I had worked construction for the better part of my twenties before the accident. I never had the know-how to get into engineering school like my parents wanted for me, but I preferred to work with my hands anyhow. 

Jobs came and went, contracts ended, but ultimately I always had a site to work or a building to put up. When the Whitlam-Hawthorne Group offered me a foreman position for the construction project of their new headquarters, I accepted in a heartbeat. Job security from a company like WHG, with a salary I’d only dreamed of and benefits to match? I thought it would be stupid not to accept.

The foundation had barely been poured on the site when the collapse happened. No one knew who exactly was to blame, whether it was the surveyors, the engineers, or just some freak accident, but those of us caught in the rubble only had the parent company to point our fingers at. Three men dead and thirteen injured was apparently a serious enough legal threat that Whitlam-Hawthorne opted to offer us each a generous settlement outside of court. You can judge all you want that my silence was bought, but six zeroes on a check would buy yours too. 

In addition, they also offered me a “systems” job I’d be able to work from home, and even a reduced renter’s rate at one of their apartment complexes, in a unit that would accommodate the wheelchair I’d be confined to the rest of my life. Until then I didn’t even know that they owned any residential properties, but the complex looked decent enough on the pamphlet they sent me. After all, I certainly couldn’t live alone in my current fourth-floor apartment anymore.

I moved in near the beginning of February last year. I won’t lie, the adjustment to everything at once hit me a lot harder than it should have. Overnight I had gone from working outside every day to being restricted to a wheelchair I had no intuition for using and being stuck inside all day long. My hard hat and boots swapped for a work laptop and a filing cabinet. The depression caused by my new situation was only worsened when I got settled in. 

It was embarrassing how little I owned that would still be practical given my new lifestyle, so it didn’t take long for the movers to bring everything over. I was moved in less than a day after I got out of the hospital. 

The apartment was a first floor unit for obvious reasons. The second and third floors each had units with patio balconies that extended an outcrop over my minuscule, fenced-in “yard”. As a result, the already tiny windows in my living room barely got any sunlight during the day. Off to the side of my living room, I had a kitchen with lowered countertops and extended storage space on the lower shelves. My bedroom was spacious, with a wheelchair-accessible closet, and a roomy attached bathroom. I wish I could say I was thankful, but the accommodations only reminded me that I’d never live the same life again.

Please don’t get me wrong- I’m absolutely not one of those guys who sees disability as something that makes someone lesser. My aunt was a wheelchair user when I was growing up, and I had an older brother with special needs. Both of them had my respect for as long as they’d lived. 

But both of them had died because in one way or another, they depended on something that couldn’t be provided for them. In her old age, my aunt fell out of her chair at home one day, and didn’t have the arm strength to crawl back up or reach the phone. The medics said that her pets had begun to eat her even before she died. My brother ended his own life because my parents refused to get him the help he needed. I still won’t talk to my family for that.

And now, after almost thirty years of independence and ability, it seemed as though every one of my prospects was ripped from me, and I was entirely dependent on the company that had caused it. In short, I was very, very bitter. 

In June of that year, it was as hot as it had ever been in my state. By then I’d settled into a dull routine- wake up, do a few arm exercises before I showered, eat breakfast, and then try to get some “work” done before lunch. What I did could barely qualify as work, but it seemed like the company thought it would be better to have me under NDA and payroll than risk me suing. Once lunch came around, I would check my fridge for groceries, and add what I was running low on to my weekly mobile delivery order. It was so much easier to have someone else leave groceries at my front door than to find a way to actually get to a supermarket. 

I’d found a routine where I honestly never had to leave the apartment. I avoided human interaction those days, so it was easy to stay inside. The only voices I heard for months were my neighbors. From what I could tell, I lived underneath a married couple that never stopped fighting, and in the unit next to me there was an older woman with at least a couple more cats than our lease allowed.

