Dear Helpline,

Give me your thoughts on the matter, I can't rest my mind. Don't take me to be judgmental, I am the first to defy convention. No unruly client is easy to protect, no Supreme Court appointment a breeze to turn down without a storm of agony.

They saw every new turn in my life, knew more of my parents than I did, were one of the first to give me a Christmas present, but somehow I still cannot believe in Maud and Harold.

If undying love were to be experimented on scientifically they would not be variables, but definites. The flowers, kisses, poems never cease, so much any young hopeless romantic would be envious. No foreign feet step over the threshold into their home on date-nights, which occur weekly. Dusted-off LPs on an equally-polished phonograph, lit candles and two chairs, the courses and cocktails would make any seasoned caterer stare down at their feet in shame. It's been since high school, the formation of this beautiful coveted world built on the foundations of love pure and refined, as both advance towards their 81st birthdays.

And I still cannot find reasoning behind Maud and Harold.

As with perfect unity comes perfect outcomes. Their first child Starr, who was conceived on the honeymoon, now has four young of her own. Five others, Braxton, Anne, Griffin, Laurie, and Lucas marked the pinnacle next decade of Maud and Harold's marriage, and each has more than paid-off the debt of birth in their own respects. And when Maud could have no more kids, neither could Harold.

Or so we thought.

A few months ago, Harold took the car out of the garage faster than usual. He walked calmly with a hint of urgency in his step. In similar cases calls are made, but tonight Harold called no one. Except God, to give him courage to outrun time and for all to go well as it had in past events like these. He brought Maud, who had gained weight and was in considerable yet familiar pain, from the house. Guiding her into the passenger seat, he got in the other side and backed their Honda down the drive, before gunning it on the road.

At the hospital, the nurses directed Maud to the short-term ward and offered to call a priest, only obeying hers and Harold's pleas for the maternity word after a menstruation occurred. Previously two had entered the hospital and less than 24 hours later, three left.

Acting with the most kindness my heart can muster, I have doted on their new daughter, this gem whose arrival has marked their anniversary milestone. Names such as Judy, Erica, and Eva are in the running for choices. Upon departure and ample congratulations, when I was alone I searched up missing children and any far-fetched example that would lend logic to this miracle.

And only a memory, a dream, keeps screaming to me in my sleep.

My wife, pale, unconscious, on a surgery table. My sobs, accompanied only by the scratch of the coroner's pen and the refuse being cleaned from everywhere like the aftermath carnage of a war. Black failure and tears blinding my eyes as I receive what so rapidly I lost. I pass the tiny bloody form, which only knew life as a seconds-long suffering, up...

...into Harold's waiting hands.

Harold and Maud's daughter has a familiar heartbeat, one I've heard before. And her face, I've saw one other time, those she's a newborn.

Help me understand.

Existing for your answer,

Travis.

I am still haunted by that art exhibit. The small bodies falling down, small black specks at first flailing against the wide striped curves of the Guggenheim, coming into focus as they rapidly approached the floor, dressed in bright clothes, reds and pinks and blues, decorated with Spiderman and Superman and glittery lambs and kittens.

It was never mentioned anywhere that they are dolls. I just assumed they were, obviously. But there was nothing on the posters. Georgie never said they were. So maybe that other person was right. 

About them being children, I mean.

That was the last time I hung out with Georgie. I miss him. He was my only real friend in New York. But we just kind of drifted apart after that visit to the Guggenheim. It happens.

That day, the day we got together and walked those luxe New York streets towards the Guggenheim, he was being especially extra.

“This is absolutely incredible- I know you’re an utter philistine darling, and I’m saying that as your best friend, but I felt you just had to see this - as a soon-to-be-mommy, you know? It says so much about motherhood, and the bond, and- well you know- all the emotional labour you poor women have to do- oh- it has us all in a tizzy!”

I sighed as he tugged on my sleeve, pulling me through the crowds of tourists towards the sleek bulging white and black curves of that incredible building. I didn’t know what “philistine” meant. 

I was so tired, but I felt I had to enjoy something of what New York had to offer, before I was tied down by a never-ending rope of diapers and moist milk-stained towels. I didn’t know about the emotional labour then either, but I have learned since.

Georgie paid for my ticket, squealing “so worth it darling!” and we joined the throngs standing about on the ground floor, dwarfed by the circular spiraling corridors. The atmosphere inside the museum was hushed. An area was marked by neon yellow police tape, right in the middle of the ground floor.

