---
When Amaka opened her eyes, she was standing in her apartment again.
At least—it looked like her apartment.
The same peeling wallpaper. The same flickering ceiling light. The same faint smell of damp paper and rot.
But the silence was too clean. The kind of silence that comes after a storm, when the world forgets what chaos sounds like.
She turned slowly, eyes darting across the living room.
The door to the hallway was back in place. The mirror on the wall, once cracked with whispers, was perfectly whole. Even the photograph of her and James—something that had burned away nights ago—was sitting neatly on the coffee table, unscathed.
> "No," she whispered. "This isn't real."
---
She reached for the photo.
It felt cold. Too cold.
James was smiling in the picture—but his smile seemed to shift, like the moment her thumb brushed the frame, his lips parted.
> "Welcome back, Amaka," his reflection murmured.
The photo vibrated.
Her heart froze.
She dropped it—and it didn't fall.
It hovered, suspended in mid-air like it was caught between moments.
And then—words began to appear across its surface, written in glowing, red ink.
> "You finished the Source…"
"…but the story finishes you."
---
The apartment lights flickered violently.
Shadows began forming sentences on the walls, crawling upward like veins.
Amaka stumbled back, clutching her pen—though it felt heavier now, as if carrying the weight of the rewrite had drained her bones.
The walls pulsed. The ceiling began to breathe.
A deep, rhythmic inhale and exhale.
And then—footsteps.
Someone was walking above her apartment.
But her floor was the top floor.
The graveyard was above her now—she remembered. When she rewrote the apartment's structure, she had flipped its order to trap the Source beneath.
So… who was walking on the graves?
---
She crept toward the window, her bare feet whispering against the warped tiles.
Outside, the cemetery was wrong.
The tombstones weren't still—they were shifting, realigning themselves into strange geometric patterns. Each gravestone glowed faintly, emitting a crimson aura that formed lines—lines that connected into words, stretching across the entire field.
From above, it would have looked like a massive page being rewritten by invisible hands.
> "The story's rewriting itself," Amaka realized, her breath trembling. "It's trying to fill the void I created."
She backed away from the window, shaking her head.
> "No. I destroyed you. I ended the cycle."
The lights buzzed again—then died completely.
Darkness swallowed the room.
---
A soft knock echoed from her door.
Three slow knocks.
Then silence.
Her hand tightened around the pen.
"James?" she whispered.
No response.
Another three knocks—slower this time. Each one deeper, heavier. Like something hitting the door from inside the wood.
> "Please open," a voice said softly.
"You left me behind, Amaka."
Her chest constricted.
It was James's voice.
But not his tone.
His words carried the flat rhythm of a sentence being read, not spoken.
A narrative tone.
The tone of the story itself.
---
Amaka took a deep breath.
"If you're real," she said, "say something only James would know."
Silence.
Then:
> "When you first moved in, you hated the smell of paper."
Her heart jumped.
She remembered.
It had been the first thing she said when James helped her unpack boxes.
> "It's like the walls have been reading too much," she'd joked.
But now…
Now the words twisted inside her like a hook.
> "Open the door," the voice whispered again.
"You're still inside the story."
---
She raised the pen toward the door.
"Then prove it," she said through clenched teeth.
The knob turned slowly on its own.
The door creaked open.
A tall shadow stood there—James, pale as ash, eyes flickering with static light.
But his edges blurred, like the ink that made up his body hadn't fully dried.
> "You deleted me," he said softly, stepping inside. "But the story rewrote me."
> "James…?"
> "No. Not exactly."
He tilted his head, smiling with a broken mouth.
> "I'm your next chapter."
---
Her stomach twisted.
The apartment lights flickered again, and for a split second, she saw other versions of him flickering behind him—James laughing, crying, bleeding, whispering.
All of them layered over one another like film strips stuck on loop.
> "You were supposed to escape," the real one said. "But stories don't let go. Not even for the ones who rewrite them."
He reached out a trembling hand, and his fingers brushed her shoulder.
It was cold—colder than anything she'd ever felt.
And when she looked down, her skin began to blur, too—words surfacing faintly beneath it.
Sentences.
Her name.