On one particular morning mid-June, as I got out of the shower and dried my head, I opened my eyes to find that the power in my apartment had suddenly gone out. It was inevitable- everyone on the block had to have their AC units on blast. I finished drying off and for the first time since I moved in, rolled over to the curtained sliding door attached to my living room and went out into my small yard, where I knew I’d find the breaker box. The outside air was hot and heavy, and as I watched my toes brush against grass that they couldn’t feel, I noticed that without the noise of the AC units running outside, it was very, very quiet. Not even the sound of insects or birds filled the morning air, and for a moment, I let the morning sun rest on my face before it would rise behind the patio overshadowing my yard. For as short as it lasted, the peace that overwhelmed me was blissful. 

The silence was interrupted by the sound of a sliding door from above. Creaking wood and the sound of footsteps, followed by the familiar arguing voices I’d grown painfully accustomed to.

“If you don’t want to fix it, then I will!” The wife’s voice grew louder as she moved above me. 

“I never said I wouldn’t do it, I said give me a damn minute to put my shoes on. Why do you always-“

I zoned out as their arguing continued above. Even the briefest joy was fleeting, I thought as I opened my own fuse box and flipped the breakers. I heard my AC unit whirr to life from outside my fence, muddying the soundscape once more with its mechanical whine. At least it drowned out the arguing above.

As a struggled to figure out how to wheel back over the lip on the sliding door, I heard the arguing stop, and the couple’s sliding door slide shut and close above me. I managed to get back inside, and hoped I wouldn’t have to go out again anytime soon.

I’m ashamed to admit that was the last time I went outside for months. I’d gone no-contact with the rest of my family years ago, and what few friends I had lived out of state. I had no reason to go out anymore, so the summer’s heat paired with my depression only forced me inwards. Wake up. Shower. Eat breakfast. Work all day. Sleep. 

Even the arguments upstairs and the occasional meow from the unit next to me became monotonous. I drowned as much of it out as I could. The same voices, the same fights, the same cats misbehaving, day in and day out. In fact, as much as I tried to ignore it, sometimes I couldn’t help but listen in.

The woman who lived above me, whose name I gathered to be Claire, was seemingly unemployed. She rarely spoke unless it was to accost her husband for wrongdoing or to complain. Her husband, whose name was… Jackson? Jason maybe? He seemed to have some anger issues, but seemed more defensive than aggressive. Cold and distant paired with irritable and sensitive. A perfect storm.

I never gathered the cat lady’s name. Instead, I became very familiar with Greta, Priscilla, and Tom. Every day, the woman would try to quiet Tom for crying too loud for food, and sometime in the afternoon she would accost Greta and Priscilla for fighting over a nap spot in the sunbeam. Having natural sunlight enter the room sounded like heaven. 

The voices were my only human connection. It was mid-September, when I attempted to clear my throat of my developing allergies, that I realized I hadn’t heard my own voice in months. I cried myself to sleep that night, feeling more alone than I’d ever been.

By October, the isolation became unbearable. I found myself listening to the voices more than I ever had wanted to, quieting my apartment as much as possible just to catch them when I could. The same fights, complaints, meows. They became my friends, my comfort.

One night, out of some sense of desperation, or maybe just a form of entertainment for myself, I started responding.

It wasn’t much at first—just a quiet whisper in response to Claire’s complaints. When I heard her hiss, “You never listen to me,” I whispered, “I’m listening.” When Jackson, or Jason, or whatever his name was, sighed and muttered, “Christ, I can’t do this,” I chucked and stuttered out a quiet, “Me neither.”

I don’t know why I kept it up. Maybe just to hear my own voice. Maybe because, in a pathetic way, it made me feel like I was connecting with someone. I knew it was stupid and illogical, but it made things feel just a little less empty.

