Content warnings: Body horror, transformation, existential dread, character death, erasure from reality, systemic oppression, grief, loss of agency, disturbing imagery.
This is a dark story. If you're not in the headspace for that, please skip this story then.
This story contains heavy themes and is not intended for lighthearted reading.
Reader discretion is advised.
The F train smells like piss and burnt rubber at eleven PM on a Tuesday. I wedge myself into the corner seat by the door, careful to keep my tail tucked against my leg where nobody can step on it, and close my eyes against the fluorescent glare. My feet ache. My back aches. My shoulders ache from carrying twenty pounds of cleaning supplies up and down stairs all day. Everything aches in that specific way that comes from scrubbing other people's filth for twelve hours straight.
Three jobs today. The first was a hoarder house in Astoria—some old woman died and the family hired me to clean out the bathroom before the estate sale. I pulled things from the bathtub I'm trying very hard not to think about. Newspapers from 1987. A doll with no eyes. Something that might have been alive once but definitely wasn't anymore. The son paid me in crumpled twenties and didn't make eye contact. Couldn't tell if it was grief or shame or just the usual discomfort people get around Beastkin.
Second job was an office building in Midtown. Some tech startup that needed their bathroom tiles to "sparkle"—their word, not mine—before a meeting with investors. I spent four hours on my knees scrubbing grout with a toothbrush while bros in hoodies talked about "disruption" and "growth hacking" in the hallway. They paid on time, at least. Didn't short me, didn't try to negotiate down. Just took their sparkling bathroom and went back to disrupting whatever it is tech startups disrupt these days.
Third was a move-out clean in Williamsburg. Landlord special. Tenant got evicted, left everything behind, and the landlord wanted it "move-in ready" by tomorrow. I spent three hours hauling garbage bags down four flights of stairs because the elevator was broken. Again. The landlord paid me seventy-five dollars for work that should have cost one-fifty. When I argued, he said, "That's the rate. Take it or leave it."
I took it. I always take it.
That should have been enough. Three jobs, nine hours of work, enough money to almost cover rent. Should have gone home, heated up whatever Mika left in the fridge, and passed out on the couch like a normal person.
But then came the text. 11:23 PM, number I don't recognize: $300 cash. Tonight. Address below. Bring supplies.
Three hundred dollars. For one job. That's more than I made all day.
Rent's due Friday. I'm two hundred short. The landlord already sent the late notice. One more and we're on the eviction track, and I can't let that happen. Not with Mika starting his junior year. Not when he's finally doing well, finally has friends, finally stopped asking me when we can move somewhere nicer.
So here I am on the F train at 11:47 PM with my cleaning kit between my feet, trying not to fall asleep standing up and trying not to think about what kind of job pays three hundred dollars cash for a midnight cleaning.
The woman across from me notices my ears. I see it happen—that little double-take, the way her eyes track from my face to the dark gray fur poking through my hair. Wolf Beastkin aren't exactly rare in the city, but we're not common either. Especially not at this hour, on this train, wearing secondhand jeans and a Morrison Supply work shirt that's two sizes too big.
She stands up. Moves three seats down. Doesn't look at me again.
I don't blame her. Not really. People see the ears, the tail, the clawed fingers, and they think predator. Never mind that I'm five-foot-seven and weigh maybe one-thirty soaking wet. Never mind that the most dangerous thing I've done all week is argue with a bodega cat over the last breakfast sandwich. They see wolf, they see teeth, they move away.
Fine. More room for me.
The train lurches. I grab the pole, feeling the roughness of my work gloves against the metal. Canvas, not the disposable kind. I've had these for two years. They're stained with bleach and God knows what else, but they're sturdy. When you clean for a living, you learn to take care of your tools.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out, squinting at the screen.
Mika: you coming home soon?
Me: late job. go to bed.
Mika: its a school night
Mika: for me i mean. you should sleep
Me: i will. homework done?
Mika: yes MOM
I smile despite myself. He's sixteen and thinks he's hilarious. The smile fades when I see the time. 11:47 PM. He should have been asleep an hour ago.
Me: seriously go to bed. love you.
Mika: love you too. be safe.
The train pulls into Delancey-Essex. My stop. I shoulder my kit—bucket, bottles, rags, scrub brush, all the glamorous tools of the trade—and step onto the platform. The smell hits me immediately. Every wolf Beastkin I know complains about the subway smell, but I'm used to it now. Brake dust, human sweat, the sweet-rot of garbage, and underneath it all, the electric ozone of the third rail.
