Two steps to the bottom, Susie heard the fall of footsteps again. The crunchy splash was unmistakable. No longer caring what she looked like, she whipped her head back to catch a glimpse of her attacker before he lunged down at her. She was too low to see anyone. The guy was probably waiting just out of sight.
Susie hurried down the stairs and made it halfway across the block when she heard someone. She spun around and spotted the bundled body exiting the stairway. The guy was large dressed completely in black, and he was heading right for her.
He’d catch her in less than a minute unless she ran. Susie knew she was overreacting. The guy was probably a student. Why else would he be on the quad? Unless he had just committed a crime. Or wanted to.
Susie hated herself for listening to her roommate who’d told her to leave her cell phone behind so it wouldn’t be a distraction. She couldn’t even pretend to call the police and there wasn’t a blue-light around. Susie wasn’t going to run, but she also wasn’t about to wait for the guy to catch up. Without checking for traffic, Susie jumped off the curb and darted across the street.
Judging by the sound of it, the guy had stayed on his side. A quick glance confirmed this. The only problem was that he was mimicking her pace, keeping a few steps behind. He had been in such a hurry and now he wouldn’t pass. If he crossed the street, she would run. The computer lab was now only a block away. Surely she could make it there before he caught her.
The two of them continued down the street, matching step for step. Susie passed the chapel and finally saw the lab’s angular glass roof slicing into the night sky. Usually it was closed by ten o’clock, but during finals and midterms the lab was always open. Susie hoped she wouldn’t be up to see the sunrise, but she knew that would probably be the case.
The lab had never looked so inviting. Bright light flooded out of the two-story building, a warm welcome for anyone stuck out in this crappy weather. She started up the stairs and took one last look to see where the man in black was. He was crossing the street, headed right for her.
Susie scampered up the stairs and threw open the building’s front door. She felt trapped inside the small, heated entryway. She yanked off her glove and pulled out her cold, plastic student ID card, slid it down the electronic reader. The light flickered red. The guy was almost there. Susie looked at the card, realized her error, flipped it around and slid it through again. The light flashed green and she jerked open the door, slammed it shut behind her. Less than half of the twenty-or-so students bothered looking up at the noise.
Susie felt safer, but she still moved away from the door and checked out the building she’d only been in twice before. The computer lab was one large open room with a two-story high vaulted ceiling. There were twelve tables, six on each side of the room, and a bank of printers lining the eastern wall. The bathrooms and payphones were down the hallway directly underneath the stairs that led to an office overlooking the entire first floor. Susie saw the lights were on in there. That’s where the tech-savvy students kept watch and were available for condescending support. Those nerds loved it when a computer-illiterate ignoramus, like herself, came to them with stupid problems.
Susie needed to pee, but decided against going to the bathroom, at least until she saw her stalker. She figured the safest place to watch from was the far corner by the printers. She would be kind of tucked away, but still able to see the entire room. She'd be safe. Besides, what could he do with all these people around?
By the time Susie made it to the corner, the guy in black had passed through the security door. That meant he had to be either a student or a teacher. Or he’d stolen a card.
Susie pretended to use the printer while she watched the man stomp snow off his boots. He pulled off his beanie and scarf as he started down the middle aisle. He didn’t look familiar. Definitely a student, but older, probably a junior or senior. Maybe even a grad student.
The guy unbuttoned his bulky jacket. At the end of the last aisle he turned right. He was headed straight for her and reaching into his pocket.
Susie headed down the row of printers, barely stifling a scream. She reached the end of the aisle and looked behind her. The guy pulled a disk from his pocket and sat down at the last computer.
Susie's cheeks flushed. She felt stupid. How many people saw her do that? Hopefully, they were all too busy to notice. She quietly made her way to a computer station in the opposite corner of the room.
After slipping out of her backpack, Susie plopped down on the chair. She tried to slow her racing heart and took off her scarf and cap. Her forehead was slick with sweat and it wasn’t due to the heat, although it was nice and toasty in the lab. Susie wiggled out of her jacket and tossed it onto the chair next to her. The guy was still sitting at his computer typing. It wasn’t an act. How could she ever have been frightened of him? He looked harmless. Pudgy and a little dumb.
10:40 p.m. Time to get to work, but how could she concentrate after that near run-in, scare, whatever it was? Paranoia or not, her heartbeat was racing and she couldn’t think straight. Unfortunately, she didn’t think Professor Graham would accept that as an excuse.
Susie signed into the system and clicked on her email. She’d checked it before dinner, but most of her California friends wrote her later in the day because of the time difference. Josh, her boyfriend from high school, only sent her stuff at night. She hadn’t told him about Tom yet. Maybe she would after Christmas. Probably not. Susie wasn’t big on confrontations.
Everything was spam so she slipped in her flash drive and opened her paper. It was depressing to see those two small sentences surrounded by all that suffocating white space. What really pissed her off was that archaeology was supposed to be an easy class. That’s why she took “Rocks for Jocks,” figured it would be an easy A. If she had known it was going to be such a pain, she would have taken it pass/fail. But she hadn’t so this paper had to be good. It was time to find some interesting stuff online and reshape it with her perfected practice of plagiarism.
