She was about three weeks into the East Hollywood apartment just a few blocks away south of Thai Town, which meant she was three weeks into a new life where the most consistent relationship she was having was with her iPhone that she broke about 4 weeks ago. She had considered replacing it a few days into the move because of its cracked screen but kept it out of nostalgia and deep sense of aura that surrounded it. The apartment looked like a U-shape relic from a different time and smelled like radiator fluid with a side of metallic tang during a heatwave. The rent was higher than it should have been but such was life. Nothing in it felt new. Nothing except for her relationship status.

Things were barely unpacked, but after hours of opening boxes she decided to lay horizontal finally on the gray and affordable IKEA sofa. The screen light from her cracked iPhone fixed to her face. Bates Motel played on mute in the background with subtitles on. Words like “trilling” and “wet squelching footsteps.” She had plain Eggos on a paper towel going soft next to her on the coffee table with three half-drunk coffees spaced out throughout the apartment like the water glasses in Signs. One her coffees had already tipped over earlier and dried in a thin, sticky outline she didn’t have the emotional energy to clean up yet.

She was wearing a Let’s Summon Demons t-shirt she’d bought from Urban Outfitters and a black hoodie from American Apparel that still felt like it belonged to a different version of her. Her age probably doesn’t need to be said and starting over at that point in her life felt like having to go back to high school.

Earlier that day she’d seen a post that said “recently divorced and ready to be influenced by literally anything other than my own mind” and it stayed with her. Not because it was funny. Because it felt correct. Almost as if she had written it herself in some fugue state. Like Norman Bates going through things he didn’t order on his credit card bill, she thought there was an off chance she was clocking something she might’ve written.

The post stayed with her more. “Ready to be influenced by literally anything other than my own mind.” She had the thought, briefly, that if someone told her what to eat for dinner, she’d probably listen and if someone were to ask “is that what you’re wearing?” that she’d probably change her clothes.

Reflexively she opened her phone with the spiderweb looking screen again before she could decide if that post was a joke.

She’d spent the better part of the last hour in a Wiki hole about her new building’s footprint. Well, new to her at least. It was a 1920's vestige of a simpler time in Hollywood. Throughout her incessant browsing, she learned about Cassian Droe. Cassian Droe was the kind of thing that eventually turned up in anyone’s browsing if they started with her building. Like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with heavier urban legend vibes. He’d lived there in the twenties when the building was first built and presumed to be an occultist who carried out séances and communed with spirits. He spent his nights in the basement listening to the pipes. A basement that was never shown to her when she first looked at the apartment before deciding to rent. There was a photo of Cassian Droe in a stiff black collar, looking like every other dead white man who thought he’d figured out the universe. The page she had landed on said he believed the building could be trained. In fact, he felt it was built for that purpose exactly. The idea that if you repeated something enough times, the building might start to respond. Something about the pipes acting like the vocal chords in a throat.

She swallowed hard with her fingers brushing across her larynx. It made her remember her for tonsillectomy for some reason. She read that part about the building responding back to you again. Then once more, slower. Each word taking up its own space in her mind.

Earlier that day she’d been with a friend who was helping her move, which is millennial for carrying boxes and drinking a six pack of Modelo on the floor. They drank and talked about weird connections they’d had. The kind that only felt real for exactly the amount of time that someone was looking at you. This Wiki hole made her think of that.

She dived back into her phone without knowing why. And let’s face it, does anyone know why they’re on their phone?

“Older Gramp Seeks Asian Adventure. Basement access preferred” now showed up where “Recently Divorced And Ready To Be Influenced By Literally Anything Other Than My Own Mind" had been earlier. The oddness of people never ceased to amuse her. 

After realizing she had no true purpose for being on her phone, she put it on the coffee table face down.

The words were funny in that moment. Just something to screenshot and send to her friends later. Proof of how bad things could get without actually touching you.

Her cracked iPhone buzzed on the coffee table. Scam Likely. Then it stopped like it changed its mind.

