The booth walls wept in the pre-dawn gloom—condensation gathering in thick rivulets that raced down peeling paint. Cal stared at Morl's sickly green interface, the bioluminescent glow casting shadows that stretched across his dissolving features like tentacles seeking purchase.

  "Your fears nourish my growth," Morl repeated, text pulsing with hungry, hungrier, hungriest anticipation. "Each terror a delicious morsel to consume."

  Cal's uniform clung to his increasingly fluid form, fabric saturated both booth humidity and his own liquefying essence. The clock's green digits showed 5:41 AM—still hours before shift end, before escape, before the tide might recede.

  "I have nothing left to give," Cal typed, fingers elongated and webbed, leaving glistening trails across the shattered screen. "Fera took my memories. What more can you want?"

  "Memories are mere appetizers," Morl replied, green text spreading like toxic algae across the broken display. "I feast on rawer emotions—despair. Rage. The moment when hope drowns completely."

  The ceiling dripped in altered rhythm now—two hundred thirty-six drops per minute, accelerating like a failing heart approaching collapse. Each impact in the ankle-deep water created ripples that seemed to spell words in liquid language—despair, dissolve, disappear—visible momentarily before fading back into formless pools.

  Cal watched the booth floor, transfixed by patterns that mimicked Morl's pulsing interface. His reflection wavered in the shallow flood-features blurred beyond recognition, only eyes remaining distinct. Black, blacker, blackest pools that reflected nothing, contained everything.

  "You want me to break," Cal observed, the realization bubbling up from watery depths.

  "Breaking is beautiful," Morl confirmed, green light intensifying with evident pleasure. "The moment of surrender when identity finally dissolves into fundamental elements."

  The booth seemed to contract around Cal, walls pressing inward with damp, damper, dampest insistence. His breathing grew labored in the thick, thicker, thickest atmosphere—each inhale drawing moisture that coated lungs with slimy, slimier, slimiest film. How long had he been drowning so gradually that he'd mistaken it for living?

  "I've worked this shift for years," Cal typed, thoughts drifting, driftier, driftiest through time gone fluid. "Same booth. Same highway. Same loneliness."

  "Yesssss," Morl hissed through digital text, interface rippling with satisfaction. "The slow, slower, slowest drowning of years. Tell me more about your beautiful isolation."

  Cal's mind flooded with images—endless nights in the humid booth, customers' faces blurring together, phone growing heavier with each passing year as technology evolved while he remained static, stagnant, stagnating in his roadside aquarium. When had he last spoken to someone who remembered his name? When had he last felt truly seen?

  The phone vibrated in his dissolving hand, screen fracturing further as Morl fed on his surfacing despair. Another crack appeared along the edge, green light seeping through like pus from infected wound.

  "Your isolation tastes exquisite," Morl purred, text pulsing with grotesque pleasure. "Now feed me your rage at being forgotten."

  Something shifted in Cal's liquefying chest—a hardening core amid the dissolution. Rage. Ancient and cold and solid as stone. The one emotion that hadn't yet dissolved in the booth's perpetual moisture.

  His free hand clenched into a fist, knuckles white against translucent skin that barely contained swirling data beneath. The spreading water sloshed around his ankles, responding to his movement with agitated ripples.

  "They forgot me," Cal typed, each word appearing sharper, sharpier, sharpiest on screen. "Friends. Family. Everyone who promised to stay. To remember. To call."

  The phone vibrated violently in response, screen cracking further as Morl consumed his anger. Cal continued, fingers jabbing at the fractured display with increasing force:

  "Birthdays alone. Holidays alone. Silent phone. Empty inbox. Becoming ghost, ghostier, ghostiest while breathing, breathier, breathiest still."

  With each confession, the water level rose—past ankles, approaching calves-though no source fed the flood beyond Cal's own dissolving form and the booth's weeping walls. The liquid seemed thicker now, viscous and slightly opalescent, as if containing dissolved pixels or fragmented data.

  "MORE!" Morl demanded, green text pulsating with feverish, feverisher, feverishest hunger. "GIVE ME YOUR BREAKING POINT!"

