The nursing home smelled of antiseptic and something else—something sweet and rotting that no amount of bleach could mask.Nurse Patricia worked the night shift alone on the fourth floor. Management said budget cuts necessitated the skeleton crew, but Patricia knew better. No one wanted to work past midnight. Not anymore.Room 407 was always last on her rounds.Mrs. Hendricks had been comatose for three years, kept alive by machines that wheezed and beeped in the darkness. Her family never visited. The chart said she was ninety-four, but Patricia suspected she was much, much older.Tonight, Mrs. Hendricks' eyes were open."Just a reflex," Patricia whispered, though her hands trembled as she checked the vitals. The old woman's eyes tracked her movement, pupils dilated impossibly wide in the dim light.Then Mrs. Hendricks smiled.Her teeth had changed. They were needle-sharp now, crowding her mouth like a lamprey's maw. The heart monitor flatlined, but the old woman sat up anyway, tubes tearing free, machines shrieking their warnings into the empty corridor."Thank you for keeping me fed," Mrs. Hendricks said, her voice like wind through a crypt.Patricia tried to scream, but her throat had sealed shut. She watched in paralyzed horror as the old woman's jaw unhinged, stretching wider than any human mouth should open."Did you never wonder," Mrs. Hendricks whispered, "why this floor always needs new nurses?"Patricia's legs moved without her permission, carrying her backward toward the door. Her hand found the handle. Locked. It was never locked."The others are still here, you know." Mrs. Hendricks gestured to the walls, and Patricia saw them—faces pressing through the yellowed wallpaper, mouths open in silent screams. She recognized Nurse Chen, who'd quit last month. Nurse Rodriguez, who'd transferred. Nurse Williams, who'd simply vanished.They hadn't left at all.Mrs. Hendricks rose from the bed, her hospital gown hanging from a frame that was no longer remotely human. She moved like a spider, limbs bending in too many places."Every seventy years, I wake," she said. "And I'm always so very hungry."The last thing Patricia felt was the old woman's breath on her neck—cold as a February grave—before the feeding began.By morning, the fourth floor would need a new night nurse.They always did.