The girl with no name presses her palm flat against the wallpaper. The paper peels away like dead skin, brittle and yellowed at the edges. She watches it curl inward, collapsing into itself. It's beautiful, in a way. The way things fall apart when no one's left to care.
She walks. The hallway stretches, warps, breathes. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting shadows that twitch like dying insects. The air smells of damp carpet and something older—wet plaster, maybe, or the slow rot inside forgotten walls. She inhales deeply. The scent is familiar. More familiar than her own reflection in the grimy mirrors lining the hall.
The ceiling sags in places, bulging downward like a bloated stomach. She reaches up, trails her fingers along the damp plaster. It yields under her touch, soft as spoiled fruit. A chunk breaks away, crumbling to dust before it hits the floor. She watches it fall. No sound. Just the quiet, endless collapse of things no one will ever see.
Her footsteps leave faint impressions in the carpet—moist, spongy, alive with mildew. The fibers cling to her bare feet as she walks, whispering secrets in a language of decay. She doesn't wipe them away. They belong here. So does she.
A door hangs crookedly on its hinges ahead, half-open, half-rotted. She pushes it gently, and it sighs inward, shedding splinters like flakes of dead skin. The room beyond is darker, the air thicker, saturated with the sweetness of black mold blooming in the corners. She steps inside. The floorboards groan, buckling under her weight, but they don't break. Not yet. They're waiting for her to settle in first.
Something drips from the ceiling—slow, rhythmic, patient. It lands on her shoulder, seeps through the thin fabric of her dress. She doesn't brush it away. The moisture feels right, like the walls weeping for her, or with her. She tilts her head back, lets it pool in the hollow of her throat. It tastes like rust and old rain.
The wallpaper here is worse. Strips hang loose, swaying gently in an unfelt breeze, revealing layers beneath—older patterns, older colors, all bleeding together into a blur of decay. She peels a strip back further, curious. The glue beneath is black, sticky, alive. It clings to her fingers, strings stretching like saliva between them. She smiles. It's the first touch she's felt in years.
A chair sits in the corner, its upholstery split open, foam spilling out like viscera. She sits anyway, lets the stuffing compress beneath her weight. The wood creaks, threatening to give, but doesn't. Not yet. The room hums around her, a low, wet sound, the sound of wood expanding in the damp, of plaster slowly sloughing off bone-dry studs. She closes her eyes. Listens. It's almost like a lullaby.
The ceiling above her darkens, water stains spreading like bruises. A drop lands on her forehead, trails down the bridge of her nose. She licks it away. It's warmer than she expected. Almost body temperature. The thought doesn't unsettle her. Nothing does anymore. The air tastes of mildew and something else—something metallic, coppery. Like old pennies left in a wet palm.