The Room That Never Stopped Breathing

Some rooms make you feel watched. Others just feel cold. But the one I moved into last year it breathed.

It wasn’t obvious at first. Just a studio apartment in a crumbling, early 1900s building, cheap rent, and close enough to the subway for my daily commute. I’d lived in far worse. But on my very first night, I noticed something strange.

As I lay on my mattress on the floor, the walls seemed to… pulse. Not visibly I wasn't hallucinating but there was a sensation, a rhythm. Like a slow inhale and exhale. Like the room had lungs.

I thought it was my imagination. City sounds. My own heartbeat. But then the feeling began to grow. Not louder closer. I couldn’t explain it to anyone without sounding insane, so I didn’t. I just kept sleeping there, hoping the weirdness would pass.

But it didn’t.

It got worse.

On the third night, I dreamed I was inside a massive chest cavity, the walls slick with moisture, the ceiling arching like ribs. I couldn’t see the door, only a pulsing red light that dimmed and brightened in sync with the sound of breathing. I woke up gasping, chest tight, drenched in sweat. My window was open, but the air in the room felt used. Heavy. As if someone had just exhaled into my lungs.

And then, on the seventh night, the door wouldn’t open.

It didn’t lock from the inside. It was just stuck. I jiggled it, slammed into it, even unscrewed the hinges. Nothing. I was trapped.

That night, the walls felt warm. Too warm. And I began hearing it — not a noise, exactly, but a presence. A wet, slithering sort of silence. I couldn’t see anything move, but I felt watched. Not by eyes — but by the room itself.

That’s when I saw the condensation.

There were beads of moisture on the walls, like the apartment had been sweating. I placed my palm against the plaster and jerked it back — it was warm. Alive.

I slept with the lights on. I didn’t sleep.

By day nine, the room knew I wanted to leave.

And I think it got angry.

The lightbulbs exploded, one after the other. My phone wouldn’t turn on. Even my wristwatch stopped ticking. I tried screaming out the window, but the sound seemed swallowed like the walls were muffling everything, digesting it.

I tried breaking the window with a chair. It bounced back like I’d hit a sponge.

I curled in the corner, trembling. That’s when I noticed the floor breathing slowly rising, falling. I thought maybe I was losing my mind.

Until the room whispered.

A voice thick, wet, right behind my ear:

“Stay.”

I ran to the bathroom the only place that didn’t breathe. I shut the door and stayed in the bathtub for what felt like hours. The silence in there was deafening, but at least it didn’t move.

When I finally opened the bathroom door, the entire apartment was dark red, like the inside of a throat. The windows were gone. The kitchen sink had sunk into the floor, warped and twisted. The walls pulsed steadily, louder than ever.

And in the middle of the room, standing in the same spot where I had placed my welcome mat just a week before was me.

Or something that looked like me.

It was smiling. But its chest didn’t move. It wasn’t breathing. The room was doing that for it.

I don’t know how I escaped.

I just remember waking up on the sidewalk out front, blood on my arms and splinters under my nails. I was screaming when a neighbor found me. They called an ambulance.

They said the apartment was empty when police arrived. Clean. Untouched. Just four walls and a floor.

But I remember.

I remember the sound of lungs that weren’t mine.

I remember the taste of air that felt like someone else’s breath.

And sometimes, late at night in my new place, I swear the floor feels just a little warm. Like something is breathing beneath it.

Waiting.