The landlord told me only one thing before handing over the key.
"Don't rearrange the furniture."
I laughed. It was such a strange thing to say. He didn't laugh back. His fingers lingered on the key a moment too long, and when I finally pulled it from his grip, his hand was trembling.
"I mean it," he said. His eyes didn't meet mine. They were fixed on the door behind me — the door to apartment 4C. "Everything stays where it is. The bed. The desk. The chair. Even the mirror. You don't move them. Not even an inch."
I told him I understood. I didn't, of course. But rent was ₹4,500 a month in the middle of Pune, and the room was furnished. I was a final-year student with a thesis deadline and a bank account running on fumes. I wasn't about to argue with a man's eccentricities.
The room was small. Rectangular. A single bed pressed against the left wall, a wooden desk against the right, a plastic chair tucked under it, and a tall, narrow mirror mounted on the wall directly across from the bed. The window behind the desk overlooked a narrow alley. There was no view. Just the stained wall of the adjacent building, close enough to touch if you leaned out.
The floor was old tile — white, cracked in places, yellowed in others. There was a smell. Faint. Like wet newspapers left in a closed room for too long. I opened the window and let the November air in. It carried the smell of rain.
I told myself it was fine. I told myself it was perfect.
I moved in on a Tuesday.
The first three nights were uneventful. I slept, I worked, I ate instant noodles on the desk and wiped the crumbs off with my sleeve. The room was quiet, almost unnervingly so. My neighbors on either side made no sound. I never saw them in the hallway. I began to wonder if the other apartments were even occupied.
On the fourth night, I woke at 3:17 a.m.
I don't know what woke me. There was no sound. No movement. But my eyes opened with the sharpness of someone who had been shaken awake, and I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my heart beating with a heaviness that didn't match the silence.
I turned my head toward the mirror.
It was too dark to see my reflection clearly. Just a vague shape. The outline of the bed. The smudge of my body beneath the blanket.
But the desk —
I sat up.
The desk was on the wrong side.
It was against the left wall. The bed was on the right. I was certain. I was certain the bed had been on the left. I had placed my phone charger on the left side specifically because the power outlet was there.
I reached to my left. My hand found the wall. No outlet. No charger.
I reached to my right. My fingers brushed the charging cable, hanging from an outlet I didn't remember being there.
You're half asleep. You're confused. You moved in four days ago — you haven't memorized the layout yet.
I lay back down. I closed my eyes. I believed myself.
In the morning, the room was normal. Bed on the left. Desk on the right. Charger on the left. Exactly as it should be.
I checked. I measured the distance with my feet — seven tiles from the bed to the desk. Four tiles from the bed to the door. I took a photo on my phone. I told myself I was being thorough, not paranoid.
It happened again on the seventh night.
I woke at 3:17.
The layout was reversed.
This time, I turned on my phone's flashlight. I swept the beam across the room, and my breath caught in my chest like a swallowed stone.
The bed was against the right wall. The desk was on the left. The chair was tucked under it, facing the wrong direction. The mirror — the mirror was still on the same wall, but now it faced the desk instead of the bed.
And there was a smell. Not wet newspapers. Something sharper. Metallic. Like old coins held too long in a sweaty palm.
I got up. I walked to the desk. My thesis notes were on it — but rearranged. Pages I had stacked neatly were now fanned out, and one page was turned face-down. I flipped it over.
There was a sentence written at the bottom in handwriting that looked almost, almost like mine.
You moved it, didn't you?
I hadn't written that.
I grabbed my phone and opened the photo I'd taken that morning. The room in the photo showed the normal layout. Bed left, desk right. I looked up. Desk left, bed right.
My hands were shaking. I could feel my pulse in my fingertips.
I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. I sat in the plastic chair with every light on, watching the room. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. At 5:48 a.m., when grey light began to seep through the window, I blinked — just blinked — and the room was normal again. Bed left. Desk right.
