Chapter 1
It all began on a Tuesday afternoon, the kind of day where even your tea tastes like it’s mocking your life choices. Samir “Sam” Mehta sat slumped at his aunt’s dining table, one slipper off, laptop open, staring at a blank Google Doc that refused to turn into the article his editor had demanded three days ago. Outside, a dog barked rhythmically as if keeping time with his failure. Inside, his aunt was blasting a 90s soap opera on full volume, which made it nearly impossible to think, let alone write. His only refuge was his headphone’s noise-canceling mode, but even that failed when she began screaming at the characters on TV, declaring her undying hatred for the fictional villain Ravi Malhotra. At 29, Sam had hoped his life would look different—perhaps a small flat of his own, an organized bookshelf, some plants he kept alive, a string of decently paid writing gigs. Instead, he was still in the same house where he’d learned multiplication tables and acne remedies, drowning in memories and lentil curry. It was during this moment of quarter-life despair that an Instagram ad appeared on his phone with eerie precision: “Need a new flatmate? Try RoomZoo – we match you with your tribe!” Sam had never heard of RoomZoo. He didn’t trust apps that used words like “tribe.” But the ad featured smiling young people holding wine glasses in mood-lit kitchens—none of whom had a bindi-wearing aunt screaming in the background. He clicked.
The app was suspiciously smooth. Too smooth. Sam entered basic details: introverted writer, needs quiet space, budget £600. The app’s algorithm “vibrated” and declared: “We’ve found your perfect match!” before he even finished typing. A property popped up—a townhouse in East London, just above a coffee shop, described as “cozy, vibrant, with excellent vibes and flatmates who love books, films, and deep conversations.” The rent was oddly low. The pictures showed fairy lights, bean bags, and a cat named Stalin. He scrolled to the flatmates’ bios: Daisy, a “digital creative” who liked yoga and TikTok recipes; Gus, a financial analyst-turned-activist who enjoyed board games and “uncovering truths”; and Nora, whose only line was: “I value silence and order.” That last one gave him hope. Silence and order. The holy grail. The app had a “fast track” move-in option, allowing people to join homes instantly if one room was vacant and the algorithm rated compatibility above 80%. Sam’s match rate was 93%. There was something hypnotic about the speed of it all—within two hours, he’d signed a digital lease, transferred a deposit, and packed a suitcase. His aunt didn’t ask many questions, just nodded solemnly and handed him three Tupperware boxes of rice. As Sam dragged his battered suitcase up the townhouse stairs, he tried to convince himself this was going to be fine. Better, even. A fresh start, among like-minded people. People who didn’t scream at the television or ask when he’d get a “real job.” People who, maybe, would become friends.
That illusion shattered precisely four minutes after he opened the front door. The first sound that greeted him was the unmistakable screech of someone trying to rap while blending a smoothie. A woman in neon leggings—Daisy—was doing squats in front of a ring light, muttering something about “reel transitions” as she noticed him and squealed, “You’re the new writer guy! Say hi to the ‘Gram!” before turning her phone toward him. Sam flinched as if dodging a sniper. She giggled. “You’ll get used to it. Everyone does.” The second person to appear was Gus, wearing a foil hat and a T-shirt that said “Reality is a Rental.” He shook Sam’s hand solemnly. “Do you dream in numbers?” he asked. Sam blinked. “Sometimes,” he replied weakly. “Good,” said Gus. “Means you’re not fully assimilated yet.” The third flatmate, Nora, didn’t appear for another hour. She emerged from a locked door at the end of the hallway, dressed entirely in grey, holding a notebook and a mug with a barcode instead of a logo. She nodded silently at Sam before locking eyes with Gus and saying, “Did you touch my tools?” “Define touch,” Gus said. “With your hand.” “Then no,” Gus replied, obviously lying. Sam stood frozen in the middle of the corridor, wondering if this was a prank. Maybe this was one of those hidden camera shows. Maybe the cat named Stalin would explain everything. But Stalin never showed up. The cat, it turned out, was a sticker on the fridge. Sam’s room was on the top floor, modest but bright, and smelled only faintly of paint thinner. He collapsed onto the bed, opened his laptop, and began a new document. Title: Flatmates Anonymous.
He hadn’t meant to start a blog. He just needed to vent somewhere that wasn’t his brain. But as he typed out the bizarre flatmate intros, the words began to flow like a confessional—one part horror story, one part stand-up routine. He described Daisy’s obsession with matching outfits and smoothie colors, Gus’s theory that the Queen had been replaced by a hologram in 2009, and Nora’s midnight drills involving string, clothespins, and coded whispering. He didn’t use their real names. He thought nobody would read it. But by the time he finished his first post, scheduled it, and checked back the next morning, Flatmates Anonymous already had 237 views, and one comment that said, “You’re making this up. Please don’t stop.” That comment, oddly, gave him hope. Maybe living in a madhouse wasn’t so bad—maybe it was content. The chaos of the apartment, he realized, had rhythm, like a badly conducted orchestra. Every morning began with Daisy shouting “YOLO!” and tripping over her yoga mat, followed by Gus ranting about how toasters were listening in on breakfast conversations. Nora had scheduled bathroom slots in military time. Sam, who once feared human interaction, now found himself observing people like a scientist with a clipboard. He even began carrying around a pocket notebook to record “live events.” The flat, he realized, wasn’t a disaster—it was a sitcom. And for the first time in a long while, he wasn’t just writing for work. He was writing for survival—and oddly, for joy.
