The printer was screaming again.
Not metaphorically. Not some frustrating whirr. This one was shrill—an almost-human cry tearing out of Conference Room B, a sound so wrong it made the fluorescent lights buzz harder in sympathy.
Lance Mercer stood in the doorway with his coffee. Lukewarm, bitter, the kind that tasted like burnt cardboard and resignation. He sipped anyway, eyes half-lidded.
He almost smiled at the machine, like it might apologize if he looked at it long enough.
"Ctrl+P wasn't supposed to weaponize you," he muttered.
The junior analyst beside him—pale, eyeliner smudged, hair pinned back with the desperation of someone barely hanging on—spread her hands defensively.
"I swear, I only hit print."
The printer's shriek cut off mid-breath. It whirred, clattered, then hummed as if nothing had happened.
Lance crouched, flicking the panel open with one finger. A mangled paperclip dropped to the floor with a metallic tink. He held it up like evidence.
"There's your soul. Next time, maybe a prayer instead of reprints."
She gave him the usual half-laugh. The laugh everyone gave him. Polite. Empty. Already moving on.
The lights above flickered twice—too slow to be random, too rhythmic to ignore.
Lance rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, they do that."
Then, softer, "Probably."
Lance Mercer appears as a man in his early twenties, carrying the kind of pallor that comes less from ill health and more from too many hours indoors under artificial light. His rectangular glasses sat slightly askew on the bridge of his nose, lenses often smudged with fingerprints he never quite bothered to clean. Tousled strands of silvery-blonde hair fell around his face, medium in length and stubbornly unruly no matter how often he tried to tame them. It gave him the look of someone forever caught between exhaustion and distraction—like he'd just woken from a dream he couldn't remember but was still trying to piece together.
As for clothing, he wears a dark, padded jacket hung over a wrinkled button-up shirt, its seams sagging slightly from overuse. Multiple zippered compartments lined the jacket—not tactical, but the kind bought from outlet racks meant for convenience, stuffed with stray USB drives and tangled cords. A messenger-style satchel weighed against his side, its strap worn shiny where it rubbed against his jacket. Cargo pants, once a pragmatic choice for commuting and odd jobs, swayed faintly as he moved.
By the time he made it back down the corridor, the office was already waking into its usual chaos. Phones ringing. Keyboards hammering like teeth grinding in unison. Somewhere, someone was microwaving fish.
Kronos Solutions: a temple to middle-tier IT misery.
His cubicle was a shrine to mediocrity:
A Mulder bobblehead, leaning like it had given up believing.
Three succulents—two alive, one fake, because Lance kept forgetting to water them.
A doodle pinned to the partition: How to Punch a Robot.
A single Polaroid of him and his dog Dario in matching hoodies. Dario looked betrayed.
Lance dropped into his chair and logged in. The ticket queue glared back—already stacked, already impossible.
PRIORITY: HIGH. PRINTER DOWN (Conference Room B).
He snorted. Already done. Already back in the queue.
Another popped up: URGENT—VPN DOWN.
Then another: URGENT—VPN SLOW.
Then another: URGENT—VPN JUST "FEELS" WRONG.
It was always this way. Hydra tickets. Fix one, three sprouted.
He rubbed his temples, cracked his knuckles, and dove in.
By mid-morning, the place felt like an aquarium full of sighs and passive-aggressive coughs. People passed his cubicle without looking at him, or worse—looking just long enough to smirk. "Mercer, the Printer Whisperer." "Mercer, Tech Support Messiah." Every joke was the same joke, and every laugh cost him something small and irreplaceable.
He shuffled over to a workstation, the fourth VPN ticket already gnawing at his patience. "Do you need help?" he asked, voice flat but not unkind.
The woman barely looked up. "Uh—I have a boyfriend."
Lance blinked at her. His face didn't change, but his eyes—already bloodshot from too much screen-glare—flared wide, a thin vein pulsing at his temple. He stood there in silence, the hum of the cubicles filling in what should've been his reply.
From across the office, someone shouted, "BRICK!"