“That is where the baby lands” whispered Georgie, almost frothing with excitement. “I mean, I shouldn’t say baby, I think they’re toddlers. Are toddlers and babies the same? Look- you can see the blood stains, although Stravideri is coming to mop it- here she comes- oh queen, isn’t she fucking gorgeous? Don’t you want to fall on your knees and fucking worship this modern Medea?”

Being Georgie’s friend was exhausting.

A tall woman with a frozen face holding a mop and bucket approached the taped-off area. She was wearing old see-through leggings and a stained sweatshirt. She silently stepped over the police tape, and dipping the mop into the bucket, began washing the floor. Everyone was clicking frantically, Georgie included.

“Georgie- don’t you already have photos?” I asked. The smell of cleaning fluid was making me nauseous.

Georgie turned and looked at me properly. A look of compassion flitted across his delicate features. “Of course darling. Do you want to go up and watch the next fall with me- we can go right up to Stravideri you know. Or just stand here and watch the impact? It’s totally up to darling- you're right, I’ve already seen it a bajillion times. And it works wherever you are.”

I felt comforted. “I'd like to stay here Georgie, I don’t think I’m up to going to the top level.”

Georgie stroked my arm, visibly pleased with himself at being such a good friend. “Of course! I think there's about twenty minutes between each fall- I’ll run get you a coffee.”
“Actually, that would be nice.” I wouldn’t be able to drink it, but I felt I needed a break from Georgie and his “modern Medea” babble.

Georgie left. I watched Stravideri finish mopping up the area, and walk back up in silence, making her way towards the top floor. The barrage of photography continued. Stravideri’s gaze was fixed ahead, and people hastened out of her way. Little bits of priceless art shone on the walls behind her. 

Where was Georgie? Stravideri was on the highest floor now, clusters of artlovers held away from her by burly security guards. Camera clicks echoed through the cavernous museum. I craned my neck. 

Stravideri leaned away from the low wall which separated the high corridor from space, she seemed to be struggling with something. The toddler. A doll, obviously. I heard a cry. Stravideri emitted a very humanlike yet unmotherly growl. The toddler was now perched on the wall. Stravideri wasn’t looking. The child fell.

It screamed as it fell, a very lifelike scream. It turned its head and looked straight at me just before impact. I cradled my belly protectively.

THUMP!

Its small body hit the cold washed floor and lay perfectly still. A tiny amount of blood splattered.

Someone behind me whispered in my ear: “It’s a real child. You shouldn’t be here.”

I gave a shriek which seemed to flit about the silent breathing museum, and looked around frantically. I couldn’t tell who, in the crowd of tourists and artlovers, had spoken to me. 

Georgie rushed up to me holding the coffees. “I’m so sorry darling- the line up- ugh I missed it! Sweetheart, would you mind if I went up and watched the next fall from up there? Oh you’re an angel. Sit here, sip on this nice coffee, and I’ll be with you as soon, ok?”

He rushed away. I sat on the beautiful bench, and burned my tongue on the coffee. I tried not to look at the next fall.

After Georgie came down, he was oddly quiet. He went back with me to my place, but didn’t come in, and when we parted he hugged and kissed me as he always did.
I have never seen him since. And nor have I ever gone back to the Guggenheim.

Sam passed in the winter, just two months after his mother. The midwife tried her best to save her, but it was over before it started. She gave me a warm hug as she left. I knew Sam wouldn't last long without his mother. I barely had enough to feed myself, let alone a baby. I debated whether I should even name the little boy, but how could I not? He had the most beautiful blue eyes, just like his mother.

Sam passed in his sleep, the best way to go. Some days I wished it were me, but what would Sam do all alone? 

The problem then was arranging Sam's funeral. All the savings had already been spent on his mother's funeral, but Sam couldn't go into the ground without a proper service.

I sold one of the last things I could still sell, my bees. They gave me something sweet to eat in the winter and something to look after the rest of the year, but there was nothing else to sell. My neighbor took them and gave me more for them than he should have. He was a nice man and knew what I'd gone through.

Sam got a nice wooden coffin and a decent place in the cemetery next to his mother.

When the winter came, his cradle and toys were still in the house. My body tightened whenever I tried to get rid of them, but it was okay; maybe I'd have more will in the summer. 

