college residence hall gothic

romnovae:

• the lights in the hallway are always on. you wake up at 4 am and lean over to make sure the slice of light under your doorway is still there. it is, except for the two dark patches made by someone’s feet as they stand there, watching. when you get up and look through the peephole, there’s no one there, but the shadows remain until the morning comes.
• the room next to yours has been empty all year, even after the spring transfer students moved in. still, you hear people talking in there now and then: quiet, murmuring, anxious. when you knock on the wall they do not stop.
• one day you wake up and realize you haven’t left the building in three days. your window tells you the outside world is still there, but when you try to open it for fresh air, you can’t, and when you go downstairs to leave, the doors are locked.
• there’s a frisbee in your room and you don’t know how it got there. you don’t play frisbee. no one you know plays frisbee. everyone in the residence hall owns a frisbee anyway.
• the building is never truly silent. if it were, you would know it was time to really be afraid.
• they turn the heat on too high in the winter, all winter long. you open the windows and let heat pour into the frozen air, and still your room is sweltering. you wonder who the administration is desperately trying to keep warm.
• there is a spot on the wall where nothing will remain attached–no posters, no lights, no stickers. you’ve tried to cover it up a dozen times and when you turn back to it, the poster you stuck there has disappeared. you find it in the cabinet under your sink, but not until many weeks later.
• the faucet leaks. the shower leaks. the ceiling leaks. they do not leak water.
• the day you move in, the RA gives you a list of all the room’s imperfections already registered with the school so that you won’t have to pay for any of these broken things at the end of the year. the list reads: one (1) lopsided desk, multiple dents in the walls/paint, one (1) cracked mirror, and one (1) tear in the fabric of reality caused by the extreme emotional disturbance of the previous occupant, brought on by academic stress.
• you wonder how much the fine for the last one costs.