Jack hadn’t been feeling himself the past couple days, and it was showing.

His wife Wendy was starting to worry, and their son’s imaginary friend, Tony, was starting to become too vocal for his mother’s comfort. Danny talked about Tony like he was a part of the family, not just a figment of his imagination. He whispered to him in corners, paused mid-sentence to “listen,” and sometimes spoke in a strained, distant voice that wasn’t quite his own. Wendy spent long nights awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying Danny’s words and wondering if isolation was getting to all of them faster than she’d expected.

Jack, however, didn’t seem to notice. He’d been growing more and more… different by the day. Some nights he wouldn’t eat or sleep. He felt no shame in chastising his wife and son for seemingly innocent missteps—a door left open, a question asked at the wrong time, a laugh that came too loudly. His patience was thinning, stretched tight like wire ready to snap. And his writing—his writing had become an obsession. Not the hopeful, inspired kind, but something feverish and desperate, as if the words owed him something and were deliberately refusing to comply.

Jack sat hunched over the typewriter, fingers hovering uselessly above the keys. The machine loomed before him like an accusation. The room was cold, though he hadn’t noticed when it had become that way. His hair was unkempt, greasy from days without a shower, and his eyes were ringed with dark, sleepless shadows. Four hundred words. That was all he had managed, and they stared back at him with quiet mockery.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, jaw tightening. The silence pressed in on him, thick and deliberate, broken only by the faint hum of the hotel settling around him. It felt alive in these moments, as though it were waiting—listening. Jack rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the crawling sensation beneath his skin, but it only grew worse. Thoughts intruded uninvited, sharp and venomous. If they’d just leave you alone. If you had real quiet. Real respect.

His fingers slammed down on the keys, the clatter echoing too loudly in the empty room. He paused, breath uneven, and stared at the half-written page. The words didn’t feel like his anymore. They felt suggested, nudged forward by something patient and unseen. A faint smile tugged at his lips—not joy, but grim satisfaction.

Jack leaned closer to the typewriter, shoulders curling inward as if confiding in it. The hotel seemed to breathe with him, and for the first time in days, the silence didn’t feel empty. It felt approving.