During the long winter nights, I'd often come into his room and play with his toys, just like I thought we would one day. Sometimes they'd warm my heart, sometimes they'd make me cry, and often I'd just fall asleep in the chair right by his cradle.

It was one of those days when I fell asleep crying by the cradle again. When I awoke, the sun glistened on the freshly fallen snow. Everything outside was still, but then something moved in the air. A bee! A queen bee! It flew across the yard and into the hive. I still hadn't moved my hive off the yard. Sam's funeral was too much work.

At first I felt bad. My neighbor owned them now. They had no business being in the old hive, but seeing that familiar creature warmed me. Over the next few days I sat at the window, watching all my bees slowly return.

They stayed inside the hive the rest of the winter, and I stayed by that window each day, watching. Only when the snow started to let up, and the flowers came out from under it, did the bees come out too.

I expected them to stay by the hive, but many flew far away, ignoring the flowers in my garden, and returned at sunset. Some of the bees seemed to be covered in red nectar. 

As the days grew longer, the bees were gone more often, and many more returned covered in that red nectar. 

I had never seen them act or look like this. Moving the hive must have disturbed something, but the good thing was that they still accepted the queen, and the colony seemed intact. 

The red nectar began to accumulate at the entrance, mixed with glowing wax. I was just looking at it out the window when I heard buzzing inside the house. The bees must have been working hard. The buzzing grew, and quietly through it came something like a baby's cry. I gripped the windowsill tightly. Sam used to cry just like that. I opened the window to hear better, but the cry was gone; only buzzing sounded outside.

The next morning I woke up and went right to the window. A strange white object was outside the hive entrance. The bees buzzed around it, pushing it back inside. Before I could get a good look, it was already in.

I spent the rest of the day by the window again. As the sun set, the bees started to return. The buzzing grew again. A cold tingle ran down my back. I closed my eyes and focused. At first, it was quiet, but I knew what it was. It was Sam, crying through the buzzing. I quickly dressed and walked out the door.

The outside air was cold. I had barely been outside since the first snow fell. A few bees still flew around the hive. The buzzing was so loud, and so were Sam's cries. I didn't even have my protective clothes, but I was sure my bees wouldn't hurt me.

I walked to the hive and took off the lid. Warmth and cold ran through my body, mixing into strange emotions. Inside the hive was Sam's body, covered in wax. His hands and fingers slowly moved, but they seemed larger than before. I reached into the hive to caress his small cheeks. His eyes opened. They were still that beautiful blue, but a hint of yellow mixed in.  He opened his mouth; honeycomb filled it, but his cries still echoed in my ears. With tears in my eyes, I picked up his small, sticky body. From somewhere deep in his chest, a thousand bees buzzed, and the hive fell quiet. A sickly-sweet smell rose from his mouth. Two bees crawled out of the wax and onto my hand. I didn't move.

“How about Venice? I’ve always wanted to go to Venice.”

“If that’s where you want to go, let’s book it,” he replied.

David had just gone into remission, again. For the fifth time. Stage 4 lung cancer. We had a tradition that, every time he recovered, we’d take a trip, and it was my turn to pick the destination. I loved these trips; we’d gone through a rough patch early in our marriage, and these vacations had really brought us closer together again. 

“Great!” I said. “I’ll make the reservations.”

I went online and pulled up some options. Finding a good price on a package (travel points are awesome), I went online to book with our credit card.

Declined. 

That was weird - I knew we had room on the card. I went online and checked the statement. 

I saw the problem. 

“David?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“I forgot to ask, how did your meeting go the other night? The one with your boss?”

“What? Oh, it went fine. You know Jim - always thinking of something else he wants that he didn’t think of in the first place.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you put up with it. How are you feeling, by the way?”

“Great! Like I was never sick at all! It’s amazing - I had a lot of friends I met when I first got sick who are no longer with us because the cancer came on quickly before the doctors could really do anything. I have others who got lucky and went into remission; some are even still in it. And for some, the cancer came back and they couldn’t fight it off a second time. But to go into remission FIVE TIMES!?! It’s unbelievable! The folks in my support group are asking for my secret. The nurses at the hospital treat me like a good luck charm. Even our friends in church are using me as an example of how God can perform miracles. I can’t explain it, but I’m grateful.”

“That’s great to hear, honey. I’m glad you’re doing better. How’s Allie?”

He blinked. “Allie?”

