It started with the walls.
At first, I thought it was the wind, the soft groan of old wood, the creak of pipes expanding. But then the whispers began.Not outside. Inside.
They came from the cracks in the paint, from behind the shelves, from the spines of books that hadn't been opened in years. Sometimes I could make out words. Sometimes they were just sounds, breathless, wet, urgent.
I pressed my ear against the wall once.Big mistake.
There was a voice, low, close, like someone speaking through cupped hands.
"You shouldn't have taken it."
I stumbled back so hard I hit the desk, scattering pages everywhere. The manuscripts fluttered across the floor like birds, and as I picked them up, I realized each one had changed. New lines. Handwriting that wasn't mine.
"You wrote my death into silence.""Now silence writes you."
I wanted to scream, but the apartment seemed to inhale with me. The air thickened, the temperature dropped, and the whispers multiplied, rising and falling in waves, overlapping each other until they sounded almost human.
I could swear they were saying my name.Over and over.Sometimes soft. Sometimes angry. Sometimes pleading.
"A.K.""A.K.""A.K."
I ran from room to room, covering my ears, but the voices followed. They were in the vents, the faucet, the electric hum of the fridge. Even my own breath sounded like it carried someone else's words.
When I turned off the lights, the whispering grew louder.When I turned them back on, the room seemed to shift, furniture slightly moved, pages rearranged.
I thought about leaving, but every time I reached the door, the knob was freezing cold, and the whispers pressed closer, like the walls themselves were holding their breath.
By midnight, I sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by the scattered drafts.And that's when I realized the whispers weren't random.
They were reading.Every single one of them was reading me.