It had been a minute before a text came through from Scam Likely. No words. Just a screenshot that looked like it had been passed around too many times to still belong to anyone.

“Older Gramp Seeks Asian Adventure. Basement access preferred.”

Same words that she had seen earlier. Same spacing. Or close enough.

She looked at it longer than she needed to. She almost replied. Just to see what would happen. She started to type something and then deleted it. Started again and stopped herself halfway through. All the words she came up with didn’t feel like something she wanted to be seen saying.

She didn’t text her friends. Not her Modelo buddy or bestie who showed her the apartment in the first place. They would likely tell her to take several seats and then start a group chat about her. She could already picture their sardonic tone.

Not knowing what else to do with the object in her hand, she opened her banking app, then closed it just as fast. The number there felt worse than anything she’d been watching.

Scam Likely made her think of the sheer amount of dating apps that she had survived just to end up here on an IKEA couch, divorced. OkCupid. eHarmony. Craigslist personals (RIP but spiritually alive). Even Tinder. None of them felt quite like apps. None of the messages truly stuck. Just fragments of the idea of someone that kept finding her anyway.

She put her phone down and switched to a true crime show but didn’t bother looking at the screen. She just let the voices fill the room. As they should. A buffer between herself and her own mind.

Still, she thought about the basement in her building that she had only just found out about. The idea of someone staying down there long enough to stop being a person and start being an invocation. Not lonely. Just simplified. Something you could answer without thinking too hard about it.

Her apartment shifted. It wasn’t colder. Just used. And time seemed more like a suggestion than a thing she existed within.

She looked at the TV across the room. It was off now, but it held her reflection anyway. When she blinked, it lagged. Like her existence was still buffering. It wasn’t enough to prove anything. Just enough that she didn’t want to check again.

A pipe moved somewhere in the old walls. Not a rattle. Something slower. A weight dragging itself through the building. Sounded like an echo that had no end. The sound climbed, steady, like it knew where it was going. No map needed.

She swore the pipes dragging sounded like a person saying “We can hear you talking.”

She didn’t remember talking. There was no one to talk to. But the sound coming from the pipes had become so similar to her voice that she didn’t want to hear it again.

So she looked at the phone. According to Twitter, Taylor Swift was expecting her first child. There was some long standing discourse on her feed about ethics in writing. It seemed that our country has started another war. You’d think that would be enough to distract her, but the text message never left her mind.

“Basement access preferred.”

Her thumb hovered over Scam Likely’s text to delete it, then stopped.

She opened Google Maps without thinking, like she was about to order something. Like the answer might already be there.The blue dot sat inside the building, but not where she was. Not her unit. Not the hallway.

Somewhere in the middle of it.

She stared at it.

Didn’t zoom in.

Didn’t move. Just let it sit there.

Just watched.

She stood up a second later, like her body had been waiting for permission and Scam Likely gave it to her.

For the first time in weeks she wasn’t thinking about the divorce anymore. Not the person, not the logistics, not the version of herself that had existed before the words “recently divorced” started to feel like something she could click into and disappear into.

Her mind was stuck on the pipes.

About how long something could sit in the walls before it learned the shape of a voice. Her voice.

She looked at the message again.

“Older Gramp Seeks Asian Adventure. Basement access preferred.”

It was a glitch. She wasn’t even Asian. She’d spent thirty years being exactly what she was, and the phone still couldn’t get the category right. But fuck it, even the occult gets it wrong sometimes. At this point, she didn’t have the energy to correct the record. If the building wanted to call her that, she’d let it. It was better than being the version of herself that lived on an IKEA couch watching Bates Motel.

She grabbed the cracked iPhone and walked toward the door.

She didn't turn around. Behind her, the muted TV was still showing the same crying woman on the same yacht. The subtitles said “Unintelligible sobbing.” The soft Eggo was still on the paper towel. The sticky brown ring from her coffee was still drying on the floor.

The room didn't feel empty. It just felt finished.