Lance exhaled through his nose, low and tired. "Good for him," he muttered, almost polite, before turning away, shoulders sagging like he'd just been asked to carry another corpse on top of the pile.
His phone buzzed. A new message.
Reminder: Weekly metrics meeting @ 11am. Attendance mandatory.
Lance groaned. Meetings at Kronos were endurance trials disguised as productivity. Twenty people, one agenda, zero decisions. His boss, Mr. Dalca, was a man carved out of spreadsheets and nicotine. His eyes had the sharp, suspicious gleam of someone always waiting for the next screw-up.
When Lance slid into the meeting room—late—Dalca didn't even bother with words. Just one long, flat glare across the table.
A few coworkers shifted, the scrape of chairs louder than the muted chatter. Lance muttered a half-hearted "Sorry," and dropped into his seat. The apology hung there, unanswered, before being swallowed by the droning presentation.
Dalca finally cleared his throat. "Mercer, my office after this."
And just like that, the air turned to lead.
The rest of the day blurred—resetting passwords for employees who swore they typed it "exactly right," watching the ticket count climb faster than he could breathe, hearing coworkers mutter "rough night?" every time he passed.
By 5:01 PM sharp, he vanished. A ghost clocking out with precision, slipping past the stares.
Home smelled of lavender dryer sheets and warm concrete. The floorboards creaked their usual protest as he stepped inside. His apartment was small, drafty, and unkind—an echo of himself.
He dropped his coffee cup by the door. The dregs trembled, rippling in time with the building's faint, ever-present hum.
The overhead light flickered once and died.
"Figures," Lance muttered, tossing his jacket onto a chair.
Dario's squeaky banana toy lay abandoned in the hallway. Lance bent to pick it up, thumb brushing the rubber. "Bet you regret this place more than me, huh?"
The microwave dinged. He froze. Its clock blinked 00:00. He hadn't plugged it back in.
He shook it off, grabbed ramen from the cabinet, and boiled water. Steam rose, curling lazily—then whipped upward like it had been yanked before settling again.
He frowned. "Building vibes."
The living room was a shrine of clutter:
Dog-eared paperbacks stacked like barricades.
A bookshelf leaning like it might give up at any second.
Rubik's Cubes, most unsolved.
A sketchbook full of cryptic doodles and ciphers scattered on the table.
And there—half-hidden beneath a takeout menu and a tangle of charging cables—sat the photo frame.
Lance paused mid-step.
It wasn't a fancy picture. Just his mom and dad caught off-guard at some family barbecue, his mom laughing while trying to swat his dad's hand away from stealing food off her plate. He looked about sixteen in it, awkward and hunched like his body hadn't figured itself out yet. But his mom's arm was looped tight around his shoulder. His dad's grin was wide, shameless.
The glass of the frame was cracked in the corner. Probably from when he dropped it moving in. He kept meaning to replace it. He never did.
Lance picked it up carefully, brushing a smear of dust off the glass with his sleeve.
The hum of the building, the wind rattling the balcony door, even the faint hiss of the kettle—all of it seemed to fade. He just... stared.
For a long moment, it was like he'd slipped into the picture instead of looking at it. His mom's perfume was fresh in his mind, some floral thing that clung to his hoodie when she hugged him. His dad's voice—half teasing, half encouraging—was so easy to conjure he almost mouthed the words in sync.
They probably thought he was doing fine out here. Independent. Grown. Thriving. He never corrected them.
He swallowed, jaw tight.
What was he supposed to say, anyway?
Hey Mom, Dad—everything's fine. I'm eating ramen for the fourth night in a row.
His thumb traced the frame's edge.
The kettle screeched. He didn't move.
Part of him wanted to call them. Just to hear their voices, just to ground himself in something real. But the thought of explaining anything—the exhaustion, the loneliness. He couldn't burden them. Not after everything they'd given him.
So he just stood there, staring at that frozen barbecue smile, until his eyes unfocused. His body was in his dim little apartment, but his head was back in a backyard bathed in orange light, grass sticking to his shoes, his parents still close enough to reach for.