It became a kind of game for me. Each night, I sat in the dim light of my apartment, sipping from one drink too many, and I listened. I let their words become ours. The fights, the meows, the mild chit-chat. When Claire snapped, “You never take me seriously anymore,” I whispered, “of course I do.” When the old woman called out to Tom, scolding him for knocking something over, I grinned and mumbled, “Bad cat.” It was more than a game, it was all I had. 

Then, about a week after I’d started, I noticed it for the first time. 

Claire had just shouted, “For once in your life, admit that I might be right.”

I responded instinctively, “Why should I when you’re wrong?” 

Before I could finish my words, from above, her husband’s voice exclaimed back to her, “But why should I when you’re wrong?”

I paused. For a minute or so, I sat intently listening. I knew her words had sounded familiar, but had I heard them have the same argument before?

I brushed it off at first. Of course it sounded familiar; I’d been listening to their fights for months, I’d probably heard them bring up the same talking points a hundred times. Often enough that subconsciously, I probably just knew what he was likely to say.

But then, the next day, it happened again.

“Is it that hard to get your my car’s registration done? I’ve been overdue for almost a week,” Claire snapped.

And I knew for a FACT that I had heard that before. Not just something like it—those exact words, in that exact tone, in that exact order. That in itself could have been explainable, except the first time I’d noticed it had been in August. Her registration hadn’t been expired for a week at this point, it had been almost 2 months. 

I turned off my AC and listened harder. My heart thumped against my ribs.

“If it’s no big deal why can’t you go get it done for me?”

There. She’d said that part too, I thought. 

I swallowed and realized my mouth had gone dry, my palms beginning a cold sweat as I grappled with the feeling that they’d done this all before, many times. 

Coincidence. That’s all it was. Maybe their fights really were that predictable.

I told myself to ignore it, but I couldn’t.

That night, I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, my ears straining to pick up what was being said above me. I tried to convince myself I was just being paranoid, but something felt… wrong. 

That next day, I kept notes of what little I could hear around me on my computer. In the past, I paid little attention to what was being said and when, but on that day I was meticulous. I kept every fan off, I didn’t run my laundry, I skipped my shower, I did everything in my power to keep my home as quiet as possible to maintain the ability to transcribe every word being said. 

From the old woman next to me, 8:15 AM:
“Oh Tommy Tom, be quiet. I fed you already.”

From upstairs, 8:17 AM, Claire on the phone: 
“Yes, he left for work. No, it’ll just be me here until he comes home for lunch.”

12:32, upstairs again.
“Jason, I told you not to slam the front door when you come in, you scare the hell out of me every time!”

All throughout the day, anything that I could struggle to make out, I made note of.

The next morning I awoke earlier than usual. I had my notes, and I had some time, so I showered and made my way to the middle of the apartment to listen once again. 

I sat eagerly waiting, checking my watch and waiting for signs of life. Then, from the apartment adjacent to mine, at exactly 8:15 in in the morning, the woman began to speak.

“Oh Tommy Tom, be quiet. I fed you already.”

8:17. “Yes, he left for work. No, it’ll just be me here until he comes home for lunch.”

And more. All morning long, I listened in awestruck silence at my entire day’s transcription being reenacted word-for-word, minute by minute. By the time 12:32 rolled around and Claire complained about the door slamming, I was sickened to realize that on neither day, nor any other, had I ever actually heard their door slam shut. 

As if the same script was being read over and over, just muffled enough and just faint to keep me from noticing. 

I needed air, so I did something I hadn’t done in months.

I left my apartment.

I struggled to wheel out into the complex’s courtyard, squinting against the sunlight, the fresh air strange but refreshing against my skin. The apartment building wrapped around in a neat, uniform U-shape, with a mirroring building just across the narrow parking lot. The second and third-floor balconies of each building were stacked like dull concrete shelves above my head.

I looked up at the couple’s unit just above mine. The small windows all had their blinds wide open, but I couldn’t make out movement inside. 

I wheeled turned to look at the unit next to mine, where the old woman lived. Blinds open, but the same- no movement inside.

