It takes a moment to register. A sound, out of place. Distant, but insistent. A knock at the door.

The quantum door

Who knocks anymore? Who still does that? His first thought is that it’s a mistake, a sound meant for someone else. Then comes the irritation . Out of all the doors, why his? He exhales sharply, eyes flicking back to the screen. If he ignores it, it will go away. It always does.

One, then another. Brief, perfunctory, as if whoever was knocking was fulfilling an obligation rather than making a request. He keeps his eyes fixed on the glowing screen in front of him. Something stirs in his throat, a bitter impulse that refuses to take shape.

Silence.

His fingers glide over the phone’s surface, effortlessly scrolling through predictable sequences. A pulse of light, colors shifting, the rhythm of movement soothing, hypnotic. He leans back, the glow wrapping around him, swallowing him whole.

Everything melts away. The door, the knock, the vague unease … dissolving into the perfect feedback loop of stimulation. Videos roll into each other, music bends time, faces stretch and warp into something better, cleaner, more refined. His body forgets itself, loses edges. There’s warmth here, brightness, the illusion of momentum.

Somewhere, beyond the cocoon, the night moves. Hours. Maybe days.

The shadows on the walls shift, elongate. The screen hums beneath his fingers, guiding him, holding him. His breath evens out, syncs to the scrolling. The world outside grows thinner, less certain. A kind of peace settles in, the absence of weight.

Then…

A different sound.

The knocks again, firmer this time.

Who the hell keeps knocking? A neighbor? A mistake? Someone from the building management? His mind tosses out explanations, each one flimsier than the last. His pulse quickens, but he tells himself it’s nothing. Just some idiot who’ll give up soon.

The sound digs into him now, a jagged edge where before it was just a ripple. His pulse stutters, fingers hesitating mid-scroll. He forces them forward, faster, as if motion alone could smooth out the disturbance. The screen is warm under his touch, too warm. A bead of sweat forms at his temple, slides down the side of his face. He doesn’t wipe it away.

A sound that doesn’t belong. It cuts through the air, raw, physical, something from another world forcing its way in. His body flinches before he registers why. The knock carries weight, an uneven rhythm that disrupts the smooth, effortless glide of his existence. A sound with shape, with force — real in a way nothing else has been for a long time.

What time is it? He doesn’t know. The screen doesn’t tell him, or maybe he hasn’t looked. Is he hungry? His stomach doesn’t say. When was the last time he ordered food? Did he eat it? The thought flickers and vanishes before he can grasp it.

A vague unease rises. He scrolls harder, faster, pushing the questions down, burying them under movement, under images. But something lingers, an itch just beyond reach. Time has been slipping through the cracks, pooling in unseen corners. He can feel it now, pressing against his skin, heavy, sour.

The knocks don’t stop.

He tenses. There’s something unsettling about the persistence, something that sends a faint tremor through his hands. The door seems to gain weight, density, something alive, pulsing faintly on the other side.

Bright screens, looping images, faces laughing without sound. He sinks deeper, the soft pull of inertia wrapping around him. The world inside the screen stretches, expands, offers a seat at the table. He belongs here, where things move in perfect rhythm, where time only exists in the space between swipes.

A part of him knows he should respond, but the thought is sluggish, dissolving before it forms. The screen hums beneath his fingers, warm, forgiving. Outside, something waits, something insists — but that’s out there, in the static, in the weight of things that demand. Here, he floats.

The knocking lingers in the background, like a distant storm, like something that will pass if he waits long enough.

A third knock . Loud now, demanding.

Police? No, that doesn’t make sense. A delivery he forgot? But why keep knocking? His thoughts fracture, leap to absurdities. A prank, a lost stranger, a warning. His fingers twitch over the screen, but the feed has lost its pull. He is no longer watching. He is listening.

