Marcus wiped the sweat from his forehead as he pushed the mop across the endless tiled hallway. The scent of cheap lemon cleaner stung his nostrils. He had been at this job for years, and it paid the bills—barely. His wife, Emma, never said it outright, but he could see it in her eyes. Disappointment. Not in him, exactly, but in what life had become. She had once been proud to introduce him as her husband. Now, when people asked what he did, she hesitated.But his daughter, Lily—she was different. She didn’t care about the bills, or the long hours, or the tired man who walked through the door every night. She would run into his arms, her laughter wrapping around him like a warm blanket. "Daddy! I drew something for you!" she would say, waving a crayon-streaked masterpiece in his face. He kept every single one. They reminded him of who he was outside of work.That Monday, after a long shift, Marcus found himself at O’Malley’s, a small dive bar he used to frequent before Lily was born. He sat at the counter, nursing a whiskey. The bartender, Gus, gave him a once-over.“Haven’t seen you here in a while, Marcus.”Marcus chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, well… I got responsibilities now.”Gus smirked, wiping down the counter. “Right. How’s the wife? The kid?”Marcus swirled his drink. “Lily’s good. She’s… she’s perfect, man.” A soft smile tugged at his lips. “Emma… I don’t know. She’s restless. Feels like she wants something I can’t give her.”Gus sighed. “Women like to see a man move forward. Feels like you’re standing still, doesn’t it?”Marcus exhaled sharply. “You know, I wanted to be a musician.” He tapped his fingers against the counter like an imaginary piano. “Used to play the keys, even had a band in college. Thought I’d make it big.”Gus raised a brow. “What happened?”Marcus took a sip. “Life happened. Bills. Work. A kid. Had to be practical.”"Practicality," Nyx whispered from the shadows of his mind, "a beautiful word for surrender."Marcus frowned, rubbing his temples. Maybe the whiskey was hitting harder than usual.That was before the week where everything unraveled.It started with small things—his music player skipping tracks at random, static cutting into his favorite songs. He shrugged it off at first, assuming a loose connection, but then it happened again. And again. A song he didn’t recognize played one night, lyrics warped and distorted, whispering things he swore he could almost understand. He turned it off, but the melody lingered in his mind, crawling under his skin.Then came the false alarms. Fire drills blaring at odd hours, making him scramble to evacuate, only for security to wave it off as a system glitch. He started noticing prank calls on his phone—unknown numbers, voices breathing on the other end before hanging up. Sometimes, they whispered his name. His bills suddenly doubled, overdue notices arriving for services he never used. He called the electric company, the internet provider—none of them had an explanation. His account drained, his paycheck delayed, his world tightening around him like a noose, Nyx had to derail him psychologically first.He began hearing things at work. A voice just outside the range of comprehension, murmuring in the empty halls. His mop bucket was never where he left it, doors he locked were found wide open, and the janitor’s closet lights flickered at just the right moments, as if something unseen was toying with him. He stopped listening to music, stopped answering calls, but it didn’t matter. Nyx had slithered into his life, making reality shift in ways that left him questioning his own mind.That night, Emma made steak. She sat across from Marcus at the dinner table, her posture stiff, her wine glass half-empty.

  “We need to talk,” she said, cutting into her meat without looking up.

  Marcus swallowed a piece of his steak, already feeling the weight of the conversation. “About?”

  “About us. About this… life.” She set her knife down. “You come home late. You barely talk. And when you do, it’s like you’re somewhere else.”“I’m tired, Em,” Marcus said, rubbing his forehead. “Work’s been hell.”“Work’s always been hell,” she shot back. “But it’s not just that, is it? Something’s wrong, Marcus.”He sighed, gripping his fork. “You think I don’t know that? Everything feels… off. Emails disappearing. Bills I know I paid coming back overdue. And these calls, Em—these fucking calls—”Emma leaned forward, her eyes sharp. “Marcus, listen to yourself. You sound paranoid.”Marcus’s jaw tightened. “You think I’m making it up?”She exhaled, shaking her head. “I think you’re drowning, and you won’t reach for a damn lifeline.”Silence stretched between them. Marcus sat there, trying to find the right words to explain, but nothing came out.From the hallway, Lily’s small voice called out, “Mommy? Daddy?”Emma forced a tight smile. “Go back to bed, sweetheart.”Marcus stared at his plate, appetite gone. His hands trembled slightly."She doesn’t see it yet," Nyx murmured, "but soon she will. And when she does, she'll run."Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. Just tired. That’s all it was.This was just the beginning of his nightmares. Nyx was getting to the endgame in pursuit of an inevitable checkmate.Friday afternoon, Marcus was called into the supervisor’s office.“Sit down,” his boss, Mr. Ridley, said, rubbing his temples. “Marcus, what the hell is going on with you?”Marcus swallowed. “Sir, I don’t—”“Don’t bullshit me,” Ridley snapped. “You sent out an email resigning. Then you come in like nothing happened?”Marcus’s stomach dropped. “I never sent—”Ridley sighed. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re unreliable. Missing shifts, acting erratic. We’re letting you go.”Marcus sat there, frozen.Fired. Just like that.Nyx’s voice coiled around his thoughts."One more thread cut. How long can you stand?"Marcus didn’t react. Didn’t beg. Didn’t argue.He just left.Instead of going home in shame he decided to chin up and let go of what is in the past wiping the tears from his watery eyes he said to himself hopefully "atleast i still got a family", he stopped at a flower shop. He bought a bouquet for Emma and a stuffed bunny for Lily. It wasn’t much, but it was something.When he got home, though, the apartment was eerily quiet. No laughter, no warmth—just emptiness. On the kitchen table, a note."Marcus,I can’t do this anymore. I love you, but I need more. I need stability. I need to know that tomorrow won’t fall apart. I took Lily to my sister’s. I hope you understand."He stood there, gripping the paper, the flowers wilting in his hands. The stuffed bunny tumbled to the floor.The weight of the silence pressed down on him.Then—Something shifted in the room. A shadow stretched unnaturally across the wall. A presence pressing down on him.His breath hitched.He had finally become aware that something—or someone—was watching him."Leave me the fuck alone! I know that you are no God, you devil, please leave me alone!" he roared, his voice cracking, but the emptiness answered with nothing."No response. Just…" Nyx whispered from the dark corner of his mind. "Your suffering will not go to waste, you are a pivotal cornerstone for humanity’s advancement."For two days, Marcus sat in that empty apartment. He didn’t eat. Barely drank. Just whiskey and silence. His mind grew clearer, but with every passing hour, the darkness inside him grew heavier.By Sunday night, his body was weak, but his mind had never been sharper. He walked to the rooftop of the building he had cleaned for years. The city stretched before him, indifferent. The wind pulled at his clothes as he looked down at the distant streets, feeling like the world had forgotten him long ago.His phone buzzed one last time.A message: “Control is an illusion.”Tears slipped down his cheek. He wanted to scream, but the scream got caught in his chest. There was nothing left inside. No fight. No hope.He took a breath.And as he stepped forward, Nyx’s voice, eerily calm, spoke in perfect sync with his thoughts:“I was never meant to win.”“You were never meant to win.”And then, as the city’s skyline seemed to stretch impossibly far beneath him, the world went silent. The chaos, the pain, all of it, vanished in an instant, leaving only the void. In his last moments, Marcus thought of the only thing that had kept him alive—his daughter, Lily—while clutching one of her drawings. He jumped.

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