I realized quickly that every unit in my building, and the building across the way, was the same.

Blinds open. No signs of life.

I sat there for nearly an hour, watching. Not a single shadow moved behind the windows. No doors opened. No one entered or left the building.

The silence pressed against me as I realized that not only were there no people visible to me, there was no movement at all. 

No birds.

No passing cars.

No distant voices from other tenants.

Just the wind and the faint mechanical hum of the AC units.

Living isolated will do strange things to your mind. It’ll make you keep track of things that societal norms would normally remind you of, but it also makes you ignore glaring truths right under your nose. It wasn’t until I sat there, utterly confused, that I suddenly realized that I had never seen my neighbors. Not once.

Not leaving their doors. Not in the parking lot. Not on their balconies, despite hearing their voices out there almost every night. I hadn’t even spoken to anyone in person when I moved in- I’d filled out all of my paperwork online, and I had been driven here by a company vehicle when the movers said they’d brought everything over. 

A sick feeling crept into my stomach.

I had lived here for eight months. Eight months of hearing these people argue, of hearing the woman behind me talk to her cats. And I had never once seen another human being in the flesh.

The implication had barely begun to set in when, almost in reaction to my realization, the blinds in the apartment next to mine suddenly closed shut. They were followed only a few seconds later by those belonging to the unit upstairs, and in almost a cascade, all of the open blinds for every unit in the building were closed. 

I moved faster than I ever had in my chair. I wheeled quickly out of the little courtyard, and into the parking lot street. Surely, there had to be a leasing office somewhere nearby.

As I reached the lot, I looked both ways and saw only rows and rows of identical buildings, the blinds on each slowly closing, the movement rippling away from me for what seemed like miles of units. I had never realized the scale of the complex. 

As I hustled to find any building that stuck out, I noted that I still saw absolutely nobody. Empty cars parked in lots, bicycles leaning against fences, varying patio furniture, even children’s toys left on sidewalks as though they’d be returned to shortly. All signs of life, but without any life at all to be seen.

After about 20 minutes of searching for any indication of an office, I returned to my home. My arms were exhausted from moving more than I had in a long time, and I knew I couldn’t keep searching forever. 

I made it back to my unit not long after. With the surrounding windows blocked from view by obtrusive blinds, my home felt bleak, solitary among the rest of them. It didn’t help that I knew that somehow, I really was the only one here.

I made it back inside, and closed the front door behind me. Not one second later, as I turned to go to my room, a chime startled me, and I realized that my doorbell had been rung. 

I immediately turned back to reopen door, but outside there was no one to be seen. Just my weekly grocery delivery sitting neatly on my doormat, impossibly waiting where it hadn’t been only five seconds prior.

The following days were a blur. Had there actually been anyone outside to look at my apartment, they would have seen me wildly going from window to window, peering through blinds like a tweaker waiting on a package. 

For about a week, all of the arguing, the meowing, the idle conversation that had repeatedly permeated my walls went absolutely silent. Whatever was going on, it caught wind of my curiosity and stopped, as though to gather itself and prepare. And prepare it must have, since when the sounds of human voices and interactions reappeared a week later, they’d changed. New arguments, new discussions, even a new cat supposedly added to the bunch.

The second day that the voices were back, I noticed that they were different from the day before. The conversations were new the next day as well, and the day after that. For seven days, I almost allowed myself to believe that maybe I’d been imagining things. I even began to hear the occasional car outside, slowly creeping past. Maybe something I somehow hadn’t noticed before?

On the eighth day of the return of the noises, however, my heart sank. Repeated phrases, returning arguments and interactions that I’d already hastily taken note of one week prior. The next day followed suit- they’d learned, but only a little bit. Whatever loop was being played for me was now a whole week’s worth of audio, not just a day’s worth. Even the passing cars returned exactly at the times I’d remarked the week prior, but now that I was looking for them, I could tell that they were driverless. 

