Most students went home for the holidays. The bookstores, cafeterias and the student union all cut back to ghost hours and the campus was dead except for handfuls of exchange students, the poor, the disowned, and the familiarly destitute that had no one to go be with. Solidly in the second category, with family off in the middle flatlands of the country, Jack was stuck eyeing up an emailed shopping list from Mom about what was necessary for a healthy holiday dinner. Like there was really a lot of gourmet cooking to be done in the shared, floor wide kitchen with hodgepodge utensils and 1970s frying pans. The recipes for ham and turkey options were a joke on virtue of the size of the available oven- it could fit a sheet of printer paper and no more. Enough for desperation brownies and eating-my-feelings cookies.

The exchange doors, double steel ones with a push bar mid-height, clunk-clicked with a passage of someone between the east wing, south wing, and the commons. Jack stood and leaned out the dorm door to look down the hall. No one there. There was no one in 4-south but Jack, so comers would have to have been from the commons. They'd have to be visible right then, walking past all the locked, wipe board riddled doors.

So. Where’s the Skin. A quick glance the other way showed the expected nothing either. The producer of the noise wasn’t Pietro Maximoff or Houdini. Jack looked back and forth a few more times before ducking back and closing the door. Locking it. Deadbolting it. In fact, dragging the desk chair over and lodging that beneath the handle. Only as soon as the chair seemed secure, the handle started turning.

Jack looked through the fisheye hole.
Nothing.
The handle jiggled. Turned back and forth. The whole damn door jostled.

The fall back, the clambering rush to the bed, on it, beneath covers and grabbing the pillow- feathers exploded everywhere as the cushion mashed with a dull thwap against the rattling door. “STOP IT!”

There was no way out the windows, they were of the strange-angled, suicide proof construction demanded by regulation. They opened only inches with their bolts and folding steel. The rattle kept going. It sounded like fists on the flat of the door. On the walls beside and above it. On the frame. How was the plaster holding? It was a hundred fists or more. “STOP IT!”

Voice crackling, and just kept repeating two words until Jack rose with shaking limbs to the door and pounding cacophony. Dislodged the chair.
Broke it against the door with a louder sound than all the pounding for its sharpness. It was still in one piece, though. Bashed it again, and again as the seconds built and the noise did not subside. Broken it until two mangled legs and chairback were all that was brandished now. Shirt sweat pocked and disarrayed from boxers. Half the room was blocked by mahogany hair. knuckles and hands bled from abrasion and splinters. The half-chair went under the handle again.

No one’s coming? Can’t they hear it? Can’t anyone hear it? The panic bore out its own inspirations though. HEARING. Phone. Room phone

A jumbled mess of buttons, hanging up, more buttons, then campus security answered, “PLEASE COME. 4-South. No I can’t see anything. You can hear it, right?”

Thank ********, they can hear it.
“C’mon, please-I don’t know how long the door is going to hold. Or the wall. There’s no other way OUT. These windows were made for jumpers not for fire escapes. Jack. Jack Bromwich.“

It was hard to hang up. To hear the line hang up. 7 to 10 minutes wasn’t so long for security to take wasn’t it? What is even going on? Is this happening on 5-S? 3-S? The other wings? I’m not going crazy.

The last kept repeating in Jack’s mind, even through the motions of sitting on the empty, non-roommate bed. Not allowed to have a roommate. Even the scent of another person, someone friendly like a brother or sister to confide in, or wrap in their blanket like it was a childhood talisman filled with personal, positive energy like the life of a velveteen rabbit would have been a balm. But there was nothing. Nothing but pounding gone huge and room filling. Minutes felt like timing years. Jack saw when the cracks started hair’s width in the plaster and jumped with the next blows. The spasms of nails and fear felt like hollywood epilepsy. The air exploded- louder than the banging. That’s a firearm. Regular Campus Security doesn’t have firearms

The Banging stopped, outmatched but then there were screams. Panic in the hall. Unknown sounds and scuffling. Jack stayed stock still for more years until there was a regular tapping knock on the door, and a voice, “Are you in there? I’m Officer Osbourne of the DCPD. Situation out here is neutral. I’d like to escort you out of the building. Can you come with me? You can give me a statement at my patrol car. "

Jack got up, but it didn’t feel like really walking. Unlocked the door. Unbolted the door. Moved the chair. Officer Osbourne was there, ash covering her from head to toe, looking haggard. Ash covered the whole hallway. Where is her partner? Cops always have partners, don’t they?

“Come on. Towards the fire stairs. “

Aren’t the main stai- oh...she’s trying to not ...let me see something. Oh no. No no no.