The Short Straw

Alex washed his hands and started walking toward the bathroom door. He heard a scream from down the hall. God damn it, he thought. It was Friday the 13^th of September and his residents were living it up again. He couldn't go in and bust them until someone complained, but he didn't think there was anyone in the building besides him that wasn't partying. “Can I be the person who complains?” he said to no one in the hallway.

The music had now escalated to the point where he could no longer hear any of the words. As he got back to his room, he thought bitterly about how he lost rock, paper, scissors to every other RA in the building and was forced to have the only Friday the 13^th of the year. If only I had done paper after the third tie!, he thought tom himself. He sat down at his desk and tried to get some homework done. He might as well do something, since he couldn't have fun this evening. After he had read three paragraphs about how Israel could have peace within the next decade, he heard another sound. This yell seemed to have fear in it. It was definitely not the guttural yell that he had heard earlier.

He decided to do some investigation. The boys probably wouldn't tell him anything, but maybe he could scare them just enough to turn down the music a little bit. He got down to the end of the hall and knocked on Jordan's door. Large amounts of shushing could be heard from inside. No response. He knocked again, this time adding, “I heard somebody scream. Are you boys okay in there?” The door opened just enough for Jordan to show the right half of his face.

“No one in here screamed. We're just playing some Halo. Maybe that was it,” Jordan said.

“Glad to hear that I don't have to save anybody's asses. Let me know if someone gets killed by something other than a Warthog,” said Alex before walking back to his room.

Alex got back to his room, sat down at his desk, and stared at his textbook. “I am going to read you,” he said to the $150 book before him. He flipped through it, looking for the part on Israeli peace. He found the paragraph where he had stopped the last time and then gave up. It was 10:30 on a Friday night and his brain could not care less about whatever the hell, bullshit plan Jimmy Carter had come up with this time. He decided that his time would be better spent facebook stalking that cute girl that sits in front of him in World Relations. He started to sort through his friend's friends looking for a picture of her or a name that jogged his memory. Why didn't he pay more attention during roll call? Was it Christine? That kind of looked like her. Or maybe was it Molly? That picture could be her with a different hair color. All of these questions raced through his brain, only to be shot down by limited profiles with no information. “Aha!” he said, accidentally, much louder than he would have liked to admit. Luckily, everyone in the rooms around him were empty for the weekend. This girl had the right age and hair color, but little else could be discerned by her only picture. It was a picture of her standing on a rock on Lake Superior far away from wherever the person who took the picture was standing. He was just about to continue his search when he heard another noise from down the hall. This one sounded suspiciously like broken glass. “Damn them and their Halo!” he thought to himself, “Why couldn't alcohol make people less rowdy?”

He could feel a draft as soon as he got a short distance from his room. They must have broken their window and had opened their door. Or maybe they had seriously messed up and accidentally broken the window in the hall. He got up to the door. “Fuck!” was all he managed to get out before his tongue gave up speech and sat motionless at the corner of his gaping mouth.

The door lay in four pieces. There were two chunks still hanging on the hinges. One of the other pieces was jammed into the mini-fridge and the other was just visible underneath the desk. All that remained of the window were a few pieces along one edge. Dan was hiding under the desk next to the piece of the door mumbling quietly too himself. Chase was stuck to the wall next to the closet with what was probably his own blood. Adam was sitting on the couch still trying to play the game, even though the TV had been tipped over and was now in two separate pieces. The left side of his face was covered in blood . Jordan was lying in his bed above the couch with the covers pulled over his head. He was mumbling, but with a volume normally attributed to yelling. Alex couldn't make out anything that either he or Dan were saying. “Are you guys okay? What the FUCK happened here?” Alex finally managed to say just before throwing up at his own feet. No one seemed to acknowledge his presence after 15 seconds, so he ran back to his room to call 911. After he got word that there were the police and ambulances were on their way, he called the front desk and had them get all of the RAs that they could to the fourth floor as soon as possible.

He ran back to the room. Chase had now fallen off of the wall and was in a crumpled heap. Adam now showed the same wounds as Chase, but still had blood enough to bleed against the faded upholstery. Jordan was still under his covers, but was now thrashing around, mumbling louder than should be possible. Dan was no longer anywhere to be seen.

Alex withdrew from the doorway and threw up again. As he rose from his heaving, he saw a dark shape standing of the middle of the room. It was dark green and looked as though someone had crossbred an iguana with a minotaur. It was holding Chase's left hand in its teeth and was ripping the remaining limbs from his torso. Alex looked into the creature's eyes and wiped the vomit from his mouth.

Alex turned and ran back down the hall, “Yhastghunotgh!” he yelled as he ran. He bumped into Hannah, the RA from the second floor as he ran, nearly knocking her down the stairs. Alex sped up as he approached the window, running straight into it. He hit the railing first and his momentum carried him headlong through the window and onto the bike racks below.

Hannah grabbed onto the door handle and pulled herself up. She rubbed her arm where she had fallen and walked over to the end of the hall to see what had become of Alex. She leaned out of the broken window. From the glow of the streetlights she could see Alex's mangled corpse amid the broken bikes and threw up all over the window sill below her.