew with a hint of sulfur, not the corpselike sickly sweet smell on the floor below.
The door to apartment 203 is somehow fused into the wall, and judging from the way it feels when kicked, there’s solid cinder block behind it as well.
There’s a little alcove on the corner, between apartments 203 and 204, with a window looking out into the branches of a pine tree that doesn’t exist when one views the building from the outside. There’s a sobbing, gurgling noise audible through the wall of 203, and there is something faintly and disturbingly human about it; there’s intermittent knocking as well, and the sobbing intensifies with it until finally both quiet again.
Something about the west hallway makes it feel like a killing floor. There are no windows onto the courtyard on this side, and the doors of apartments 204 through 207 are fused into the wall the same way the door of 203 is. The lights don’t work in this hall, and there’s the constant feeling of something watching you - something inhuman and hostile. The light coming through the branches of the pine tree throws constantly moving shadows across the floor, but something about them seems off - too dark, too active, and if one concentrates for long enough, one might notice some slow flutter of movement of the walls themselves. There are faint animal scrabbling and groaning noises at what would be the corner between apartments 207 and 208.
The door to apartment 208 is missing entirely. Where it should be, there’s a blank space in the wall.
The door to 209 is set back in a hallway that shouldn’t exist, according to the building’s outer geometry, and opens with a squeaking noise that sets one’s teeth on edge. There are hand-sized bubbles of faintly yellowish fluid suspended in the squamous tissue of the windows, and across the living room wall is a wide crack, full of oversized and poorly aligned human-looking incisors - though it may be difficult to spot behind the bulge of veiny tissue with skin almost like chamois leather hanging from the ceiling to within four feet of the floor. It’s disturbingly warm to the touch, pulsating slightly. The kitchen is in only slightly better shape; the countertops are warped, the stove is badly rusted, and there are long, unnaturally thick hairs protruding from the gaps between the cabinets, and between the stove and the counter. There’s no refrigerator, and the cabinets are empty; squeezing past the fleshy bulge on the hallway wall that’s similar to the one on the living room ceiling will confirm that the apartment was uninhabited, the bedrooms completely devoid of furniture.
The back half of apartment 210, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are located, is covered in the same fleshy substance, and there’s the sound of something pacing back and forth in one of the bedrooms. The front half is more normal, with gray faux-leather furniture in the living room, and atop one of the cabinets there’s a set of encyclopedias dated 1969; inside the cabinet is a set of doo-wop records and a record player - still functional, but the sporadic power fluctuations alter the speed of the record, distorting the sound eerily. In the kitchen, the refrigerator is empty, and most of the drawers and cabinets are filled with abnormally thick hair, but there’s a forgotten, completely full bottle of dish soap under the sink.
Apartment 211 has nothing noteworthily wrong with it, but it was also uninhabited prior to whatever happened to the city. There’s no furniture, and nothing in the cabinets except for a forgotten roach motel under the master bathroom sink, in which there’s a severed, shriveled human toe.
The interior of apartment 212 is pitch black, and the lights don’t work. Shining a flashlight around it reveals that everything’s in place - the living room is comfortably (and gaudily) furnished, there are a few small knives in the dish rack next to the sink, and the faint smell of rotting food is wafting from the refrigerator. However, the tissue of the windows is completely opaque, and something about this apartment makes you feel sick and feverish the moment you step through the door. The darkness seems to slink angrily away from the flashlight beam like an animal, and the batteries drain unnaturally quickly; in the dimming light, the shadows seem to pull themselves up into shapes like people wearing long, hooded cloaks. The further you head into the apartment, the worse the fever and nausea and dizziness become, and the more cloying the darkness is, though eventually one might notice a faint tinge of light at the back of the apartment - one coming from beneath the door of the master bedroom.
The bedroom is fully lit, revealing an impossible phantasmagoria of massive, curved bones and raw-looking exposed tissue. There’s something moving back and forth in the middle of it, but back here, the headache is almost literally blinding, making it impossible to tell exactly what it is, aside from that it’s wet and bloody and too suggestive of the human form for comfort.
Anyone in a frame of mind to toss the apartment for supplies will find a few towels, an extra set of sheets, and several travel toiletry kits in the hall linen closet, and several cans of tuna, vegetables, and fruit salad in the pantry.
There’s a cyclical buzzing audible through the door of apartment 213. Upon opening it, heat and moisture and the scent of decaying meat and plant matter roll out. Apparently whoever owned the apartment had a serious botany hobby, as there are planters full of dead plants, along with blown-out grow lights and drip tape - long ago clogged by the tissue fragments that sometimes emerge from the building’s pipes - all over the place. Surprisingly, none of the plants seem to have been marijuana, but instead were probably orchids or lilies. Here and there, a few shoots are poking up between the dead plants, but the few leaves they sport are thorny, like those of the plants in the courtyard. Despite the buzzing, there’s a disturbing lack of any signs of insect activity in the apartment. Its inhabitant seems to have taken poorer care of themselves than of the plants, as all that’s left in the refrigerator is plant food, and the cans of soup and potted meat in the cabinets are all store-brand; the few clothes left in the closet are worn and threadbare, and there are only a few cheap disposable razors next to an unopened travel-size stick of deodorant in the bathroom cabinets. In the guest bedroom, used as a study in this apartment, the bookshelves are mostly bare, with a few haphazardly strewn books on some of the more obscure points of botany remaining to attest to the fact that most of the shelves’ contents were probably hurriedly shoveled into boxes before the inhabitant left.
Apartment 214, like apartment 201, is inaccessible because of something heavy and yielding - probably another one of those growths of flesh - blocking the door.