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I have reached the end of my rope.

Noise has been pouring into my apartment all night, extinguishing any goodwill I might’ve had towards my upstairs neighbors. The boom of a disgruntled man’s voice accompanied by the shrill censure of an unhappy woman rattles through the ceiling. The chiptune music of a retro video game jolts my weary bones and I have reached my limit. Had it been the first time this had happened, I would have put my AirPods in and endured a night of fitful sleep. But this is the third night in a row, and the principle of respect has finally outweighed my reluctance to engage in conflict. Also, I have an exam tomorrow.

I move my hand over to my bedside table, where it clamors for my phone. The bright light of the lock screen streaks across my room like a comet tail. The time blares at me against the backdrop of Spyro, the aging family alsatian, lounging on a rustic patio chair.

2.45 am

I shuffle to my front door with sleep still clinging to my limbs like ivy to a trellis. I grab my coat from the hook by the door and throw it on over my gingham pajamas. For a moment, I hesitate. Perhaps I should just email Shirley, the building manager— a stout woman with a temperament built to withstand the buffeting blows of discord. But just as I move to shrug my coat off, the sound of hammering reverberates through the drywall. This has to stop.

Being spurred on by righteous indignation, I storm down the fluorescent hallway to the elevator, press the up button and watch the clunky metallic doors part instantly. Once inside, my fury-filled finger jabs the button numbered 3. I shake all the fatigue from my bones.

“Excuse me but are you aware of the time?” I rehearse my opening words as the iron mandibles of the elevator clamp shut. I also practice the withering glare that will accompany my sharp-tongued reproach. My face contorts in distaste. Perhaps I should soften my approach; try to be less antagonistic.

“I’m sorry, but would you mind keeping it down? I have an exam tomorrow and I really need to sleep.” This request is more plaintive and I hope that the weary face that goes along with it will inspire an adequate amount of pity in my noisy neighbors. Only someone truly heartless could ignore the pleas of a sleep-deprived grad student.

Ding.

The glinting silver of the elevator doors retreats to unveil the third floor. I am immediately greeted by a pinching chill. A murky hallway stretches out before me. It smells of damp and dread. The paint on the walls is peeling off, coat by coat, as if the walls are trying to molt their skin. The bickering voices and the blaring music that lured me out of bed are nowhere to be found. Instead, I am met with stiflingly sedentary air and an eerie stillness.

The entire fourth floor is lit by a dusty green bulb that hangs suspended from a pendant light fixture in front of apartment 403. I live in apartment 303.

My entire body is racked with hesitation.

I swiftly lift my hand and press the button that would transport me back into the comforting arms of floor 3, but the metallic jaws of the elevator don’t move. The swinging green light begins to flicker and buzz. I feel strangely drawn to the bulb’s spasmodic bursts (a glitchy morse code that triggers my feet to take its first steps into the unsettling passage).

I am now standing in front of apartment 403. My eyes are looking directly into the inky pupil of the peephole. My hand fists and rises to greet the weathered plywood but before I can knock, I hear the snick of a door opening.

I freeze.

The coat I am wearing — built to endure the harshest of minus temperatures — can’t stave off the cold that grips my body and wrings it like a limp rag. My eyes funnel forward towards the unprovoked handle in front of me. The door creaks open by a small margin, as if nudged by the same frigid fingers that have kneaded fear into my marrow. The opening offers a tiny sliver of the apartment’s inky interior.

My panic has swaddled me into stillness. I stand, fixed in place, for an unknowable amount of time. The moments I spend standing in front of door 403 seem to exist within a vacuum — an arrested reality. Eventually, the debilitating skeins of fear wrapped around my limbs slowly start to unravel. My chest finally expands, allowing me to truly feel the profundity of what it means to breathe in and then out again. The rush of oxygen is dizzying. It rushes through my veins, roiling my curdled blood. Vitality crashes over me. My mind blazes with a clarity of purpose that can only be forged in the heat of adrenaline.

I have a decision to make.

I can either pass the threshold of the door that has just opened to me in a grim show of hospitality, or I can flee the hall of shadows — running as far as my feet would be willing to carry me. The decision seems easy enough to make. Any person with even the slightest inclination towards self-preservation knows that entering apartment 403 spells danger. But the longer I spend in the liminal timescape of the fourth-floor hallway, the more muddied my instincts become. Rational thought has evolved into an amorphous construct and the idea of going back to my apartment suddenly seems cowardly — illogical even.

I step into the pitch-black belly of 403.

I don’t know what to make of this.

I have been staring at the computer screen in front of me for some time. My unblinking eyes have adjusted to the only source of light in the dark and ascetic living room of apartment 403. After entering the apartment, it quickly became apparent to me that it is vacant. Not only is there no other physical presence but it also lacks any of the warmth necessary to sustain human life.

The very apartment that has been raining fury down upon my head for three nights in a row, stands completely desolate. It is devoid of any furniture or trappings save for an antique Windsor chair and a dormant computer screen planted on a desk in the center of the open-plan living room. I am currently sitting in this chair, staring at the giant monitor; confounded.

The scene in front of me is shockingly pedestrian. It’s a view of a street lined with a 24-hour Punjabi deli, a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint called Geronimo's, a door that leads to an underground parking lot, an acupuncturist and a bus stop.

This is a familiar view.

The same view that, for better or worse, greets me every day when I step outside my apartment building. My street. Adero street.

Under surveillance.

I’m looking at a stale slice of urban life. It’s footage of people, buses, birds all buzzing about their business, completely unaware of an all-seeing eye watching them. A number of things strike me as strange about the surveillance footage. The first is the time of day: 10.15 am according to the time stamp. The footage must be pre-recorded. The second is the bus stop. In the footage I’m watching, the stop opposite my apartment block is fully operational. I notice it because, for the last month, I’ve had to catch the bus two blocks down. The bus stop I'm looking at has been under construction for just as long.

And then I see it. The thing I have been waiting to see.

I see myself.

I’m walking into the camera’s view to stand and wait under the bus shelter.

I see a bus pull up to the stop. The side of the bus boasting an advertisement for the latest Marvel movie. The words, NOW IN CINEMAS, written in bold block letters underneath the face of a self-gratified-looking actor. A movie I’ve been anticipating for months.

A movie that’s only coming out next year.

My disbelief is debilitating. I feel my eyes watering from the lack of blinking. The atmosphere has been sapped of all breathable air. The bus on the screen pulls away, with me on it.

The computer screen turns black and I am ensconced in complete darkness. The weight of what I have just witnessed turns my mind to mush.

How can I trust what I saw? This floor seems to warp time—reality. The toxic green vapors of the fourth floor have settled in my mind and perverted my faculties.

Apartment 403 has lured me into its gaping mouth.

I don’t think I can leave.

I don’t think I want to.