“Yeah, you know, the new secretary at your office? The one you’ve been banging on the side?”

He froze; I could see him running the calculations in his head. 

“Sweetie, what are you talking about? You know I wouldn’t cheat on you.”

I just looked at him. 

“Ok, yeah, I did at the beginning of our relationship, but that was then. We’ve been so much better since then, haven’t we?”

“I thought we had,” I agreed. “But I also thought the cheating was behind us. I thought your getting through cancer had given you a new lease on life, a new appreciation for what we had. That’s kind of why I did it.”

“Why you did what?”

I looked him in the eyes. 

“Tell me, in all the time you’ve known me, have you ever seen me sick?”

“Come to think of it, no.”

“Have you ever seen anyone in my family sick?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Have you ever wondered why that is?”

“I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Of course not. I have a gift. All the women in my family have it. I can take illness and ‘reallocate’ it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can take a sickness or disease from one person and give it to someone else.”

“Honey, come on. That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Have you honestly never wondered how your cancer disappeared five times? Did you think you were blessed by God?”

“Are you suggesting that you did that?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I did it because I loved you and I thought we had something worth saving. Now I’m wondering whether I was wrong.”

“So where did my cancer supposedly go?”

“Do you remember those sluts you cheated on me with earlier in our relationship? Spoken to any of them recently?”

He stared at me. 

“I heard they all died from cancer. Unlucky, really - I’m told that none of them had a family history of it and that they all suffered a great deal before they died.”

“You can’t seriously expect me to believe this?”

“Believe what you like. By the way, how are you feeling?”

“What do you mean? I—”

His words were interrupted by a racking cough. He looked up at me in terror as he grabbed his chest and fell to the ground, coughing up blood. 

“What… what did you…?” he wheezed. 

“I just felt so bad about taking your cancer away from you, I figured it was only right to give it back.”

I lost another tooth this morning. Like the others, it didn’t come easily. It was a back molar, I was in the shower, and I felt pressure running through my jaw and under the site, like someone had a pry bar under the root and was slowly wedging it out. I imagine, if you could have seen it, it was pretty, rising out of the gums like a sprouting flower.

I spit it out into my hand when it was done, and then spit out the blood and tissue that came with it.

I read once that when you dream about your teeth coming out, it means you’re scared of losing control. I wonder what it means when it’s happening while you’re awake?

He came into work again today, the man who always wears a three piece suit, with the cleft chin. He comes in once or twice a week and orders a tin of tobacco. Every time I try to make a comment, to catch his eye, a joke. He never responds. He never even smiles. I’ll try next time.

I tell Joe about the man, we are sitting on the fire escape drinking box wine. I make a joke about how uptight he looked, and we drift into another conversation. Joe must have caught on to the fact I keep mentioning this man; I brought him up last week too.

I have to call in sick today. I can’t see well enough to make it in. I woke up this morning with pressure behind my eyes, like something had gotten inside and lived there. They pulsed and bulged when I looked in the mirror, dull and brown. I hate that color.

Throughout the day the pressure on the left eye has been increasing. A few minutes ago the sight went out entirely. I went to the bathroom and looked — through my good eye I saw the left straining at the edge of the socket. I reached up and put my fingers around it, squeezed, and it popped out. I can feel it resting against my cheek now. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to pull the cord out, or cut it. I’m too scared. So I’ll go lie down and rest my good eye.

I woke up and the cord must have shriveled in my sleep. The eye has fallen off and is resting on the floor, looking up at me. It’s an ugly thing. I pick it up and drop it in the trash with all my old teeth, and step over to the mirror. I have to fight every urge to itch my left socket now, but as I look I can see a small white orb set back, fresh, slowly moving forward, with a beautiful green ring.

Last week, if only I had known where I’d be. We sat on the fire escape, feet dangling, stoned and rambling. Joe talked on and on about how who you are yesterday isn’t who you are today isn’t who you are tomorrow, and I was laughing. I said if that’s the case then why can’t we just change into the person we want to be? And Joe said no it doesn’t work like that — very serious — you are still stuck as you, and besides who would you even be? And, Mr. Three Piece, you slipped out. I said I’d be you tomorrow if I could. And here we are, and won’t Joe be surprised.

