We all float downward

The elevator doors opened on the 13th floor, though the building had no 13th floor. Jacob didn’t question it. Not at first.

He was tired. Corporate accounting drained the color from everything—even the flicker of logic that should’ve told him: there’s no 13th floor in the Otis Tower. Not on the blueprint. Not on the keypad. Not in the damn lease he signed three months ago.

But here it was. Concrete hallway. Fluorescent light stuttering above like a dying insect. And at the end of the hall, a door.

Apartment 1313.

His finger twitched around the key he didn’t remember picking up.

The hallway stretched behind him—longer now. Slick and gray like the inside of something organic. Wet. Breathing.

He blinked.

The lights buzzed harder.

"Just tired," he muttered, stepping to the door. The numberplate oozed rust, or something redder. Thicker. Something like blood that had been sitting in a warm room too long.

His hand moved on its own. Key in lock. Twist. Click.

Inside: nothing.

And everything.

Darkness like thick oil poured over his vision. He stepped through instinctively, only to realize he hadn't walked at all—he’d fallen.

Down.

Forever downward.

---

When he awoke, Jacob was on the ceiling.

Or the ceiling was the floor.

Or there were no floors, only air thick enough to chew, humming with a whisper that slithered into his ears like leeches. The apartment stretched and folded like a living organism in sleep, flexing its bones and cartilage.

"Welcome," a voice said.

He turned.

No one. Only the mirror, tall and cracked, leaning against the opposite wall—or maybe the ceiling again. In it, Jacob's reflection grinned.

But Jacob wasn’t smiling.

The reflection opened its mouth and coughed out a stream of water, black and bubbling. It floated upward—or downward—and began to flood the room.

Jacob gasped, turning away.

Every surface dripped. Photographs lined the walls: his face, his apartment, his office—but wrong. His coworkers had no eyes. His cat was flayed open, pinned to the carpet with forks. His mother hung from the kitchen ceiling, laughing silently as the photograph bled.

“No,” Jacob whispered. “What is this?”

The floor squirmed beneath his feet. A sound like wet paper ripping echoed through the apartment as the walls began to breathe. Doors opened where there had been none.

From one: the sound of weeping.

From another: the shriek of metal bending, tearing, weeping in pain.

From the last: silence. The kind of silence that wraps around your skull and squeezes until thoughts scream.

He chose silence.

Inside was a spiral staircase made of bone and teeth, winding down into blackness. The banister pulsed with veins.

He descended.

---

Every step deeper was a memory.
Every turn of the spiral: a sin.

There was the time he hit the dog with his car. Kept driving. Pretended he didn’t hear the yelp.

Next level: the girl from college. Too drunk. He didn’t stop. Just whispered “You wanted it,” and zipped his fly.

Further still: his father’s stroke. Left gasping on the kitchen floor while Jacob sat with headphones on, pretending he hadn’t heard the thump.

Each memory peeled him open a little more. His skin flaked. His nails fell. His teeth loosened. By the time he reached the bottom, Jacob was raw. Shaking.

Naked before the dark.

And the dark grinned.

---

“Now you float,” said the voice.

He was in water.

Thick, black water. The kind that lives under graveyards and forgotten lakes. It filled his lungs. Filled his ears. Filled the cracks in his memories.

He struggled to swim, but there was no up. Only down.

Shapes moved around him.

Not fish. Not people. Memories made flesh.

A girl with broken legs swam past, eyes bleeding regret. A man with Jacob’s face but no skin whispered through bubbles, “We all float downward, brother.”

He screamed, and bubbles poured from his mouth. The water tasted like ash and rot.

And then—

A hand. Pale. Slender. Grabbing his ankle.

Pulling.

He looked down and saw the boy.

A boy no older than ten. Missing his lower jaw. Eyes black and wide, pupils swimming like eels.

The boy opened his mouth anyway.

"You left me. You left me there."

Jacob remembered.

1987. The quarry. The dare. The fall.

The silence after the splash.

He never told.

Never tried to save him.

Jacob kicked, tried to flee, but more hands joined the first. Wrists bone-white. Fingers sharp as broken promises.

They dragged him deeper.

Down.

Past the bones of all his regrets. Past the ruined cathedral of his soul. Past the things he thought he’d forgotten and buried.

At the bottom, he saw himself.

Not a reflection.

A body. His body. Bloated. Eyes glassy. Mouth filled with black worms. He floated there, tethered to nothing. Rootless. Rotting.

Waiting.

---

When Jacob opened his eyes again, he was in his office.

Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The monitor blinked. Outlook chimed a reminder.

It was Monday.

His heart pounded. He looked at his hands.

Still there. Still real.

He exhaled a laugh. Shaky. Relieved.

Until he looked out the window.

The sky was upside down.

Birds flew underwater.

People walked on the clouds.

He turned in his chair and saw the elevator, open and waiting. On the panel: 13.

It would never let him go.

Because once you float downward, you don’t come back.

You are condemned to suffocate in the dark.

End