Noah's knee jerked under the table, rattling the empty bottles. The whiskey burned his throat, but it couldn't silence the static in his head. What the hell is happening? He'd asked himself 17 times today—he'd counted—but the answers were buried under the same fog that blurred Mia's face in his memory. He had every question—except about the whiskey. No answers. Just the same loop: panic, denial, burn
The bottle slipped from his grip, rolling under the bed like a coward. He didn't chase it. His lungs were too busy collapsing, his ribs trapping a heart that slammed against them like a caged animal. Panic attack. Fifth this week. Or sixth? He clawed at his throat, fingers digging into the tattoo Mia had inked years ago—a crooked star, her "artistic protest" against his dad's military discipline. Now, it felt like a brand.
He lunged for the half-empty Jack on the nightstand. The first sip was a lie. The second was fire. By the third, the edges of the room softened, the faces in the wallpaper blurring. He glared at the bottle like it had owed him money.
"I didn't know you were that bad," he muttered to the ghost in the corner—the one with Mia's hips and his mother's disappointed mouth.
When he collapsed onto the mattress, he didn't dream. He blacked out.
---
Morning light stabbed through the blinds, cutting stripes across his bare torso. His left eye cracked open, crusted with sleep and something darker. His fingers brushed cold steel—the chef's knife. Mia's knife. The one she'd used last Halloween to carve pumpkins, laughing as guts spilled onto newspaper. "You're such a child," she'd said, flicking seeds at him. Now, the blade was streaked red, its edge clotted with dried blood.
His breath hitched. Blood smeared his arms, his chest, the sheets. Fresh, almost pink in the daylight, pooling in the creases of his elbows. The smell—iron and salt—was real. Not whiskey hallucinations. Not this time.
His lungs seized. What did I do? Who did I—
No. No, no, no—
He bolted upright. Blood webbed his arms, crusted under his nails, splattered across his chest. Fresh. Too fresh. The smell—iron and rot—curled in his nostrils, the same as the stray cat he'd found flattened behind the dumpster last week. His apartment was wrecked: the couch spilling foam, the TV cracked from when he'd thrown the ashtray. But no body. No wound. Just him, the knife, and the slow drip of crimson sliding down the fridge door.
"Fuck. Fuck." He scrubbed his hands under the sink's rusty tap, soap foaming pink.
The shower called him.
---
He stumbled in, still gripping the dishrag, his skin crawling with the phantom itch of dried blood. The water hit scalding, clothes and all. It slammed against his back like needles, branding his flesh. His shirt clung to him, translucent, revealing a map of neglect: pale skin tinged yellow, ribs jutting like a shipwreck's remains.
He peeled off the fabric, wincing as it tugged at sores on his shoulders—marks from nights spent in whiskey-soaked clothes. Under the bathroom's unforgiving LED, the truth pooled. His face was a disaster—cheeks hollow, stubble patchy, dark circles like bruises under his eyes. But it was his skin that made him freeze.
Blotchy. Not the tan he'd carried from summers lifeguarding, but a sickly gray, streaked with red like something had burrowed under it. He pressed a thumb to his collarbone; the imprint lingered, white and lifeless, before sluggishly refilling with blood.
Circulation's fucked. Or your liver's cooked. Pick a tragedy.
The water swirled pink at his feet. He stared at his hands—raw from scrubbing, nails split, black at the beds. Her blood? His? The drain sucked it down in slow, greedy gulps.
Then the reflections started.
The glass door fogged unevenly. In one quadrant, his face warped—jaw stretching, eyes yellowing into slits. Another patch showed his teenage self—sunburned, grinning, oblivious. The worst was the center panel. A figure stood behind him, breath-close. Taller. Paler. Its hand pressed over his, fingers merging with his own in the steam.
"Mia?" His voice cracked.
The figure's lips moved, but the voice came from the drain—a wet, glottal chuckle.
Noah spun, slipping, elbow cracking against porcelain. Empty shower. Empty bathroom. But the steam smelled like her perfume now—jasmine and nicotine. And beneath it, the sweet-rot stench of a butcher's dumpster.
His nails raked his arms. Not real. Not real. But the welts rose anyway, crimson tracks weeping serum. The water turned ice-cold, shocking his lungs into a gasp. He looked down. The drain pulsed, alive, drinking the blood.
---
Ding-dong. Ding-dong. TAP TAP TAP.
Three hours later? Three days? Time had melted. Noah crawled across the floor, whiskey and bile churning in his gut. The pounding intensified—tap tap TAP—a woodpecker drilling into his skull.
"Open up, you piss-stained leech!"
Mrs. Kowalski. Sweet, cookie-baking "call me Agnes" Mrs. Kowalski. Now her voice was a chainsaw, shredding through the flimsy apartment door.
She stood there, hair a rat's nest, lips peeled back in a snarl. Her eyes, sunken. Her dentures clicking. "Motherfucker! Pay my damn rent now!"
Noah blinked. This wasn't the widow who'd brought them chicken soup when Mia had pneumonia. This was something sharper, meaner, her words serrated.
He swayed, gripping the doorjamb. "But… this is my home. I own it."
"Mad? Are you mad?!" Spittle flew. "Eight months! Eight months, you shitstain! How I'm supposed to fuck around, huh? That whore Mia at least paid before she ran off to wherever whores go. You? A piece of shit!."
"Smart. The girl knew when to abandon a sinking ship."
"One month," She muttered, "or else streets are calling your name, shithole!"
The door slammed. Noah slid down the frame, lungs burning. The eviction notice trembled in his hand—a name scrawled at the bottom: Agnes Kowalski, Property Manager.
Since when?
---
A Polaroid fluttered from the fridge as she shoved past—Mia, mid-laugh, holding a charred casserole. "Our first fire hazard," she'd giggled, smoke curling around her like a halo. Now, a bloody thumbprint smeared her face. His thumprints.
No.
His knees hit the floor. The laptop glowed from the coffee table, screen cracked from the night he'd thrown it. The document was already open.
[INT. NOAH'S APARTMENT - DAWN]
The man staggers, breath ragged. He scrubs at his hands with dish soap, but the blood clings—to his skin, his teeth, the spaces between.
The cursor pulsed.
[CLOSE ON SCREEN]
New text oozed into view: "He'll try to burn the clothes. Melt the knife. It won't matter. They always find him."
"Who?!" Noah slammed his hands on the keys.
The screen glitched.
[DETECTIVE MARTINEZ (V.O.)]
"You know how this ends."
Three knocks. Wood splintering.
"Police. Open up."
"Mr. Voss?" A younger voice now. Impatient. "We know you're in there."
Voss. Not his name. Not even close.
The script updated:
[NOAH PRESSES HIS FOREHEAD TO THE DOOR. HIS REFLECTION GRINS BACK.]
He turned.
In the peephole, his own face stared back—grinning. Eyes black as static.
"Jesus Christ."