The rhythmic drip, drip, drip from the bathtub began my first night after moving in. It’s the sort of thing you don’t notice when apartment hunting. But like a kid with swollen adenoids who snores like a monster, these water droplets hit the porcelain with enough heft to echo through the whole unit. The intervals were inconsistent. Sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes 30 seconds. The longest ever was 5 minutes. Just long enough to get started into something else only to be pulled back to that sound.

3 weeks and just as many plumbers later, the drip drip drip persisted. There was no mechanical explanation. New York City is full of mild tortures you have to put up with to enjoy plenty of other magical parts of the city. I supposed this was a new torture I was subject to endure. I invested in a white noise machine and thought that’s that.

2 months later my best friend, Beck, visited. He’s an engineer and I thought he’d get a kick out of it so I showed him. Also the guest bed was a blow up mattress in the living room adjacent to the bathroom. He also couldn’t find a cause. What he did find was insomnia because the drips kept him up. Funny thing about him - he learns languages as a hobby. Over the course of that restless night, it dawned on him the drip was speaking in Morse code.

The first deciphered messages were haunting. “Get out, Jeffrey.” “Leave while you still have breath.” “The time of your judgement will come.” And so forth.

I’ve never been one for fanciful tales or ghost stories. But the evidence before me was undeniable. When Beck returned home, the bad times began. Communicating with it became my obsession. I longed to understand it. Yet all it did was emit a continuous stream of veiled threats. Soon enough my obsession lost me friendships, the semblance of a love life I once had, any sense of stability, and eventually my job. I had to commune with it! That became my all consuming passion.

My savings had enough to cover rent for almost a full year, but the exorbitant HOA was far beyond my means now. So I quit paying it, only rent.

Sure enough, no eviction notice came. However several strongly worded letters from the building HOA came. I ignored them. Until one day the president of the HOA showed up with a person seemingly from a carnival. This figure of dramatic color, pungent smell, and twisted smile met my gaze. They said, looks like the day of your judgement has come. Suddenly, they pulled a quartz from their leather bag, extended their arm towards me, and uttered an undecipherable incantation. The drip from the tub began violently thudding over and over. I dropped to my knees and pleaded for understanding, any grain of knowledge. My begging was met with a curl of the figures mouth as they cut their incantation to say, “If you really want to know, I can show you. Just give the word.” Without pause, I said, “Yes! Please!”

Everything went black.

I woke up in my bed. The dripping had stopped. When I exited my bedroom, I found the most dismal surprise party in my living room. The front door was not longer there. The place was full of people from ages past through to today. The oldest of the bunch hobbled forward, clasping my shoulder, and said, “we tried to warn you.”