Static in the Walls

The voice — calm, toneless, and terrifyingly near — drifted through the apartment like smoke.

“You’re not supposed to remember.”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My legs felt fused to the floor. My breath hitched in my throat, trapped somewhere between a scream and silence. I tried to convince myself that I’d imagined it — the dark, the stress, the cold coffee sloshing through my bloodstream — but no. That voice hadn’t come from my head. It had come from inside the apartment.

I spun around, arms out slightly as if to ward off an invisible attacker.

“Who’s there?” My voice cracked embarrassingly, barely above a whisper.

Nothing. No answer. No creaking floorboards. Just silence.

Then I remembered the landline. My feet moved on instinct, the way you run toward the source of a fire instead of away. It was still on the wall, covered in dust, cord tangled. The blinking red light on its base made my heart knock twice as loud.

Missed call.

I jabbed the playback button.

No voicemail.

Of course.

I didn’t know what scared me more — the voice or the idea that something could call the landline. I hadn’t given that number out in years. And I had no memory of even plugging the thing in.

I needed answers. I needed logic. My mind latched onto the only thing that still made sense: Daniel Voss.

He was weird, yes. Quiet. Too smart. He also had a tendency to ramble about memory and brain function anytime someone asked him a simple question like “how’s your day?” But more importantly, he lived two floors down and had once told me he “liked patterns in human chaos,” whatever the hell that meant. I didn’t care. I just knew he studied memory and something in my memory was wrong.

I pulled on my hoodie, shoved the strange note into my pocket, and practically sprinted down two flights of stairs, skipping the elevator because I no longer trusted things that made noise in the dark.

Daniel answered the door in pajama pants and a t-shirt with a chemical diagram I couldn’t decode. His glasses were crooked.

“Eliza?” He blinked at me, rubbing one eye. “It’s late. Did something happen?”

I didn’t answer right away. I was too busy scanning behind him. No shadows. No voices. Just a cluttered but cozy apartment that smelled like old books and instant noodles.

“I need to ask you something, and I need you to believe me.”

He blinked again. “Okay…”

“I had a roommate, right? Marley? She lived with me for the past year. You met her at least once. Curly black hair, tattoo on her shoulder, leather boots, kind of an attitude problem?”

Daniel frowned. “I… don’t think so?”

My chest tightened. “You’re kidding.”

“I’ve only ever seen you coming and going alone, Eliza.”

“But we threw a barbecue last August — you came. You brought that weird tofu dish.”

“I remember the barbecue.” He scratched his head. “But I thought it was just you hosting.”

My fingers curled into fists. “So what? She’s just… been erased? Like some memory glitch?”

He tilted his head. “What are you suggesting?”

I yanked the note from my pocket and shoved it at him. “This. Read this. Tell me I’m not crazy.”

He took it. His eyes scanned the note once. Twice. Then he looked at me.

“This is your handwriting.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t remember writing it?”

“Nope.”

He stepped aside. “Come in.”

Inside, I sat stiffly on his corduroy couch while he typed furiously on his laptop. Every now and then he muttered to himself — stuff like “hippocampus misfire” and “long-term encoding disruption.” He finally looked up.

“I’ve been studying memory intervention for three years. There are experiments — most of them illegal — that aim to manipulate personal perception using neurochemicals, light frequencies, sometimes even sound patterns.”

“Are you telling me someone erased her from my mind? From everyone’s?”

“Not just your mind.” He pointed at me. “You said the photos changed. The lease. Even your phone.”

I nodded.

“Then this isn’t just memory manipulation. This is environmental rewriting. Someone’s altering your reality.”

I swallowed. “How?”

He leaned back. “I don’t know. But I believe you.”

The relief that hit me almost hurt. “Thank you.”

“But if this is what I think it is,” he added, “you’re not just remembering something you weren’t supposed to. You’re interfering with someone’s system. That makes you dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I echoed.

“To them.”

I felt my throat go dry. “So what now?”

“We test it.” He got up and disappeared into another room. When he came back, he was holding a device that looked like a clunky VR headset and a small journal.

“Okay, no offense,” I said, “but that looks like something you stole from a failed Kickstarter campaign.”

He smirked. “It reads neural activity patterns and translates memory data into visual cues.”

“…So, a mind-reading helmet.”

He offered it to me. “Sort of. Put it on.”

The thing was heavy and awkward, but I slipped it over my head.

“Close your eyes,” Daniel said. “Think about Marley. Not just her face — the way she moved, talked, laughed. Anchor her in your mind.”

I did.

At first, all I saw was static — fuzzy gray, like an old TV with no signal. Then shapes began to form. A boot. A smirk. A swirl of black hair. I saw Marley at the kitchen table, teasing me over how I always overcooked pasta. I saw her dancing in the rain outside the building, flipping me off when I told her she’d get sick.

The image was grainy, glitching like bad video footage, but it was there. She was there.

I pulled the headset off. “Tell me you saw that.”

Daniel nodded slowly. “You’re not hallucinating. These are real memories. Which means someone tried to suppress them. And did a terrible job.”

“So now what?” I asked. “We expose them?”

“First, we find out who they are.”

Suddenly, the light above us flickered violently — once, twice — then burst. Sparks rained down.

Daniel flinched. “That’s not a power surge.”

His laptop began glitching. Lines of code scrolled on screen, fast and aggressive.

“What’s happening?” I asked, my voice rising.

“I think we just triggered something. Someone’s watching.”

From inside the walls came a low hum. Then a voice.

“You’re deviating from protocol.”

Daniel grabbed my arm. “We need to go. Now.”

We ran for the door — but it slammed shut before we could reach it. The lock clicked. Then the second lock. Then the third. All automatic. All too fast.

“We’re trapped,” I whispered.

The journal Daniel had dropped on the couch suddenly flipped open on its own — pages rustling wildly before stopping on

one scribbled line.

You are being reset. Please remain still.

Then the lights cut out again.

And this time… I heard footsteps behind me.