I check the address again. Essex Street, between Delancey and Rivington. Close. I could walk it in five minutes if my feet didn't feel like they'd been beaten with hammers.
The street is quiet when I emerge. The Lower East Side at midnight is all closed metal gates and the occasional drunk stumbling toward their overpriced apartment. I walk past Chen's Bodega—Samira's working tonight, I see her through the window and wave—and turn onto Essex.
The building is nicer than I expected. Pre-war, five stories, the kind of place that probably got gut-renovated in the last ten years and now charges three grand for a studio. The front door is propped open with a brick. No doorman, but there's a camera above the entrance. I look up at it, wondering if anyone's watching, then step inside.
The lobby smells like fresh paint. White walls, gray tile floor, those modern light fixtures that cost more than my monthly rent. There's a wall of mailboxes, all with neat labels. I scan them, looking for the apartment number.
The text just said "3F." But when I get to the third floor—no elevator, of course, and my legs are screaming by the time I reach the landing—there's a problem.
Apartments 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, 3G.
No 3F.
I stand there, staring at the door between 3E and 3G. There's fresh paint here too. White, same shade as the walls, but newer. Shinier. And when I look close—really close, using the edge of my vision the way my mother taught me—I can see where numbers used to be. The ghost of a 3 and an F, painted over but not quite hidden.
My wolf instincts prickle. Something's off. But then again, everything about this job is off. The last-minute text. The weird instructions. The cash payment.
I try the doorknob. It's unlocked.
Of course it is.
The apartment is empty. I mean completely empty—no furniture, no curtains, no sign anyone's lived here recently. But it smells occupied. Not in a bad way. Just... lived in. Like someone was here this morning and might come back any minute. Coffee and laundry detergent and that specific human smell that everyone has but nobody talks about.
There's a work order on the kitchen counter. Not a real one, not like the ones I get from the cleaning company. This is handwritten on a torn piece of notebook paper.
Clean thoroughly. Pay special attention to kitchen and bathroom. Do not disturb anything in the bedroom closet. Cash on counter when finished. Take as much time as you need.
The cash is there. Three hundred-dollar bills, crisp and new, held down by a coffee mug.
I should leave. Every instinct I have says this is wrong. No client name, no contact info, no explanation for why the apartment number was painted over or why the place is empty but smells lived-in. My mother used to say the wolf knows before the human does. Trust your nose, trust your ears, trust that feeling in your gut that says run.
But three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars means rent gets paid. Means Mika eats more than ramen this week. Means I don't have to choose between the electricity bill and the phone bill.
I set down my kit and get to work.
Start with the kitchen. Always start with the kitchen. That's what Mom taught me when I was fourteen and she brought me on my first job. Kitchens are the heart of the home, she said. You clean the heart first, everything else follows.
I pull out my supplies. Bucket, spray bottles—one for surfaces, one for glass, one for bathrooms—rags sorted by color, scrub brush, sponges in three different grits. Everything organized, everything in its place. You can tell a professional cleaner by their kit. Amateurs bring whatever's under their sink. Professionals have a system.
The kitchen is small. Galley-style, barely room for one person to work comfortably. White cabinets, gray counters, stainless steel appliances. The kind of generic renovation that every landlord in the city thinks makes their overpriced shoebox "luxury."
But it's cleaner than most places I work. No grease splatter on the stove. No crumbs in the toaster. No mysterious stains on the counters that require the heavy-duty degreaser and twenty minutes of elbow grease. Just dust. A thin, even layer of it, like the place has been empty for a week or two but not longer.
I wipe down the counters with the all-purpose spray. Check the cabinets—empty, all of them, not even shelf liner. Check the drawers—also empty. Check the fridge—empty but running, cold air rushing out when I open the door. Someone's paying the electric bill, keeping the appliances on, but nobody's living here.
The sink is dripping. Slow, steady drips that echo in the quiet apartment. Plink. Plink. Plink. It's the only sound besides my breathing and the distant hum of traffic from the street below.
I try to tighten the faucet. Turn it hard to the right, the way my super showed me when our bathroom sink started dripping and the landlord wouldn't send anyone to fix it. It doesn't help. Must be the washer inside. Not my problem. I'm here to clean, not repair plumbing.
I open the cabinet under the sink. Most people keep cleaning supplies there. Sometimes the client leaves stuff, saves me from using my own products. But all I see is the standard plumbing—pipe going down, curved trap, shut-off valves—and a circle of salt on the cabinet floor.
Not spilled salt. A circle.