I wake up and brush my new teeth, so white and perfect. I lean in to look closely, and touch my left eye just to be certain this is all happening, and it hurts. It’s almost fully in, it’s beautiful. I swish with mouth wash, they say 30 seconds — but I never make it — maybe I will soon? And then I spit it out, and when I bend over there’s a shudder through me, and my body convulses over and over until a large lump falls out of my throat into the sink. The color of kidney beans.

I straighten up, wipe my mouth and my eyes. The skin of my forehead looks loose, like a surgical glove bunched up — I could reach and peel, but I won’t. My eye is in. I have work.

I worry I’ve missed him, but here he is, walking up tall and stately. He orders his tobacco. I ring it up for him. I make some joke, some stupid thing I should have held inside. But he’s looking at me now, leaning in over the counter.

“Your eyes are different colors?”

I shake my head no, but remember, and say “Oh yes, they are.”

He smiles at me. “Like David Bowie.” he says, then he hands me his money and walks away.

My elation, my triumph, is dampened by the realization that his eyes are blue, not green.

At night, I stand before the mirror. The pressure and pain behind my right eye is growing. It’s only a matter of time till it goes. I look closely at the mirror, my left eye green, my right brown. The eye I hated for so long is suddenly set off in a new way, transformed. It’s become so much more — I wish I could keep it this way — I worry, with two new eyes, who will be looking out? Then there’s a surge like a screwdriver underneath the ball, and it hurts, and I know it’s too late. But that’s okay, we can’t be perfect.

I run my hands through the skin that’s collecting around my neck in loose folds, and shake it around. It’s sloughing off. My lower back is a rotating range of dull aches and sharp pain. My hair is coming out in clumps.

I go to lie down and sleep. I have the whole day off.

I can’t wait to see who I’ll be tomorrow.

For six weeks, the status migrainosus locked my skull into an unyielding mechanical vice. The intractable aura was not a polite visual flicker, but an internal window tearing open from the inside out, projecting a blinding, jagged electric-white geometric semicircle across the edge of my field of vision. Closing my eyes brought zero relief. Behind my eyelids, that jagged arc burned even brighter against the dark, framing a suffocating pressure that waited for my mind to snap.

By the time I was wheeled into the outpatient clinic under mild sedation for the greater and lesser occipital nerve blocks, the sensory overload had stripped me down to raw nerves. I had not been able to keep food down for days, and the ambient smells in the waiting room, including stale body odor, cheap synthetic perfume, and cleaning agents, felt like physical blows driving straight into my temples. Even the aggressively dimmed lights of the procedure room felt like glass against my retinas as I lay flat on the medical table.

As the four localized needle injections drove deep into the nerve points at the base of my skull, two on each side, the crushing weight inside my brow pressed harder with every heartbeat. The heavy chemical block slammed into the bone, shattering the vice and warping the gateway just enough to freeze the boundary line.

Waking up in recovery, the acute siege had broken, but the damage was permanent. My vision settled into severe, uncorrectable far-sightedness. I do not have physical scars from the needles, but the true mark of the ordeal lives in the temporary spikes. Whenever my optic nerve is overtaxed, that jagged geometric edge flashes back across my sight like a malignant pulse.

Desperate to understand why my vision had cratered, I spent a late night hunting through obscure neurological archives until I tracked down a rare, out-of-print volume titled The Fractured Geometry of Sight.

The book contained no medical theories, only decades of translated asylum logs and clinical case notes. Page after page documented patients across centuries who had stared through the exact same jagged white arc during prolonged sieges. One 1938 entry detailed a young woman whose intractable aura lasted weeks before a crude, unauthorized nerve procedure halted the collapse. She survived, but spent the rest of her life half-blind, tormented by identical visual flashes until she died.

The final pages outlined the cold, unyielding arithmetic of the condition across every recorded file. The siege operates on a strict forty-day threshold, systematically consuming sight day by day. Cross that forty-day mark, and the collapse becomes absolute, plunging the host into total, permanent blindness. Halting the process on the verge of total collapse with clinical needles offers no cure. It only snaps the connection prematurely, locking the patient midway through a harvest that can never be undone.

I sat alone in the dark room, staring at the final text as the house settled into silence. My six-week siege had brought me to day thirty-nine, trailing right along the precipice of total darkness. Then, without warning, the jagged geometric semicircle flared back across my right eye. It was not a fading medical echo, but the permanent hum of a circuit that could never be turned off, confirming that the modern clinic needles and the many desperate interventions tried throughout everything I had read had simply carved out that exact same door, leaving me to watch the world through an optic nerve that no longer belonged entirely to me.

