The Vanishing Aisle

I’m dictating this on my phone because my trusty old desktop finally gave up the ghost — the power supply died with a sad fizzle, leaving me with just this little screen and a dying battery. I’m holed up in my apartment above the 24-hour Laundromat, the one with the flickering neon sign that hums like a trapped bee. I should be sleeping, but something’s got my nerves shot, and I can’t even scroll through my photos without my thumb hovering over the ‘call’ button, though I have no one to call. It’s the disappearing. Not objects, not keys — the whole aisle. The one in the corner of the Laundromat, the one everyone avoids because it smells like burnt cinnamon and damp mop water. The one that faces a wall of cracked tiles that always looked freshly painted, but the paint was always peeling. Last Tuesday, I went down to do a load of my work uniforms. The place was dead, just the buzz of the dryers and the drip of a faucet. I loaded my clothes, threw in a pod, and sat on the cracked plastic chair, watching my phone die slowly. I looked up at the aisle — the one with the peeling paint — and I blinked. For a split second, the tiles weren’t there. Instead, I saw a hallway, long and dark, lined with wooden doors, all of them ajar, all of them showing slivers of a dim, yellow light. And at the far end, a figure, short and stocky, the size of a child, but moving with an adult’s weary gait. It stopped, turned its head as if it sensed me, and then it raised a hand and beckoned — once, slow, like a wave. I swear I saw its face — not a face, a blank, like a mannequin’s head, but with two dark pits for eyes. Then I blinked again, and the aisle was back, tiles intact, but now they had a fresh coat of paint, still wet, with a faint sheen. My machine had finished, and when I pulled out my clothes, they were bone dry, cold, and smelled like pennies. I shoved them in a bag and fled upstairs. That was four days ago. Since then, I’ve been watching the aisle from my window. Every night at 2:33 AM, the fluorescent light above that aisle flickers three times, then goes dark for exactly eleven seconds. During those seconds, I can see the hallway again, the doors, the figure, now standing at the entrance. It doesn’t beckon this time. It just stands, arms at its sides, head tilted, as if waiting for me to come down. And tonight, I saw something new: a door on the hallway was open, and a person was lying on a bed inside, covered up to the chin with a white sheet, their face turned to the wall. As I watched, the figure walked to the foot of the bed, picked up the sheet’s hem, and lifted it. The person rolled over — and it was me. Not me now, but me older, with gray hair and a tangled beard. My eyes were closed, my chest still. Then the figure looked up at the window, directly at me, and it pointed with a long, thin finger. That was when my battery hit 2%. I rushed to plug in my phone, but the outlet near my bed sparked and died. So here I am, typing this in the dark, the phone screen my only light. The humming from the Laundromat has stopped. I just heard the main door of the building open downstairs. I heard footsteps on the stairs, slow and heavy, but they’re not coming up — they’re going down toward the Laundromat. And I swear, from the window, I can see the hallway light flickering, and the outline of that stocky figure, now standing at the base of the stairs, looking up at my window. It’s holding something in its hand — a key. My apartment key. The one I lost last month. I’m not going to answer the door. But the footsteps have stopped. The hum is starting again. And I feel a draft from under my door, like someone’s opened a window — but all my windows are sealed. I’m going to turn on my flashlight and look through the peephole. I’ll update this if I can. If I can’t — well, you know where to find me. There’s a spare key under the mat.