🏢 THE APARTMENT ABOVE MINE
PART 34: THE WOMAN AT THE DOOR 🔪
The door opened slowly.
My mother stood outside.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. My entire body froze as I stared at the woman I had spent years believing I understood.
“Mum?” I whispered.
Tears streamed down her face as she reached for me.
“Michael, come with me. Now!”
Before I could move, David stepped between us.
“Don’t listen to her!”
My mother looked at him with an expression of pure hatred.
“You’ve lied to him for too long, David.”
David’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me the truth!” I shouted.
My voice echoed through the hallway.
Neither of them answered.
I looked from David to my mother, desperately searching their faces for something familiar, something that could tell me which one of them was lying.
Finally, my mother lowered her gaze to the necklace around my neck.
“Your necklace contains the original memory,” she whispered. “That’s why they can never completely control you.”
I instinctively touched the pendant.
“What original memory? What are you talking about?”
David suddenly grabbed my wrist.
“She’s not your mother, Michael!”
My heart pounded.
“What?”
“She knows exactly what to say to make you trust her. Don’t let her manipulate you!”
My mother screamed.
“CHECK THE BACK OF THE NECKLACE!”
I tore the pendant from my neck and turned it over.
There, beneath years of scratches, were tiny engraved letters I had never noticed before.
SUBJECT 00 — ORIGINAL MEMORY KEY.
I stared at the inscription.
Subject 00.
Original memory.
The words felt strangely familiar, as though I had seen them in a dream I couldn’t remember.
“What does this mean?” I whispered.
Neither of them answered.
Then every light in the hallway went out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
I heard footsteps.
A struggle.
Someone whispered my name.
And then—
Silence.
When the lights flickered back on, my mother was gone.
David was gone too.
Only the apartment door remained open, revealing the darkness inside.
I backed away slowly.
“David?”
No answer.
“Mum?”
Nothing.
Then the television inside the apartment switched on by itself.
Static filled the screen.
A man’s face gradually emerged from the interference.
I stopped breathing.
The face was mine.
Not similar to mine.
Not someone who resembled me.
It was my face.
But the man on the screen looked older, exhausted, and terrified. A thin scar ran across his left cheek, and his eyes carried the unmistakable expression of someone who had witnessed something terrible.
He leaned toward the camera.
“Michael,” he said, “if you’re seeing this, they’ve activated the original memory key.”
I stumbled backward.
“Who are you?”
The man swallowed.
“I’m the original Michael.”
My legs nearly gave way.
He glanced over his shoulder, as though someone might be listening.
Then he looked directly into the camera again.
“You need to understand something before they find you.”
He paused.
“The woman you call your mother died twenty years ago.”
The television went black.
I stood frozen, unable to process what I had just heard.
My mother was dead?
Then who had raised me?
Who had held my hand when I was afraid of the dark? Who had taught me to tie my shoes? Who had sat beside my bed when I was sick?
Were those memories even mine?
A cold whisper drifted from behind me.
“That’s a lie.”
I spun around.
At the far end of the hallway stood my mother.
She was breathing heavily, her clothes stained with dust, and her eyes fixed on mine.
But something was different.
Her expression was no longer gentle.
Her face had become frighteningly still.
And in her right hand, she held a knife.
I backed toward the wall.
“Mum?”
She took one slow step forward.
“Michael, listen to me. Whatever you saw on that television, you must never believe it.”
“Then why did he have my face?”
Her eyes flickered.
“Because they made him that way.”
“Who are they?”
She didn’t answer.
I raised the necklace between us.
“What is Subject 00?”
For the first time, my mother looked genuinely afraid.
She glanced at the pendant, then at the knife in her hand.
“Give me the necklace.”
“No.”
“Michael, please.”
“No!” I shouted. “I’m done with the lies! David says you’re not my mother. A man who looks exactly like me says you’re dead. And now you’re standing here holding a knife!”
Tears filled her eyes again.
“You don’t understand what will happen if they get that necklace.”
“Then explain it!”
She shook her head.