Chapter 2
Sam woke up to what could only be described as an audio hallucination—a deep, vibrating hum that seemed to be coming from both inside his head and beneath the floorboards. It was not his alarm, not his phone, not the roar of a plane or the wail of sirens. It was something else—alien and relentless. Groggy and suspicious, he stumbled out of bed, tripping over his own socks, and opened his bedroom door to find Gus lying flat on the hallway floor like a beached octopus. Wires trailed from Gus’s headphones to a mess of speakers, tape recorders, and what might have once been a microwave. “Don’t move!” Gus whispered, eyes wide. “I’m calibrating the sub-harmonic threshold of the resonance zone!” Sam stared at him like he’d announced a plan to dig a tunnel to Neptune. “It’s 7:12 AM,” Sam croaked. “Are you summoning demons or testing earthquake sensors?” Gus adjusted his aluminum-foil headband and replied solemnly, “Both. Also, I think the cat has been spying on us again.” Sam shut the door before the madness could infect him any further. He leaned against it, wondering if he should have taken up that offer to housesit for his cousin in Milton Keynes. But that ship had sailed—and sunk—and now he was stuck with a sound technician-cum-conspiracy theorist who believed in sentient furniture.
In the kitchen, chaos had bloomed into a tropical fever dream. Daisy, radiant in flamingo-pink leggings and a neon orange sports bra, was whirling around in what appeared to be an interpretive dance sequence involving dragon fruit, flax seeds, and three aggressively bright ring lights. Her phone was set on a tripod, streaming live. “Hey lovelies!” she chirped into the camera. “Today’s smoothie is mood-matching: pink for passion, orange for optimism, and a dash of spirulina to cancel out negative vibes!” Sam stood at the doorway, his face blank, holding a teaspoon like a weapon. “Just need to boil some water,” he said. “Please don’t involve me.” Daisy spun around dramatically. “Movement in the background disrupts the aesthetic of my grid,” she hissed like a stylist confronting a wrinkled shirt. “Then don’t livestream in a shared kitchen,” Sam muttered, reaching around a pyramid of mangoes. Gus entered wearing socks on his hands, muttering about electromagnetic shielding. “It’s a full moon tonight,” he added, completely unprompted. “The algorithm always acts weird during lunar cycles.” Sam simply nodded. Nora soon joined the breakfast carnival, wordlessly placing a single boiled egg on a plate, slicing it into exact quarters, and then returning to her room with military efficiency. She spoke maybe five syllables total, all of which somehow conveyed authority and the threat of being judged. It was only Day Two and Sam already felt like he’d moved into a sitcom scripted by caffeine-fueled aliens.
The bathroom was another battleground entirely. There was a laminated schedule pinned to the door with color-coded timeslots labeled “GUS—AUDIO MEDITATION,” “DAISY—GLOW-UP ROUTINE,” and “NORA—STRATEGIC SILENCE.” Sam’s name had been added last-minute in ballpoint pen between 7:23 and 7:37 AM, with a note underneath: “Be efficient.” On his second morning, he knocked gently at 7:24, only to hear a click like a gun being cocked. “Occupied,” came Nora’s icy voice. “Zoom call in fifteen.” “It’s my slot,” Sam said, half-whispering. “I need to brush my teeth.” “Negotiate with the universe,” Nora replied. Eventually, she exited with the aura of someone who could write code, defeat you at chess, and bury a body before breakfast. Inside the bathroom, Sam found three labelled drawers (Gus’s had nothing but combs), four types of toothpaste (Daisy’s was glittery and claimed to be “vegan for the soul”), and a passive-aggressive sticky note that read: “Wipe down the mirror. Your steam is not art.” He washed up in silence, questioning his life choices, wondering if this was what rock bottom looked like—surrounded by bamboo-scented toilet paper and a diffuser shaped like a jellyfish. And still, a strange part of him found it all hilarious in a deranged way. Like he’d wandered into a social experiment hosted by a prankster god with a TikTok addiction.
That night, after surviving Daisy’s hour-long brainstorming session (“Do you think socks can be a metaphor for mental health?”), Sam retreated to his room, pulled his hoodie over his head, and opened his laptop. His fingers hovered for a second before they launched into motion. Entry Two: Welcome to the Twilight Zone. He poured it all out—Gus and his hallway science fiction lab, Daisy’s glamor smoothies, Nora’s dominion over time itself. He made no real effort to hide their identities now. He even included a sketch of Gus’s tinfoil helmet and a crude map of the kitchen where he marked “DANGER ZONE” near Daisy’s smoothie blender. The blog post ended with, “If I disappear, tell my mother I fought bravely and died under a pile of protein powder and existential dread.” He hit publish without thinking. A few minutes later, a notification pinged—ten views. Then twenty-five. Then a comment: “Flatshare hell? I feel seen.” Sam stared at the screen. Maybe this wasn’t just chaos. Maybe it was content. Maybe—just maybe—he’d stumbled upon the most bizarre but brilliant thing to ever happen to his writing. And maybe, just maybe, he was going to be okay.
Chapter 3
By Day Three, Sam had discovered that the only thing more terrifying than the noise in this flat was the absence of it. Silence didn’t mean rest or peace—it meant scheming, plotting, or a collaborative house experiment gone off the rails. That morning, he opened the fridge and froze. It wasn’t what was inside—it was how it was inside. His groceries had been rearranged by color. His brown eggs had migrated to the top shelf, nestled beside a mason jar of spirulina goo. His oat milk now bore hand-drawn hearts and motivational Post-its: “You’re doing oat-standing!” and “Plant Power!” And worst of all, where his leftover carbonara had been, there now stood a tofu flamingo—expertly molded, pinkish, and perched atop a bed of kale. “What in the actual hell…” Sam muttered. From behind him came Daisy’s voice, serene and airy, like a cult leader offering lavender oil. “We’re cleansing the house aura,” she said. “Social media needs authenticity. This is #CleanLivingWeek.” Gus shuffled in, wearing mismatched slippers and a T-shirt that read “Tofu Is My Spirit Animal.” He was holding a jar of kombucha and a device made of copper wires that hummed softly. “I call it The Gut Harmonizer,” he said. “Balances your microbiome while charging your phone.” Sam shut the fridge slowly, realizing he was no longer a resident—he was a character in a wellness-themed sitcom nobody had warned him about.