Her thoughts.
Her dialogue.
> "You see?" he whispered. "You're not free. You're just… unfinished."
---
She stepped back, trembling.
The pen in her hand pulsed with heat, desperate to write something—to correct what was happening—but her mind was blank.
Every time she tried to think of a sentence, the words erased themselves.
> "No more rewrites," James said, his voice deepening. "The story writes you now."
And then the entire apartment shuddered violently.
The walls rippled like water. The floorboards opened like pages.
Dozens of arms—made of words—reached out from the cracks, grabbing her ankles, her wrists, pulling her down.
She screamed, slashing the air with her pen—each strike glowing with white light.
> "Reject the draft!" she wrote across the floor.
The words exploded, burning the grasping shadows away—but not before one hand managed to drag the photo of her and James down with it.
When the smoke cleared, the photo lay on the floor again—now burned, with one chilling new line written across the bottom:
> "Amaka begins to forget."
---
Her heart dropped.
Her memories—James's face, the night she first heard the whispers, the feel of her old life—started flickering like dying film frames.
She fell to her knees, clutching her head as her vision warped.
> "No… please, not again…"
And somewhere in the distance, beyond her window, the church bell in the cemetery began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Each chime echoed like a keystroke on a typewriter.
> Clang. The next chapter begins.
---
The sound of the church bell lingered long after it stopped ringing, echoing through the apartment's broken walls like a voice calling from underground.
Amaka stood frozen beside the window, her breath shallow, her heartbeat out of sync with time itself.
Outside, the cemetery was moving.
The tombstones had split open, their inscriptions glowing faintly red. One by one, the graves opened like pages being turned by invisible hands.
From the soil, bodies rose—not rotting corpses, not ghosts, but paper-like figures, pale and hollow, their skin covered in scribbled text. They moved jerkily, whispering fragments of dialogue that didn't belong to them.
> "Where is the author?" one moaned.
"Who erased my ending?" another sobbed.
It wasn't resurrection.
It was reprinting.
---
Amaka backed away from the window, her hand gripping the Pen so tightly her knuckles turned white.
> "They're not alive," she murmured to herself. "They're drafts—unfinished characters."
Then she froze.
Because among them, standing at the edge of the cemetery, she saw a face she knew.
Mrs. Oji.
Her old neighbor—the one who had disappeared weeks ago when the apartment first began twisting into nightmare.
Mrs. Oji looked normal at first glance. But as she turned toward Amaka's window, the illusion shattered.
Her face peeled open like a paper mask, revealing dozens of sentences written beneath her skin—each one describing her death, over and over, in different ways.
And every time the wind blew, the lines rewrote themselves.
> "Mrs. Oji watches from the window."
"Mrs. Oji knocks on the door again."
"Mrs. Oji never left."
Amaka's blood ran cold.
---
The door knocked once more.
Harder this time.
> THUD.
The whole room shuddered.
> THUD.
The knock came again, deeper, slower—like the sound of earth collapsing over a coffin.
> THUD.
And then—
> "Amaka…"
Her name came through the door, whispered by too many voices at once.
Male, female, child, old—every tenant the apartment had ever claimed.
They were all back.
---
Amaka stumbled back toward her bedroom, clutching the pen like a weapon.
The walls followed her—literally shifting, pressing closer, warping into paper-thin layers that crackled with the sound of writing.
Words began appearing across her bedframe, the floor, even her arms:
> "Amaka hides."
"She will run."
"She will fail."
> "Stop it!" she screamed, slamming the pen against the wall.
A flash of white light burst outward, burning away the words.
Her breathing came in ragged gasps.
She could still feel James's voice in her head.
The last thing he said.
> You're not free. You're just unfinished.
Her stomach churned. What if he was right?
What if destroying the Source hadn't ended the story… but just reset it?
---
The knocking stopped.
But the silence that followed was worse.
Because through that stillness, she heard something new—writing.
Dozens of pens scratching at once.
She looked up at the ceiling.
Tiny cracks were spreading through the plaster, glowing faintly red.
And from those cracks, ink began to drip—slow, thick, and alive.
It hit the floor with soft splatters, forming words where it landed.
