Chapter 5: My Turn

Chapter 5: My Turn

The rage burned itself out, leaving behind a black, brittle ash of exhaustion. Remi’s tirade ended not with a bang, but with a ragged, whimpering collapse. She sank to the floor, her legs giving way, her body wracked with tremors that had nothing to do with the apartment’s profound cold. The last thing she remembered was the impassive, smiling face of the doll, its black glass eyes reflecting her own broken image as the world dissolved into a merciful darkness.

She didn't so much wake up as surface, dragged from a deep, dreamless void by a silence that was more jarring than any noise. The first thing she registered was the ache in her bones and the rough texture of the cheap carpet against her cheek. The second was the quiet.

A deep, ringing silence.

Slowly, she pushed herself up, her muscles screaming in protest. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She blinked, trying to clear the fog from her vision and her mind. And then she realized what was wrong. The television was off.

For the first time in three days, the constant, melodic drone of The Crimson Court was gone. The screen was a black, glossy void. The absence of the sound was a physical presence in the room, a deafening stillness that made the hair on her arms stand on end. The watcher had finished its show.

A new, more potent fear began to trickle into the hollow space her rage had left behind. Why had it stopped?

Remi staggered to her feet, leaning against the back of the sofa for support. Her throat felt raw, as if she’d swallowed sand. Her gaze swept the room, cataloging the scene of her breakdown. The armchair was still grotesquely positioned in the middle of the floor, its scuff marks like angry scars on the laminate. The doll was still on the coffee table, a small, dark shape in the gloom of the curtained room. Everything was as she had left it.

Except for the wall.

Across from the sofa, on the large, blank expanse of beige paint above the silent television, something was there that hadn't been there before.

Something red.

Her mind, sluggish and traumatized, took a moment to process it. At first, she thought it was a trick of the light, a shadow. But as her eyes adjusted, the image sharpened into two distinct, jagged words. They were scrawled across her wall in a thick, waxy, blood-red line. The letters were huge, childishly formed and uneven, as if written by a small, angry hand with a grip of impossible strength.

It looked like it had been done in crayon. She didn't own any crayons.

Her breath hitched in her throat. She took a stumbling step closer, her heart beginning to pound a frantic, heavy rhythm against her ribs. She didn't need to get any closer to read the message. It was a direct, two-word answer to the last, desperate question she had screamed into the void.

What more could you possibly want?

The wall gave her the reply.

MY TURN.

The air rushed from Remi’s lungs. It wasn't a scream; it was a silent, strangled gasp. This wasn't a random act of a chaotic spirit. This was a response. A communication. A declaration. The thing in her apartment had listened to her rage, had absorbed her pain and her defiance, and had answered with a possessive, terrifying claim.

The entire apartment, her small, cluttered sanctuary, instantly transformed. It was no longer a home violated; it was a prison cell. The deadbolt on the front door was no longer for keeping the world out, but for locking her in with this… this thing. Every shadow in every corner was no longer just a patch of darkness, but a place where it could be hiding, watching, waiting. The single window overlooking the alley didn't offer escape; it was a barred opening taunting her with a world she could no longer safely access.

Mrs. Millar's complaint, the overdrawn bank account, the threat of eviction from Mr. Henderson—those were problems of the living world. They felt small and distant now, like anxieties from another lifetime. The horror had moved past the circumstantial and had become deeply, terrifyingly personal.

Her gaze was drawn, as if by a physical force, back to the doll on the coffee table. It sat in the exact same spot, its posture unchanged. But in the context of the writing on the wall, its appearance was horribly altered. The serene, painted smile no longer looked placid or mocking. It looked triumphant. Its unblinking black eyes seemed to gleam with a new, hungry intelligence. It was the face of a victor who had just announced its intentions.

“My turn for what?” Remi whispered, the words barely audible in the crushing silence.

My turn to choose the entertainment. My turn to move the furniture. My turn to spend the money.

The logical conclusions were terrifying enough, but her soul screamed a far more primal fear. A fear born from her grandmother's old stories, of porcelain figures with hollow insides, waiting to be filled.

My turn to live.

The entity wasn't just a parasite content to feed on her finances and her fear from a distance. It had been watching her, studying her, perhaps even learning from the dramas it consumed on the television. It wasn't content to be a guest anymore. It wanted to be the host. It didn't just want her attention.

It wanted her life.

The childish scrawl on the wall was not a prank. It was a promise. A declaration of war for the ownership of her body and her soul. And as Remi stood trembling in the center of her cage, she knew with a sickening certainty that the haunting was over. The siege had begun.