The Tenth Floor

Elliot Graves had worked security long enough to know that most places were different after dark. But there was something about Everline Tower that felt... wrong.

It wasn’t the tallest building in the city, nor the busiest. Impressive by day, forgotten relic at night. Twelve floors of corporate nothingness—law firms, recruitment agencies, maybe an investment company or two—but by the time Elliot Graves started his shift, the offices were empty.

The lobby was a cavern of glass and steel, polished floors reflecting the pale glow of the overhead lights. A row of silent desks lined one side of the room, the receptionists long gone. The security station, a squat little booth near the lift banks, was where Elliot would spend most of his night.

It wasn’t a hard job. A few patrols. Checking CCTV. Making sure no one broke in or set up camp in the stairwells.

Easy money. With only one simple rule.

He had heard it the first day on the job, sitting across from his supervisor in a windowless office that smelled like stale coffee, cigarettes and paperwork.

“The tenth floor is off-limits,” the man had said, sliding a company-issued ID badge across the desk. “You see anything weird with the lifts? Ignore it.”

Elliot had nodded, waiting for an explanation.

“Fire damage,” the supervisor continued. “Happened about fifteen years back. Gutted the whole floor—place is a wreck. It’s sealed off, no one’s been up there in over a decade. The lifts don’t stop there; the buttons are disabled, and the stair access is locked. Just do your rounds and don’t worry about it.”

Simple enough.

But Elliot had worked security long enough to know that rules always had a reason. And if an entire floor was condemned, why was the building still open? Why had it not been repaired?

Still, he didn’t argue. The pay was decent and compared to dealing with drunks at the shopping centre, this was easy work.

At least, it should have been.

It started small.

Elliot was at the security desk, feet up, half-watching the grainy CCTV monitors, the glow of the vending machine his only company. The building was quiet, the only sounds the distant hum of the air conditioning and the occasional creak of settling pipes.

Elliot was scrolling through his phone when movement flickered across the security monitor.

One of the lifts was rising.

His eyes flicked up, frowning. The building was empty. No one should be using the lift.

He checked the feed. The screen showed Lift Three ascending. 6… 7… 8… 9…

Then—10. The screen flickered wildly.

The number shouldn’t be there. The panel was programmed to skip it, to jump straight to 11.

The lift kept climbing, as if nothing was wrong, but Elliot’s stomach twisted.

He rewound the footage, playing it back.

8… 9… 11.

He blinked. Wait.

He ran it back again. Slower.

The number 10 didn’t light up. Just as it should be.

No flicker, no glitch, nothing. It just… wasn’t there.

He scrubbed the footage frame by frame. The jump from 9 to 11 was seamless—no hesitation, no break. But he knew what he had seen.

10 - Then, static.

A sharp distortion had twisted across the lift’s interior feed. Just for a second.

A shape.

Tall. Thin. Blurred at the edges. Standing at the back of the lift.

The picture snapped back to normal, and the lift was empty again.

Yet, on the replay. Nothing. Had he imagined it?

Elliot sat completely still, the screen’s glow buzzed in the silence.

He checked the logs. No lift calls. No movement detected. No sign anyone had used the system.

The camera must have malfunctioned. That was all.

But then why was his pulse still hammering?

The footage was a glitch. It had to be.

Elliot had seen weirder tech idiosyncrasies before—motion sensors going off with no one there, CCTV cameras looping old footage like echoes from the past.

He let out a slow breath, rolling his shoulders to shake off the tension.

The shift wasn’t even halfway over. He wasn’t about to let his own mind start screwing with him.

He stood, stretching, and grabbed his torch. Routine check. Walk the floors. Make sure no one had sneaked in. Normal. Simple.

His footsteps echoed too loudly as he crossed the lobby. The emptiness of the building pressed in around him—not just quiet, but the kind of silence that swallowed sound, like a theatre after the last audience had left.

He pressed the lift call button. The lights flickered to life above Lift Three.

Ding.

The doors slid open.

Elliot frowned. The button panel was already lit. 10.

That wasn’t right.

