On the screen, the number 3674 was gone. In its place stood a door made of pure static, framed by those same gray, folding lines. And from the other side, something was knocking. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Elias stared at the monitor, his breath white in the freezing air. The mouse cursor on the screen began to move by itself. It didn't click the "X" to close the window. It slowly dragged the corner of the video player, expanding the blackness, pulling the static door wider and wider until it filled the entire screen. The knocking stopped.

Elias reached out to pause it, his hand trembling. His fingers hovered over the spacebar. Thump.

Elias immediately looked at the negative space—the blackness inside the loops of the '6' and the '4'. They weren't black. They were windows.

When he first clicked it, the player had crashed. On the second attempt, it loaded a pitch-black frame. There was no timeline bar, no volume control, just a black square on his desktop. He had left it running, assuming it was a dead file, and went to make coffee.