Terms of Being
Some buildings don't just hold people-they process them.
In Terms of Being, ten horror stories slip their fingers under the clean edges of modern life and peel back what's humming beneath: the contracts you didn't read, the routines you didn't choose, the systems that smile while they take.
A "focus floor" where denied claims go to finish dying. A voice that wakes in your mouth with someone else's secrets. A map update that insists you turn onto roads that shouldn't exist-and welcomes you by name. Eight minutes of perfect calm that feels like relief... until it starts feeling like instruction. A dead mall that rearranges itself after closing, offering you as its newest anchor tenant. A diner that survives by keeping its doors unlocked for the one customer you never refuse. A doll hospital where restoration becomes ritual, and the original body isn't porcelain. A good room kept pristine for guests who never come-until it begins hosting without you.
These stories aren't about monsters under the bed. They're about the softer horrors: bureaucracy that eats memory, comfort that becomes captivity, nostalgia that turns predatory, and the quiet terror of realizing the world has terms-and you've been agreeing to them your whole life.
Open the door. Take the detour. Sign the form.
Just don't expect to recognize yourself when you get back.
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