My Roommates Woke Up With Impossible Voices — And Then The Terror Started

Part 1

The winter mornings in our apartment were always brutally cold, the kind of deep chill that settled into your bones before you even opened your eyes.

I usually stayed buried under my heavy comforter until the absolute last minute, dreading the moment my bare feet had to touch the freezing hardwood floor.

But that morning, something dragged me out of my deep sleep much earlier than my alarm.

It was the clinking of ceramic mugs coming from the kitchen, followed by the low, whistling hum of the old kettle boiling on the stove.

I groaned, throwing my arm over my eyes and trying to ignore the noise, but my bladder had other plans.

I kicked off the blankets, shivering violently in my thin t-shirt, and shuffled down the narrow, dimly lit hallway toward the kitchen.

Brian was already up, leaning against the chipped laminate counter in his oversized grey hoodie, staring blankly at the wall.

He held a mug in both hands, letting the steam rise against his face, looking completely exhausted.

“You’re up early,” I mumbled, rubbing the sleep from my crusty eyes.

“Hey buddy, how’s it going?” he replied.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

The sound that came out of his mouth didn’t belong to Brian.

It was impossibly deep, a rumbling, resonant bass that vibrated through the floorboards and rattled the loose silverware in the drawer.

It sounded like a movie trailer voiceover, or some kind of digital vocal distortion cranked to the absolute lowest pitch.

“Whoa,” I said, taking a step back and blinking rapidly.

“Yo, what?”

“What?”

Brian’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Why is your voice so deep?”

I stared at his throat, fully expecting to see a microphone strapped to his neck.

“Oh, it’s just a little deeper in the morning,” he said casually, the booming vibration making my teeth ache.

“Yours doesn’t do that?”

“No, Brian, mine doesn’t do that,” I snapped, my heart doing a weird, anxious flutter in my chest.

“You sound like you’re narrating a Ford commercial.”

“Yeah, I get that sometimes,” he shrugged, taking a slow sip of his tea.

“Is that like a medical condition?”

I stepped closer, inspecting his face for any signs of a prank.

I looked for a hidden phone playing a soundboard, or a prank show camera tucked behind the cereal boxes.

But there was nothing, just Brian looking tired and slightly annoyed by my interrogation.

“I don’t know why it does that, Greg,” he sighed, the low frequency of his sigh vibrating against my ribs.

“It’s early.”

“Will you let me enjoy my morning in peace?”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” I muttered, shaking my head and walking toward the bathroom.

I figured he was just messing with me, doing some weird vocal fry trick he learned on the internet to get under my skin.

Brian was always pulling stupid stunts like this, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of freaking out.

“I’m going to make some tea for Tyler,” Brian’s booming voice echoed down the hall behind me.

“You want one too?”

“Uh, no sir, no, no, no thank you, hoodie guy,” I called back, locking the bathroom door behind me.

I splashed freezing water on my face, trying to wake myself up, but a sudden, sharp pain flared behind my eyes.

It was a headache, blooming instantly at the base of my skull, thick and heavy like a physical weight pressing down on my brain.

I gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, waiting for the throbbing to pass, but the air in the bathroom felt strangely thick and suffocating.

I took a deep breath, but my lungs felt tight, as if I couldn’t draw enough oxygen from the stale, metallic-tasting air.

“Just an FYI,” Brian called out from the kitchen, his voice sounding even lower, almost monstrous through the thin walls.

“Tyler is a little under the weather.”

“He sounds terrible.”

“Try not to draw attention to it, I think he’s self-conscious.”

I dried my face with a towel, my headache pulsing with every beat of my heart, and opened the door to head back out.

“What do you mean, self-conscious?”

I rounded the corner back into the living area.

That was when Tyler stepped out of his bedroom, clutching his throat, his skin a pale, sickly shade of grey.

“Oh my… I know how… good morning,” Tyler croaked.

The sound that tore from Tyler’s throat was even worse than Brian’s.

It was a demonic, grating bass, a sound so unnaturally low and strained that it made the hairs on my arms stand straight up.

I stared at both of them, my vision blurring slightly as the throbbing in my skull intensified into a blinding agony.

They were both speaking in those impossible, booming registers, looking at me with glazed, unblinking eyes.

“Okay, what is going on?”

My own voice sounded thin and weak in comparison.

Neither of them smiled.

There was no punchline, no hidden camera, no laughter breaking the tense, suffocating silence of the apartment.

The apartment suddenly felt much smaller, the peeling yellow wallpaper closing in on me like the walls of a tomb.

I tried to take a step back, but my legs felt heavy, like I was wading through wet cement.

My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, a primal instinct screaming at me that we were in terrible danger.

This wasn’t a prank, and it wasn’t a viral video stunt.

Tyler swayed on his feet, his massive, deep breathing sounding like an idling diesel engine in the quiet room.

He turned his glassy eyes toward me, the booming vibration rattling the teacups on the counter, and in that agonizing second, I realized we were trapped in a cage with something we couldn’t see.