When the kettle clicked off on its own, the sound startled him back. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and set the photo down carefully on the table—almost reverently, like he was afraid it might break further if he looked too long.
The ramen had gone lukewarm by the time he finally ate it, his attention drifting anywhere but the bowl.
He hunched over his sketchbook, pencil tapping against the margin. A square half-drawn, a line unfinished. His mind wasn't really there—somewhere between the cluttered table and the weight of the photo on the shelf, he'd drifted.
The pencil hovered above the page, line unfinished. His hand trembled faintly, not from fear but from the kind of fatigue that sat behind his eyes, dull and insistent. The quiet office world he had retreated from seemed... closer now. The echo of phones ringing, keyboards clacking, distant fluorescent flickers—he could feel them under the walls, beneath the floorboards, like a vibration that shouldn't exist in his apartment.
Dario let out a low, questioning whine from the rug, ears twitching toward him. The sound tugged Lance back down to earth. He exhaled, set the pencil down on top of the sketchbook, and rubbed the heel of his palm against his temple.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming," he murmured, voice dry but fond.
The dog stretched, claws clicking lightly against the floor, before trotting toward the hallway that led to the bedroom. His tail brushed against one of the stacks of paperbacks, wobbling the pile until it threatened to collapse. Lance steadied it with a quick hand, muttering something under his breath about "suicidal architecture," before pushing his chair back.
The apartment creaked as he moved—floorboards groaning under weight, pipes shifting somewhere deep in the walls. He turned off the desk lamp, the room plunging into shadow except for the weak spill of the streetlight through the blinds. His reflection in the darkened window lingered a fraction too long when he glanced at it, like the glass was reluctant to let him go.
He didn't notice.
Dario padded ahead, nose nudging the half-open bedroom door wider. Lance followed, one hand skimming the chipped paint of the frame as he stepped inside.
His room pressed in around him—messy, cramped, but undeniably his. Against one wall stood an old upright piano, its dark finish dulled to a matte brown where sunlight had long since stripped the sheen. Stacks of loose sheet music were scattered across the top, curling at the edges, pages sliding into one another like a paper avalanche waiting for a single nudge. A half-broken metronome leaned sideways there too, pendulum frozen mid-swing as if caught in hesitation.
The desk by the bed was no better. Books slouched in uneven towers, spines creased into unreadable lines. A cheap gaming console sat beneath the TV, its plastic surface smudged with fingerprints, a single controller perched on top with its thumbstick chewed down to raw rubber. A tangle of charging cables snaked across the carpet, knotted with dust and lint, some leading nowhere, plugged into nothing. The faint glow of the power strip in the corner pulsed like a heartbeat, too slow, too deliberate.
Above the bed, shelves sagged under the weight of more clutter—comic trade paperbacks crammed spine-first, unsolved puzzles stacked like trophies, a cracked snow globe from some long-forgotten trip. A pair of socks hung half out of the drawer below, one inside out, its gray heel stiff with wear.
The air carried a mix of scents—dog fur, pencil graphite, ramen broth cooling in the kitchen, the faint sour tang of laundry that should've been done days ago. Beneath it all, there lingered something sharper, almost metallic, threading itself through every breath.
Dario shifted on the rug, claws clicking against the hardwood. He huffed and laid his head down again, though his eyes never left the shadowed corner by the dresser. His ears twitched, then went flat.
Lance ignored it. He dragged himself toward the piano, sitting down on the old bench. The wood groaned under him, one leg uneven enough that the whole instrument seemed to tilt just slightly, like it was leaning toward him. He rested his fingers on the keys, the cool ivory chipped at the edges, their surfaces worn to a dull sheen by years of repetition.
He pressed one key. A low, hollow sound filled the room, vibrating through the floorboards and into his ribs. Another. And another. Soon, a melody emerged—halting at first, then steady, weaving between the clutter, wrapping around the stale air. The sound was warm and imperfect, notes faintly off-tune, but it softened the edges of everything else.
Dario's ears flicked again at the sound. His head lifted. He stared toward the hallway this time. His throat rumbled.