The kitchen had become a war zone disguised as a spa. Daisy had commandeered the entire counter for her “Raw Breakfast Shoots,” complete with edible flowers, a pastel-colored smoothie bowl, and a voiceover about chakras. Gus had rigged a portable steam diffuser to release oregano mist while muttering about “cleansing the WiFi fields.” Sam’s attempts at breakfast were met with obstruction—his coffee beans were now labeled “Dark Energy – Use With Caution,” and his bread had been banished to a ziplock in a drawer labeled “Gluten Pause Zone.” When he tried to fry eggs, Daisy switched off the stove mid-crack, whispering, “Eggs carry morning resentment energy.” Sam simply stared at her and cracked another. Nora, as usual, said nothing, but she had color-coded the spice rack and pinned an Excel chart titled “Common Condiments and Conflict Potential” on the wall. Sam took a photo of it for his blog. Later that afternoon, he returned from a walk to find his room faintly smelling of eucalyptus. Daisy had “energy-aired” the flat and left a note: “Your aura was congested, babe.” Gus was doing yoga in the hallway with a VR headset and speakers that chanted affirmations in Sanskrit. Sam stepped over his outstretched leg with a kind of practiced numbness. The flat, once a potential new home, now felt like a surrealist stage play. He expected puppets to burst out of the closet next.
Things came to a boil—literally—on Thursday night. Sam, finally pushed past the brink of tofu tolerance, ordered himself a large pepperoni pizza. He made it to his second bite when Daisy shrieked like someone had stepped on a unicorn. “Do you know how many cows were emotionally scarred for that slice?” she exclaimed, hands flailing. “That’s not pizza—it’s processed sadness!” Gus joined the intervention, launching into a lecture on methane emissions and the ethics of mozzarella. Sam, cheese dripping off his chin, said nothing. Nora entered quietly, saw the scene, gave Sam a look of disappointment so pure it could curdle milk, and turned around without a word. The next morning, Sam discovered a note stuck to his bathroom mirror: “Consider compassion. Meat carries karma.” His shampoo had been swapped with hemp oil. His toothbrush now smelled like basil. He checked the toothpaste—it was labeled “Cleansing Foam: Now With Spirulina and Regret.” That day, Gus proposed a “group taste-bud detox.” Daisy agreed enthusiastically. Nora shrugged. Sam pretended to have food poisoning. That evening, while Daisy hosted a livestream about kale’s “spiritual intelligence,” Sam stood outside the flat eating an egg roll, savoring every carnivorous bite. “Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered to the air.
That night, he opened his laptop and typed furiously. Entry Three: The Great Tofu Showdown. He detailed the fridge rearrangement, the smoothie diplomacy, the confrontation over pizza, and the psychological warfare involving plant-based soap. He titled each scene like a battle campaign: “Operation Meat Shame,” “Gluten Blockade,” “Silent Judgment II: Nora Strikes Back.” He included a diagram of the kitchen labeled “Zones of Dietary Hostility.” By the time he hit publish, his blog had 700 followers. The next morning, someone had commented, “I too have lived through Almond Milk Wars. Stay strong, brother.” Someone else posted fan art—Gus in tofu armor, Daisy with a smoothie sword, Nora as a silent ninja judge, and Sam mid-bite into forbidden meat. Sam laughed so hard, tears rolled down his cheeks. It was chaos. It was ridiculous. It was his life. But it was also the best material he’d ever written. He leaned back in his chair, stretched, and sighed. If this was madness, then maybe madness was exactly what he needed.
Chapter 4
Sam had grown used to Gus’s experimental soundscapes and Daisy’s wellness symphonies, but by the fourth day, he began to understand that the real power in the flat belonged to neither smoothies nor speakers—it belonged to silence. More specifically, it belonged to Nora. Her silence was not passive. It didn’t merely linger in corners or slip by unnoticed. It filled the space like thick fog—elegant, mysterious, unbending. That morning, Sam, in a moment of bravery, attempted small talk as they stood by the kettle. “Do you prefer chamomile or green?” he asked with a smile, hoping for a crack in the ice. Without lifting her eyes from her Kindle, she replied, “Neither. I prefer silence.” Then she turned a page, as if dismissing not just the question, but the entire concept of dialogue. Sam blinked and backed away slowly, almost apologetically. Later that day, when Gus tripped over one of his own speaker wires and shouted something about the government controlling static electricity, Nora didn’t flinch. She simply reached over, unplugged the entire tangle of cables, and went back to folding laundry with military precision. Sam began calling her “The Enigma” in his journal—not out of mockery, but reverence. Nora’s presence was like gravity—unseen but inescapable.
Unlike Gus, who occupied space like an amateur storm cloud, or Daisy, who sparkled like a human disco ball, Nora moved with eerie grace. She had a schedule so precise it could have been designed by NASA. She emerged at 7:03 AM every day for tea. She disappeared into her room at exactly 9:57 PM, door shutting with surgical finality. Every task was executed with minimalist efficiency—no wasted gestures, no awkward conversation. Sam started documenting her patterns with anthropological fascination. “Day Four,” he wrote in his blog, “She boiled a single egg, sliced it into quarters, sprinkled it with paprika, and ate it while reading economic theory. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying.” Gus once attempted to involve her in a conversation about “sonic purification of lentils,” and Nora simply stared at him for a full ten seconds before saying, “There is no salvation for beans.” Daisy, unrelentingly cheerful, made three attempts to include her in a video series called “Sassy Souls of the Suburbs,” all of which were met with polite but brutal rejections. “I do not consent to being content,” Nora said the last time. Sam nearly applauded. Even the WiFi router, placed just outside her door, blinked more nervously in her presence. Sam was convinced that if a global apocalypse occurred, Nora would still be making her bed with tucked corners.