Two weeks had passed since I left my apartment, and a thought occurred to me. What would happen if I tried to interrupt the routine?

I checked my notes of the prior two weeks, and began to prepare a plan. The next day, the old woman would chastise her cats for ganging up on the new kitten at exactly 9:13 and 3 seconds. However, I would knock on her door at 9:13, hopefully forcing whatever charade was about to be performed for me to have to adjust. 

The next morning I prepared myself. I shaved for the first time in weeks, and I made sure I looked as presentable as possible. I couldn’t give them any reason or excuse to not open the door for me. 

I waited in front of the door for about two minutes, my eyes locked onto my wristwatch and my ears as alert as they’d ever been. 

The very second my little Casio turned 9:13, I knocked as loudly as I could without sounding aggressive, and was sure to stop knocking in less than the three seconds it would take her to start speaking. 

I waited with bated breath, far longer than I think I should have. Three seconds felt like a minute, and by the time an actual minute rolled around, hours had gone by in my mind. 

I was satisfied enough with my ability to interrupt the cycle, and as I turned my chair to return back home, something spoke to me from behind the door. 

“Who is it?”

Three words. Three NEW words, spoken undeniably in response to me. But whatever was speaking to me was not an old woman, I don’t know if I could even call it human. The words felt disjointed, as though stitched together from other phrases and distorted in a rushed attempt to sound coherent.

I barely had time to collect my thoughts before the voice called out again, the words the same but the cadence and tone shifted, attempting to emulate normal human speech. It sounded more natural, but it was still undeniably inhuman.

“Who is it?”

“I’m… I’m your neighbor, from next door..”

“Who is it?” The voice called once more as, to my horror, the door cracked open.

I braced myself to see something horrible waiting for me inside, some mockery of a human being waiting to lunge at me from the darkness. But darkness, inky black and concealing, was all that greeted me from behind the door.

The door opened in full, and as what little sunlight that could poured inside, there was absolutely no one inside. Absolutely no movement, no sign of life save for a voice that called out from the doorway, now in perfect form.

“Who is it?”

I peered my head inside the doorway, and as I did I felt myself through a threshold, icy and cold. Worse was the feeling of loneliness that seemed to inject itself into my veins- in all my months of being alone, I had never felt it quite so intensely as when I crossed through that door. 

As I entered the living room, only one thing about the otherwise unremarkable home stood out. A wheelchair, fallen over onto its side lay in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t see anything around it, but it was surrounded by sounds of slow, methodical chewing and the occasional tearing of flesh partnered with a hungry meow. I left immediately.

After that day, the prewritten schedules changed more often, and far more sporadically. Sometimes I would go days without hearing anything, sometimes entirely new arguments would appear in days I thought I’d documented, and occasionally the cars that would pass would make a turn they hadn’t before. Every action was hollow though, and every voice was attached to nobody real. I knew that much for certain.

I started to review my options. I hadn’t seen another human being for the better part of a year by now, and I doubted that were to change unless I somehow got out of this complex, but where would I go?

There was no one to come and pick me up. I hadn’t opened my work laptop in weeks, and I knew no one in… whatever city I was in. Did I even know where I was at? I… I vaguely remembered the offer after the accident, and the company men coming to get me from the hospital and..

My mind struggled to remember the actual order of events that led me to living there. The more I puzzled it over, the less it made sense. As far as I could piece together, I had been in the accident, and some suits had visited me in the hospital when I woke up. They explained vaguely what happened and that the company wanted to avoid legal troubles, so they passed me over the check and the new job offer, as well as the pamphlet for the apartment. I remember signing my leasing information online from the hospital and then.. and then I remember being brought here directly from there.

Had it been that immediate? Had I been in such a daze I didn’t recognize the strangeness of the situation?

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at my door. Not a doorbell, a knock. Three solid knocks, echoing through my apartment. A chill ran as far down my spine as I still had feeling, and I slowly began to wheel myself towards the front door. I stopped in the kitchen to grab a knife on my way. 

