After Hours

After Hours Written and Illustrated by Kelsey Ward

I don’t remember what had brought me to campus so late at night, I just remember snapping awake in a darkened, empty lecture hall, pulling a tight, long breath into my chest. I blinked, my eyes were so dry they felt like two balls of cotton twisting around in my skull. The tray table beside me seemed stickier than usual, the dust in the air more pungent and stinging in my sinuses. My eyes adjusted to the stark contrast of the white screen at the front of the room, even though no one was there, it was illuminated, but blank. I turned around and squinted at the beam of light emanating from the back of the room, it held the sleeping tiers of seats in a cone of dancing dust. I couldn’t think of why the projector would be on, I didn’t see anyone else here. I called out to ask the darkness if I was alone, the high pitched buzz of the projector bulb was the only response.

I rose with an aching spine. How long had I been asleep? When did I fall asleep? I didn’t remember. I stood and shut my eyes, anticipating for the motion lights to flood the room with fluorescent rays, but nothing changed. I wove my way around the curved rows of seats and dragged myself up the musty carpeted steps to the back of the room and contemplated turning off the projector, but I wasn’t all too excited about the idea of doing so without the room lights on.

Smacking my sour tongue against my rough teeth and cracked lips, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and used my free arm against the cold beige painted metal of the door to push my way into the hall. I knew I must have been exhausted because the door seemed heavier than usual, my wrist made a creaking noise under its weight, then a popping and a crunch as it buckled back. I cursed and shook it out but was soon distracted by yet another discovery: The motion light here seemed to be out of order as well, luckily the adjoining hall was bathed in whining white light, giving me enough light to see by.

But I wasn’t alone here. A small shape was moving in the dark. A cat. In the dim it’s silhouette nearly disappeared into the hallway behind it but its green-yellow eyes threw the projector light from behind me back towards myself, making its eyes flicker with glow as its gaze passed over me, devoid of interest. How did a cat get in here? I I crouched and moved toward it, attempting to make myself less threatening. But it darted off around a corner all the same. I went to follow it, to let it outside. Surely it wasn’t meant to be in here.

I hurried to where it had gone and tried to tread lightly on the worn linoleum and make my footsteps echo as little as possible. Initially I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to do so. Upon reexamining my instincts I understood just what I was afraid of. A lit hallway meant someone, perhaps, may have been here recently, or maybe they were still here. I assured myself that the cat must have triggered it, not a person. I wasn’t even sure what

time it was but the darkness outside the windows made me assume I should have been alone.

I rounded the corner into the lit hallway and glanced around. Nobody. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or not. I didn’t stop to think about it too carefully. I just wanted to get home, change into some sweatpants, microwave some popcorn or make small talk with my roommates. Why did such mundane things sound heavenly to me now? Maybe the cat could leave the way it came, I told myself, worst case scenario it would surely be safe here until morning. I began feeling queasy at the thought of scouring the dark old building alone for the animal. I decided to leave the cat.

I grasped the cold stair railing, wincing at the pain in my wrist and recoiled. I continued down the stairs, fortuitously, my left foot landed on the only step with the safety grip tape worn away and my leg slid out from under me, bringing my mid back and tailbone crashing down onto the sharp right angles of the two steps behind me. I groaned, ready to mourn the injury on my vertebrae but a more pressing pain soon presented itself. My mouth pulsed with a pain much sharper now. My jaw and tongue throbbed. Admittedly it took me too long to piece together that I had bit my tongue as I landed. I reached my hands to my mouth to survey the damage, expecting the possibility of blood, but greeted with more than I could have feared.

Sheer adrenaline roared in my ears like a sharp wind on a cold day. My first instinct was to pick them up but my fingers were shaking and the small fragments were too numerous and slick to gather. Just then, a sound above made me stop cold.

Footsteps. Heavy ones. Something in the deepest part of my brain began ringing alarm bells again. I heard the footsteps quicken and break out into a sprint. Like a frightened hare I abandoned the scattered dental bones, letting them slip through my fingers and clink to the floor and leapt down the stairs, ignoring the new foreign landscape perceived to my tongue. At the final landing my arm grazed something. I looked back to see what I had hit out of instinct and soon wished I hadn’t. There was something hanging from the edge of the handrail. Something familiar. Wet and glistening. I seized my forearm to find it was wet too, I prodded it, easily sloughing off the flesh on the arm with my fingertips like wet toilet paper.

What was happening to me?

Yet again something within me like a twitching in my muscles and a burning in my lungs urged my legs to keep moving. Someone or something was coming.

I limped down the hall toward the main exit, elation of hope filling my chest. But perhaps I celebrated too soon. With all my weight I pushed on the door but it didn’t budge. It was kept locked after hours. And I was locked in. We were locked in. Together.

The footsteps behind me continued to gain distance and speed, I tried to will myself to turn and face them, managing only to lock eyes with my own reflection in the glass, a sight I’ll never forget. I hardly recognized myself. A mouth half full of broken teeth, sputtering blood. Skin grey and taught over the bones. Wide, streaming, bloodshot eyes.

Just then I jerked my head up off the desk with a gasp like a stun gun directly to the heart. “Wow, relax.” A voice beside me soothed. It was Kat. That was right. We had come here to get some of our group project work done. I could see out the window that it wasn’t night yet, the sun was just beginning to set over the crest of the adjacent building. “You’re clearly not getting any more work done so we might as well go home now.” She suggested. I cleared my throat and sat up straight, pain free. Bewildered but grateful.

“Yeah... let’s go home.”