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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wooleyty on 2024-09-18 17:48:58+00:00.

Jack sat slouched in the chair across from me, his shoulders hunched, eyes constantly flicking toward the camera mounted in the corner. His fingers, pale and trembling, kept tugging at the frayed cuffs of his prison jumpsuit. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days—worn down by something much deeper than exhaustion. It was fear. And something else.

I leaned forward, keeping my voice calm and controlled. “You said it started with a crack?”

Jack nodded slowly, barely meeting my gaze. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Just a crack in the wall. That’s how it all began.”

He paused, running a hand through his hair, and for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. Then he took a shaky breath, his eyes distant, like he was trying to relive those first few days in his mind. “Solitary’s always been a mess,” he continued, voice hoarse. “The walls in there—cracked, dirty. You get used to it. It’s like the whole place is rotting from the inside out. You stop noticing after a while. Mold in the corners, cracks everywhere… normal stuff for a place like that.”

His fingers drummed absently on the table, the sound sharp in the otherwise quiet room. “I noticed the crack in my cell a few days before everything started. It was small, maybe three or four inches, right down by the corner where the wall meets the floor. Nothing unusual, right? These walls were falling apart all over the place, so I didn’t pay much attention at first.”

He looked up, his brow furrowed as if trying to decide how to explain what happened next. “But the next day, it wasn’t just a crack anymore. There was… something growing out of it. Black stuff. I thought it was mold. That’s what you’d think, right? This place isn’t exactly sanitary.”

Jack took a deep breath, his fingers tapping faster now, more erratic. “It didn’t move, at least not that I could see. But every time I looked at it, it seemed like there was more of it. I swear to God, it was spreading. Slow. Maybe six inches a day. I couldn’t see it move, but when I’d wake up in the morning, it had crept further along the wall, like it was crawling while I was sleeping.”

I wrote down the details and looked back up. “You’re saying it was growing that fast? Just overnight?”

Jack nodded, his voice growing more agitated. “Yeah. I’d wake up, and there’d be more of it. Not much at first—just a few more inches, but I could tell it was moving. The crack was getting wider, too. And it wasn’t just mold. I knew it wasn’t mold, not with the way it looked. It wasn’t just sitting there on the surface. It was alive.”

His voice grew quieter, as though he wasn’t sure if he should be saying the words out loud. “It was like it was breathing.”

I raised my eyebrow but kept my expression neutral. “What made you think that?”

Jack shifted in his seat, eyes darting toward the walls of the room before fixing on the table. “It wasn’t just that it was spreading. It was how it made the room feel. Different. Like the air was heavier. It smelled wrong, too. Not like the usual mold or dampness. This was something else. It smelled like… like something rotting. Foul. The kind of smell that makes you gag.”

He paused, rubbing his fingers against his temples, trying to recall every detail. “I told the guards the second day, right when I noticed it had spread. The guy dropping off food just shrugged it off. Said he’d file a report, but I knew he wouldn’t. Why would he? It’s solitary. They don’t care what happens in there as long as we stay quiet.”

Jack’s fingers clenched into fists, knuckles turning white. “So I waited. Figured maybe someone would check it out. But no one came. And each morning, when I woke up, the black stuff had spread a little more. Not fast enough to notice while it was happening, but enough that I knew it was growing.”

His voice lowered, his eyes widening slightly as he recounted those days. “By the third day, it had covered the entire corner of the wall. The crack had gotten bigger, and the black stuff—it wasn’t just growing anymore. It was feeding. It had to be. There was no other explanation for how it was spreading so steadily. Every morning, it was a few inches closer. And the smell kept getting worse.”

He ran his hands through his hair again, his face etched with frustration and fear. “I kept telling the guards. Every time they walked by, I’d bang on the door and shout that something was wrong. They thought I was losing it and told me to shut up and deal with it. But I wasn’t crazy. That stuff was real, and it was spreading.”

Jack took a deep breath, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “I wasn’t imagining it. I know what I saw.”