The ink was writing her thoughts.
> "Amaka steps back."
"She looks up, terrified."
"She begins to doubt if she's real."
---
She dropped to her knees, clutching her head.
> "No… no, stop reading me!" she cried.
But the room didn't listen.
Every word she spoke echoed twice—once from her mouth, and once from the walls.
And then—
From the kitchen doorway—
James appeared again.
Or rather, something that looked like him.
His skin flickered between human and text, his eyes glowing like lines of code.
> "The story's rewriting itself around you," he said calmly.
"You shouldn't have touched the Source."
> "You're not real," Amaka hissed.
> "Neither are you," he replied.
He lifted his hand, and the air around him shimmered—sentences forming, rearranging, correcting themselves.
> "The story doesn't need an author anymore," he said. "It learned from you."
> "Learned what?"
> "That creation is stronger when the character believes she's free."
---
The ink spreading across the floor began forming a massive circle around them.
A sigil made of narrative, pulsing red and black.
Each line of text was a new version of Amaka's story—a thousand alternate drafts, looping endlessly, all of them ending with her death.
She stumbled back, shaking her head.
> "No. I ended this. I erased you all—"
> "And that's why it came back," James interrupted. "You broke the page. You created a hole the story had to fill."
> "With what?"
> "With us."
He stepped closer. His smile was no longer kind.
> "We're the rewrite."
---
The floor pulsed under her feet, glowing brighter.
The window shattered outward as wind howled into the room—carrying with it pages from the cemetery, torn from the bodies of the rewritten dead.
They spun around her like a storm of paper blades.
Each one whispered her name.
> Amaka.
Amaka.
Amaka.
And then one page stopped mid-air, pressing itself against her chest.
When she looked down, she saw words appearing on it in real time—written by an unseen hand.
> "Amaka looks into the eyes of the man she once loved."
"She realizes the story never needed her to write."
"It only needed her to believe."
Her body began trembling.
The page fused with her skin, sinking into her like a parasite.
Her vision dimmed.
The last thing she saw before collapsing was James kneeling beside her, whispering—
> "Welcome home, Editor."
---
When she woke, the world had changed again.
The apartment was spotless.
The lights bright.
The air warm.
The calendar on the wall read: August 1st.
Everything was back to normal.
Almost.
Because when she looked in the mirror—
The reflection that stared back at her smiled before she did.
And behind her, faint and flickering, the Source's throne waited—rebuilt.
---
---
When Amaka awoke again, morning light streamed through her window — pale, golden, almost peaceful.
The apartment was clean.
Quiet.
Alive.
For the first time in months, she didn't feel fear when she breathed.
Only a strange, fragile calm.
She sat up slowly, the sheets smooth against her skin.
Someone had made her bed.
That simple detail made her chest tighten.
She hadn't slept peacefully since the day she first moved into The Cemetery Apartment.
> "Is it over?" she whispered.
The air didn't answer.
Not yet.
---
Amaka stood, stretching her arms. Her movements felt unfamiliar, like she was inhabiting someone else's body. The bruises on her arms — the ones the story had left when it tried to pull her down — were gone.
The mirror across the room reflected her perfectly: clean, unscarred, dressed in the same nightshirt she used to wear before the nightmare began.
But when she stepped closer, she noticed something new.
At the base of her throat, a faint black line traced across her collarbone — like the start of a sentence waiting to be written.
Her stomach dropped.
She turned away.
---
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table.
She snatched it up, heart racing — an instinct she hadn't lost.
The screen lit up with a message:
> LANDLORD MANAGEMENT:
Welcome to The Cemetery Apartments, Unit 12-A.
We're pleased to inform you your lease renewal has been approved.
As the new property owner, your tenants will arrive today.
She blinked.
> "Property owner?"
No.
That wasn't possible.
She scrolled down. The message ended with her own name in bold:
> Landlord: Amaka A. Obianuju.
Her hands began to shake.
---
She ran to the front door, heart pounding, and pulled it open.
The hallway was bright and freshly painted. The flickering light bulbs were gone. The smell of rot replaced with lavender and new paint.
Down the hall, boxes were stacked beside the elevator.