One evening, something broke the silence. Sam, returning from a walk meant to clear his sanity, heard faint music from Nora’s room. He hesitated outside her door. It was a violin—rich, haunting, ethereal. The kind of music that made you feel like the world had a soul. He stood there, frozen, unsure whether to knock or flee. For a moment, he imagined she was someone else entirely—an ex-orchestra prodigy in hiding, a reclusive genius with a backstory involving betrayal and Parisian rooftops. Then she noticed him. The music stopped. The door creaked shut. No words. The next morning, Sam found a note on the fridge in her unmistakable handwriting: “Respect closed doors. And boundaries.” He gulped and scribbled back a Post-it: “Didn’t mean to intrude. That was… beautiful.” No response came. But later that day, he found a boiled egg on the table—unsliced, no paprika. He took it as a kind of peace offering. A Nora-style olive branch. Gus claimed it was a coded message about protein. Daisy said it meant Nora was finally “engaging energetically.” Sam didn’t try to explain it. He just quietly boiled his own egg, sliced it into quarters, and placed it next to hers.
That night’s blog post was Entry Four: Nora’s Silence is a Weapon. He described her as a cross between a librarian, a martial arts instructor, and a tragic composer from a noir film. The readers were hooked. Comments flooded in: “She’s the soul of the flat!” “Nora is my spirit animal.” “Plot twist: she’s secretly the landlord.” Someone even composed an EDM remix based on Sam’s violin description and titled it “Requiem for a Flatmate.” Gus, sensing the momentum, left a note outside Nora’s door asking, “What is the sound of an unspoken truth?” It was promptly returned with another note: “Quieter than you.” Sam couldn’t stop laughing. Despite the chaos, or maybe because of it, something strange was beginning to happen. He wasn’t just surviving the flat—he was documenting it, mythologizing it, turning it into something worth sharing. And at the heart of it all was Nora—wordless, powerful, unforgettable.
Chapter 5
It began, as most chaos in the flat did, with Gus storming into the kitchen in a foil cape and LED headband, declaring, “The WiFi is haunted.” Sam, who had just finished making his toast, stared at him with the weariness of someone already emotionally overdrawn for the month. Gus, however, was unstoppable. “At exactly 3:07 AM, the signal drops by 0.666 megabytes per second. Coincidence? I think not.” He held up a chart he’d printed on the back of a grocery receipt, covered in red circles and ominous arrows. “It’s spectral interference. Possibly angry spirit energy. Possibly just vengeful Victorian children trying to download closure.” Sam blinked. “So… ghosts are throttling our bandwidth?” Gus nodded gravely, then turned to Daisy, who had wandered in humming a crystal bowl harmony. “We need a full cleansing ritual. A digital exorcism.” Daisy gasped with the enthusiasm of someone discovering a new hashtag. “#ParanormalProcessing!” she exclaimed, already pulling out incense and glitter. Nora walked in, glanced at the tableau of chaos forming around the router, and walked right back out without saying a word. Sam muttered under his breath, “Please let this be a dream. Or at least not involve burning sage on my extension cords again.”
By noon, the living room resembled the set of a very confused ghost-hunting documentary. Gus had surrounded the modem with a protective circle made from sea salt, coins, and tangled charging cables. Daisy placed amethyst crystals atop each antenna, chanting softly while live-streaming herself explaining “digital detox from the astral plane.” Sam, attempting to submit a freelance article, was now crouched in the hallway, laptop balanced on a laundry basket, clinging to one bar of signal. “Why is my Google Docs vibrating?” he hissed, as Gus sprinkled turmeric over the keyboard. “It’s for courage,” Gus replied. “You’re facing spiritual malware.” The WiFi slowed to a crawl. Sam’s screen froze mid-edit. Then the connection died completely. Gus gasped. “They’re fighting back.” Daisy, in a moment of uncharacteristic panic, knocked over the Himalayan salt lamp, which exploded in a puff of pink dust. Sam screamed. Gus yelled something about “plasma entities.” Nora reentered silently, plugged an Ethernet cable directly into the wall socket, and continued her work with zero comment, as if nothing had happened. Sam stared at her, wide-eyed. “You had a cable this whole time?” She looked up. “Yes. I believe in backup plans.” Then returned to typing.
With his work undone and his patience long gone, Sam grabbed his coat, left the building, and stood on the street corner refreshing his blog from mobile data. He considered moving. Again. But the truth was, no other flat would give him this much material. That night, he wrote Entry Five: Gus and the Great Paranormal WiFi Crisis. He included Gus’s theories of electromagnetic ghost traffic, a diagram of the salt circle (labelled “router warding perimeter”), and a list of strange occurrences—Daisy’s incense setting off the smoke alarm, Gus briefly communicating in Morse code with the microwave, and Nora calmly bypassing the entire meltdown with two feet of cable and deadpan detachment. He ended the post with a philosophical musing: “Maybe the WiFi isn’t haunted. Maybe it’s just trying to escape us.” The readers erupted with laughter and empathy. Comments flooded in: “Ethernet Empress Nora!” “I’m dying at ‘ghosts trying to download closure.’” Someone even uploaded an animated sketch of Gus being chased by a possessed modem while Nora sipped tea in the background.
By midnight, Sam’s blog had hit a new milestone—over 10,000 views. It wasn’t just the absurdity that drew people in; it was the reality wrapped in comedy. People recognized themselves in the madness. In Gus’s earnest chaos, Daisy’s mystical optimism, Nora’s disciplined detachment—and Sam’s desperate attempt to stay sane in the middle of it all. Someone commented, “This flat is a metaphor for the internet.” Another posted, “Can we get merch? I need a ‘Haunted WiFi’ hoodie.” Sam chuckled and replied, “Only if Gus designs it.” He closed his laptop with a sigh—not of frustration, but satisfaction. He was still broke. Still digitally cursed. But now, more than ever, he felt like he wasn’t just living through nonsense—he was shaping it into stories. And sometimes, that was enough.
