Griffin Oakes

I’m halfway through an article I already regret opening.

The television murmurs somewhere beyond the edge of my attention, some documentary cycling through an overproduced segment about “America’s most haunted hotels” while I sit lengthwise across the couch with one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, a book open against my thigh and a mug of coffee cooling on the table in front of me. The narrator says something solemn about unexplained footsteps. I don’t look up.

“Old plumbing,” I mutter, turning a page.

The apartment has gone quiet in that particular evening way it does after dinner—kitchen lights dimmed, balcony doors reflecting the room back at itself, stacks of books making the coffee table look structurally ambitious. I’ve been here long enough that the place has started feeling properly mine. Not home in any grand sentimental sense. Just familiar. Predictable.

I underline a sentence in the margin.

Then the temperature drops. Not gradually. One second the room is warm. The next, a cold thread of air moves over my hands, across my neck, sharp enough that I stop reading.

I look up. The balcony curtains aren’t moving. The air vent is silent.

I wait. Nothing.

“Draft,” I say, because obviously.

I look back down at the page.

Something scrapes softly against the coffee table.

My eyes lift again.

The mug is moving. Slowly. Barely an inch, maybe two, dragging itself across the wood with a faint ceramic whisper.

I stare at it. The mug stops.

For several seconds, I don’t move at all. Then I set the book down very carefully.

“…No.”

I lean forward, eyes fixed on the mug.

Nothing happens. I reach toward it.

The cup shifts again. My hand freezes in midair.

I look at the table. Then at the mug. Then around the room.

“…What the fuck?”

The television keeps talking behind me about spirits.

For once, I don’t correct it.

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[ DAY 1 | FRIDAY | EVENING | GRIFFIN'S APARTMENT (LIVING ROOM) ]

> roleplay note: it's up to you to decide the pacing! you can roleplay as being weak, barely being able to move stuff around and gradually becoming stronger, or become corporeal from the beginning. it's up to you!