4 hits

Lyrics

The air in the apartment has turned into a thick, electric soup. It tastes like copper and stale ozone. I’m deep into the fourth hit, and the transition was violent—a sudden snap where the reality of the room shattered and reformed into something jagged. My pulse isn't a heartbeat anymore; it’s a high-voltage wire arcing in a puddle.
​I’m hunched over in the hallway, my spine curved like a question mark. My knuckles are raw, stained with a chalky white dust that’s settled into the creases of my skin. I have a flat-head screwdriver I found in the junk drawer, and I’m working it behind the door frame.
​Chirp. Scratch. Peel.
​The beige paint is stubborn, but I’m more persistent. I can feel the vibration of the metal against the gypsum board, a tactile frequency that travels up my arm and settles in my jaw. I’m not just cleaning; I’m excavating. I’m convinced that if I can get through the top three layers—this cheap landlord-special tan, the eggshell white underneath, and that weird 90s mauve—I’ll find the blueprints. The real ones. The ones that show where the vents actually go and why the shadows in the corner keep changing shape when I’m not looking directly at them.
​"They're watching the perimeter, man. I’m telling you, the frequency changed."
​It’s the geek. He’s been in the living room for eighteen hours, a human pendulum swinging between the window blinds and the front door. He’s got a pair of dismantled headphones around his neck, wires trailing like plastic guts. He’s convinced the neighbor’s Wi-Fi is actually a localized mapping signal. Every time a car rolls past on the street below, he freezes, his head cocking to the side like a bird, eyes tracking a sound only he can hear. He’s the weekend warrior of paranoia, a ghost in a zip-up hoodie.
​"Count 'em with me," I rasp. I don't look at him. If I break eye contact with the wall, the patterns might reset.
​"Count what?" He’s at the window again, his fingers twitching against the plastic slats, creating a tiny sliver of light that cuts across the floor like a blade.
​"The popcorn," I say, shifting my weight and sliding onto my back. "The ceiling. It’s a ledger."
​I stare upward. The ceiling is a vast, inverted mountain range of sprayed-on texture. In the dim, flickering light of a single floor lamp, the shadows between the grains create a complex network of topography. I start at the vent and move East. One. Two. Three. Ten. Fifty.
​The grains start to move. They don't just sit there; they rotate on their axes, tiny white planets in a drywall galaxy. I can see the clusters forming—syllable clusters of stone, a language written in calcified dust. Every time I blink, the count changes, and the frustration burns in my gut like acid. Four hundred and twelve... no, four hundred and thirteen. The extra one just birthed itself from the shadow of the smoke detector.
​"There's too many," he whispers, suddenly looming over me. His face is a map of exhaustion, skin pulled tight over bone, his pupils swallowed by the iris until there's nothing left but two black holes. "You can't count 'em all. It's an infinite loop. That's how they trap you."
​He’s right. I can feel the loop tightening. The scraping of the screwdriver, the squeak of his sneakers, the humming of the refrigerator—it’s all one giant gear turning in the dark.
​I reach up, my hand shaking so hard it looks like a blur. I pick at a single, sharp stalactite of ceiling texture. It resists for a second, then snaps, crumbling into a fine powder that rains down onto my forehead. It feels like hot ash. I rub it into my skin, wondering if I can become part of the architecture, if I can just fade into the paint and the dust until the weekend finally lets go of my throat.
​"Keep scraping," the geek mutters, turning back to the window. "I'll watch the street. Don't let the walls close the gap."
​So I dig back in. The metal bites into the wood. The paint curls like a dying leaf. I’ve got forty more hours of ceiling to count and a lifetime of layers to peel away before the sun dares to come back up.