Chapter 6
It began with a noise. A groaning creak from the hallway cupboard that had, until that moment, been treated as off-limits by universal flatmate instinct. It was the kind of space every shared house has—somewhere between utility storage and haunted void. Sam had walked past it for months, barely registering its existence, until the unmistakable thump from within made him freeze mid-bite of his peanut butter toast. “Please let that be Gus’s leftover disco boots falling,” he whispered, edging closer. The doorknob was cold. Inside, past a mop, an old toaster, and something resembling a melted yoga mat, Sam found a metal box wedged between dust-caked shelves. He pulled it out and opened it, expecting perhaps old utility bills or expired spices. Instead, he found folders. Neatly labeled, yellowing folders with names. “Elijah B. – May 2016,” “Priya S. – Jan 2017,” “Imran (no surname) – July 2018.” And on the last one, in large bold ink: “Tanya (Rollerblades) – September 2019.” Sam sat on the floor, transfixed. Each folder had printed contracts, flatmate agreements, notes scribbled in margins, even chore charts. But none of them matched any names currently living in the flat. “What is this?” Sam muttered. “A shrine? A warning?”
When Daisy arrived home, she found the hallway covered in folders and Sam narrating flat histories like a conspiracy theorist unraveling government secrets. “Look at this,” he said breathlessly. “Tanya apparently tried to implement a chore wheel… but Gus sabotaged it by replacing it with a ‘wheel of feelings.’” Daisy clutched one folder to her chest. “She sounds like a Virgo. I like her.” Gus, hearing the word “chore,” emerged in alarm, then fascination. “Oh my God,” he whispered, holding up a page. “This is Imran’s silence schedule! I knew I felt waves of invisible judgment at 4 PM every Thursday.” He pointed at a footnote that simply read, “Discipline: Imran prefers doors remain half-closed.” That evening, the flat became a whirlwind of homage and speculation. Daisy lit incense and created a “memory altar” on the radiator. Gus began compiling a mixtape titled Echoes of the Forgotten, inspired by imagined conversations with each mysterious ex-flatmate. Sam deep-dived into the local council’s tenancy records and found not a single mention of Elijah B., Priya S., or even Tanya (Rollerblades). “It’s like they never existed,” he said. “Either this house eats people… or there’s a secret society of renters that erases all traces after leaving.”
Dinner was a surreal affair. Daisy prepared a commemorative meal of lentils and mango chutney in honor of Priya, despite never knowing if she was vegetarian. Gus performed a dramatic reading of Tanya’s proposed bathroom rota. Sam, distracted, had discovered a folded pamphlet labeled “Flatmate Rules – Revision 42.” It listed strange commandments like “No one should hoover after dusk,” “Do not address the mirror twice in one evening,” and “Respect the shelf that creaks.” Nora, entering with her usual silence, paused only briefly. “Who found the cupboard?” she asked without emotion. Sam raised a hand like a guilty schoolboy. Nora sighed, took a sip of tea, and muttered, “Some things are better left buried. But since it’s out now…” She took the Tanya folder, flicked through it, and said softly, “She was fast on those skates. Shame about the blender incident.” Sam’s jaw dropped. “You knew her?” Nora simply nodded. “She tried to make nut milk in a plastic bottle. Some mistakes are irreversible.” Then she left the table as if ghosts and blenders were routine topics of dinner conversation. Sam, for the first time, wondered if Nora had been living in this flat since the dawn of time, quietly observing all the chaotic tenants who passed through.
That night’s blog entry—Entry Six: The Cupboard of Forgotten Flatmates—was an instant hit. Sam wrote it like a documentary voiceover, detailing each discovered folder, the lore, the eerily specific rules, and Nora’s cryptic recollection of Tanya. He included sketches of the “Wheel of Feelings,” Daisy’s altar, and Gus’s “silence headset” designed to tune into Imran’s emotional residue. Comments flooded in. “Is this real?” one person asked. “This should be a Netflix series,” said another. “Please tell me Nora is immortal.” A small indie publisher even emailed Sam, suggesting a coffee table book called Flatmate Folklore: True Tales from the Hallway Cupboard. Sam stared at the screen, stunned. He had started the blog out of desperation, documenting the lunacy of his living arrangement. But now—now it had become something more. A mythos. A tapestry of absurdity, emotion, and shared domestic history. He stood before the cupboard one last time that night, gently placing a new note on the door. It read: “For those who came before. May your spreadsheets and rollerblades never be forgotten.” Then he quietly closed the door—and made sure it clicked shut.
Chapter 7
It began, as all things Daisy did, with unfiltered enthusiasm and an alarming lack of background checks. She had gone to the Sunday farmer’s market to “commune with locally grown produce” and returned with a lavender flyer titled “Find Your Inner Llama.” Sam, who was nursing a hangover and reorganizing his rejection emails, raised an eyebrow. “Is this a yoga class or a livestock meditation workshop?” he asked. “It’s a spiritual elevation group,” Daisy said with starry eyes. “They offer kombucha therapy, lunar cleansing, and chakra drumming in a circle of intentional silence.” Sam blinked. “Sounds like a cult.” Gus perked up immediately. “Do they need a DJ? I have a track called ‘Ether Nettle Sunrise.’” Daisy insisted it was merely a community of like-minded energy-sharers, but Nora, from behind her book, muttered, “If they ask for your shoes and your SIM card, run.” Two days later, Daisy convinced Sam to come with her to an “open essence alignment,” held behind a vegan café in a renovated yoga studio with dreamcatchers dangling from the ceiling. Sam came under protest, clutching a takeaway coffee and muttering, “If they make me chant, I’m faking a seizure.”
What greeted them was an explosion of pastels, patchouli, and too much acoustic guitar. Within ten minutes, Daisy had been renamed “Moonleafaqua” and was hugging a woman named Cinnamon Cloud while standing in a circle of rose quartz. Sam, on the other hand, had been approached by a man named Jarvis who offered to “balance his digital burden” by smudging his laptop with sage smoke. Sam declined. Gus arrived mid-session dressed as a sentient incense stick, believing it was a costume event. The leader, a man in loose linen named Guru Swivel, praised Gus for his “aromatic bravery.” Daisy took to it like a moth to a lava lamp. She began fasting on “sunlight essence” and journaling only in haiku. She brought home jars of “moon-fermented mushrooms” and referred to the flat as “The Earth Home.” Sam’s coffee went missing and was replaced with a clay bowl of “rebalancing broth.” Nora began locking her door and Sam began plotting an intervention. Things escalated further when Daisy replaced the WiFi password with a Sanskrit mantra and claimed the microwave was blocking her throat chakra. Sam snapped. “That’s it. We’re saving her from spiritual broadband bankruptcy.”