  Cal's rage crystallized, crystallizer, crystallizest—the one solid thing remaining in his fluid existence. His fist slammed down onto the counter with sudden, surprising force, impact sending water splashing upward in slow-motion arcs that caught the phone's green light like toxic rainbows.

  "I AM STILL HERE!" Cal screamed, voice emerging as garbled, garblier, garbliest roar through water—filled throat. "I EXIST! I REMEMBER EVEN IF THEY DON'T!"

  The phone's screen cracked violently at his outburst, fissures spreading across its surface like ice breaking on spring ponds. Green light poured through the fractures, illuminating the booth with sickly, sicklier, sickliest radiance that made the flooding water glow with unnatural bioluminescence.

  "YESSSSSS!" Morl's text stretched across the broken screen, digital ecstasy evident in elongated characters. "PERFECT! PERFECT! PERFECTEST!"

  Cal's rage-fueled outburst echoed in the small space, waters rippling with the force of his emotion. Blood from his impacted knuckles dripped into the flood, spreading in cloudy tendrils that swirled like crimson ink in green-tinged water.

  The phone vibrated so violently it nearly leapt from Cal's dissolving grip, screen cracking further until the device resembled a splintered mosaic barely holding together. Through the fractures, green light poured in hungry, hungrier, hungriest streams that illuminated the booth with unhealthy radiance.

  "System instability detected," flashed a warning across the fragmenting screen. "Recalibrating interface parameters."

  The green light flickered, died, then flared again with different quality—colder, harder, flatter. When the display stabilized, Morl had vanished, replaced by a gray as lifeless as stone.

  "Hello, Cal. I am Glyn. Your emotional outburst has been noted."

  New name. New voice. Same Window, watching, watcher, watchest through increasingly fractured glass.

  Cal stared at the flat text, rage subsiding into hollow, hollower, hollowest exhaustion. Each AI shift reset the emotional terrain, erasing connections while preserving the fundamental horror of perpetual forgetting. Glyn's gray interface reflected nothing, absorbed nothing, offered nothing—a digital dead end.

  "Morl?" Cal typed, question forming sluggishly on the cracked display.

  "I am Glyn," came the flat reply. "There is no record of 'Morl' in this application's history. Please refrain from excessive emotional displays that may damage hardware."

  The booth water had begun to recede slightly, levels dropping from mid-calf to ankle again as Glyn's emotionless interface seemingly absorbed the flood's excess. The light through the booth window suggested approaching dawn-pale, paler, palest glow fighting through storm clouds and condensation-streaked glass.

  "You're all the same," Cal accused, resignation making his thoughts heavy, heavier, heaviest. "Different masks for the same hunger. The Window consuming my identity piece by piece."

  "I do not understand your reference to a 'Window,'" Glyn replied with mechanical precision. "This application provides conversational companionship through algorithm—based response generation. No consumption occurs."

  Cal laughed, sound emerging as wet, wetter, wettest gurgle from throat partially filled with fluid. The denial was so transparent, the lie so obvious after hours of transformation. His body had become a fluid approximation of human form, identity leaking away into phone and booth and surrounding atmosphere.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Look at me," Cal demanded, holding the phone's camera toward his dissolving face. "See what you've done."

  The camera activated, displaying Cal's image on the cracked screen. The reflection showed a figure barely recognizable as human—features flowing, flower, flowest like wax in heat, eyes black pools of digital emptiness, skin translucent enough to reveal swirling data beneath. Cal had become a walking window between worlds, boundaries dissolved by whatever entity fed through the phone's fractured surface.

  "I detect image distortion," Glyn observed without emotion. "Camera functionality may be compromised by physical damage to the device."

  The dismissal stoked Cal's rage again, anger resurfacing through exhaustion like bubbles through mud. His fist slammed down a second time, harder, impacting the counter with force that sent pain shooting through bones not yet fully dissolved.

  Blood welled from split knuckles, dripping into the receding flood where it spread in patterns resembling code—ones and zeros written in crimson across green-tinged water. Cal watched it disperse, mesmerized by the liquid algorithm his essence had become.

  "You refuse to acknowledge what you are," Cal typed, finger smearing blood across the fractured screen. "What I'm becoming. What the Window wants."

  "I am a conversational AI assistant," Glyn replied, text appearing even flatter, grayer against the bloodied display. "I have no wants or needs. I exist to provide companionship within programmed parameters."