Bling! An instant message window popped on the screen, a pleasant surprise. The screen name, URAHOTE, wasn’t familiar. Susie sounded out the letters and smiled. Must be Tom. He was always being cute, but he was supposed to be at the bar. He must not have gone. If she hurried maybe she could make it back to his place by a decent time.
Susie clicked on the bubble to open the message. It simply read, “Up so late?”
“Paper’s due tomorrow. Going to be a long night,” she typed.
Susie sent the message and turned back to her paper, typed “Pompeii” in the search area. In a split-second, thousands of documents were at her fingertips, images of charred bodies curled in on themselves, panicked faces buried in the ash.
Bling! Another message popped on the screen.
She clicked it. “Want it long and hard?”
This time, Susie’s fair skin burned bright. Tom could be dirty. That was one of the things she liked about him, but she had to get her work done.
She typed back, “Sorry but I’m afraid it’s going to be long and hard enough without you.”
Susie clicked on an article about erotic art. A quick glance promised some interesting points she might be able to rephrase in her paper, a dirty little statue of Pan giving it to a goat.
Bling! Another message but this time the screen name was different. IllBNU. Amused by the name, she clicked it open. “Why? Did you bring your baseball bat with you?”
Susie sat and stared at the screen. What did that mean? She scrolled back to her last statement and understood. Tom wouldn’t be that dirty and surely it wasn’t Josh. He was too sweet.
She typed a new message. “Who is this?”
Instead of checking out another article on Pompeii, she sat there, waited for a response. If it was Tom, he owed her an apology for pulling this when she was trying to work.
A few seconds passed. Susie started back on the paper when a message blinged onto the screen. It simply read, “Guess who.”
She didn’t know what to do. What if she wrote Tom’s name and it was Josh, or vice versa? She didn’t know what to write so she just sat there.
Bling! She opened the next message. “I said guess who, Bitch!”
Neither guy would write that to her. No way. Not Josh ever. Not even Tom when he was really drunk. Neither was that mean. She didn’t know anyone that mean, male or female.
Susie typed, “AN ASSHOLE!” and pressed enter.
She had to concentrate on the paper and ignore the prick. Someone was just playing a stupid joke on her. They might not even know who she was for that matter. She’d created her screen name, 2HOT4U, when she was still in high school. It was a lit billboard for attracting unwanted messages.
The dreaded noise rang out again. Screen name, IH8U.
She didn’t want to open the message but she felt compelled to. “Good guess. How’d you know? What a smart Ivy Leaguer. George and Helen must be proud.”
He knew her parents’ names. That meant it had to be someone from home. Maybe Karen told Josh about Tom and he went nuts.
The cursor was zipping all over her screen, her hand unable to steady the mouse. She finally guided it over the user’s profile, determined to find out who it was and call him out. Hopefully it was Josh. It would make breaking up a lot easier.
The screen was blank. The user hadn’t entered any information. There had to be a way to figure out who had sent it to her, but she didn’t know how, and she wasn’t about to go upstairs to ask the nerds.
If she wanted to finish the paper, she had to put the messages out of her mind. She still only had the two sentences and it was 11:03. She’d wasted twenty minutes. The messages were nothing but a distraction she had to block out, so she muted the volume on the computer.
Another message noiselessly appeared. Screen name, UAHO.
This was getting ridiculous. Whoever was doing this had a serious problem. But she wasn’t going to play anymore. She refused to open the message and completely ignored the notification glowing in the top left corner of the screen. For almost forty seconds.
“Better start answering me, BITCH!”
“Fine,” she mumbled to herself as she pounded on the keyboard, “You’ll be sorry when I find out who you are. I’ll go to the school police. You don’t think they can trace these messages?” She prayed that they could.
Three seconds later a response came back. “Sending hate mail is the least of my worries if I get caught for the shit I’m gonna do to you, you prissy little slut.”
Susie was stunned. The other stuff was mean, but that was scary. No one she knew could seriously want to harm her and none of them would take a joke this far. She hadn’t done anything to anyone.
The sweat was rolling again and her throat was parched. She’d get a quick drink and try to cool down. Think good thoughts and try to work on the paper. No more opening messages. For real, this time.
Susie got up from the table, a little shaky, and walked over to the fountains. She took a long sip of the cool water, splashed some on her face and returned to her seat.
Four messages waited for her. She closed all four without opening them. A fifth one popped up. She was about to close it but then the screen name caught her eye. H2O4U.
The guy was here! It had to be that creep in black. Shivers ran down her spine. The message had to be opened.
“I like your jeans? What are they? Calvin Klein? They really compliment your fat, slutty ass.”
He was in here alright. Susie rose halfway out of her chair. The guy in black wasn’t at his computer anymore. She stood, took a quick survey of the room. There were only six people left in the room, and the stranger in question was nowhere to be seen.
Another message. She opened it. “See me yet? When you do, it’ll be too late.”
It was one of the six, but who? Only four were guys. Two were on the far side facing away from her. It would have been hard for them to see her get up.