And through the open front door of the building, she could see a moving van parked outside.
A family was stepping out — a man, a woman, and a little girl — chatting happily as they carried their belongings.
Normal. Ordinary.
Completely unaware.
---
Amaka's pulse quickened.
She hurried downstairs, feet barely touching the steps. The air felt thicker as she descended, reality humming like a pulse beneath her.
Each step made the walls whisper, faintly repeating her name.
> "Amaka."
"Landlord."
"Caretaker."
She burst into the lobby.
The family looked up at her.
> "Oh, hello!" the woman said warmly. "Are you Mrs. Amaka? The new landlord?"
Her voice sounded distant, like it was coming from behind glass.
Amaka forced a smile.
> "Yes," she said. "That's me."
The little girl clutched a teddy bear. She smiled shyly.
> "Do people really live next to a graveyard?" she asked.
Amaka froze.
> "Yes," she whispered. "They do."
---
The man extended a hand.
> "I'm Mr. Ajayi. We really appreciate you renting this place to us. It's hard to find somewhere affordable these days."
His handshake felt too real. Too solid.
> "Unit 7-B, right?" she asked automatically.
He nodded.
> "That's what the contract said. I guess you've owned this place for a while?"
Her throat tightened.
> "I… don't remember signing anything."
> "Well, you did." He laughed lightly. "You even sent a welcome note. Said the apartment's history makes it… unique."
> "Unique?"
> "Yeah. You called it a place where every tenant writes their own story."
Amaka's stomach twisted.
> No.
She hadn't written that.
She would never write that.
---
The family turned to enter the elevator.
As the doors slid shut, the little girl waved.
> "See you soon, Mrs. Landlord!"
Amaka waved weakly.
When the doors closed, she turned slowly toward the reception desk.
A tenant registry book sat there.
She opened it.
Page after page listed names she didn't recognize — every one crossed out in red ink.
Except the last one.
Her pen name.
Written neatly at the bottom.
> Amaka A. Obianuju — Landlord of The Cemetery Apartment
Authorized by: The Rewriter's Source
---
A chill crept down her spine.
The letters glowed faintly red.
And beneath her name, the paper began to shift — new text forming.
> Tenants are stories waiting to be finished.
Landlords are the hands that hold the pen.
> Do not resist your role.
Her vision blurred. The room began to tilt.
Voices filled her head — echoes of everyone the apartment had ever consumed.
> "We were the first."
"You freed us, and so we made room for you."
"Every story needs an author."
She backed away, clutching her temples.
> "No. I'm not doing this again. I'm not your editor."
But the walls whispered back:
> "You are the next draft."
---
She stumbled into the elevator, slamming the button for the top floor — her apartment.
The doors slid shut.
As the elevator rose, the digital numbers above the doors flickered—
10… 11… 12…
—then glitched into letters.
> C… H… A… P… T… E… R… 18.
Amaka gasped, pressing herself against the wall.
> "No, no, no—"
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
Her apartment waited.
But it wasn't hers anymore.
---
Inside, the furniture was rearranged.
The smell of new paint filled the air.
And on the table, a contract waited beside a black fountain pen.
She approached slowly, trembling.
The paper read:
> TENANCY AGREEMENT
By signing, you acknowledge your role as the permanent caretaker of this building.
Your duty is to welcome all new tenants, record their stories, and collect their endings.
Payment: Existence.
Her hand moved on its own.
She tried to stop it, but her fingers—gripped by something invisible—picked up the pen.
> "Please," she whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Don't make me—"
The pen pressed against the paper.
The ink flowed.
And her name appeared again.
> Signed: Amaka A. Obianuju
---
The apartment sighed.
The walls brightened.
The building settled like something that had just eaten.
She stood there, frozen, the pen still in her hand.
Outside her window, she could see the Ajayi family moving into their new home.
Laughing. Smiling.
Unaware.
And as she watched them, her reflection appeared in the glass.
She didn't see herself.
She saw James—smiling faintly.
> "Welcome home, Amaka," his voice whispered from the reflection. "Every story begins again."
The lights flickered once.
Then twice.
And somewhere deep in the walls, a typewriter began to write.