6 p.m

He tried meditation. It didn't help that much. Every time he reached a state of deep calm, the body in the bag settled in his thoughts.

He left the bag in room no.69 where his friend had lived. The thought made his chest ache. His knuckles hurt from cracking them. He'd thought about leaving the bag in the trash dumpster in the basement, but it'd been a while since he went there and wasn't sure how safe it was there. He has the disadvantage of not being able to see in the dark, whereas those things did.

A couple of hours since the shop incident had passed and he still felt like he was being watched, making him scratch his nape unconsciously. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he noticed the red marks his nails had made on his neck.

He took a long cold shower and was now reading and making notes in the book, parts where he thought his sister would laugh or make a silly comment.

His sister's biology and chemistry books still laid on top of her closet. She'd wanted to be a doctor, she had asthma and got pneumonia two years ago. It was terrible. She was connected to all sorts of tubes and machines. He had to stay in the hall sitting beside his dad while his mother stayed with her. It changed her mother forever, her once bright eyes were then dull with dark bags under them. They thought they would get rest after his sister was discharged off the hospital, but that never happened.

He got up from the couch and left the book carefully on the small wooden table. He crouched and took the canned food he got from the shop and prepared his dinner.

At the table, he saw through the small gaps between the blinds, the bright lights of the two rooms in front of him. He stared at the room while he ate, trying to make out any sort of movement from the inside.

Then, something clicked in his head. His friend had a telescope in his room. He smiled. Xander had been an astrology fan, he'd helped him paint his room with stars and a night sky. He figured he would go there tomorrow morning. The dark scared him and now more than ever.

He went back to the couch and resumed his reading out loud, as if his sister was there, listening to him. When his voice grew tired he just read in silence, until his eyes started to droop. He yawned and hugged the pillow his head had been resting on.

***

He woke up with his neck aching. He looked at the clock on the wall, 8 a.m.

He got up and leaned over the window. Everything was the same. Nothing changed.

He went over the kitchen counter and made some coffee. Two cups.

While he was drinking, the ground shook. He placed the cup on the counter before dropping to the floor. He crawled to the window and peeked through the blinds. There were 4 figures outside the building to his right. They wore dark and expensive clothes. The tallest one was kicking the wall with unnatural force. Breaking the wall as if it was glass.

Elli gasped. The tall person looked in his direction, he lowered his head immediately, ear against the wall.

After a couple of minutes, he looked up and the people were gone. They must've entered the building. He panicked.

If they went inside the building, they were probably there for whoever had been living in the room of the 2nd floor. He heard things breaking and not long after three people emerged from the building, dragging a fourth. One of them was pulling a girl from her hoodie, when she started screaming and fighting the hand on her, the person yanked her with brutal force inside a van he hadn't noticed. Then they drove off , he stared at the place where the van had been. His breathing went back to normal but the shaking in his hands gave away how terrified he was. He looked away with glassy eyes.

He tried not to think about it. He couldn't stay at his apartment, fearing one of the strange people had seen him and knew exactly where he was.

He headed to no.69, after closing the door behind him, he started looking for the telescope in Xander's room. He found it underneath the bed with a couple of astronomy books.

He reached the kitchen and found chocolate flavored cereal hidden on top of the refrigerator. He smiled.

He was about to head back to his room when he realized the body didn't smell at all. He thought that by now the room would be covered in it's rotting smell, but there was nothing. Actually, it smelled as if the apartment had been recently cleaned. He frowned

He headed towards Xander's father's office, where he'd left the body. But it wasn't there. His heart thumped loudly in his chest.

Where was it?

The sound of footsteps reached his ears. He turned around and saw the man from the shop. Only he was dressed in dark and expensive clothes like the people he'd previously seen. The stranger smiled, dimples appearing on his cheeks.

Elli looked down and saw the body's bag on the stranger's pale hand.

"What a pleasant surprise", the stranger said with a raspy deep voice.

Elli's eyes widened. He realized there'd been four people entering the building.

Only three of them came out.