Cato at the Threshold
A woman moves into the cheapest apartment in the city, only to discover she is one of seven humans living among vampires. When a figure in her hallway begins warning her to leave, she must decide whether to escape alone—or risk everything to save the others before the building claims them.
It wasn’t sleep paralysis.
Estrella knew the difference between fear born from sleep deprivation and fear that carried depth.
She had experienced sleep paralysis before, more than once.
Each time it had followed the same pattern of suffocating stillness, frantic awareness, and the crushing sensation of something pressing down against her chest while her voice remained locked somewhere behind her teeth.
Whatever visited her that night did not feel like a misfiring brain or a chemical miscommunication between waking and dreaming.
It was aware of her in a way that no nightmare had ever managed to replicate, and over time, that distinction became impossible to ignore.
By the third night, she locked the door every night without exception. Sometimes she whispered a hurried prayer because she was never entirely certain what she was sealing out.
Since she began treating the nightly ritual with that level of seriousness, he had not come inside.
In the beginning, he existed only as a presence occupying the space where her narrow hallway met the threshold of her bedroom and he only ever appeared when the door was unlocked.
She had never witnessed him forcing entry, had never heard the handle turn or the hinges shift. He did not break in or push himself inside.
He simply crossed it when it was open to him.
That detail, more than anything else, anchored the experience in reality. It followed a rule. It adhered to something consistent, even if she did not yet know what governed his actions.
There was a strange thought that returned to her again and again, that if he ever stepped into the light, she would recognize his face.
But the light never reached him, and he never made any visible effort to seek it.
He remained where the hallway held him, as though he understood something she did not.
As though he knew she would slip eventually. The thought unsettled her more than his presence ever had.
Last night, she almost did.
Exhaustion had dulled her focus, her routine slipping just enough for the moment to pass without its usual precision.
Her cat had been restless, pacing across the bed with unusual attention, her tail curling and uncurling slowly, as though she were tracking something invisible.
Estrella fed her, checked the windows, turned off the lights, and for a single, accidental second, she walked away from the door without locking it.
The realization came instantly, a hollow drop settling into her chest before she had even fully registered the mistake.
She turned back quickly, crossing the room in two steps, her hand finding the lock and turning it with a force that bordered on urgency.
When she returned to the bed, her cat was already curled near her feet, her gaze fixed unwaveringly toward the doorway.
Estrella followed that line of sight without thinking.
He was there, sprawled out on the floor, his back leaning against the door.
She could not see his face, but she did not need to because she knew he was looking at her.
Her cat shifted suddenly, her paw brushing against Estrella’s ankle in a brief, unexpected movement that pulled a sharp breath from her lungs.
He vanished in the way a thought disappears mid-sentence, leaving behind only the absence of what had been there before.
She could not sleep, and eventually morning came without interruption, light spilling through the window in a way that felt almost indifferent to everything that had occurred during the night.
For a while, she convinced herself that it had ended there.
That whatever pattern had been forming had finally broken.
Then one evening, she walked into the kitchen and found a vase on the counter.
It was made of clear crystal, its surface catching the light in fractured reflections that scattered across the countertop. Inside it, arranged with deliberate care, was a gradient of roses that shifted from bright, vivid red to a deep, near-black at the edges.
They were still damp and freshly cut.
She did not need to question where they had come from.
Because the night before, when she stood at the door, and her hand rested against the lock, she hesitated.
