Something wicked this way comes
I.
Night falls at the law school. You must have fallen asleep in the Fishbowl. You feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickling, as if someone is watching you, but there’s no one else in the library.
Needing a stretch, you walk up to the second floor. The lights have been dimmed for the night, but you can’t shake the feeling that someone is up there. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the giant painting of Pierre Elliot Trudeau that hangs on the wall by the elevators. He’s holding his usual red rose, but his smirk seems more sinister in the low light.
You rub your tired eyes, and when you look again, he looks exactly as he always does—sitting on his chair, a book open on his lap, looking at you with his eyebrows arched.
You shake yourself off and decide to go to the basement instead. Maybe going up and down the stairs will get your blood circulating again.
The silence of the library basement is deafening. You approach the stacks, running your hands along the spines of the hardcover reference books, looking for something interesting before you head back to the Fishbowl.
You must have pressed a hidden switch, because a loud clunk sounds, and the stacks start moving. They roll towards you, carrying the weight of hundreds of untouched hardcover reference collections. They pick up speed, but you’re frozen in place.
You scream.
II.
Night falls at the law school. You must have fallen asleep in the Fishbowl. Whew, it was only a dream. You decide a break from the library is warranted, and you head to the first-floor bathrooms.
As you approach, you notice a sign on the doors. “Emergency Water Disruption,” it reads. “Washrooms are out of service due to water main repairs.” You shrug off the minor inconvenience and head to the basement.
Luckily, the downstairs bathrooms are open. The moment you step in, a toilet flushes, and you breathe a sigh of relief to know that someone else is in the building. You call out, but no one answers. Feeling slightly uneasy, you chalk it up to the automatic toilet’s buggy sensor.
You stand in front of a sink and wave your hand under the tap, but only a trickle of lukewarm water comes out. Frowning, you move to the next sink in the row. This time, the tap groans once before blasting a jet of ice-cold water, splashing off your hands and onto the front of your shirt.
You yelp in surprise and jump back, but the water keeps coming. It fills up the sink and starts overflowing, and you search for a manual switch, but you don’t find anything. All the taps start running, and an inch of water quickly floods the bathroom floor.
You try to leave the bathroom, but the door is locked. The waterline is rising, and you have no cell phone signal in the basement.
You scream.
III.
Night falls at the law school. You must have fallen asleep in the Fishbowl. Whew, it was only a dream. Maybe a snack from your locker would do you some good.
The basement is dark, the eerie glow of the emergency exit sign the only source of light. You wave your arms overhead, hoping the motion sensor lights will kick in, but nothing happens. You hear a clunking from down the hall, far too loud to be someone’s footsteps.
It’s not until you step into the locker bay that the lights finally come on, and you breathe a sigh of relief. You grab your food and head to the kitchenette.
You hear the clunking again. This time, it’s accompanied by a low hissing. It sounds like it’s coming from above you, but all you see is exposed air ducts and water pipes.
As you pass the student lounge, uncomfortably warm air envelopes you. You pause to squint at the lounge’s back wall—is that white ooze dripping down the exposed brick?
It must be low blood sugar. In the kitchenette, you put your food in a microwave, but it’s not working. You put your food into a different microwave, but the light goes out in that one, while the lights turn on in the other two. Frustrated now, you switch to the third microwave, only for it to shut down. The other two microwaves flash their numbers tauntingly. When you take out your food altogether, all three microwaves start humming.
A loud thump sounds right behind you. You feel hot air on the back of your neck.
You scream.
IV.
Night falls at the law school. You must have fallen asleep in the Fishbowl…