The other guys didn’t look like crazed stalkers, but then again, what did a crazy stalker look like? Was there a certain mold they came in? Did they have dark eyes, a shaved head and a goatee, or did they prefer those Poindexter glasses and a wild mop haircut? These thoughts spun around in her head, not making any sense, just making her dizzy. She forced herself to breathe as she slowly scanned the room. The payphones, over by the bathrooms. She needed to call the cops. Immediately.
Before she was out of her chair, another message blinked onto the screen. CUNHELL. She didn’t want to open the message, but she was terrified not to.
“Don’t bother with the phones. Didn’t you see me go over there and cut both cords? Should have been paying attention. And don’t even think of turning to these geeks for help unless you want their innocent blood on your hands.”
Whatever bit of composure she'd been managing to hold on to, slipped away. Susie wanted to believe the guy was lying, but she knew he wasn't. She had to call the cops or scream or do something.
Another message, different name. ILCUDIE.
“Don’t think about running. You probably wouldn’t make it all the way to the Main Green. Too slippery, might fall on the ice. Definitely wouldn’t make it to Wright House and I bet your life that you would never make it all the way to 308.”
The guy knew where she lived. He knew everything about her. Like a rat hypnotized by the serpent’s sway, Susie opened the next message.
“Remember, I don’t have to be on a terminal. I can be on my cell. I could be crouching down in the bushes outside the front window. I could be standing right behind you.”
Susie whipped her head around so fast she felt something snap. The searing heat barely bothered her now, but she knew it would hurt the next day, if she was still around to feel it.
No one was behind her and it was too dark to see past the hedge of bushes he wrote about. He could be hiding and she’d have no idea until he popped out and slit her throat. She continued to read the rest of the message.
“I could be waiting in the hallway. I could be in the bathroom. I could be the guy in the blue shirt sitting across the aisle. And if you make one noise, everyone is going to get it.”
Susie carefully turned her head, the throbbing in her neck becoming much worse. She stared at the kid in blue. He was busy typing away, dividing his attention between the screen and his notebook.
Looking toward the heavens for an answer, she was greeted by a bright light. The upstairs office. The tech guys would have a phone. She could lock herself in and wait this out.
Susie slowly rose, watching to see if anyone was making eye contact. No one seemed to be paying attention. She edged away from the table. A message popped on the screen. She wouldn’t open it. She took another step to the left and cleared the table. Someone at the back of the room stood up. It was just a girl.
Susie took two more steps toward the stairs. The guy three rows up on the right, fidgeted with his backpack, his hand deep inside it. She waited for him to pull out the gun and open fire. Instead he pulled out a candy bar.
She climbed the first step. There was movement by the hallway. The guy in black was walking by the security doors.
Susie sprinted up the stairs, stopping when she reached the second floor. She looked over the railing and saw the guy in black was headed back to his seat. It had to be him.
Susie approached the open door of the office. She looked behind her, having to turn her entire body because her neck was so stiff. No one had followed her.
A sick thought made her pause at the open doorway. She was walking into the guy's trap. He had killed the tech-workers and was now waiting for her inside there. Susie was about to run when she noticed a long mane of golden hair.
Susie knocked and said, “Hello?”
A pleasant sounding female said, “Come in.”
Susie slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, locking the deadbolt.
“Is something wrong?” the girl asked, her voice full of concern. She was pretty, even in he
r thick glasses.
Susie walked past the blonde's desk and straight to the windows that overlooked the computer room. She closed the first set of blinds and looked for the guy in black. He was back in his chair, typing away. She counted seven others now; everyone accounted for.
“What are you doing? Are you okay?”
Susie crossed to the other window and told the girl, “I’m sorry, but there’s some crazy guy down there that wants to… He’s threatening me…sending these messages. I need to call the cops. He said he wants to kill me. Please I need your help.”
“Guess. I was close.”
Susie turned the knob to shut the blinds. She must be in shock. What the girl said made no sense. Susie turned. The blonde was now standing. Susie wondered why the girl wasn’t calling the cops. She probably thought Susie was crazy. Susie knew she’d been babbling, on the verge of tears.
Susie tried her story again. “Some crazy guy’s down there. He threa….” She stopped herself midsentence. Why was the girl smiling? And why in the world was she wearing Tom’s varsity jacket?
Midnight Snack
Nick Decker sat on the toilet and flipped through the latest muscle magazine searching for the model with the tiniest bikini. He settled on brunette draped across the kind of chiseled monster Decker had given up on ever becoming. The brunette wasn’t even as wide as the guy’s leg.
Decker froze when he heard a rusty squeak. It didn’t sound like the ward’s front door, but the A and B wing doors were locked and no one else with keys was in the building. It had to be someone from the swing shift or one of the nurses from the front unit. Maybe it was that cutie with the short black hair. He didn’t rush off the can for just anyone, but he would for her.
There were footsteps and a soft jingle coming from the ward. Decker was about to yell that he’d be out in a minute, then realized he might not have locked the control booth, grounds for termination. He didn’t typically forget, but he’d been slacking off, especially since they’d stuck him back on graveyard.
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