Deliberate, perfect, unbroken. Maybe six inches across. The grains are fine and white, table salt not rock salt, arranged in a precise ring. And in the center, there's a small pile of what looks like dried herbs tied with twine. Sage, maybe, and something else I don't recognize. Something that smells sharp and green even dried.
My wolf instincts scream. The fur on my tail stands up. My ears pin back against my skull without me meaning to.
I know what this is.
Mom used to make these. Back when I was little, before Dad left, when we lived in the old apartment in the Bronx. She'd put them under the doorways, in the corners of rooms, under our beds. Salt circles with herbs in the center. Protection, she called it. Keeps the bad things out. Or keeps them in.
I asked her once what bad things she meant. She just smiled and said, "The kind you don't want to meet, mija."
But Mom also believed in a lot of things. Astrology. Crystals. Energy cleansing. The kind of stuff that sounds nice but doesn't pay rent or put food on the table. After she died, I packed away all her sage and salt and little protective charms. They didn't protect her from lung cancer. They didn't protect Dad from walking out. They don't mean anything.
This is probably just... what? The previous tenant was superstitious? Paranoid? Watched too many horror movies?
The work order said clean thoroughly. It didn't say leave the weird occult stuff.
I grab a paper towel and wipe it away. The salt grains stick to my glove for a second before spilling into the trash. Static, maybe. Or moisture. The herbs smell stronger up close—sage definitely, and something like rosemary, and that sharp green smell that makes my nose itch.
I wipe those away too. Drop everything in the trash bag.
The dripping stops.
I freeze, paper towel still in my hand.
The faucet is still dripping—I can see it, drops forming at the spout, falling to the basin—but there's no sound. No plink. Nothing. Like someone hit mute on the world.
My ears swivel forward, straining. I've got better hearing than humans, better than most Beastkin except maybe the cat variants. I can hear the couple arguing three floors up. The TV playing in 3E. The traffic on Delancey. But the dripping faucet, six inches from my face, makes no sound at all.
Then: three knocks. Sharp, deliberate. From the bedroom.
My heart hammers against my ribs. Every instinct I have says leave. Run. Get out. The wolf in me is screaming danger, predator, wrong wrong wrong.
But I'm not just wolf. I'm human too. And the human part says: old building, weird acoustics, pipes settling. You've cleaned a hundred apartments weirder than this. Remember the place in Queens where the toilet made sounds like someone crying? Turned out to be air in the pipes. Remember the studio in Harlem where you swore you saw shadows moving? Trick of the light through the fire escape.
This is the same thing. Has to be.
"Hello?" My voice comes out steady. Good. Professional. I've dealt with squatters before, people hiding in apartments they're not supposed to be in. You stay calm, you stay firm, you call the cops if you have to. "Is someone here?"
No response. Just that awful silence where the dripping should be.
I should leave. Take the money—it's right there on the counter, three hundred dollars in crisp bills—and go. Let someone else deal with whatever this is. I'm a cleaner, not security, not pest control, not whatever job title covers mysterious knocking in empty apartments.
But three hundred dollars. And I've already cleaned the kitchen. Started the job. Professional cleaners finish their jobs.
I walk toward the bedroom, my footsteps too loud on the hardwood floor. The apartment has that hollow sound empty places get, every small noise echoing. My breathing sounds like wind. My heartbeat sounds like drums.
The bedroom is empty like everything else. Hardwood floors, one window facing Essex Street with those cheap blinds that come with every apartment, a closet with sliding doors. No bed, no dresser, no sign anyone ever slept here.
Three more knocks. Definitely from the closet. Sharp, precise, evenly spaced.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"If someone's in there, you need to come out." I try for authoritative and land somewhere around nervous. "I'm calling the cops."
I'm not calling the cops. I don't even have my phone out. But whoever's in there doesn't know that.
No response. But there's a smell now, cutting through the coffee and laundry detergent and generic empty-apartment staleness. Copper, sharp and metallic. And underneath it, mold. Wet and organic and wrong. Old fear, my mother would have said. Places remember violence. Remember pain.
Places don't remember anything. Places are just places.
My hand is on the closet door before I can talk myself out of it. The metal track is cold under my palm, even through the glove. I slide it open fast, like ripping off a band-aid. Better to see whatever it is all at once than draw it out.
Empty.
Just bare walls and a wire shelf and one of those hanging fabric organizers people use for shoes. No person, no animal, nothing alive. Nothing that could have made that sound.