Lance didn't notice. He kept playing, eyes half-closed, body swaying gently in rhythm. The lamplight pooled across the keys, reflecting faintly in the polished black, bending slightly with each ripple of sound.
Outside the window, the city noise had dulled to nothing. No cars. No horns. Only the piano, and the faint, steady rasp of Dario's breath.
And then, faintly, the kettle clicked again.
Outside the window, the city noise had dulled to nothing. No cars. No horns. Only the piano, and the faint, steady rasp of Dario's breath.
And then, faintly, the kettle clicked again.
Lance frowned, fingers pausing on the keys. He thought he'd already turned it off. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe the timer had reset. He let the note linger until it faded, then closed the lid softly, careful not to make the strings shudder.
The room seemed heavier after the music stopped, as though the sound had been holding everything up. He rose, stretching his stiff back, and gave the clutter one last glance outside before going to his bed.
Dario followed him as he shuffled toward the bed. The dog leapt up first, circling twice before collapsing into the blankets with a sigh. Lance smiled faintly and ruffled the fur between his ears, the motion automatic, grounding.
He didn't bother changing the sheets or folding the mess of laundry crumpled at the foot of the bed. He just slid under the covers, the fabric cool against his skin, the faint scent of detergent and dog still clinging to the pillow. The glow of the power strip still bled faintly across the floor, green and patient, casting warped shadows that bent with every flicker of the lamp outside.
For a long time, Lance stared at the ceiling. His eyes traced the tiny hairline cracks in the plaster, the faint outlines where posters used to hang. Dario's breathing steadied beside him, warm and rhythmic, syncing with his own until the two were almost indistinguishable.
His body grew heavier. His thoughts blurred.
And just before sleep took him, a single piano key pressed itself down in the dark, a soft, low note rolling through the room.
Lance didn't stir.
Dario's ears twitched.
The sound lingered a moment too long before dissolving into silence.
---
The first thing Lance heard was the alarm.
Not birdsong. Not sunlight. Just the grating, factory-default beeping of his phone vibrating itself toward the edge of his nightstand.
He groaned into his pillow, reaching out without lifting his head. His fingers patted the cluttered surface until they smacked the phone face-down, silencing it. Victory.
Dario stretched at his feet, paws twitching, tail thumping lazily against the sheets.
"Yeah, yeah," Lance muttered into the fabric. "Somebody's gotta pay for the kibble, right?"
The dog yawned like an opera singer and flopped back into place. Lance envied him. He pushed himself upright, hair sticking out like a crime scene, and sat at the edge of the bed staring at the floor for longer than was socially acceptable.
The apartment was quiet. Too quiet, except for the faint tick of the ceiling fan overhead.
Eventually, he moved. Socks from the chair. Shirt from the drawer. Slacks still wrinkled from last week because ironing was for people who hadn't already given up. He dressed in increments, like pulling on pieces of a uniform he never asked for.
Button-up. Badge clipped to his belt.
Over, and over, and over, and over again.
He brushed his teeth without looking in the mirror. His reflection always felt like it had more energy than he did, which was insulting, considering it didn't even have to go to work. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like—being that version instead. Someone who seemed like they'd actually figured it out.
He spat into the sink, rinsed, and shoved the thought down. It was stupid. You didn't get to trade places with your reflection. You didn't get to just wake up as someone else. Be grateful you wake up.
Still, he lingered, toothbrush in hand, a quiet treachery curling through his brain: Wouldn't it be easier, though? To step into that skin and leave yourself behind?
He flicked off the light and left before the thought could bite deeper.
Dario padded into the bathroom doorway, sitting with regal patience, tail sweeping the tile.
"You don't have to stare," Lance said, toothpaste foaming in his mouth. "You know I'm gonna come back. It's not like I've got anywhere else to be."
The dog blinked slowly. Judgmental.
"Don't look at me like that," Lance added. "You're unemployed."
Breakfast was half a bagel eaten over the sink. Coffee reheated from yesterday because he forgot to make fresh. He dropped a piece of the bagel, and Dario snatched it mid-bounce with the reflexes of a god. Lance gave him a flat look.
