The first swing was for Sarah. The second was for my tires. The third was for my sanity.
Drywall is deceptive. It looks solid, but it’s just chalk sandwiched between paper. When you hit it with a four-pound lump hammer and enough adrenaline to jump-start a semi-truck, it doesn't just break. It explodes.
Dust plumed out like a white smoke grenade. I coughed, tasting the chalk, but I didn't stop. I swung again. And again. The jagged hole grew from the size of a fist to the size of a head, then the size of a torso.
The smell hit me harder than the debris. It rushed out of the breach, a physical wave of sour milk, human waste, and ancient, stagnant air. It was the breath of a house that had been rotting from the inside out for thirty years.
I kicked the remaining jagged flap of gypsum. It snapped inward, falling into the dark.
I stood there, heaving, the hammer heavy in my hand. The light from my dual computer monitors spilled into the hole, cutting a blue cone through the dust.
It wasn't just a space between studs. It was a corridor.
I stepped through the wall.
My foot landed on something soft. Insulation, maybe? Or old clothes. The floor here was plywood, unfinished and gritty. The space—Unit Zero—was narrow, maybe three feet wide, running parallel to my apartment. It was cluttered with the guts of the building: thick iron pipes wrapped in asbestos tape, bundles of frayed electrical wire stapled to the studs, and piles of… things.
Nests.
Piles of stolen newspapers. Candy wrappers. A sleeping bag gray with grime. A bucket that explained the smell.
"Mark..."
The whimper came from the floor, about six feet to my left.
I swung my phone flashlight beam toward the sound. Sarah was huddled against a vertical drain pipe. Her wrists were zip-tied to a metal bracket. Her mouth was covered with silver duct tape—my duct tape, stolen from my kitchen drawer weeks ago. Her eyes were wide, wet, and terrified.
"I’ve got you," I choked out, stepping over a pile of oily rags.
Something moved in the shadows above her.
It wasn't a rat. It was a spider. A human spider.
Elias was clinging to the pipes near the ceiling, his limbs splayed out to brace himself against the narrow walls. In the harsh LED light of my phone, he looked like a photo negative. His skin was translucent-pale, mapped with blue veins. He was wearing a filthy, oversized hoodie that hung off his skeletal frame like a shroud.
His eyes were pitch black, the pupils blown wide to absorb the darkness he lived in. He squinted painfully against my light, shielding his face with a hand that was more claw than flesh.
"Too loud," he hissed. His voice was a dry rattle, like dead leaves skittering on pavement. "Guests are... too... loud."
He dropped.
He didn't land with a thud. He landed silently, absorbing the impact with practiced ease. He stood between me and Sarah, hunched over, protecting his hoard.
In his right hand, he gripped the screwdriver. The one from my tire. The tip was filed to a needle point.
"Get out of my room," Elias whispered. He twitched, his head jerking to the side as if hearing a sound I couldn't.
"It’s not your room," I said, my voice shaking. I gripped the hammer tighter, my knuckles turning white. "It’s a crawlspace, Elias. You’re living in a sewer."
He bared his teeth. They were yellow and rotted. "It’s... quiet here. Until you. Tap, tap, tap. Always tapping. Always listening."
He lunged.
I’d never been in a fight in my life. I expected it to be like the movies—slow motion, clear choreography. It wasn't. It was fast, messy, and confusing.
Elias moved with a terrifying, jerky speed. He closed the distance before I could even lift the hammer. The screwdriver flashed toward my stomach.
I twisted instinctively. The metal tip caught my hoodie, tearing through the fabric and grazing my ribs. It felt like a bee sting multiplied by ten.
I shoved him back. He was light, frail, like a bird made of hollow bones. He stumbled into the wall, knocking a copper pipe that rang out with a hollow clang.
The noise seemed to hurt him more than the shove. He winced, clutching his ears.
"Noise!" he shrieked.
I didn't wait. I swung the hammer.
I wasn't aiming for his head—I couldn't do that. I wasn't a killer. I swung for his arm, the one holding the shank.
But the narrow space betrayed me. The head of the hammer caught on a bundle of hanging wires, deflecting my swing. It smashed into the plywood wall with a deafening THUD.
Dust rained down on us.
Elias screamed—a high, piercing sound of pure sensory overload. He scrambled forward, tackling me around the waist.
We hit the floor hard. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh. The smell was unbearable now, right in my face—the reek of unwashed skin and decay.
He was weak, but he was desperate. His fingers clawed at my face, trying to gouge my eyes. I flailed, dropping the hammer. It clattered away into the dark.
"Quiet!" he gibbered, drool spilling from his lips. "Make it quiet! Make it stop!"
He raised the screwdriver again, aiming for my throat.
I caught his wrist. His arm was thin, the tendons standing out like wire cables, but he had the leverage. The sharp tip descended, inch by trembling inch.
I looked at Sarah. She was kicking her legs, trying to make noise, trying to distract him. Her eyes were locked on mine.
Sound tells a story.
Elias lived in the dark. He lived in silence. He monitored the building by the vibrations in the walls. His entire world was defined by sensitivity.
I was an audio engineer. I dealt in volume.
I let go of his wrist with one hand and slammed my palm against the floorboards—hard.
BAM.
Elias flinched.
I grabbed a loose length of metal conduit pipe lying within reach. I didn't hit him with it.
I smashed it against the cast-iron waste stack running right next to his head.
CLANG!
The sound was explosive in the confined space. The iron pipe resonated like a church bell from hell.
Elias convulsed. He dropped the screwdriver, clamping both hands over his ears, curling into a fetal ball on top of me.
"Stop! Stop!" he wailed.
I didn't stop. I hit the pipe again. And again.
CLANG. CLANG.
It was the loudest sound I could make. It was a rhythm of violence. It was a drum solo of pure decibels.
Elias rolled off me, writhing on the floor, trying to burrow into the insulation to escape the noise. His sensory advantage had become his fatal flaw. He couldn't filter it out.
I scrambled to my knees, gasping for air. I grabbed the hammer from where it had fallen.
Elias looked up at me, tears streaming down his grimy face. He looked pathetic now. Just a broken man hiding in the walls because the world outside was too loud.
"Please," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Shhh."
I stood over him, the hammer raised. I could end it. One swing.
But the noise had stopped. The only sound was his wheezing breath and the distant sirens approaching from the street.
"Officer Miller is coming back," I panted, pointing the hammer at him. "And this time, he’s going to hear you."
I backed away, keeping my eyes on Elias. I reached Sarah. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely grab the zip ties, but I wedged the claw of the hammer under the plastic and twisted. The plastic snapped.
Sarah ripped the tape off her mouth, gasping. She didn't scream. she just threw her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder.
"He was watching," she sobbed into my shirt. "He was always watching."
I held her with one arm, keeping the hammer raised with the other. Elias didn't move. He just lay there, curled up amidst the candy wrappers and the dust, covering his ears, humming a low, discordant note to drown out the world.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.