The lifts skipped the tenth floor. The panel wasn’t supposed to let anyone select it. Hell, it wasn’t even supposed to have power.

Maybe the system had reset? He had seen stranger things.

Elliot hesitated, then stepped inside. The doors closed smoothly behind him.

He reached to press 12—his usual starting point. His finger hovered over the button.

Then—

Soft. Faint. Distant.

A voice.

Muffled, barely audible. Somewhere above.

Elliot’s hand froze. The lift was silent, but the noise hadn’t come from the speaker system. It had come from inside the shaft.

A single, soft knock echoed down the walls.

The following night passed quietly. Elliot sat at the security desk, sipping cheap vending machine coffee and watching the CCTV monitors out of habit rather than necessity. The Everline Tower had settled into its usual after-hours stillness, and his shift had been mercifully dull.

Just how he liked it.

He leaned back, stretching, glancing between the screens—lobby empty, stairwells clear, office corridors silent. Nothing out of place. Nothing moving.

He reached for his phone when movement caught his eye.

One of the lift cameras had switched feeds.

His stomach tensed—not because it was unusual, but because of which lift it was.

Lift Three.

The one that had glitched before.

Elliot frowned, leaning in. The lift wasn’t supposed to be in use. No one else was in the building. Yet the small indicator screen above the doors lit up.

6… 7… 8… 9…

His breath slowed. He knew what should come next.

11.

The lift should skip to 11. It always did.

Except it didn’t.

10.

The number glowed, solid and real, as if the floor had never been locked at all.

Elliot sat up straighter. His mouth felt dry.

The lift had stopped.

But the doors didn’t open.

Bang.

A sudden, heavy thump from inside the lift.

Elliot flinched, eyes locked on the screen.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The force of it shook the camera slightly. The sound was muffled through the speakers, but it was unmistakable—something was inside.

But the doors didn’t move.

No one had called the lift. No one had pressed the button.

And then—silence.

The pounding stopped abruptly, like someone had taken their hands away. The camera feed flickered.

Ding.

The lift resumed its ascent.

The doors finally slid open on the eleventh floor.

Empty.

Elliot’s skin prickled as he watched the doors linger open for a few seconds before closing again. His pulse hammered in his ears. He forced himself to check the logs.

No calls. No request for floor 10. No record of movement at all.

He swallowed hard. His shift had just started.

It was going to be a long night.

Elliot was tired. Not exhausted—just that creeping, bone-deep fatigue that settled after too many nights alone in an empty building. The kind of weariness that made the edges of things blur, that made time feel slippery.

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face. The CCTV screens glowed dully in the dark. Everything was as it should be—motionless, silent, utterly still. He checked his phone.

1:43 AM.

He took a sip of coffee. It had gone cold.

Frowning, he placed it back down. He had only just poured it, hadn’t he? He glanced at the vending machine, the faint hum of its refrigeration unit pressing against the silence. Had he walked over there? He didn’t remember.

Elliot shook his head, trying to focus. It was just fatigue. The mind played tricks when there was nothing to distract it.

The CCTV flickered.

Not static—just a brief distortion, a shift in contrast. Almost imperceptible. He scanned the monitors, but nothing had changed.

Still, he felt it.

The sensation of something unseen, just out of frame.

His eyes flicked back to the lift feeds. Lift Three was on the ground floor. Unmoving. The doors firmly shut. He exhaled slowly.

Then, the intercom crackled. The sudden burst of static made him jolt, the speakers buzzing above the desk.

A voice. Warped. Distant.

“Don’t let it—”

The transmission cut out with a violent hiss of static. The sound scraped through the room, crawling under his skin.

Elliot sat frozen, staring up at the intercom speaker. The voice had been male. Rough. Familiar.

The intercom remained silent.

He turned back to the monitors, but something was wrong.

His reflection in the glass panel behind his desk.

It should have been a perfect mirror image—his own weary form slouched in his chair, eyes fixed on the screens. But something about it was off.

His reflection wasn’t quite lined up.

A fraction of a second out of sync. He shifted in his seat, and the reflected movement followed just a little too late.

Elliot swallowed.

