The Girl on Floor Twelve Doesn't Answer

§01

The post flickered onto my screen just after midnight, a tiny flare of digital paranoia in the vast, silent dark of my dorm room.

Post #347.

Anonymous, of course. They always were.

[Admin, total anonymity please. Our campus is haunted.]

I let out a long, weary sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose until little white dots danced in my vision.

As the unpaid, unsung, and frankly, overworked admin of the North Ridge State University Confessions Page, I thought I’d seen it all.

Cheating scandals, secret crushes, desperate pleas for notes.

But a haunting? That was a new level of Fall Break boredom.

[Last semester, a girl from my department who stayed on campus disappeared. Still missing. No one talks about it.]

My finger hovered over the delete button. Just another urban legend in the making.

[A few days ago, a senior from the next college over vanished too! Straight from her room.]

[For any girls still in the dorms, especially if you’re alone, be careful. Lock your doors at night. Please.]

I rolled my eyes, the cynicism a familiar armor.

Still… something about the tone felt chillingly off.

It wasn't the usual playful, attention-seeking drama.

The words were clipped, stripped bare of any flourish. It felt less like a story and more like a warning.

A genuine, desperate warning.

Just as I was deciding whether to ignore it, a sharp, sudden knock echoed from my dorm room door, cutting through the silence like a shard of glass.

"Knock, knock."

A pause, thick with unspoken presence.

"Dorm check."

§02

The voice, so unexpected, so out of place, was like a jolt of ice water to my system.

My phone slipped from my suddenly numb fingers, the corner of it smacking me square in the face.

"Ow—" I hissed, the sting of it a bizarrely real sensation in a moment that felt utterly surreal.

I sat bolt upright in bed, rubbing my throbbing nose, my mind racing to catch up.

A dorm check?

I glanced at the clock on my phone. 2:03 a.m.

It was on the schedule for this week, sure, but not at two in the morning.

And definitely not during Fall Break.

The twelve-story building was a concrete tomb, echoing with the ghosts of students who were smart enough to go home.

I could count the number of occupied rooms on one hand.

The student handbook was practically my bible, and I knew for a fact: no dorm checks during official university holidays.

I shook my head, trying to dispel the fog of late-night paranoia. "You're just tired, Sutton," I muttered to myself. "You're hearing things."

I was about to lie back down, to pull the covers over my head and pretend the world didn't exist.

But the knock came again.

Louder this time. Sharper. More insistent.

"Knock, knock."

"Dorm check. Open up."

And then three more, rapid-fire, like a frantic heartbeat against the wood.

"Knock. Knock. Knock."

§03

This time, there was no mistaking it.

That was Judy's voice.

Our dorm supervisor, Judith Keegan. Auntie Judy to most of us.

She was a sweet, slightly flustered woman in her late forties who always smelled faintly of lavender and baked goods.

But her voice now… it was all wrong.

It was thin, strained, as if scraped raw. All the warmth had been hollowed out of it.

"Just a second, Judy! Coming!" I called out, my voice sounding unnaturally high.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, the cold of the laminate floor shocking my bare feet.

An involuntary shiver snaked its way up my spine, a primal instinct screaming that something was deeply wrong.

The anonymous post flashed in my mind, the words now seeming less like a warning and more like a prophecy.

[Lock your doors at night.]

My hand, already reaching for the deadbolt, froze a mere inch from the cold metal.

Why, I asked myself, my thoughts suddenly sharp and clear, why would Judy be doing this now?

My dorm was a so-called "luxury single," a boxy but modern room on the twelfth floor.

The hallways were perpetually lit by humming fluorescent lights, casting a sterile, 24/7 glow.

Right now, a sliver of that insistent light under my door was being eclipsed.

A shadow.

It should have been Judy’s shadow.

But it wasn't.

It was a solid, unnatural block of darkness.

Judy was a petite woman, barely five feet tall, with a frail build.

This shadow was broad, thick, filling the entire gap from one side of the doorframe to the other.

It was the shadow of a large man.

Even more unsettling, the shadow was pressed right up against the door. There was no space, no gap to suggest a person standing a foot or two back.

Whoever was out there wasn't just standing in my hallway.

They were leaning their entire weight against my door.

Listening.

Waiting.

I backed away from the door, slowly, silently, my breath caught in my throat like a stone.

I wasn’t opening that door.

§04

I retreated to the relative safety of my desk, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

My hands trembled as I unlocked my phone, the screen almost blindingly bright.

I went straight to the confessions page, to my private messages with the anonymous user.

Their avatar, a cute, innocent cartoon character—Bubbles from *The Powerpuff Girls*—seemed like a sick joke now.

[Admin]: Is this post a joke? I need to know right now. I can't spread rumors that could cause a real panic.

The reply was so fast it was as if they’d been waiting for me.

[Bubbles]: It’s not a joke. I swear it’s not. The university is covering it up to avoid a scandal. Please, just post it. You have to warn people.

My blood ran cold.

I was an out-of-state student. My home was a sixteen-hour train ride away, a distance that suddenly felt like a different planet.

Staying for the break to save money and get ahead on my coursework had seemed like such a smart, practical decision.

Now it felt like a fatal one.

I was exactly the kind of person the post was about. Alone. Isolated.

Forgotten.

My fingers, slick with sweat, fumbled as I typed.

[Admin]: What happened to those girls? The ones who disappeared? Tell me.

[Bubbles]: No one knows for sure. They were just… gone. One day they were in class, the next their rooms were empty. Last seen in the dorms. The police searched everywhere. Woods, campus, town. Nothing. They were both out-of-state students, too. Like you.

*Like you.*

That did it. Every detail was a red-hot poker branding itself onto my fear.

Dorms. Late night. Alone. Out-of-state girl.

It wasn't a profile. It was a mirror.

I immediately swiped out of the app, my mind a maelstrom of panic. I opened a browser tab, frantically searching for a bus ticket, a train ticket, anything to get me out of here at first light.

And then, the knocking returned.

It was no longer a knock. It was a pounding.

A heavy, furious banging that vibrated through the floor.

"Knock. Knock."

The voice was still Judy's, but it was a monstrous parody now, loud and distorted.

"Sutton Rhodes. I know you're in there. Open the door."

My full name. He knew my name.

"KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK!"

§05

The voice was a weapon now, battering against my defenses.

I scrambled away from the door, my back hitting the cold, unyielding glass of my window.

It had to be a recording. Or a twisted impersonation.

Someone was using Judy's voice like a key, trying to unlock my door from the outside.

The girls who disappeared… I could see it now. They heard a familiar voice, a trusted authority figure. They opened their doors without a second thought, and they were swallowed by the night.

The shadow under the door vanished.

A flicker of hope ignited in my chest. Had he given up?

No.

A colder, more terrifying thought replaced it. He could be waiting down the hall, just out of sight, ready for me to foolishly peek my head out.

I fumbled with my phone, my fingers slipping on the smooth screen as I navigated to the keypad and typed out a message to 911.

I remembered from orientation that the text-to-911 service was spotty out here in the foothills, but it was my only silent option.

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