People can get used to a lot of things even, apparently, monsters living in their hallways. It isn’t specifically my hallway - I live in an apartment building and it’s the hallway that our doors all open out onto but there is a monster in it. None of the other floors have one, just us. We’re on the top floor if that makes any difference.
I’ve lived in this building for 5 years now and I’ve gotten used to “the monster”. If it has some specific name for the kind of monster it is, I don’t know it.
I’ve seen it twice now. The first time I had no clue what it was and luckily it always comes from the opposite end of the hallway to where my door is. I’m sure somebody would have warned me about it eventually but when I moved in I had my friends helping me and I guess nobody wanted to share something that crazy to a group of people.
In the couple of weeks after that I didn’t run into any neighbours and I’m not sociable enough to seek them out. I know Sarah now and she knows every other person on the floor but back then I was completely in the dark.
When I arrived home that day, someone had left a doordash order at my door. A pair of fancy teas had been dropped off, the address was supposedly for my apartment and they’d been there a couple of hours according to the receipt. I stood there debating the ethics of just taking the teas or leaving them there in case the person who ordered it came looking.
I was standing there longer in the hallway than I ever had before. Longer than four minutes and that is the tipping point for whatever curse rules over the hallway.
It was the sound of something being dragged that made me turn and look. The monster was at the other end of the hall - my door is the east end of the hallway next to the stairs and the creature comes from the westerly end.
The closest thing I can compare it to is a gorilla but one without a head. It didn’t seem to have any facial features, no eyes or ears or mouths. It was just one huge distorted body. It leaned forward on its fists and walked on those, pulling its body and small (vestigial?) legs. Light green fuzzy fur covered its body. I imagine it’d be soft to touch if you were able to get close enough.
Embarrassingly when I saw it I didn’t react by screaming or running or even attempting to fight it. I just felt confused. This was so surreal that it had to be a joke. This was someone in a costume and they’re playing a joke on me for some reason. As it slowly moved closer to me, dragging itself bit by bit, I realised that it was really happening. My dogs were inside my apartment but I could already hear them barking incessantly through the door. I already had my keys out before I saw the teas and I hurried inside. I locked the door after me.
After another minute or so I saw the handle to my door turn once and then a second time as if the creature was testing it. I shoved my couch in front of the door and didn’t get much sleep that night.
When I cautiously opened my door the next morning to go to work, the drinks were still there in their plastic bag. My best guess is that the order was for an apartment on the floor below that put in the wrong address. People on my floor don’t order stuff off food delivery apps for obvious reasons.
Our building is only a decade old. It was built only 5 years before I arrived - I have email addresses older than it. Luc moved into our floor back when the building was built. I don’t know him too well but Sarah does and she passed on the details. There had been no monster when he started living here, the first sighting was about a year later. There was no sign of anything amiss, a skylight was broken a couple of months before that but there didn’t seem to be any connection between that and the monster.
I’m not making a good case for living here but it’s not actually that bad. As long as you don’t linger in the hall you’re out of danger and if worst comes to worst and someone else summons it when you’re there it’s a pretty straightforward routine. Step into your apartment, close the door and lock it. Always listen at your door before opening it. Sometimes in life you just have to make do with the hand you’ve been dealt.
Until shithead moved in.
Shithead moved in a couple of months ago and has made living here a nightmare. Before it was easy to stick to a routine and avoid danger. Everyone tried to minimise the chance of the monster appearing. Shithead didn’t, it seemed like he didn’t care.
Shithead nearly got me killed a week after he moved in. I was coming back from walking my dogs and when I reached the top of the stairs they lost their minds. Pulling at their leads and barking hysterically at the featureless door that led to the hallway. As I calmed them down I heard it; the slow scraping sound. The door handle started to turn.
This time there was no confusion. I ran down the stairs half dragging my poor dogs but it was to save all our lives. I heard the door open and I kept running until I got to the ground floor and ran out the front of the building. I’d heard it might follow you into the stairwell but once you got outside there was no chance of it coming out that far.
Obviously at the time I didn’t know it was shithead. However, after Sarah told me about how he hadn’t been following the unwritten rules of living here I guessed he’d accidentally summoned it.
Apparently he would hang out in the hallway sometimes. Or let his friends hang out there, god knows what they thought of the creature. He’d been ordering stuff for food delivery apps and telling couriers to leave packages at his door, risking all their lives too. I only know about that because a few weeks ago when I was walking upstairs I heard the couple from 402. They were pissed about it and complaining about how unfair it was that he was flagrantly disregarding the agreement we all had to live by.
It was about two weeks ago that Sarah came and visited me saying she was rounding everyone up for a “floor meeting”. She expected at least one person from each apartment to attend. Except for 404, she had added with a look of contempt at shithead’s door. It would be tomorrow night and she emphasised being punctual to avoid any appearance from the monster.