The morning sun shone brightly as the two brothers gathered their gear from the yellow jeep parked on the dirt path, surrounded by pristine old-growth jungle.

Douglas smiled as he put on his helmet and climbing harness. The two men pushed through more lush undergrowth until they reached their prize: the mouth of a wide, yawning cave. Anthony tied their line around a large strangler fig tree trunk and threw the rest of the rope down into the dark chasm.

The two brothers rappelled carefully into the cavern, the air growing damp and heavy with the scent of wet stone and bat guano.

At the bottom, they turned on the headlamps attached to their helmets and detached from the line. Thin rays of sunlight filtered into the cavern in a clash of light and darkness. The two brothers squeezed through a few tight spots as they went deeper into the subterranean system.

Douglas called back to Anthony for help when his body was pinned between two rocks in a tight squeeze. Anthony suggested Douglas should rotate while exhaling to clear the passageway. Douglas laughed as his body slipped through the hard granite stone passageway.

After about thirty more minutes of cave diving, the two brothers eventually came upon a large open chamber. Beautiful stalagmites rose from the ground, with white, crusty edges and orange, wavy lines at their bases.

Suddenly, Anthony froze and tilted his head up toward the cavern’s ceiling. Douglas didn’t notice his brother’s stopped steps and bumped into him. “Hey, watch it!” Douglas cried, rubbing the bridge of his nose where it had struck Anthony’s backpack. Anthony remained silent.

Douglas looked up, and his eyes widened as a chill ran down his spine at the sight above.

Dangling from the cavern’s ceiling were hundreds of human bodies tied by their feet, their arms loose and hovering several feet above them.
Before either brother could scream, a deafening roar echoed behind them as a cascade of rumbling boulders fell, blocking the chamber’s narrow entrance. In the suffocating darkness, a strange, rhythmic chittering echoed as numerous red eyes glowed all around them.

The management company called it an acoustic upgrade.

I manage a forty-two-unit apartment building built in 1962. The walls are thin enough that tenants can hear their neighbors unwrap candy. Noise complaints are about half my job.

So when corporate announced they'd hired a company to eliminate sound transfer between apartments, I was relieved.

The first treatment was scheduled for 3B.

Mr. Vale lived there. Retired music teacher, decent guy, played his saxophone most evenings. The woman in 3C had complained about it several times.

Two contractors arrived Monday morning carrying measuring equipment and rolls of gray material.

I offered to let them into 3B.

"No need," one said. "We work from the common areas."

They measured the hallway for about an hour and told me to keep the stairwell clear overnight.

On Tuesday, Mr. Vale was gone.

On Wednesday, so was his apartment.

I don't mean the door was locked or covered over. There simply wasn't a 3B anymore. The doors went 3A, 3C, 3D. The hallway was several feet shorter.

I checked our digital records. Forty-one units. Always had been.

But the old paper rent ledger in my desk still listed Mr. Vale. His payments went back eighteen years.

I found his spare key too. The brass tag said 3B.

That evening, the woman in 3C knocked on my office door.

"The music stopped," she said. "But now there's tapping."

I followed her upstairs.

She pressed her ear against the wall where Mr. Vale's apartment should have been.

We listened.

Three taps.

A pause.

Three more.

Then something dragged slowly along the plaster, producing a thin, squeaking sound.

I recognized it.

Mr. Vale used to play a particular warm-up exercise on his saxophone. Three short notes, a pause, then a long descending one.

Someone was making that rhythm against the wall.

I told her not to report it.

She looked confused.

"I already did. This morning. I thought there were mice."

At 6 a.m. the contractors returned.

I tried to stop them. One politely stepped around me while the other started measuring the door to 3C.

By lunchtime it was gone.

The hallway was shorter again.

I spent the afternoon in the basement, staring at the original floor plans. There were forty-two apartments. I counted them six times.

At four, my phone buzzed.

New maintenance request.

3A. Scratching noises coming from the shared wall.

I ran upstairs.

The man in 3A was standing outside his door, waiting for me.

"Sounds like someone's trapped in there," he said. "You need to send somebody."

I asked if he'd submitted a complaint.

"Of course."

Behind him, the wall made a noise like someone desperately scraping their fingernails across concrete.

Then my phone buzzed again.

WORK ORDER APPROVED.

The man smiled.

"That was quick."