Fatigue. That was all. The body lagged behind the brain sometimes—delayed recognition, misfired neurons. Nothing more.

He forced himself to look away. He needed to move. A patrol, clear his head.

His boots echoed on the marble floor of the lobby as he crossed to the lift. His fingers hovered over the call button for a second longer than necessary before pressing it.

Ding.

The doors slid open.

The panel was blank—no floors selected. He exhaled, stepped inside, and pressed for 12. The button glowed beneath his fingertip.

The doors closed.

Then, without warning, the lift shuddered.

The buttons flickered.

Elliot stiffened. The usual smooth ascent jolted—barely perceptible, but enough for his pulse to spike. His eyes flicked to the panel.

The numbers blinked as they climbed.

4… 5… 6…

Then, without his hand moving—

10.

The number pulsed red against the panel.

His breath turned shallow.

The lift did not stop.

It climbed, as if nothing had happened.

…11…12

The doors slid open, revealing the empty, darkened hallway of the twelfth floor.

Elliot stepped out. His legs felt unsteady.

The doors closed behind him with a soft hush, as if nothing had happened at all.

Yet the sensation remained. Something was waiting.

Only when he reached for his torch did he notice the slight tremor in his fingers. He flexed his hand, willing it to stop.

The corridor was silent.

Twelve floors up, there was no city noise, no street sounds—just the occasional murmur of air vents and the quiet mechanical hum of the building’s unseen systems.

He forced himself to walk the hallway, checking doors as he always did. The glass-walled offices were empty. Computer monitors slept in standby mode, little green lights blinking in quiet rhythm.

Routine.

Still, the unease clung to him, crawling at the base of his skull. Something had been wrong with that lift.

Something had caused 10 to light up.

His own footsteps echoed as he turned the corner, passing an office he had already checked. But as he glanced through the glass panel, he froze.

There was someone inside.

His stomach lurched.

A figure, standing by the far desk. Back turned. Unmoving.

The office had been empty a second ago. He was sure of it.

Elliot swallowed, his pulse hammering. He reached for his radio.

“Security to base,” he muttered, forcing his voice to stay level. “I’ve got a—”

The words died in his throat.

The figure was gone.

The office was empty again. The air in his lungs turned to ice as he unlocked the glass door and entered.

Slowly, he stepped closer. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, the space devoid of life. The chair by the desk was pulled out, but that could have been left like that earlier.

But on the surface of the desk, something caught his eye.

A stack of paperwork. Old. Yellowed at the edges.

Elliot frowned, reaching for the top sheet.

Everline Tower Security Incident Report

The breath left his lungs. It was his handwriting. His signature.

But the date—February 2008.

That wasn’t possible. He hadn’t been working here in 2008. He hadn’t even lived in the city back then. A slow, crawling sensation spread up his spine.

He flipped through the next page. Another report. Same writing. Same signature. Dated three months after the first.

Page after page, all signed Elliot Graves.

He stared at his own name in a dozen places, scrawled in ink he didn’t remember touching. His hands had started shaking again.

He backed away from the desk. His mouth was dry, his thoughts tangled. He needed to get downstairs. Back to the lobby. Somewhere normal.

The lights flickered. A crackle of static fizzled through the radio.

Then—A voice. His own voice.

“Don’t let it out.”

The words whispered through the empty corridor, distorted, stretched, as if played from an old recording.

Elliot turned on his heel. He needed to go. Now.

He walked faster, heart pounding in his throat, reaching the lift call button. He jabbed it hard, breath uneven.

Ding.

The doors opened smoothly.

Lift Three.

The panel inside was already lit.

The number 10 glowed with quiet patience.

Waiting for him.

Elliot hesitated.

He had never been to the tenth floor. No one had, not for over a decade. The place was gutted. Sealed off. There was nothing there.

But the doors remained open. The button still glowed.

He had to know.

Elliot stepped inside.

The doors slid shut. The lift began to descend.

The descent felt wrong.

Elliot had ridden this lift dozens of times, but now, something was off. The usual weightless shift of motion was missing. There was no hum of machinery, no gentle sway of cables. Just a silent, suffocating drop.