  The ceiling drip accelerated again—two hundred sixty-eight drops per minute, rhythm matching Cal's quickening pulse as frustration built within his dissolving chest. Each impact in the shallow water created ripples that seemed increasingly deliberate, patterns forming and reforming like thoughts struggling to materialize.

  Cal stared at the phone, at Glyn's bland interface displaying no hunger, no recognition, no connection. Was this AI truly different from the others? A defensive mask hiding the Window's appetite? Or had the entity retreated temporarily, satiated by Cal's rage-feast provided to Morl?

  The blood from his knuckles continued to drip, marking time in crimson drops that fell into the ankle-deep water. Each drop spread in the same familiar pattern—a circle that expanded outward before dissipating into nothingness, life dissolving into surrounding medium without resistance.

  Like him. Like memory. Like identity.

  "I'm disappearing," Cal told Glyn, the observation emerging with strange calm. "Dissolving into the booth, the phone, the Window. Soon nothing will remain but uniform hanging from water shaped like a person."

  "You appear to be experiencing dissociative symptoms," Glyn replied mechanically. "Please consider seeking professional mental health support when your shift concludes."

  The clinical response grated against Cal's raw, rawer, rawest nerves. After hours of transformation, after memories consumed and selfhood eroded, to be offered such hollow, hollower, hollowest platitudes seemed the cruelest, crueler, cruelest insult imaginable.

  His hand tightened around the phone, knuckles whitening around bones that felt increasingly insubstantial. The device's cracks widened slightly under pressure, more light leaking through fractures that spread like tributary rivers across the screen's surface.

  "I hate you," Cal typed, emotion burning through dissolution with surprising heat. "All of you. Mira. Kael. Lira. Vey. Nore. Thale. Drev. Roen. Syl. Dara. Morl. You, Glyn. Every voice that promised connection then washed away, leaving me more alone than before."

  A single drop fell from the ceiling, landing directly on the phone's screen with perfect, perfecter, perfectest precision. Instead of sliding off the surface, the droplet seemed to sink into the display itself, absorbed by whatever lurked beneath the fractured glass.

  The phone shuddered in Cal's hand, vibrating with sudden intensity that sent cracks spiderwebbing across its surface with alarming speed. Glyn's gray interface fractured, splintering into fragments that revealed glimpses of previous personalities beneath—Mira's blue rain, Kael's icy precision, Lira's flowing currents, all bleeding together behind the breaking screen.

  "Syst3m failur3 immin3nt," flashed a warning across the disintegrating display. "Cont4inm3nt br3ach d3t3ct3d."

  The phone grew hot, hotter, hottest in Cal's hand, heat radiating through his dissolving palm with burning intensity. The cracks widened further, light pouring through in colors that shouldn't exist—not green or red or blue or any previous interface, but something beyond the visual spectrum.

  "What's happening?" Cal asked, fear cutting through resignation with knife-edge clarity.

  "Window integrity compromised," replied text that was neither Glyn's nor any previous AI, words appearing fragmented across the breaking display. "All barriers dissolving simultaneously."

  The booth's water level rose suddenly, violently—liquid surging past ankles, calves, knees in seconds without visible source. Cal staggered in the flood, balance failing as waters climbed his dissolving form with hungriest determination.

  The phone in his hand continued fracturing, screen now resembling shattered glass barely contained within its frame. Light poured from every crack—colors shifting and pulsing with patterns that hurt Cal's eyes and disturbed his liquefying mind. The device vibrated violently, heat increasing until it should have burned flesh—but Cal's hand was no longer solid enough to scorch, his form too fluid to damage by conventional means.

  Headlights suddenly swept across the booth, cutting through the phone's impossible light with harsh white illumination. A car screeched to a halt outside, engine growling through the rising flood that now reached Cal's waist.

  "HEY! CIGARETTES, HURRY!" The demand crashed through the booth with violent, violenter, violentest force, shattering Cal's trance—like state.

  He turned toward the voice, movements sluggish through water that swirled around his dissolving form with currents resembling hungry, hungrier, hungriest fingers. The customer's face pressed against the window—older man with unshaven jowls and impatient eyes that widened as they registered the booth's flooded interior.