But there's writing on the back wall. Fresh writing, finger-drawn in the dust:
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Over and over, filling the wall. A child's handwriting—looping letters, inconsistent sizing, the kind of writing you see from seven-year-olds who are just learning cursive. Or something pretending to be a child.
The copper smell gets stronger. My ears swivel back flat against my skull. The fur on my tail is standing straight up and I can't make it stop.
Then I hear it. A voice. Soft, relieved, gentle:
"Thank you."
It doesn't come from the closet. It doesn't come from the apartment. It comes from everywhere and nowhere, inside my chest, inside my bones, a voice I don't hear with my ears but feel. Like sound transmitted through my skeleton.
The temperature spikes. Warmth floods the apartment, going from cool and empty to summer-afternoon warm in seconds. The copper smell disappears. The mold smell disappears. Even the coffee and laundry detergent fade away.
The apartment suddenly feels hollow in a way it didn't before. Not empty like no one's home. Empty like no one's been home. Abandoned. Forgotten. Actually, truly alone.
Whatever was here—whatever I heard, whatever wrote on the wall—is gone.
I back away from the closet. My hands are shaking. My tail is tucked between my legs like I'm some scared puppy and I hate it, hate the way my body betrays my fear, but I can't stop it.
Nope. Absolutely not. We're done.
I'm a cleaner. Not an exorcist. Not a paranormal investigator. Not a character in one of those horror movies where someone's too stupid to run. I clean apartments, I cash checks, I go home. That's it. That's the whole job description.
I grab my kit from the kitchen—moving fast, not quite running but close—and shove the cash in my pocket. Three hundred-dollar bills, just like the text promised. My hands are shaking so bad I almost drop them.
The apartment looks normal as I leave. Just empty and clean and thoroughly, completely ordinary. The closet door is still open. The writing is still there on the wall—I can see it from the doorway, those looping childish letters saying THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
I pull the door shut behind me and lock it. My hands are still shaking. The deadbolt clicks home with a sound like finality.
The hallway is bright and normal and real. Generic carpet, white walls, the sound of TVs playing behind other doors. 3E is watching a game show. 3G has music on. Everything is normal. Everything is fine.
I take the stairs fast, nearly tripping on the second-floor landing. The lobby is still empty. The camera above the door watches me leave. I don't look back.
---
The subway platform is empty when I get back to Delancey. I sit on a bench and look at my hands. The gloves are stained. Dark marks around the fingers and palms, like I dipped them in ink. Or ash. Or something else.
I pull off one glove. The stains go through to the canvas underneath. When I try to scratch them off, they don't budge. Not dirt, not grease, not anything I recognize.
The F train pulls in. I get on, find a seat, and stare at my gloves the whole ride home.
The rational part of my brain—the human part—is working overtime. Old building. Weird acoustics. Previous tenant left weird stuff. Someone probably playing a prank with a speaker. The voice was my imagination, stress-induced hallucination, I've been working too hard.
The wolf knows better.
Something was in that apartment. Not a person, not an animal. Something else. And I let it out.
Or it let me think I let it out.
The train lurches into my stop. I stumble off, climb the stairs to street level, and walk the three blocks to my building on auto-pilot. The key sticks in the lock like it always does. The stairs creak on the third step like they always do. Everything is normal and familiar and real.
Mika's asleep on the couch, his homework spread across the coffee table. Pre-calc, from the look of it—pages of equations in his careful handwriting, the problems he couldn't figure out marked with question marks in red pen. He's got his headphones in, some video playing on his phone balanced on his chest. The screen shows some guy explaining derivatives. Mika fell asleep studying again.
Sixteen years old and he still can't sleep in his own bed half the time. Says the couch is more comfortable. I think he just feels safer out here, closer to the door, closer to me. Three years since Mom died and he still has nightmares sometimes. Wakes up calling for her. I'm getting better at pretending I don't hear him crying in the bathroom after.
I pull off my shoes—carefully, because my feet are absolutely killing me—and grab the blanket from the back of the couch. The same blanket Mom crocheted when I was twelve, cream-colored with a border of blue flowers. It's got holes now, places where the yarn came loose and neither of us knows how to fix it. But it's soft and it's hers and Mika likes it.
I cover him up, gentle so I don't wake him. He shifts, mumbling something that might be a math term or might be nonsense, and settles deeper into the cushions. His ears twitch in his sleep. Same dark gray as mine, but fluffier because he actually remembers to condition them. Mom used to braid little charms into her ear fur—beads and tiny bells that chimed when she moved. I asked her once why she did it and she said it was tradition, that wolf Beastkin in Mexico City had been doing it for generations.