“They’re coming.”
“Who?”
Before she could answer, a door slammed somewhere upstairs.
Then another.
Footsteps began moving through the building.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
One floor above us.
Then another set of footsteps sounded below.
We were being surrounded.
My mother grabbed my arm.
“We have to leave. Now!”
I pulled away.
“Not until you tell me the truth.”
She looked at me with a desperation I had never seen before.
“Your memories are not what you think they are, Michael. The childhood you remember, the people you love, even the name you answer to—everything was built around one event.”
“What event?”
She opened her mouth.
A loud electronic chime interrupted her.
The television inside the apartment switched on again.
This time, there was no static.
A red countdown appeared on the screen.
00:59
00:58
00:57
My mother stared at it in horror.
“No,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
A mechanical voice filled the hallway.
“ORIGINAL MEMORY KEY DETECTED.”
The necklace grew warm in my palm.
“SUBJECT 00 LOCATED.”
The countdown continued.
00:45
00:44
I looked at my mother.
“What happens when it reaches zero?”
She tightened her grip on the knife.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she leaned close enough for me to hear her next words.
“When the countdown ends, Michael, one of us will remember everything.”
She looked directly into my eyes.
“And the other one will cease to exist.”
The screen flashed.
00:30
I turned toward the television.
A new message appeared.
SELECT THE ORIGINAL.
Below it were two photographs.
One showed the man from the recording.
The other showed me.
My mother began to sob.
“Don’t choose either one.”
The footsteps were getting closer.
I could hear voices now, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize.
Then David’s voice came from the apartment behind me.
“Michael! Whatever she tells you, don’t let her touch the necklace!”
I turned.
David stood inside the open doorway, his shirt torn, a dark bruise across his forehead.
He looked terrified.
“She’s been lying to you since the beginning!” he shouted.
My mother raised the knife.
“Stay away from him!”
David lifted both hands.
“Michael, look at the inscription again. Look carefully!”
I lowered my gaze to the pendant.
Beneath the words SUBJECT 00 — ORIGINAL MEMORY KEY, a second line had begun to appear.
Letters emerged slowly, as though the metal itself were changing.
MEMORY HOLDER: MICHAEL.
Then another line appeared.
ORIGINAL OWNER: UNKNOWN.
My blood ran cold.
Unknown?
If I was the memory holder, and the original owner was unknown, then whose memories had I been carrying all this time?
The countdown reached ten seconds.
My mother screamed.
David lunged toward me.
I clutched the necklace against my chest.
And suddenly, a memory struck me.
A white room.
A glass wall.
A child’s voice crying in the darkness.
And a man standing on the other side of the glass, looking exactly like me.
He pressed his palm against the wall.
Then he whispered words I somehow remembered:
“When you find the woman with the knife, don’t let her tell you which one of us is real.”
The countdown reached zero.
Every light in the building exploded at once.
In the darkness, someone grabbed my hand.
A voice whispered into my ear.
“Finally. I’ve found you.”
It wasn’t David.
It wasn’t my mother.
It was the voice of the man from the television.
And when the emergency lights returned, I saw him standing directly in front of me.
The original Michael.
Alive.
He looked at the woman holding the knife, then at David.
Finally, his eyes settled on me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph.
It showed three people standing outside a hospital twenty years earlier.
My mother.
David.
And a small child with my face.
But the child wasn’t standing between them.
He was lying in a hospital bed.
And beneath the photograph was a handwritten date.
THE DAY MICHAEL DIED.
The man stepped closer.
“Now,” he said, “you need to know which one of us they brought back.”
Behind him, my mother raised the knife.
David screamed my name.
And I finally understood the most terrifying possibility of all.
Maybe the question was never whether my mother was real.
Maybe the question was whether I was.
🔻 TO BE CONTINUED…
💬 What do you think? Is Michael the original person, a reconstructed memory, or something even stranger? And why does his mother carry a knife?
🖤 Part 35: The Day Michael Died — the truth behind Subject 00 is about to be revealed.