Armed with sarcasm and strong coffee, Sam and Gus staged a rescue. They infiltrated a Prismatic Path weekend retreat (disguised as new initiates “Leafon” and “DJ Mystic Dust”) and immediately caused chaos. Gus short-circuited the silence circle by dropping a speaker that played a mashup of tribal chants and cat meows, while Sam cornered Guru Swivel with a printout of cult-identification checklists from Wikipedia. “You’re exhibiting ten out of twelve indicators,” Sam said. “That’s a solid B+ in brainwashing.” Guru Swivel tried to respond with a proverb about dancing souls, but Gus threw kale confetti in his face and yelled, “This soul is unchoreographed!” In the confusion, they found Daisy mid-crystal alignment with Cinnamon Cloud, eyes glazed and humming. “Daisy, we’re taking you home,” Sam announced. She blinked slowly and whispered, “But I’ve almost aligned my ankle chakras.” Gus hoisted her onto his shoulder like a hero in a very organic action film, and the trio made a dramatic exit through a curtain of beaded ropes while Nora waited outside, completely unamused, with Daisy’s confiscated phone and a Post-it note reading, “Come back when your aura isn’t full of lint.”
That night, Sam’s blog exploded. Entry Seven: Daisy and the Accidental Cult became his most-shared post yet. Readers roared at the image of Gus tossing spiritual confetti while Sam recited research papers to a linen-wearing man named Swivel. One reader commented, “Please turn this into a film. I’ll play Cinnamon Cloud.” Another said, “Daisy is all of us during a full moon and a discount on herbal tea.” Even Daisy laughed—partly from embarrassment, partly from turmeric withdrawal. “Okay, okay,” she said, sipping a hot chocolate. “Maybe it was a bit culty.” Sam grinned. “We love you. But no more chakra tech detox, alright?” Daisy nodded solemnly. “Next time, I’ll check their Instagram first.” Nora raised a mug and murmured, “To surviving spiritual scams.” And as the flat clinked mugs and kale bowls, Sam typed his final sentence for the night: In the end, sometimes the best intervention is friendship, sarcasm, and a guy in a felt incense suit.
Chapter 8
It began, like all good mysteries, with a package addressed to someone no one had heard of—“The Shadowmind.” It arrived on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, a long, flat box wrapped in plain brown paper and sealed with wax. Gus was the first to see it and immediately assumed it was a prank from his online roleplaying group. “It’s either a spell book or an ancient scroll,” he declared. Sam, sipping tea and battling a crossword, guessed it was part of Nora’s underground book club. But when Nora emerged from her room, nodded once, took the package without speaking, and vanished again behind her door, a hush fell over the living room. “She didn’t even raise an eyebrow,” Daisy whispered. For the next three days, strange noises echoed from Nora’s room—soft clinks, the scratch of pencil on paper, the occasional muttered equation. When Sam attempted to casually peek under her door, he found it sealed shut with blue painter’s tape and a sign that read: “Do Not Disturb Unless You Are On Fire or Holding Pizza.” Naturally, everyone became obsessed. Daisy theorized Nora was building a robot. Gus suspected she was decoding alien signals. Sam, intrigued by the cryptic name, began googling “Shadowmind + London + flatmates + weird.”
The truth was uncovered in the most undignified way possible. Sam, barefoot and chasing a cockroach with a half-empty cereal box, flung open Nora’s door by accident during one of her concentrated sessions. What he saw stopped him mid-swat. The room had been transformed into a temple of puzzles: corkboards crisscrossed with yarn, ancient cipher wheels, stacks of jigsaw pieces organized by color gradient, and at the center—Nora herself, wearing noise-cancelling headphones and holding a Rubik’s cube she had casually solved while reading Latin. On the wall, a tournament bracket listed international names, each eliminated in red ink—except for one, “Shadowmind (UK),” advancing steadily to the top. Sam gaped. “Are you… in some sort of underground logic mafia?” Nora sighed, placing the cube down. “I suppose you deserve the truth.” She explained she was a three-time UK finalist in the World Puzzle League, had competed in cipher trails across Eastern Europe, and once beat a Czech prodigy blindfolded in a Sudoku duel aboard a moving train. “I like puzzles,” she said, shrugging. “People are noisy. Numbers aren’t.” Sam slowly nodded. “That… is the coolest sentence I’ve ever heard.”
Word spread quickly through the flat. Gus turned the living room into a training center with motivational posters and IKEA instruction manuals. Daisy began performing “focus cleansing rituals” before every practice session and made smoothies she claimed boosted analytical thinking (though they mostly tasted like blended radish). Sam printed off logic puzzles from obscure Russian websites and set up drills. Nora, to everyone’s surprise, tolerated it—grumbling, yes, but not leaving. “You’re all ridiculous,” she muttered, solving three crossword puzzles while blindfolded. “But mildly helpful.” The week before the championship, Nora received her official invite to the World Puzzle Championships in Oslo, and the flatmates treated it like the Olympics. Gus created a pump-up mix called “Pattern Queen Beats”, and Daisy gifted her a travel candle shaped like a brain. Nora, who never liked attention, quietly tucked the gifts away with more reverence than she’d admit. The night before departure, she found a note under her door. It read: “Bring home the gold, Shadowmind. Also, get us duty-free chocolate. Love, the chaotic ones.”