The room felt heavier, his words sinking in like stones. He paused, waiting for my response, but I let the silence stretch, giving him time to collect himself. Finally, I asked, “What happened after the third day? Did it stop?”

Jack shook his head, his voice wavering. “No. It didn’t stop. It just kept growing, slow but steady.”

Jack took another shaky breath, his fingers tapping nervously against the table. He looked around the room again, like he was searching for something that wasn’t there, then rubbed his face with both hands. I could tell he was trying to push back the memories, but they kept clawing their way to the surface.

“It kept spreading,” he muttered, his voice strained. “Every morning, I’d wake up, and that black stuff was a little closer. Six inches, maybe more, every damn day. The crack, too—it was getting bigger like something was trying to push its way out from behind the wall.”

He stopped, staring at the ceiling for a moment, then shook his head. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I started banging on the door, yelling at the guards every time they passed. I told them the black stuff was spreading and that the crack was getting worse. They didn’t believe me. They just looked at me like I was crazy.”

His hands clenched into fists. “I wasn’t crazy. I knew what I saw. But to them, I was just another inmate trying to get out of solitary. They told me to calm down and that someone would come check it out, but no one ever did. Not for days.”

Jack’s voice dropped lower. “By the fourth day, I could barely breathe in there. The smell… it was like something had died in the walls. Worse than that. It was foul, like the whole room was rotting from the inside out.”

He stared down at his hands. “And I could feel it. In my bones, you know? Like something was wrong with the air itself. It felt thick and heavy like it was pressing down on me. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I’d lie awake at night, staring at that black stuff creeping along the wall, knowing it was getting closer.”

Jack paused, shaking his head again like he was trying to clear the memory. “I begged them. Every time a guard walked by, I begged them to move me, to get me out of that cell. They ignored me. Days passed. The black stuff kept growing. I could feel it getting closer, but they didn’t care.”

He let out a bitter laugh, the sound hollow. “It wasn’t until the lawsuit threats started flying that they decided to move me. They couldn’t risk me going to a lawyer, saying they were keeping me in a contaminated cell. So, they moved me.”

I watched him carefully. “Where did they take you?”

“To another cell in solitary,” Jack muttered. “A dirtier one, if you can believe that. No black stuff, though. But I could still see my old cell from the window in my door, just a few doors down. I’d look at it every day, but I couldn’t see the fungus. Not yet.”

His voice dropped, barely a whisper now. “I wasn’t the only one in solitary anymore. They put someone else in my old cell.”

Jack stared at the table, his face tight with anxiety. “At first, I didn’t hear much about him. The guards didn’t talk to me after I was moved. But after a few days, I started to overhear things. Little bits and pieces. They said the guy they put in my old cell… he’d touched the black stuff. They had to move him to the med wing.”

He stopped, rubbing his hands together as if trying to warm them. “I didn’t know what had happened to him at first. Just that he was unconscious, and they didn’t think he’d wake up. Then the rumors started.”

Jack’s eyes darkened, his voice lowering. “They said his skin was changing. One of the guards said it looked like it was blistering, like something was eating him from the inside out. Another said his veins were turning black, like the stuff was crawling under his skin.”

I scribbled down notes, glancing up at Jack. “How long after they moved you did this happen?”

He shrugged, his voice distant. “A couple of days, maybe. Not long. Whatever was in that cell, it got him fast.”

Jack’s hand shook slightly as he continued. “I started hearing more after that. The guards didn’t want to talk about it, but I could tell they were scared. They were trying to keep it quiet, but everyone knew something was wrong. The guy they put in my old cell… he wasn’t just sick. He was changing.”

Jack shifted in his chair, his eyes narrowing slightly as if the memory of what came next still gnawed at him. “It wasn’t long after that when things started changing. I could feel it—something was happening in that place. The guards… they stopped talking. Just did their rounds without saying a word. No more gossip, no more jokes. Nothing.”

He paused, his fingers drumming nervously on the table. "The guy in the med wing… they said he wasn’t getting better. They’d quarantined him and locked the whole wing down. That’…

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