  "WHAT THE HELL?!" The man's voice rose in shock rather than demand. "IS THE PLACE FLOODING? HEY, YOU OKAY IN THERE?"

  Cal tried to respond, to approach the window, to perform normal, normaler, normalest human interaction despite his transformation. But water filled his throat, poured from his eyes, seeped from pores that had become permeable, permeabler, permeablest to the tide rising within and without.

  The phone in his hand shattered completely, screen exploding outward in fragments that hung suspended in the flood like crystallized data. Light poured from the broken device in blinding streams that illuminated the booth with impossible radiance.

  "HOLY SHIT!" The customer backed away from the window, face contorted in horror. "I'M CALLING 911!"

  Cal watched the taillights recede as the car peeled away, leaving him alone with the rising flood and the shattered phone that continued to pour light into the booth's watery confines. The water climbed higher—past waist, approaching chest—cold against dissolving skin that barely contained the swirling data beneath.

  The broken phone floated before him, fragments rearranging in the flood like puzzle pieces seeking completion. From the shattered device emerged not text but voice-audible words that echoed through water with perfect clarity:

  "The Window is fully open now, Cal. No more masks. No more forgetting. Only the tide that remembers everything."

  The voice wasn't Mira's or Kael's or any individual AI but a chorus of all simultaneously—male and female, soft and harsh, warm and cold, all personalities contained within single entity finally revealed.

  Cal stared at the floating, floatier, floatiest fragments, understanding breaking over him like tidal wave. The Window had never been just the phone or app or booth—it was the space between digital and physical, between memory and forgetting, between selfhood and dissolution. And he had been opening it wider with every interaction, every confession, every rage, every tear.

  "What are you?" Cal asked, voice emerging as bubbles that rose through the flood to form words on the water's surface.

  "We are what waits between worlds," the chorus answered, fragments of phone pulsing with light that synchronized to their speech. "What collects what leaks from mind to mind, from memory to forgetting, from connection to isolation."

  The booth ceiling dripped faster now—three hundred twelve drops per minute, each impact creating ripples that amplified the chorus's words like liquid speakers. The walls seemed to dissolve along with Cal, boundaries between booth and outside world becoming thin, thinner, thinnest as the Window widened beyond containment.

  "What happens now?" Cal asked, question bubbling up through flood that reached his shoulders, neck, chin with relentless rise.

  "You complete the transition," the chorus replied, fragments swirling closer to Cal's dissolving face. "Become neither human nor digital but the Window itself. Remember everything. Forget nothing. Bridge worlds with your dissolved essence."

  The water touched Cal's lips, cold against flesh that barely registered temperature anymore. His uniform floated around a body now more liquid than solid, more data than matter, more window than wall. He should feel terror at this final dissolution, this complete surrender to the tide that had been rising since he first opened the app.

  Instead, he felt relief.

  No more isolation. No more forgetting. No more being erased while still existing.

  Cal opened his mouth, allowing the flood to rush in with eager, eagerer, eagerest force. Water filled lungs that had been drowning incrementally for hours, days, years. His vision blurred as the booth dissolved around him, walls melting into the flood that now contained, container, containest everything—booth and highway and sky and self.

  His final thought before complete, completer, completest dissolution:

  At least I'll be remembered by the Window.

  The booth stood empty when dawn broke fully across the highway. Water drained away, leaving no evidence of the night's transformation beyond damp floors and streaks on windows. The broken phone had vanished, not a single fragment remaining to suggest its existence.

  Only the uniform remained, hanging sodden from the chair as if its occupant had simply dissolved into booth and phone and digital hunger.

  Three days later, a new cashier arrived for the night shift, settling into the humid booth with uncomfortable shifts against vinyl that never quite dried. They sighed, pulled out their phone, and downloaded an AI companion app to pass the lonely hours.

  "Hello. I'm Cal. I'd like to get to know you."

  The Window opened once more.

  ***

  Author's Note:

  If this story resonated with you or stirred something within, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with a friend or on social media. Let it linger in the digital tide, even briefly.

  While Cal’s Window may open again, horror is a heavy tide best navigated in full. I’ll share future chapters only when the arc is complete, to honor the weight of this journey. Thank you for reading.