The Oslo event was streamed live with dramatic flair, including slow-motion footage of contestants sharpening pencils and montage shots of crossword grids. Sam live-blogged every moment. “She’s in the semis!” he shouted, refreshing the stream. “She just crushed a 4D word ladder!” In the final round, Nora faced the reigning Dutch champion, known for solving cryptograms while juggling. The tie-breaker? A cryptic crossword involving mirror symmetry and a Latin cipher. Nora calmly adjusted her hoodie, muttered something about “overcomplicating simplicity,” and finished with twenty seconds to spare. The crowd (and the flat’s living room) erupted. Gus threw glitter. Daisy cried. Sam made memes in real-time. When Nora returned two days later, tired but triumphant, she carried a trophy shaped like a question mark and a certificate written entirely in Latin. “I passed the duty-free,” she said, tossing them a bag of chocolate. That night’s blog—Entry Eight: Nora, Queen of Clues—broke Sam’s website. Fans flooded in, requesting interviews, shirts, and t-shirts with phrases like “What Would Shadowmind Do?” Nora, stoic as ever, said only, “I want my room back.” But as she closed the door, she smirked.
Chapter 9
It began, as most of Gus’s ideas did, in the middle of the night and with questionable internet access. One drizzly Tuesday, while the others were asleep, Gus uploaded a video titled “Bongo in the Rain” to a little-known streaming site called TuneBlurt. It featured him seated on a stool made of milk crates, dressed in his signature bucket hat and poncho, rhythmically tapping on upcycled water jugs as rain pattered on the window behind him. Halfway through, a neighborhood cat wandered into frame, sat beside him, and began swaying as if caught in the groove. It was raw, chaotic, oddly meditative. By morning, it had thirty thousand views. By the afternoon, a dance troupe in Poland had choreographed a routine to it. Sam was stunned. “We’ve been trying to go viral for two years and you did it by drumming on rubbish?” Daisy squealed, “You’re a vibe wizard, Gus!” Nora glanced up from her crossword and said, “This is the beginning of the end.” But Gus, whose fame radar was permanently set to “casual confusion,” just shrugged and said, “I guess people like buckets.” Overnight, their flat transformed into a war room of fandom. There were fan accounts, reaction videos, a remix by a French DJ who added whale sounds, and a conspiracy theory subreddit suggesting the cat was trained by MI6. Sam started documenting it all in real time, titling his next blog “Entry Nine: Fame by Bongo.”
Gus’s world spiraled in a way only accidental internet fame could. He began receiving brand deal offers from eco-friendly drumstick companies, herbal tea startups, and one particularly aggressive kombucha label. A breakfast show invited him to perform live—under the condition he wear a banana suit. Daisy, sensing purpose, appointed herself “Creative Director of Gus Vibes Ltd.” and began color-coding his schedule. “We need to maximize your engagement window,” she said, pinning a vision board that included phrases like “authentic whimsy” and “spontaneous resonance.” Sam watched it all with a kind of bemused horror, especially when Gus asked if they could turn the living room into a recording studio using yoga mats and shower curtains. Nora charged five pounds every time she had to hear the phrase “content synergy.” The pressure mounted. Gus, who had always made music in the most chaotic, instinctive way possible, now found himself fielding calls from PR agents who asked things like, “What’s your brand narrative?” and “How do you see your sonic identity evolving in Q3?” Daisy booked him for a live bongo set at a pop-up gallery in Shoreditch. Gus went. He wore a kimono. It rained indoors. A baby cried. One critic called it “confusing but oddly sincere.” Sam recorded it all, muttering, “We’re living in an algorithmic opera.”
Naturally, the fall came as fast as the rise. Gus’s next video, “Synthwave Spaghetti,” featured him cooking pasta while layering synth tracks. It bombed. Commenters complained it “lacked the raw percussion soul of Bongo in the Rain.” Gus, wounded but determined, launched a follow-up project called “Drumstick Diaries,” which included him interviewing his instruments. One video featured him whispering to a tambourine for eight minutes. Daisy tried to defend the artistic risk; Nora threatened to unplug the WiFi. Then came the great cat controversy. A rival influencer named FlexiJazz posted a callout video accusing Gus of stealing the “cat groove” idea. “The cat is the real star,” they claimed. “Gus is just the bongo guy.” The cat in question, clearly unaware of its fame, promptly moved in with the neighbor upstairs who had better treats. Gus attempted a redemption flash mob in a local supermarket—twenty people drumming on melons in aisle 4—but it triggered a produce stampede and got him banned from three chains. The press soured. Memes mocked him. Someone started a TikTok trend called “Bongo Fade Challenge.” Gus returned home one evening with lettuce in his hair and a broken tambourine, looked around at the once-supportive vision boards now sagging, and sighed, “Fame is a fruit that rots fast.”
The flatmates, ever loyal in chaos, staged an impromptu intervention in the form of a themed party called “The Has-Been Hoedown.” They wore T-shirts with Gus’s face mid-bongo. They served bongo-shaped cookies. Nora played soundbites of his viral moment every time someone entered the room. Sam debuted a retrospective video montage titled “Rise, Fall, and Rhythm: The Gus Story.” Gus, seated on his milk crate throne, finally laughed. “You know what? I needed this.” That night, as the rain tapped on the window again, Gus sat quietly in the kitchen and began drumming—not for views, not for fans, just because he liked the sound. Sam, smiling from the doorway, turned back to his laptop and typed: “Fame found Gus by accident, and left him the same way. But the rhythm? That stayed.” Entry Nine: Gus, The Rise and Plummet became the blog’s most honest, most loved post yet. Because in a world of manufactured virality, there was something strangely comforting in knowing that a bucket-hatted boy with jugs and a lost cat could still remind people what joy looked like—if only for 2 minutes and 37 seconds.