"Yeah, enjoy your gluten. You've earned it."
The morning blurred into its usual checklist: shoes tied, wallet checked twice, keys confirmed three times. The ritual of leaving. He shrugged into his coat, Dario trailing him to the door with silent loyalty.
He knelt, scratching behind the dog's ears, softening in a way he didn't for anyone else. "Guard the place, maestro. Don't let the mailman take over while I'm gone."
Dario licked his chin once, firm, like sealing a contract.
The door closed behind him, and the mundanity pressed in again.
The hallway smelled faintly of dust and boiled cabbage from some unseen neighbor's apartment. The elevator groaned like it resented his weight. Outside, the same cracked sidewalks, the same half-dead trees, the same people clutching coffee cups like lifelines shuffled toward the same destinations.
Over.
And over.
And over.
And over.
And over again.
His office building was a tomb of gray cubicles and humming fluorescents. He sat. He typed. He answered emails. He filed tickets that felt less like fixing problems and more like bailing water from a sinking ship with a paper cup. His coworkers laughed in the break room at jokes he didn't bother to ask about. His boss nodded at him once in the hallway. That was it. That was the human interaction quota.
At lunch, he ate a sandwich alone at his desk, staring at spreadsheets like they might suddenly start doing stand-up.
His thoughts circled the drain.
Why am I so miserable?
He wasn't hungry. He wasn't hurt. He wasn't broke. He had a dog. He had a home. He had parents who loved him, who gave him a good upbringing, who told him he could be anything.
And still, the emptiness gnawed.
Why do I feel so… ungrateful?
By the time he got home, the sun had gone down. Dario greeted him like he'd been away for a year, paws on his chest, tail a whip-crack of joy. Lance's shoulders sagged, some weight lifting for the first time that day. He laughed—genuine, if tired—and scratched the dog's chest until Dario's whole body wiggled.
"Yeah, yeah," Lance muttered, dropping his bag by the couch. "I missed you too. Don't tell anyone."
Dinner was instant noodles again. He didn't care. He slurped them on the couch with Dario's head in his lap, watching a rerun of some sitcom he didn't even like, but it filled the silence.
When he finally dragged himself to bed, the cycle wound down. He stared at the ceiling fan. He listened to the city hum through the glass. Dario's breathing steadied beside him.
Tomorrow, he knew, would be the same.
Over, and over, and over, and over again.
And in that stillness, with the routine pressing down like a weighted blanket, the question circled back—quiet, unanswerable, sharp enough to sting:
Why wasn't this enough?
He sat at the kitchen table, half-spent pencil in hand, staring down at a crossword torn from the paper. It was something he did sometimes—pretend a puzzle could quiet the static in his brain. The room around him felt ordinary: kettle whistling faintly in the background, Dario curled by the fridge, a ray of light cutting across the floorboards.
But the squares on the page weren't cooperating.
He rubbed his eyes. Blinking didn't help. The crossword's borders seemed too sharp, the inked letters too precise, like someone had etched them with a scalpel instead of a pen.
The normalcy strained.
It was subtle at first—like the air conditioning kicking on, except he didn't own one. Like a faint vibration under the walls, a murmur threading up from the floorboards. A pressure that wasn't sound but sat heavy in his ears anyway.
He held his breath without realizing.
The crossword pulsed once, a trick of his tired vision, then steadied. He set the pencil down carefully, as though the wrongness might notice if he moved too suddenly.
Dario's ears pricked. The dog didn't growl, not yet, but his head lifted, eyes fixed on something beyond Lance's shoulder.
Lance didn't turn.
Something wasn't right.
And for the first time that day, Lance felt it: a quiet, insistent awareness that even here, in the "safe" sanctuary of his apartment, he wasn't alone. Something—or some feeling—was watching him, waiting for a misstep.
Dario shifted, growling again, louder this time. Lance glanced down, and for a heartbeat, the dog's eyes reflected a flicker of something that wasn't there before—something hungry, patient, almost human.
Lance swallowed. Tried to breathe.
Everything outside the crossword was ordinary. But Lance knew: ordinary was a lie.