After she died, I couldn't look at my ears without seeing hers. Seeing the empty space where those charms should have been. I keep mine plain now. Functional. No decoration, no charm, nothing that draws attention.
Mika's growing his out, though. Says he wants to know where we came from, who Mom's family was. I should help him figure that out. Should reach out to Mom's sister in Puebla, should teach him the few Spanish words Mom taught me, should tell him stories about her childhood.
But I work three jobs and he has homework and there's never time, never energy, never space for anything except survival.
He looks so young like this. Not the almost-adult who argues with me about curfew and college applications. Not the teenager who keeps applying for after-school jobs that I keep making him turn down because he needs to focus on school. Just my baby brother. The only family I have left. The only person in the world who's mine to protect.
The three hundred dollars sits heavy in my pocket. Blood money. Ghost money. Whatever that was money.
Was it worth it? The weird apartment, the salt circle, the knocks, the voice, the writing on the wall?
I look at Mika, at his peaceful sleeping face, at the pre-calc homework he's working so hard on because he wants to go to college and become a social worker and help people who need it.
Yeah. It was worth it.
I just hope I don't regret that later.
My phone buzzes. Unknown number. I nearly drop it.
Job well done. Will be in touch.
I stare at the message for a long moment. Will be in touch. Like this was a test. Like I passed.
I don't want to pass. I don't want them—whoever they are—to be in touch. I want to delete the message, block the number, pretend tonight never happened.
But three hundred dollars for a few hours of work. If they offer again, I'll probably say yes. That's the worst part. Knowing I'll say yes.
I delete the message. Block the number. It doesn't make me feel better.
I should shower. Wash off the day, the grime, the weird apartment. But I'm so tired I can barely stand. My legs are shaking. My hands are shaking. The adrenaline from earlier is finally crashing and all I want is to close my eyes and not think about any of it.
I go to the kitchen sink, turn on the water, and wash my hands. The canvas gloves are still on. I scrub them under the hot water, using the dish soap, trying to get the dark stains out.
They don't budge.
I scrub harder. Use the nail brush. Add more soap. The stains stay put, slick and dark against the gray canvas. When the light hits them right, they almost seem to shimmer. Like oil. Like something alive.
I tell myself it's rust. Old building, old pipes, rust in the water. That's all.
It's not rust.
The water runs clear. My hands are clean under the gloves. But the gloves themselves—my favorite gloves, the ones I've had for two years, the ones that fit perfectly and never give me blisters—are marked now. Stained with something that won't come out.
I turn off the water. The apartment is quiet except for Mika's breathing and the distant sound of traffic from the street below. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. Real sounds.
I'm too tired to deal with this. Too tired to think about it. Tomorrow. I'll worry about it tomorrow.
I grab a throw blanket from the hall closet—the thin one, the one that's not quite warm enough but is better than nothing—and curl up in the armchair across from Mika. The chair is uncomfortable, too small for sleeping, springs digging into my hip. But I can see the door from here. Can see if anyone tries to come in.
Not that anyone will. Not that I expect them to. But my wolf instincts are still screaming and I can't make them stop.
I pull the blanket up to my chin. Close my eyes. Try to breathe steady and slow like Mom taught me when I had nightmares as a kid. In for four, hold for four, out for four. You're safe. You're home. Nothing can hurt you here.
Except something did hurt me. Or changed me. Or marked me. I can feel it in my bones, in my blood, in the way the gloves feel heavier than they should on my hands.
Sleep pulls at me despite the fear. Exhaustion is stronger than adrenaline. My breathing slows. My heartbeat slows. The apartment fades around me.
And I dream.
I dream of dripping faucets that make no sound. Salt circles that glow in the dark. Voices saying thank you in empty rooms. Writing on walls that says the same thing over and over: thank you thank you thank you.
I dream of my mother, younger than I remember, drawing a salt circle under my childhood bed. "This will keep you safe, mija," she says. "As long as you don't break it."
In the dream, I break it. And something comes through.
I wake up gasping.
The apartment is dark. Mika's still asleep on the couch, snoring softly. The clock on the microwave says 4:47 AM. Three hours of sleep. Better than nothing.
I look at my gloves, still on my hands. The stains are darker in the pre-dawn light. Darker and slicker and wrong.
Tomorrow I go back to normal jobs. Office buildings and hoarder houses and landlords who short me. I'll forget about tonight. File it away with all the other weird shit that happens in this city and never gets explained. It'll be fine.
It has to be fine.
Because I can't afford for it to be anything else.