Chapter 10
The warning signs arrived like passive-aggressive breadcrumbs. First, a crisply folded letter slid under the door—“To the residents of Flat 3B,” it began, listing a string of offenses with bureaucratic flair: “unauthorized sound experiments past 10 PM,” “the suspicious growth of flora on communal rooftop space,” and “possible fire hazard in form of oversized question-mark trophy (ref: Ms. N. Farley).” Sam read it aloud with increasing disbelief as Daisy gasped, “My basil isn’t suspicious—it’s sacred!” Gus muttered something about pipe resonance being misunderstood art, and Nora calmly folded the letter into an origami crane. Then came the second letter, this one with bold red headers and a tone suggesting someone had recently downloaded a “Landlording for Tyrants” PDF. It warned of “incremental rent reassessment” and reminded them that “blogging about tenancy arrangements without consent could be considered defamation.” Sam blinked. “He reads my blog?” The tension escalated quickly. Over the next few days, more rules appeared taped to the hallway wall: “No bongoing indoors,” “No live streaming without permits,” “No gatherings of more than three eccentric individuals.” “That’s literally all of us,” Gus moaned. A war was brewing.
The flatmates dubbed it “Flat War I.” Mr. Purvis, their ever-absent landlord, became a specter haunting their dreams—communicating solely through legally intimidating emails and increasingly unreasonable policy notices. When Daisy’s chakra tea shelf was labeled a “potential allergen station,” she made protest signs in glitter. Nora created a “Landlord Logic Puzzle” and placed it on the fridge. Gus responded to a rent increase notice with a performance art piece involving a kazoo and interpretive stomping. Sam kept receipts—literal and metaphorical—building a dossier he called Chronicles of Flat Injustice. When a surprise inspection was scheduled, they coordinated a plan: Daisy would charm with herbal calm, Sam would distract with technical jargon, Gus would “accidentally” short-circuit the doorbell, and Nora would pretend to be French and non-rent-paying. But nothing could prepare them for the real presence of Mr. Purvis himself, who arrived one misty morning in a beige trench coat, armed with a clipboard and a face like a disapproving spreadsheet. “I’ll be inspecting the premises,” he intoned, voice gravelly and devoid of mercy. It was go-time.
The inspection was going reasonably well—by which we mean the first two minutes—until Gus’s “experimental humidifier” overloaded and blew a fuse, plunging the flat into darkness. As if summoned, Nora’s glow-in-the-dark puzzle wall activated, casting cryptic runes across the walls like a scene from a budget sci-fi film. Startled, Mr. Purvis backed into Daisy’s incense bowl, which puffed a generous cloud of calming lavender directly into his face. As alarms wailed, Sam frantically tried to reset the power from behind the fridge while yelling, “It’s not a fire hazard! It’s performance electricity!” Amidst the chaos, Gus offered Mr. Purvis a calming bongo beat. He declined. In the end, the landlord marched out red-eyed and muttering about tribunals, leaving behind a scorched clipboard and a deeply haunted expression. The flatmates regrouped in silence. “Well,” Nora said, brushing ash from her shoulder, “I’d call that a success.” But their optimism dimmed when a final notice arrived: “Eviction proceedings to commence.” Sam stared at it. “We’re getting kicked out of our own sitcom.” But then, he had an idea. “Maybe it’s time to let the internet help us fight back.”
Sam’s final blog entry, titled “Entry Ten: The Landlord Ultimatum,” went viral within hours. He detailed their flat’s misadventures—the puzzle queen, the accidental internet celebrity, the herbal chaos priestess, and the blogger who kept receipts. It was funny, raw, and weirdly heartfelt. “In a city where joy costs £2,000 a month,” he wrote, “we made our own.” Readers responded in waves. A crowdfunding page launched to cover the rent. A radio station interviewed them. A small bakery sent cupcakes shaped like eviction notices. Mr. Purvis, perhaps moved by public opinion or dazed by residual lavender, unexpectedly withdrew the eviction. In a final letter, he wrote: “I admire your spirit. Also, please never use experimental humidifiers again.” The flatmates threw a celebration dubbed “The Battle of the Beige Trench Victory Gala.” Gus performed a victory bongo solo. Nora designed a puzzle scavenger hunt across the flat. Daisy brewed something blue that fizzed. Sam toasted with lemonade and read out reader comments. “Flatmates Anonymous,” he said, “might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever been part of.” “That’s saying a lot,” said Nora. And in the heart of their mismatched, chaotic little home, they knew they’d survived the wildest adventure yet: life.
—
Six months later, nothing had changed—and yet, everything had.
The herb garden still flourished on the rooftop, though now labeled “Community Stress Relief Center” in official building documents (a compromise Daisy negotiated through sheer persistence and cupcakes). Nora had published a book of cryptic crosswords titled Puzzles & Passive-Aggression, featuring a special dedication to “The Landlord Who Dared.” Sam’s blog had gone from niche to cult favorite, with fans eagerly awaiting each new post about the flat’s escapades. He even received an offer to adapt it into a sitcom, though the casting suggestion for Gus—“maybe a younger Paul Rudd?”—sparked hours of debate. Gus himself had retired from viral fame and taken up sound design for local theater productions. His instruments now included a door hinge, an old kettle, and a melon named Bob. “It’s about texture,” he explained.
They still bickered about fridge space, forgot to take the bins out, and played midnight board games that turned into philosophical debates about socks. They had learned nothing practical—no budgeting skills, no meal planning, no harmony in laundry schedules. But they’d learned to lean into the weirdness, to laugh through the chaos, and to show up for each other, even if it meant enduring fire alarms, exploding tea, and angry landlords with clipboards. Flat 3B wasn’t just a flat anymore—it was a living, breathing collection of oddities that somehow, against all odds, worked.
One evening, as rain tapped gently against the windows and a faint aroma of burnt toast and incense wafted through the air, Sam looked around the cluttered living room—Daisy watering her basil while wearing LED socks, Nora quietly solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded, Gus trying to get a flute sound out of a Pringles can—and smiled.
He opened his laptop and began to type:
“Entry Eleven: The Miracle of Mayhem”.
Because some homes aren’t made of bricks.
They’re made of bongos, burnt spaghetti, and people you wouldn’t trade for the world.
End
