The Room That Kept Changing
The first change was so small that he ignored it.
The second was impossible.
By the third, he started taking photographs.
That was when the room became something else entirely.
Moving In
The apartment was cheap.
Too cheap, probably.
But he needed somewhere quickly, and the building seemed quiet.
There was one bedroom, a small kitchen, a living room and a narrow room at the end of the hallway.
The landlord called it a storage room.
It had no furniture.
No windows.
Just four walls and a light hanging from the ceiling.
He didn't use it.
The Chair
Three weeks after moving in, he noticed a chair inside the room.
He was certain he hadn't put it there.
It was an old wooden chair.
He removed it.
The next morning, it was back.
He assumed he had forgotten.
So he took a photograph of the empty room.
Then he removed the chair again.
The following morning, the photograph showed something strange.
The chair was visible in the picture.
But it wasn't in the room.
The Wall
After that, he started photographing the room every night.
For several days, nothing changed.
Then one morning he noticed the back wall looked different.
It was closer.
Only by a few inches.
He measured it.
The room was smaller.
He measured again.
Same result.
The landlord laughed when he mentioned it.
The measurements were wrong, he was told.
The building was old.
Old buildings moved.
Walls settled.
Nothing unusual.
The Door
A week later, the door wouldn't open.
It wasn't locked.
It simply wouldn't move.
He pushed harder.
Nothing.
Then he heard something on the other side.
A soft scraping sound.
Like furniture being dragged across a floor.
He stepped away.
The door opened.
The room was empty.
Except for the chair.
It was facing the door.
The Photographs
He began comparing the photographs.
The room was changing.
Not dramatically.
Gradually.
The ceiling appeared lower.
The walls became darker.
The chair moved closer to the center.
And in every photograph, the room seemed slightly different.
He stopped sleeping.
He stopped inviting people over.
Eventually, he stopped leaving the apartment.
The Fifth Wall
The final photograph was taken at 3:12 in the morning.
It showed the room from the hallway.
There was something wrong with it.
The room appeared longer than the hallway could possibly allow.
There seemed to be another section behind the back wall.
Another room.
And inside that room was a second door.
He stared at the photograph for nearly an hour.
Then he looked down the hallway.
The door to the storage room was open.
Beyond it was darkness.
He closed it.
The Apartment
The apartment was empty when the landlord entered several months later.
The tenant had disappeared.
His belongings were still there.
His phone was still charging beside the bed.
The photographs were gone.
The landlord later said the storage room had always been smaller than the other rooms.
He had never noticed anything unusual.
Except for one thing.
There was a wooden chair inside.
Sometimes the room doesn't change.
Sometimes you do.