In a clean and large apartment, a dim night-light plugged into the outlet residing in a living room is the only thing that keeps it from complete darkness. Distant sirens and consistent bumps from nearby apartments keep it from being entirely quiet. In a nearby bedroom, austere and lacking everything other than a bed, a computer on a desk, and an office chair, there sleeps a man in the soldier position. Broad shouldered and muscular, well-groomed and clean, this man lives a disciplined life. From his diet, his fridge is filled with meat, his cabinets have bags of nuts, and he only drinks water, of which an ample amount of the sparkling variety occupies a kitchen cabinet. He has perhaps two friends, both of which are similarly disciplined, no girlfriend, and a family that is distant.
As the man's chest goes up and down like a pendulum, a loud scream from some distant hallway in the apartment building wakes him. Briefly opening his eyes, he scans the room around him in an efficient, wary manner. Not quite certain of what the scream was about, he begins to grasp pillows in hopes of smothering his ears on both sides with them before abruptly stopping. The noise of a rumbling stampede seems to similarly break the relative quiet of his apartment, blatantly coming from the hallways beyond his staunchly defensive metal door, a door embellished with a bronze plate featuring an engraving of the man's name, Edward Shard.
Edward, featuring a frown and a deep furrow on his brow, went for his front door. 'Do they think the residents of this building will put up with their shenanigans? To play around at this hour...' His heavy, lumbering footsteps seemed to nearly match the intensity of his silent rage as he went about.
"I will kill them, stuff them.... I will kill them... I will stuff them..."
To stop Edward in his tracks, only a truly mad sentence like that could do it. Heading to his front door and peeking out his door's pinhole, he saw a nude, skinny, and devilish man wielding a knife in the middle of hallway. Something like that was unfortunate, and rare, because there was, after all, a security door for the building. There shouldn't be any instances of a nude crazy man in his apartment building's hallway as no resident, even in passing, would let such a man in. With his rage now like a doused candle, Edward considered caution and snuck away from his front door back to his room. A hallway away now, he saw a landline and grasped its handle, fumbling with the few numbers he needed to call for security.
"Hello, this is Jordsca Apartment security, we...."
"Hello, this is resident 504, there is an odd man outside my door and he..."
"... are currently unable to assist with any matters, please wait."
"..."
Edward, glancing down at his landline, briefly walked back to his front door. Before he reached it, he heard another ear-piercing scream come from beyond his door. Glancing out the pinhole, a ball of uncertainty in his stomach, the devilish man was still standing there, blankly staring at a wall. The contours of his knife had changed slightly, and now he had scars along his body. He was bigger now, also. He seemed more frightening, whatever features that made him devilish before only enhanced. Thinking he must have seen him wrong the first time, Edward walked away again, a firm intent to stay away striking him along with a desire to piss. Heading to his bathroom, one far, far away from the front door, he went and did his business. Once he did his business and was at the sink to wash his hands, his tired face flashed black and he could see the mirror showing the face of the devilish man staring right at him, as if the devilish man's blank staring at the walls in the halls were merely him peering into a window.
At this moment, Edward felt gripping fear that stopped his every movement that laced his muscles with anxiety. Shuttering his eyes for a moment, a panicked grimace flit across his face. Hesitatingly, he opened them and was again confronted with the image of the contortedly smiling of the devilish man in the mirror. It seemed... Real. As Edward was slowly trying to come to terms with this, the devilish man's bony arm began to reach for the mirror.
Anxious and petrified, Edward rapidly came to a decision.
'I will break this goddamn mirror.'
Reaching for the showerhead to his right and gripping it tightly; piercing sounds immediately reverberated throughout the bathroom as that same showerhead was used to bash the mirror in, the mirror's previously pristine surface now sporting a complex web of cracks. The quick actions and boisterous bashing happened quickly, though not before a miniscule finger had poked out of the mirror, vanishing into a blur as quickly as it came through.