The Hollow Floorboards

Sometimes, locking the door doesn't keep the monsters out. It traps you inside with them. Arthur threw the three deadbolts on his apartment door, desperate to sever himself from the suffocating noise of the outside world. He thought he was finally safe. He thought he was alone. But as the silence settles, the geometry of his sanctuary begins to shift. It starts with a shadow that doesn't belong to the furniture.
Then comes the sound: the slow, agonizing drag of a rusted iron axe scraping across the hollow floorboards, moving closer with every ragged breath he takes. Trapped in a windowless bathroom, Arthur is forced to confront an impossible, towering entity that wears his own bruised face. As the boundaries between reality and hallucination shatter, he must calculate his escape from a locked room where the greatest threat isn't breaking in-it's already inside his own mind.
The Hollow Floorboards is a gripping, claustrophobic psychological horror novelette (approx. 5, 800 words). It is a rapid, single-sitting descent into madness designed to leave you checking your own locks.