Bang! Bang!

 The door breathes open on its hinges, a soft complaint swallowed by the thick, unmoving air. Inside, the house feels abandoned by warmth, as though even the walls have given up trying to remember what comfort once meant. The smell reaches you first—stale tobacco clinging to the curtains, old smoke ground into the fabric of the place, layered over something sour: damp clothes left too long, skin unwashed, time itself decaying in corners.

You step in anyway.

The carpet underfoot is ancient, its fibers flattened by years of footsteps that led nowhere better. It exhales dust with every careful shift of your weight. Somewhere deeper in the house, a pipe ticks faintly, or perhaps it’s just the sound of the cold settling in. The windows are blind with condensation, opaque to the outside world, as if this place has sealed itself off deliberately.

You already know you shouldn’t be here.

The lump hammer feels heavier now, not in your hand but in your mind, its purpose swelling with each step you take down the narrow hallway. A door stands ahead—ajar, just slightly—spilling a thin blade of jaundiced streetlight across the floorboards. It cuts through the darkness like a warning you choose not to read.

You pause.

Listen.

Nothing but breathing.

Two rhythms, uneven but deep, tangled together in sleep. The kind of sleep that comes from exhaustion, not peace. The kind that trusts too easily in the idea that the night will pass without incident.

You push the door wider.

Slowly.

Gently.

Because you don’t want to wake them.

Not yet.

The room greets you with the same suffocating neglect. The bed is unmade, sheets twisted and stained, bodies half-covered, half-exposed to the cold. The air is thick, humid with breath and the residue of lives lived without care. Curtains barely cling to the window, allowing the streetlamp to paint everything in a sickly orange glow.

They don’t stir.

They don’t know.

You stand there, watching, the hammer hanging at your side. There’s a moment—just one—where the world seems to hold itself still. A moment where something inside you hesitates, presses faintly against the path you’ve chosen.

This is where you should have turned.

This is where you should have stepped back into the hallway, eased the door shut, and let the night swallow your presence whole. Left them to their dreams, to their small, fragile existence, untouched by whatever darkness you carry with you.

This is where you should have fled.

But you didn’t, did you?

No.

You did not.