The Stain That Breathes

My name is Diego, and I’m sixteen, living in a cramped apartment on the third floor of a four-story walk-up in the old colonial zone of Santo Domingo. The building is ancient, with thick stone walls that sweat in the humidity and ceilings that seem to lean in, listening. My room is at the back, overlooking a narrow alley where the sun only visits for an hour at noon. It’s there, on the wall opposite my bed, that the stain lives.

It started about eight months ago. At first, it was just a faint discoloration, a darker patch on the peeling plaster, roughly the size of a dinner plate. I thought it was water damage, but it had a shape, an asymmetrical oval that, if I squinted, looked like a face. Not a face I recognized, but a face nonetheless—with hollow eyes and a slack mouth. I named it Don Pedro, after the grumpy neighbor downstairs, and tried to ignore it.

But it grew. Each week, it got a little darker, a little more defined. The eyes seemed to deepen, to follow me as I moved around the room. Sometimes, in the peripheral of my vision, I’d swear the mouth was open, and I’d turn to see it just as the plaster, still just a smear. I told myself it was my imagination, that I was reading too much into a stain. But I started sleeping with the light on.

One night, I was hunched over my laptop, the only light in the room the blue glow of the screen, when I caught a movement in the mirror that hangs on the adjacent wall. I have a full-length mirror facing the bed, so I can see the stain on the wall reflected, just over my shoulder. I looked up and froze. In the mirror, the stain wasn’t flat. It was weeping—a thin, silver liquid trickling down the wall from the hollow of its left eye. I spun around, but the wall was dry. I turned back to the mirror; the liquid was gone. But I knew what I’d seen. I bolted out of the room, my heart hammering, and didn’t come back for an hour. When I finally returned, the stain was as dry as ever, but it seemed darker, more smug.

Now, it’s not just a stain. It’s a resident. It breathes. I can see its chest rise and fall, faintly, like the wall itself is alive. I’ve taken to covering it with a poster of a band I like, but the outline of the face shows through the paper, and at night, I swear I can hear a low hum, like a distant engine, coming from behind it.

The mornings are the worst. I wake up with the feeling that something is watching me, and when I turn to the mirror, I see it: my own reflection, but behind me, the stain’s face is not on the wall. It’s leaning out, its head tilted, its hollow eyes fixed on the back of my skull. I blink, and it’s back in its place, but the feeling of being watched lingers for hours.

I told my mother about it, but she just said it was the humidity and the old pipes. She thinks I’m stressed, that I need to go out more. But last night, I woke at 3:33 AM. The room was dark, but I could see the stain glowing faintly, like a piece of coal from the fire. And the hum was louder, almost a vibration I could feel in my teeth. The face was no longer imprinted; it was bulging, as if something behind the wall were pressing outward. The mouth, which had been slack, was now stretched in a silent grin.

I did what I always do: I pulled the covers over my head and whispered a prayer to Saint Lazarus, the protector of the sick and the afflicted. I stayed like that for what felt like an hour, and when I finally peeked out, the room was normal, the stain flat and dry. But I know it’s not over. I’m writing this on my phone, in the safety of the bathroom down the hall, because I can’t be in there anymore. I don’t know what it wants. I don’t know if it will hurt me. But I can feel it getting closer, and I’m beginning to believe that the stain isn’t on the wall anymore. It’s in me.