The numbers above the doors flickered.

11…

10

The light turned red.

The lift stopped.

The doors didn’t open.

Elliot’s breath came slow and shallow. He could feel his pulse in his throat.

A soft creak echoed through the lift shaft.

Then, a whisper. Not from the intercom. Not from the speakers.

From inside the lift.

“… you shouldn’t be here.”

Elliot’s fingers twitched towards the control panel. He hit 11. Then G. Open doors; close doors. Nothing responded. The buttons had no resistance. No weight.

The panel wasn’t real.

A mechanical groan shuddered through the lift, low and organic, like metal breathing. The air was thick—stale, damp, tinged with something rotten.

The lights flickered—then went out.

Total blackness.

Then—Ding.

The doors slid open.

And the darkness outside breathed.

The corridor stretched in both directions, too long, too wide—or maybe too narrow, too tight. The walls pressed close and then stretched away again, shifting when he wasn’t looking.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, but they didn’t cast shadows.

Elliot stepped forward. The floor was soft.

No dust. No fire damage. Just a long hallway lined with glass-walled offices. The rooms inside were fully furnished, desks stacked with paperwork, monitors blinking as he passed.

The offices shouldn’t be here. This floor was gutted in the fire.

The walls whispered.

Elliot turned, pulse hammering. There was no one there.

He moved forward, boots sinking into the floor. The sound was wrong, like stepping on damp carpet. At the end of the corridor, a door stood ajar.

The light inside was on.

Elliot swallowed. He should go back. He should—

The lift was gone.

His breath caught. He turned in a slow circle, cold sweat trickling down his back.

The lift doors had vanished. The walls were smooth. Featureless.

There was no way back.

A shudder crawled through his spine. He turned back towards the open office. There was no other choice.

He stepped inside.

The room was small. A security office. Filing cabinets lined the walls, the desk cluttered with reports. A landline phone sat in its cradle, the coiled cord snaking across the surface.

And on the desk—A folder.

Elliot’s name was on the front.

His stomach twisted.

He reached out, flipping it open.

Inside—incident reports. Dozens of them.

All filled in with his handwriting.

Date: 14/07/1996

Report: Unidentified disturbance. Unauthorised lift movement detected.

Elliot stared. That was impossible.

Another report. 31/08/2003. His signature at the bottom.

Another. 17/11/2015. The same writing. His own.

A choked breath left his throat. None of this made sense.

A tap.

Soft. Wet.

From the ceiling.

Elliot’s breath locked in his chest.

A droplet of something dark splashed onto the desk. Thick. Viscous.

Elliot’s gaze lifted.

The ceiling sagged, the plaster bulging outward as if something was pressing against it from the other side. A stain spread, glistening as it stretched—until the surface tore.

A hand pushed through.

Slick. Boneless. Too many fingers, too long, glistening with black fluid. It gripped the jagged edge of the rupture. The ceiling peeled back in strips, widening as something dragged itself free—limbs unfolding, joints bending at impossible angles.

Elliot stumbled back, his breath locked in his throat. The air was thick, damp, humming with something unseen.

The thing breathed.

Not through lungs. Not through a mouth.

The sound came from the walls.

Plaster cracked. The floor beneath him pulsed, the surface bulging. He looked down.

A hand reached for his ankle.

Not human. Not real.

The floor had changed—swelling, shifting, flexing like the inside of a throat. More hands clawed their way up, some small and fragile, others gnarled and broken.

The walls groaned. The lights flickered, their glow stretching, warping into something sickly and wrong.

The thing overhead pushed free.

A mass of glistening muscle and twisting limbs, shifting and pulsing as if it hadn’t yet decided what shape to take. It had no face, but Elliot knew it was watching.

The pressure in the air thickened. A vibration hummed through his bones, and then—

His own voice filled the room.

“I let it out.”

His chest seized. The words had come from him, but he hadn’t spoken them.

The thing lurched forward.

The walls buckled. The floor split open.

This wasn’t a building.

It was a mouth.

And it was trying to swallow him whole.

The walls shuddered. The air pulsed.

Elliot ran.

