When the City Went Silent
In a forgotten apartment tucked between concrete towers and flickering streetlights, she spent her nights alone with the dead.
The skull had appeared on her doorstep without a note, wrapped in black cloth stained by candle wax. At first, it was nothing more than a curious ornament. Then the dreams began.
Every night, she saw strangers standing outside her window twenty floors above the city. They had no faces, only hollow shadows where their eyes should have been. They whispered her name in voices that sounded like rusted metal scraping against stone.
Sleep became impossible. Reality followed.
She painted her face like a corpse, hoping to become invisible to whatever watched from the darkness beyond the glass. Instead, the whispers grew louder. The skull seemed warmer each night, as though a pulse beat beneath its cold surface.
One evening, she balanced it upon her head and looked into the mirror.
The reflection smiled.
She did not.
The city lights outside suddenly vanished. No traffic. No horns. No distant voices. Only silence.
When electricity returned hours later, her apartment was empty.
The skull remained on the floor.
Residents still report seeing a woman in dark makeup staring from the building's highest window. The apartment has been vacant for years.
Yet every night, someone lights two candles inside.