After a while, he swapped the crossword for a Rubik's Cube. His fingers twisted the colored blocks in slow, uneven turns. He could never solve it completely—not without forcing colors where they didn't belong—but the motion helped. Watching the cubes fall into near-order, then drift apart, reminded him that even broken things could almost come together. Almost.
He let the cube rest between his palms, rolling it gently. The edges felt sharper than usual. He frowned. It wasn't the cube; it never had been. Something in the corner of the room moved. Not fast, not obvious, just enough to make the hairs at the back of his neck rise.
Dario's ears twitched. A low growl rumbled in his chest. Lance glanced down. The dog's eyes were fixed on the shadow.
"Great," Lance muttered, voice flat, tight. "Just what I needed. My apartment—haunted now."
He tried to force a dry, sarcastic edge, but it sounded hollow, even to him.
The room itself seemed to shift subtly. The wallpaper hadn't changed, the peeling edges were still familiar. But the corner... the corner was wrong. The light flickered irregularly, and the hum of the refrigerator pulsed in a way it hadn't before, like a heartbeat. He could hear—really hear—the faintest echo of keyboards, phones, and fluorescent lights that weren't actually there.
He pressed the cube against the coffee table, forcing himself to breathe. One, two, three.
Dario growled again, longer this time, ears flat. Lance's stomach tightened.
"Yeah," he muttered, quieter now. "This is... normal. Totally normal."
No. Not normal.
The crossword lay on the table, squares still empty, letters waiting for him. Normally, it was comforting. Predictable. Safe. But he couldn't concentrate. The room vibrated with something he couldn't name. Something observing.
He let the Rubik's Cube fall onto the coffee table with a dull clatter, louder than necessary.
The shadow in the corner flickered. Moved. Not like a person, not like a cat, not anything that made sense.
Lance swallowed. He wanted to look away. Wanted to convince himself it was exhaustion or imagination. But his body refused. His senses were screaming.
Dario barked sharply, then crouched low, hackles raised. The dog's stance was defensive, tense, completely at odds with the quiet of the apartment.
Lance rubbed his eyes, blinked. The shadow didn't vanish. It lingered, patient, watching. Waiting.
He tried to speak, but the words didn't come. He wanted to say something—anything—to remind himself this was impossible. That he wasn't losing it. That it wasn't real.
It didn't help.
He sank back against the couch, hoodie tight around his chest. The Rubik's Cube rolled slightly on the table as if nudged by an invisible hand. He didn't touch it.
"Alright," he muttered finally, low, bitter. "This is a thing. Great. That's a thing now."
Not a joke. Not sarcasm. Just... acknowledgment.
Even here. Even now. Safe was a lie. Ordinary was a lie.
Dario pressed his head against Lance's leg, growl fading into a low whine. Lance put a hand on the dog's head, trying to anchor himself. The apartment should feel like home. It didn't. Not anymore.
And for the first time that day, he realized he couldn't just solve it. He couldn't reason this out. He didn't have answers. Not yet.
Something was in the room with them. Watching.
He forced himself to his feet, moving carefully toward the kitchen. Each step felt heavier, like gravity had forgotten the rules.
The refrigerator hummed as he opened it. The cold air hit him, familiar and sharp. He reached for the half-empty milk carton.
And then it phased—flickered, almost like it had been a mirage—and vanished.
Lance froze. His hand hovered in the air, fingers trembling slightly.
"Right," he said, voice flat and bitter, "of course. That's a thing now. Milk can... evaporate?"
He leaned against the counter, staring at the empty space where the carton had been. The humming of the fridge suddenly felt like a growl. Dario's growl rose in response.
He rubbed his forehead. "Yep. Totally normal. I've just... finally snapped. Great."
He glanced at Dario, who was staring at the empty fridge like it had personally insulted him.
"Well," Lance muttered, voice dry and low, "guess it's a milk run, buddy. Looks like we're doing this."
He grabbed his jacket and keys, the dog weaving around his legs with anxious energy. Normally, he hated leaving the apartment at night—too many variables, too many things he couldn't control. But the missing milk outweighed caution.