Inside 407, it looked like there was someone from every apartment. Like I said, I’m not the most sociable person so I couldn’t be completely sure. I expected Sarah to be running this miniature town hall but Zack (one half of the couple from 402) was the one acting as the authority.
“We need to teach him a lesson,” Zack had said. “We need to get him to follow the rules for everyone’s sake. We can’t let him jeopardise everyone’s safety.”
“I don’t understand why he’s putting us all at risk like this!” That has been the woman from 401. I understood the desperation in her voice, she was the closest to where the monster kept emerging. According to Luc, by way of Sarah, that apartment had the biggest turnover with residents changing every few months.
Derrick suggested that shithead was on drugs and that’s why he kept hanging out in a monster infested hallway. Derrick found him last week zoned out in the hallway and he’d had to drag shithead into his apartment. It had been a close call apparently.
“We all have to agree, if we do this. Like in Murder on the Orient Express.” Sarah glanced around the room meaningfully.
A man with a mullet that I didn’t recognise said he hadn’t read it. Sarah turned to explain the plot to the man. Unlike him, I had read Murder on the Orient Express and I felt that Sarah may have taken the wrong lesson from it.
“We need to scare him. Show him how serious this is.”
The plan was to lie in wait in the stairwell during one of shithead’s usual ‘stand around in the hallway and then eventually go to the stairs’ habit. They knew enough about his routine to know when he would be leaving on what days.
They managed to get an agreement from everyone that scaring shithead was the best way to resolve the issue. Some agreed eagerly like Luc, others were more reserved like Derrick and the woman from 401.
This meeting - this whole situation unnerved me in a way I wasn’t able to express. It felt like it was some kind of performance. I called the non-emergency line for the police and told them that shithead was a drug user and possible dealer and a possible harm to himself. The person on the other end of the line thanked me for my report and said they would follow it up as soon as possible.
I tried to avoid taking part in the plan. Sarah reported back to me that they’d had a couple of attempts but shithead had either already left or stayed home each time. I thought that surely if they keep missing him they’d just give up.
It was my bad luck that when I arrived home two days ago I walked straight into another attempt to punish shithead. Representatives from the other apartments were standing at the top of the stairs, listening at the door to the hallway.
The man with the mullet (Bruce, he said) spotted me before I could start back down the stairs again. He assured me that shithead would definitely get his this time. They were prepared to wait another hour for him to come out. Unable to go through to my apartment and too fearful to try to go back down to the exit, I stood with the others in limbo.
Despite Bruce’s worries, we didn’t have to wait an hour. We heard a door open and shut but no footsteps towards our position guarding the door of the stairway. It had to be shithead, no one else would linger in the hallway except for him. However, after only a couple of minutes shithead began walking towards us.
“It isn’t out. He wasn’t out there for the full four minutes”, Derrick had hissed to Zack.
“Just hold it shut.”
Shithead tried the door and muttered to himself in confusion. Time slowly passed for us inside, I tried to avoid making eye contact with any of the others. We knew when shithead’s tone had changed that the monster had been summoned. He was still confused but angry now. Demanding that whoever was in there to open the door.
“Wait, just a bit longer. Let it get past his apartment.”
Derrick and Zack continued to hold the door shut despite shithead’s best efforts to open it.
“I can hear it, it’s- it’s close.”
It was close, much closer than we were expecting. Zack threw more of his weight against the door, trying to barricade us against the creature. Bruce joined him. The knowledge that if we opened the door now there was a good chance the monster would follow. The others present backed them up, placing their own hands against the door, helping them brace.
Shithead swore and the banging on the door stopped. I could still hear him shouting, just muffled. The door handle for the stairs turned once, twice. We all knew who was at the door now. I wondered if it would force the door open and turn on us as karmic retribution.
But it didn’t.
Inside the sound of its bulk being slowly dragged continued past us, towards his muffled shouts and screams. I could hear shithead’s words quieten down into murmurs. Begging, pleading, praying, I wasn’t sure which. If I strained I could even hear my dogs barking inside my apartment.
Then there was silence. My dogs stopped barking, shithead had stopped crying and the low, repetitive scraping noise had stopped. I was the first one through the door. I knew if my dogs had stopped barking there wasn’t anything there. And when I looked down the hallway, I saw I was right.
And that brings me to today. I want to see it.
I close my dogs up in the bathroom so they can’t run out. I open my door and I stand there until the time has come. The monster appears as expected from the end of the hall to the west. I’ve never been looking to see how it happens before but it just appears in front of the wall unceremoniously.
It begins its slow dragging steps towards me. I was scared that it might have shithead’s cap or shirt on, or I might recognise some feature of shithead’s in its featureless body. However, I see nothing but the same monster that has always haunted us. Nothing has changed.
I step inside my apartment, close the door and lock it.