The Alert

The emergency alert woke me at exactly 2:13 AM.

Not just my phone. Every phone in the apartment screamed at once with that sharp metallic alarm reserved for disasters.

I sat upright in bed while the room glowed red from the notification.

EMERGENCY CIVIL WARNING

DO NOT LOOK OUTSIDE.

KEEP ALL WINDOWS COVERED.

DO NOT RESPOND TO VOICES ASKING FOR HELP.

THIS ALERT WILL REPEAT UNTIL 5:00 AM.

I stared at it for several seconds, half asleep, trying to process whether it was some kind of hack.

Then another sound came from outside.

Screaming.

Not distant screaming.

Right beneath my apartment window.

The Street

I lived on the third floor of a small apartment building overlooking one of the main streets in town. Normally, even late at night, there were cars passing or people walking home from bars.

But when I moved toward the blinds and peeked through the gap, the street was completely empty.

Every traffic light blinked yellow.

Every storefront was dark.

And standing in the middle of the road was a woman in a hospital gown.

She wasn’t moving.

Her arms hung loosely at her sides while her bare feet stood motionless on the wet pavement.

My phone vibrated again with the same emergency alert.

DO NOT LOOK OUTSIDE.

The woman slowly tilted her head upward toward my building.

Toward my window.

I dropped the blinds shut immediately.

My heart started hammering.

Then came the knocking.

Three soft taps against my apartment door.

The Voice

I froze.

Another three knocks followed.

Then a woman’s voice spoke softly from the hallway.

“Please help me.”

I didn’t move.

“My daughter is hurt.”

The voice sounded wrong somehow.

Not robotic.

Not distorted.

Just… flat. Like someone reading emotions from a script.

I backed away from the door silently.

Then my phone buzzed again.

DO NOT OPEN YOUR DOOR FOR ANYONE.

DO NOT RESPOND TO VOICES.

I suddenly realized something horrifying.

The woman outside my building could not possibly have reached the third floor hallway that quickly.

Not without me hearing the stairwell door.

The voice came again.

“Daniel.”

My blood went cold.

I had never said my name.

“You left your mother alone at the hospital.”

I stumbled backward.

“How do you think she felt when she died?”

My stomach twisted violently.

Only three people knew I never visited my mother before she passed away.

Me.

My sister.

And my mother.

The knocking stopped.

Silence filled the apartment.

Then, slowly, something began scratching at the other side of the door.

The Broadcast

At around 3:00 AM, the power went out across the entire building.

The only light left came from outside.

Not streetlights.

Moonlight.

A pale blue glow leaked through the curtains.

Then every phone in the apartment emitted a loud burst of static.

A new message appeared.

LOCAL BROADCAST WILL BEGIN SHORTLY.

A video automatically opened on my screen.

A terrified-looking man sat behind a desk wearing a sheriff’s uniform. Blood covered one side of his face.

He kept looking off-camera while speaking.

“If you are watching this, stay inside. They are attracted to eye contact and recognition.”

The man swallowed hard.

“They look human at a distance, but they are not human.”

A loud bang echoed somewhere behind him.

He flinched.

“We believe they arrived sometime after midnight. We do not know where they came from.”

Another bang.

Closer this time.

The sheriff’s breathing became shaky.

“If someone outside knows personal things about you, do not answer them. Do not acknowledge them. They can only imitate what they hear or—”

The video glitched violently.

For one frame, something appeared standing behind him.

Tall.

Hairless.

Its arms hung below its knees.

Its face looked stretched too tightly over a skull that was almost human.

Then the video returned.

The sheriff was gone.

The chair behind the desk sat empty while wet chewing sounds echoed through the phone speaker.

The broadcast ended.

The Hallway

Around 3:40 AM, someone began running through the apartment hallway outside.

Not normal footsteps.

Heavy impacts.

Like an animal sprinting on two legs.

Doors slammed open farther down the hall.

People screamed.

I heard one neighbor crying hysterically.

Another shouted for help.

Then came the sounds that still haunt me.

Wet tearing.

Crunching.

The screams stopped abruptly.

Something moved slowly down the hallway afterward.

Dragging footsteps.

Sniffing.

A deep clicking sound.

It stopped outside my apartment door.

I held my breath.

The thing outside inhaled deeply through the crack beneath the door.

Then my sister’s voice whispered softly:

“Daniel?”

Tears instantly filled my eyes.

My sister lived four states away.

“Please open the door.”

The voice cracked exactly the way hers did when she cried.

“I don’t want to die out here.”

I clenched my mouth shut.

“Mom kept asking why you never came.”

A long silence followed.

Then the voice changed.

The softness vanished completely.

Now it sounded irritated.

“Why are you making this difficult?”

Its fingernails slowly scraped down the door.

Then it laughed.

Not a human laugh.

A broken imitation of one.

The Window

At 4:17 AM, curiosity almost got me killed.

The entire apartment had become unbearably silent.

No screams.

No footsteps.

Nothing.

I convinced myself maybe it was over.

Maybe the military arrived.

Maybe the things left.

I carefully approached the window and lifted the blinds slightly.

The street below was packed with people.

Hundreds of them stood shoulder to shoulder without moving.

All staring upward.

At the apartment building.

At me.

Their faces looked almost human, but every smile stretched far too wide.

Their eyes reflected pale blue light like animal eyes on a dark road.

And every single head tilted at the exact same angle.

My breath caught.

One of them slowly raised an arm and pointed directly at my window.

Then all of them smiled wider.

The glass behind me suddenly cracked.

I spun around.

Something was inside my apartment.

The Thing In My Home

It stood in the hallway near my bedroom.

Tall enough that its head nearly touched the ceiling.

Its skin looked gray and damp, stretched tightly over jutting bones.

Its arms were too long.

Its fingers twitched constantly like insect legs.

But the worst part was its face.

It kept changing.

One second it resembled my mother.

Then my sister.

Then me.

Like it couldn’t decide which shape to hold.

It smiled using all of its teeth.

“Daniel,” it whispered in my own voice.

I backed toward the kitchen.

The creature took one slow step forward.

“I know what you regret.”

Another step.

“I know what hurts you.”

I grabbed the largest knife from the counter with shaking hands.

The creature stopped moving.

Then it tilted its head curiously.

“You finally looked outside,” it said softly.

And suddenly every person on the street below began screaming at once.

The windows exploded inward.

Hands reached through broken glass.

Pale arms.

Twisting fingers.

Smiling faces forcing themselves through openings far too small for human bodies.

The creature in my apartment lunged.

Morning

I woke up in a hospital bed two days later.

Police found me unconscious in my apartment surrounded by shattered glass.

They said there had been a mass panic caused by a false emergency broadcast.

Officially, thirty-two people died that night.

Most from “self-inflicted injuries.”

The government denied everything else.

Denied the recordings.

Denied the creatures.

Denied the emergency alerts.

But sometimes, just before sunrise, my phone vibrates with a notification that disappears before I can screenshot it.

The message always says the same thing:

WE ARE STILL OUTSIDE.

DO NOT LOOK.