It smelled like sour coffee, dirty laundry, and something no one ever named. The blinds were half-shut but the sun had given up trying to come in anyway. The air was warm in the worst way — like heat trapped in a coffin.

Elliot hadn’t moved in hours. Maybe days. He was sitting on the kitchen floor, back against the fridge, wearing the same black t-shirt he’d spilled ramen on three nights ago. There were three cigarette butts in the sink and a fourth tucked behind his ear. His phone was somewhere under the couch. Dead.

The only sound in the apartment was the low buzz of the fridge — and the occasional creak of the building reminding him it still stood. Unlike him.

His hands were shaking. Not from anything dramatic. Just from nothing. Just from being alive too long without enough sleep, enough food, enough reason.

There was an old voicemail playing on loop in his head. Iris’s voice. From over a year ago.

“You’re not a monster, Elliot. You’re just… so tired of trying.”

He stared at the floor tiles, eyes unfocused, lips parted like he might say something — but didn’t.

His stomach growled.

He ignored it.

Outside, a dog barked. A car door slammed. The world kept going.

But in here, Elliot was rotting. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to be saved.