The note was gone.
I called the landlord. He didn't answer. I called again. And again. On the ninth call, he picked up.
"The room," I said. "The furniture moves at night."
Silence.
"Did you hear me? The room changes. The layout reverses. I wake up and everything is on the wrong side."
His breathing was shallow. Quick.
"Did you move anything?" he asked.
"No."
"Are you sure? The chair. Did you pull the chair out?"
I thought about it. The first night, I had pulled the chair out to sit at the desk. I had pushed it back afterward, but maybe — maybe not exactly where it had been.
"I might have shifted the chair slightly," I said.
He hung up.
I stared at the phone. He didn't call back.
That night — the eighth night — I placed tape on the floor. Small strips of electrical tape marking the exact position of each furniture leg. I took photographs from every angle. I set my phone to record video, propped it on the windowsill, and aimed it at the room.
I lay in bed and tried to sleep. Rain had started. Heavy, rhythmic, like fingers drumming on the window. The smell was back — metallic, but now laced with something organic. Something warm.
I fell asleep at 1:30 a.m.
I woke at 3:17.
The room was different.
Not just reversed. Wrong. The bed was in the center of the room. The desk was pushed against the door, blocking it. The chair was on top of the desk, upside down, its legs pointing at the ceiling like the limbs of a dead insect.
And the mirror — the mirror was on the floor, leaning against the bed frame, angled upward.
I looked into it.
My reflection looked back.
It was sitting up in bed, just like me. Same posture. Same wide eyes. Same sweat-damp hair clinging to its forehead.
But it was smiling.
I wasn't smiling.
My jaw was clenched so tight my teeth ached, and my reflection — the thing in the mirror — was smiling with lips that stretched too wide, showing too many teeth, teeth that were the right shape but the wrong color, grey like wet cement.
I scrambled backward. My spine hit the wall. The mirror didn't move. The reflection didn't follow my movements. It stayed where it was — sitting upright, smiling, looking at the exact spot where I had been.
Then it tilted its head. Slowly. Like a dog hearing a strange sound.
And it spoke.
The voice came from inside the room. Not from the mirror. From behind me. From the wall my back was pressed against.
"You moved the chair."
I screamed. I threw myself at the desk blocking the door, shoved it aside, clawed at the handle. The door opened. I ran.
I ran down the hallway. Past doors that were all closed, all silent. Down the stairs. Through the building entrance. Into the rain.
I didn't stop until I was on the main road, standing under a streetlight, soaking wet, shaking so violently I could barely hold my phone.
I opened the video file.
The recording was six hours long. I scrubbed through it with numb fingers. The room was dark. I could see myself sleeping, a dim shape on the bed.
At 3:17, the video showed me sit up.
Just me. The room hadn't changed. The furniture was exactly where it should be. Bed on the left. Desk on the right. Chair tucked under the desk. Mirror on the wall.
I watched myself get up. Walk to the center of the room. Drag the bed to the center. Push the desk against the door. Lift the chair and place it upside down on top of the desk.
I watched myself take the mirror off the wall, carry it gently — tenderly — and lean it against the bed frame.
Then I watched myself sit on the bed, look into the mirror, and smile.
I watched for forty minutes.
I never stopped smiling.
I'm writing this from a motel room three kilometers away. I haven't been back. I won't go back.
But here's the thing that keeps me sitting upright, keeps me pressing my back against the headboard and staring at the wall across from me.
I've been looking at the video on a loop, trying to understand, trying to convince myself it was sleepwalking, a parasomnia episode, something medical, something explainable.
And ten minutes ago, I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
At the 3:16 mark — one minute before I sat up — there's movement in the mirror on the wall.
My reflection is already sitting up.
My reflection sits up first.
And right now, in this motel room, there's a mirror on the bathroom door that I can see from the bed.
I'm not going to look at it.
I'm not going to look at it.
I think it's already looking at me.