“Who… who’s there?” I asked, my voice tinged with panic.

There was no answer for a moment. Then, softly and meticulously from the other side, I heard my own voice, broken and stitched together, call back to me.

“I’m… I’m your neighbor, from next door.”

I flung the door open, brandishing the large steak knife out into the open air. I couldn’t see anyone in front of me, but I knew that SOMETHING was there. I sat, wildly swinging the knife in front of me, and the voice called again from right in front of my face.

“I’m your neighbor, from next door.”

There was a shimmer in the air. A glint of sunlight, a distortion outlining a shape that was unambiguously humanoid, and it was entering the threshold of the door, slowly creeping towards me. 

This was my only chance. With all the strength I could muster, I hurled the knife towards the No-one in my entryway, and as it passed through the glimmering shape I knew so could I.

I pushed myself towards the No-one, and as I entered its form a cold I’d only ever felt once before shot through my veins. The icy sting sought to freeze me in place, and the empty solitude that pressed in around me should have taken all the steam out of me. But I didn’t let it- I could FEEL it now, it was real- it could be escaped. 

I made my way through the form, and as looked back as it turned towards me, its nonexistent un-being making haste to attempt to swallow me up once more. I was faster than it though, and as I turned the corner out of the courtyard into the street, I forced myself to ignore the burning of my arms and kept pushing myself onward.

As I rolled as fast as I could, I looked at the identical buildings surrounding me. Through every blind, through every cracked door, there was Nothing and No-one watching me. I felt eyes, hungry and jealous, piercing me from all sides. No-one was trying to keep me here, but I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. I caught glimpses from my peripheral vision of glimmering nothings, clambering out of doors and emerging from parked cars. I felt chills run through my body once more as I must have passed through a group of them, their arms outstretched attempting to grab me. Whatever they were, or weren’t, I don’t think they could touch me. But I could feel them. 

More and more of them piled out of front doors, sprinting towards me. The air around me began to ripple as they amassed in numbers. It reminded me of waves of heat emanating from the roofs of cars under the summer sun. 

No-one’s fingers clawed at me as I pushed through thousands of them. Voices crackled—warped, stitched-together nonsense—surrounding me with their fractured cries.

After what felt like eternity, through the shimmering crowd that wasn’t there, I saw what I’d been longing for- the end. I had reached the edge of the complex. It wasn’t anything special as far as I could tell, no barrier or wall that would hinder my escape. I pushed myself harder and faster than my exhausted arms should have allowed, but every icy claw that passed through my blood renewed my vigor. 

The moment I crossed the threshold, the screams collapsed into silence. The air behind me felt… full. No empty, frozen fingers, no warped voices. No Nothing. I didn’t dare look back though, not yet.

I looked out ahead of me, and had never been more relieved to see a shitty Dollar General in my life. I cried sweet tears of joy when I laid eyes on a struggling jogger. Fat, sweaty, human.

I rolled over the crosswalk, and came to rest at the bus stop across the street. I finally let my aching arms rest, and they collapsed to my sides. I sat for a moment, tears rolling down my cheeks and reeking of sweat and body odor. I must have looked insane even to the scraggly homeless man that sat on the bench, but l didn’t care. He would never know it, but I loved him simply for being there.

I eventually found my strength, and wearily turned my wheelchair towards the complex that had entrapped me for a year of my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain what I saw.

Before me lay an unassuming dirt lot, not larger than a football field. Unattended construction equipment lay dormant, and a port-a-potty lay toppled and vandalized in the back corner. Surrounding the perimeter of the lot was a chain link fence. 

A land development sign stood at the perimeter, its red letters crisp and clean, as if freshly posted. Beneath an artist’s rendering of a sleek new building, the words:

COMING SOON: WHITLAM-HAWTHORNE RESEARCH COMPLEX.