His breath catches. The walls seem closer than before, the air heavier, thick with something unspoken. His stomach clenches, a dull nausea creeping in at the edges. The laughter from the screen has lost its rhythm, jagged, out of sync. He shifts in his chair, but it’s as if the fabric is clinging to him, holding him down.

The room feels smaller. His breath comes unevenly, something tightens in his chest, a deep and nameless fear. He looks at the door, that simple barrier that now seems like a threshold to something irreversible.

The screen continues its steady stream of images. Trembling fingers against its cold surface. The reality there is controlled, seamless, unbroken.

A reel loops for the third time. He doesn’t remember choosing it. The colors feel off, saturated in a way that makes his stomach clench. The laughter is sharper. Something is wrong. His hands are damp.

Something moves in the reflection of the screen . No, not a movement, just the faintest distortion, like a ripple through glass. He blinks hard. The feeling doesn’t go away.

A fourth knock, or maybe the first, stretched across time.

What if it’s not a person? The thought arrives uninvited. Something old, something outside the rules of things. His mind recoils, scrambles for logic, but it slips through his grasp. His breath is shallow, his skin damp. The walls seem to press in. The knock is inside his head now, reverberating, rearranging things that should not move.

His skin prickles. The air is wrong, charged, like the moment before a storm breaks. The shadows on the walls have deepened, stretched long and unnatural. He rubs his palms against his thighs, but the dampness lingers. His stomach twists, his body sending signals he can’t quite decode. A metallic tang lingers at the back of his throat. Something wells up in his throat, hot and nauseating. He swipes, scrolls, shifts his weight. The chair is rigid beneath him. The screen pulses like an open wound.

Something has tilted. The room, his breath, the ground beneath his feet. Even though he hasn’t moved. Or has he?

His hands are on the arms of the chair. Then on his lap. Then gripping his knees. He doesn’t remember changing positions.

His heart beats fast, but he’s not sure when it started racing. A cold nausea pools beneath his ribs. The light from the screen flickers. No, not flickering. Breathing. Expanding outward, consuming the room.

The knocking has stopped.

And yet, the pressure remains. A phantom sensation pressing against his ribs, an absence heavier than the sound itself. His fingers grip the chair, knuckles aching. His breath is shallow, too controlled. The door is there, waiting. The screen flickers again, breathing in time with him. He feels caught between them, stretched too thin, his body uncertain where it belongs.

The air is thick, pressing against him, inside him. A metallic taste on his tongue. His fingers grip the armrest, his knuckles pale. The door is waiting. The screen is waiting. He is waiting.

At some point, he stands.

Or maybe he never moves at all.

The street is a slap of light, a punch of cold air knocking the breath from his lungs. He blinks hard, his pupils contracting painfully.

Darkness. Screens. The murmur of filtered laughter, digital echoes from another world.

He steps forward. Or maybe he never moves at all. The ground tilts beneath him. Time slips, expands, doubles back on itself. Everything is too real, too immediate, raw and unfiltered.

In the room, a dead pixel appears on the wall in front of him, a microscopic crack that slowly begins to spread. His eyes fix on it, uncomprehending.

Outside, people brush past him. The heat of other bodies is unsettling, unbearable. Voices are too loud, too close, intrusive.

The crack widens, softly, slowly. His gaze stays locked on the wall, hypnotized by the almost imperceptible distortion.

Someone is watching him. A woman, older, with sharp, accusing eyes, disturbingly human. He feels the weight of lost time, of every unanswered call before this one.

The crack stops. He lifts his eyes slowly to the closed door. It remains there, intact, waiting, patient for an opening that never comes.

At some point, has it been minutes, hours? — he walks through the crowd, unsteady, each step feeling like a betrayal of himself. Something inside him is slowly coming apart.

The room returns to its usual state, silent, filled with glowing screens. His fingers fall back into their familiar, monotonous rhythm.

The door is behind him, closed, open. Both possibilities hover in silence, coexisting without resolution, as he remains, unable to tell which reality he truly inhabits.

[02_Anatomy]