It started with the ants.
Not the tiny ones that raid your hopia crumbs, but fat, glossy things the color of dried blood. They crawled in a straight line from the baseboard of Macchi's study table to a hole in the wall. Just a hole. Not a crack, not a vent—a hole the size of a one-peso coin, drilled into the plaster like an afterthought.
I watched them. 7 PM. The building was quiet, save for the thump of the AC unit fighting Manila’s humidity. The ants marched, each carrying a crumb of something pale. At first, I thought it was paper. Then I leaned closer.
Tooth.
Not human. Small, sharp. Animal.
“Bitch,” I whispered. The AC died. Silence pooled. The ants froze. So did I.
The hole twitched.
Not the ants. The hole itself. The edges puckered, once, like a mouth tasting air.
I laughed. Hysterical, high-pitched. Sleep deprivation, obviously. I’d been here since noon, revising my story about a girl who was ghosted by her FUBU. Now this? I grabbed my pen and stabbed at the hole.
Tap.
Plastic on cement. Normal. The ants scattered. I exhaled. Then—
A wet, rhythmic noise. From inside the wall.
Grnd-grnd-grnd.
Like a knife on a whetstone. Or… chewing.
I pressed my ear to the hole. Cold breath seeped out. The chewing grew louder. Hungrier. Something moved in the dark—a wet, sliding sound. A tongue.
"Fuck, kadiri", I jerked back. My phone slipped, clattering under the desk. I lunged for it, and that’s when I saw the stains. Dozens of them, speckling the floor beneath the hole. Dark rust-brown. Flaking. I touched one.
Not rust.
Blood.
The chewing stopped.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My legs were jelly. The hole stared. Unblinking. Waiting.
I did what any writer would do: I fed it a story.
“Once,” I whispered, “there was a boy who hated silence.”
The hole exhaled. The AC kicked on.
“He’d talk to walls. To plants. To his own shadow. But the silence… it grew. Until one day, he found a hole. And he told it everything.”
The chewing resumed. Softer now. Curious.
“The hole listened. It liked his stories. But stories aren’t free. So one night, it asked for a trade.”
My throat burned. The hole pulsed, edges glistening.
“The boy gave it his voice. Then his memories. Then…”
A low gurgle echoed inside the wall. The ants swarmed again, frenzied, dragging a new offering—a molar, human, cracked.
My molar.
I’d lost it at 17, running down the Dela Costa Hall. I’d never told anyone.
The hole spit something onto the floor. A slip of paper, rolled tight. My hands shook as I unfurled it.
Your turn.
The words were mine. My handwriting. From a notebook I’d trashed years ago.
The chewing grew urgent. The hole quivered, stretching wider. Not in size—in want. I grabbed my bag. The hall door was locked. Of course. My phone was dead. The AC groaned.
And then I understood.
The hole wasn’t in the wall.
It was in me.
I’d been feeding it all along. Every story I’d ever swallowed. Every secret. Every lie. It didn’t want my teeth.
It wanted the words.
The real ones.