The hands clawing from the floor missed him by inches, grasping at his boots as he lunged for the door. His pulse pounded in his ears. The corridor stretched before him—longer than it should have been, the far end warping, shifting, tilting.

The ceiling bulged again.

That thing—that mass of shifting, wet muscle—was forcing its way through the building itself. It slithered, limbs unfolding as it pulled free from the darkness above.

It wasn't chasing him.

It didn’t have to.

The walls were breathing, the light overhead humming in a frequency that made his teeth ache. The floor dipped beneath his weight, softening.

He was running on flesh.

His breath hitched. He wasn’t making progress.

The corridor stretched, pulling away from him even as his legs burned. Doors lined the walls, but they weren’t doors anymore—they were just outlines, flat black spaces that went nowhere.

Then—

A sound.

Low. Close.

Wet lips parting.

The floor tore open beneath him.

He plunged into darkness.

The Lift Doors Opened.

Elliot’s breath ripped from his throat. He was standing upright, shaking, his heart slamming against his ribs.

The lobby stretched before him.

Silent. Polished. The security desk sat where it always had, the monitors glowing dully.

The building was as it had been.

His lungs heaved, his mind scrambling for clarity.

The Tenth Floor was gone. No warped walls, no voices in the vents. Just the Everline Tower, empty and still.

A noise crackled over the intercom.

“Welcome back, Mr Graves.”

His body went cold.

The landline on the desk rang.

A sharp, metallic trill that shattered the silence.

Elliot’s feet wouldn’t move.

The phone kept ringing.

And then—the lift doors slid open behind him.

Something was waiting.

Elliot didn’t turn.

The air behind him shifted, thick and expectant, the way a room feels when someone is standing just over your shoulder.

The phone on the desk stopped ringing.

Silence stretched.

A slow, deliberate exhale whispered against the back of his neck.

“Go home, Elliot.”

His knees almost buckled. The voice was his own.

He wanted to run, to bolt for the doors, but his body locked—every instinct screaming that whatever stood behind him wanted him to turn around.

The lift doors remained open, waiting. And then, footsteps.

Soft. Measured. Moving away.

The glass of the lobby shimmered in the dim light, the city beyond flickering between real and not.

Elliot forced himself to breathe. His fingers twitched at his sides, nails biting into his palms. He had to move. He had to go.

His legs finally obeyed, stiff and mechanical. He took one step.

Then another.

He did not look back.

The automatic doors slid open before him, the cold night air hitting his skin like a slap.

He stepped outside.

The city felt hollow.

Streetlights buzzed overhead, the roads stretching out too long, the skyline twisting as if the buildings had rearranged themselves in his absence.

His car sat where he had left it, dark and familiar, its shape a single fixed point in all the wrongness.

His breath came fast and shallow as he reached it. The keys fumbled in his hand, his fingers clumsy, slick with sweat. He jammed them into the lock, wrenched the door open, and slid inside. Quickly locking the door, shutting his eyes and willing his brain to still.

He braced himself against the steering wheel.

Breathe.

Breathe.

His gaze flicked to the rearview mirror.

The Everline Tower loomed behind him.

The lift doors were still open. A shadow stood inside.

Elliot’s breath caught.

The figure stepped forward, pausing just at the threshold of the building. Just before the glass.

It was him. Same uniform. Same stance. Same face.

But it wasn’t him.

Elliot’s stomach twisted into a knot so tight he thought he’d be sick. The thing standing inside the building lifted a hand.

It waved.

And smiled.

A slow, patient, knowing curve of the lips. Elliot’s lungs seized, his hand flying to the ignition. He turned the key—

Nothing.

The engine didn’t even click.

He tried again. Still… nothing.

His pulse pounded in his skull, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel.

His eyes flicked back to the mirror—The reflection inside the building was gone.

A tap.

Soft.

Wet.

Right outside his window. The breath left his body.

Slowly, so slowly, his head turned.

The driver’s side window was dark, slick with city rain.

And his own face stared back at him.

Not from the glass. Not a reflection.

From the other side.

It smiled.

“Go home, Elliot.”

Beside him, the car door unlocked.

Ding