The Cat in Apartment B3

The Cat in Apartment B3

The first thing Nathan noticed when he moved into Willow Court was the cat.

She sat on the rusted balcony of Apartment B3, tail flicking slowly, amber eyes glinting in the half-light like they were holding something back. She wasn’t the friendly, meowing type. She just… stared. Every time he came home, she was there—silent, still, watching.

The second thing Nathan noticed was that no one seemed to live in B3.

He asked the woman in the laundry room. “Been empty for years,” she said without looking up from her phone. He asked the super. The man’s face went tight, and he muttered, “Don’t worry about it,” before walking away.

But the lights in B3 flickered on some nights. And sometimes, Nathan swore he saw a shadow moving behind the curtains.

On his third week in the building, he came home late from work. The hallway was dim—half the bulbs were dead, their glass blackened from years without replacement. As he passed B3, something scraped against the inside of the door.

He stopped.

The scrape came again—slow, dragging, like claws on wood. Then a low, guttural sound, not quite a growl, not quite a meow.

Nathan crouched, peering under the door. Two golden eyes gleamed back at him from the darkness.

The next day, he bought a can of tuna and set it outside B3. When he returned that evening, the can was gone—completely gone, not even the lid left behind. The next night, he left another. Gone again.

By the fourth night, he decided to wait in the hallway, leaning against the wall. Midnight came. The building was quiet. Then the door to B3 opened.

It didn’t swing wide—just enough for a black shadow to slip through.

The cat.

But her eyes weren’t the amber he remembered—they glowed faintly, unnaturally, like molten metal. She didn’t look at him. She padded down the hallway without a sound, tail twitching.

Nathan followed.

She led him to the basement—where the smell hit him first. Damp concrete. Mold. Something metallic, like rust… or blood.

The cat stopped in front of a locked maintenance door. She sat, staring at it, her tail sweeping the floor in slow arcs.

Nathan tried the handle. Locked.

Then—without warning—the lights flickered, and for just a second, Nathan thought he saw something through the crack at the bottom of the door. A pale hand, pressed flat against the floor from the other side.

He stumbled back, heart pounding. The cat looked up at him, and in that moment, Nathan swore she smiled.

The next morning, he went to the super’s office.

“What’s in the basement?” Nathan asked.

The man didn’t answer right away. He stared at Nathan like he was deciding whether to tell the truth or not. Finally, he said, “The cat came with the building.”

“What does that even mean?” Nathan asked.

“She was here when I started. And when the last super started. And the one before that.”

“That’s impossible.”

The man’s gaze was steady, almost cold. “Don’t feed her again.”

Nathan didn’t listen.

That night, he followed her again. This time, she didn’t go to the basement. She led him out into the alley behind Willow Court, where the streetlights barely reached. She sat at the far end, tail curling in the shadows.

When Nathan stepped closer, he saw they weren’t shadows at all. They were stains. Dark. Old.

The cat’s golden eyes fixed on him—and then, slowly, she turned and walked back toward the building.

Nathan followed her all the way to B3. The door was ajar now, as though waiting for him.

Inside, the air was cold. The walls were bare. And in the middle of the living room was a single thing: a chair, facing the corner.

The cat jumped onto it, curling up.

Behind the chair, in the shadowed corner, something moved.

Nathan’s breath caught.

The shape was human—small, frail—but its head turned in an unnatural, twitching motion. A voice came from the dark, rasping, as if the words had been unused for decades:

“She brings them here.”

The cat’s golden eyes glowed brighter.

And before Nathan could move, the door to B3 slammed shut.

The Cat in Apartment B3 — Part Two

The slam echoed like a gunshot. Nathan spun toward the door, grabbing the handle. It didn’t budge.

The cat’s eyes caught what little light there was, gleaming unnaturally bright, twin coals in the dark. She didn’t hiss or growl—she simply watched, tail swaying slowly, deliberately, like a pendulum counting down.

Behind the chair, the shadow moved again. Nathan’s instincts screamed at him to leave, but the cold certainty in his chest told him he wouldn’t—not easily.

The figure stepped forward. It was a man, though his skin looked almost translucent, stretched too tightly over his bones. His eyes were hollow, and his voice was a whisper that scraped like dry leaves.

“She brings the ones who can see her.”

Nathan’s mouth went dry. “See her?”

The others… they just see a cat.” The man smiled weakly, and the skin on his cheeks cracked like old paper. “But you saw her eyes. That means she chose you.”

Nathan swallowed hard. “Chose me for what?”

The man tilted his head toward the floor. “The basement.”

Nathan’s breath came faster. He thought of the locked maintenance door, the pale hand he’d seen. “What’s in the basement?” he asked.

The man’s smile widened, and Nathan noticed his teeth—or what was left of them—were blackened, rotten.

“Her door.”

The cat leapt down from the chair, landing with a sound that was far too heavy for her small frame. She walked to Nathan, brushing against his leg. The touch was freezing, the cold soaking into his skin like ice water.

The man in the shadows took a step back, as if afraid of her. “Once she opens it,” he said, “you won’t come back up.”

---

The next thing Nathan knew, he was standing in the basement corridor. The door to B3 was gone, replaced by the peeling gray walls of the lowest level. He didn’t remember walking here.

The cat sat ahead of him, facing the maintenance door. It was wide open now, the smell rolling out so strong it made his stomach turn. The air was damp and warm, like a place that had never seen sunlight.

Inside was only darkness.

Nathan took a step forward, his hands trembling. “What’s in there?” he whispered.

The cat turned her head toward him—and for the first time, she spoke.

Not a meow. Not a growl. Words.

The darkness seemed to pulse. Shapes moved inside, shifting and writhing like things alive. As Nathan stared, he thought he saw faces—people he remembered, and people he didn’t—pressing out from the blackness, their mouths opening in silent screams.

He staggered back, but the basement wall was suddenly behind him. The cat stepped into the doorway, her body elongating, shadow stretching far beyond her small frame.

“Come,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost kind. “Once you enter, you belong to me.”

Nathan’s body moved forward despite the panic screaming in his mind. His feet hit the threshold. The air beyond the door was impossibly cold, pulling him in like a tide.

And then—he felt claws sink into his ankle. Not deep enough to break skin, but deep enough to hold him in place.

The man from the apartment was there, his skeletal hand gripping Nathan’s arm. His eyes were wide with desperation.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “Don’t give her another.”

The cat’s golden eyes flared, and the man screamed—a dry, tearing sound—and crumpled to the floor. His body began to dissolve into shadow, drawn into the doorway.

The cat turned back to Nathan, expression unreadable.

“Last chance.”

They found Nathan’s apartment empty three days later.

No one saw him leave.

But the cat was back on the balcony of B3, tail curled neatly around her paws, watching the parking lot below.

And if anyone looked close enough at her golden eyes… they might swear they saw a human silhouette trapped inside, pounding at the glass from the other side.