Chapter 1: The Night It All Began

I barely made it through the front door before chaos hit—the kind that makes your skin prickle and your stomach drop.

Someone’s microwave beeped down the hall, and a poster for Spring Fling was half-ripped on the wall. Doors hung ajar as people peeked out, music thumped low from someone’s speaker, and the burnt smell of popcorn mingled with the usual air-freshener funk. But the whole vibe shifted the second I spotted him.

His whole body was crawling with festering sores, and he reeked so bad it felt like the rot in his flesh was leaking into the air. Worse, he was lunging at anyone who got too close.

He looked like a monster—skin patchy and raw, shuffling under the buzzing fluorescent lights, trailing the stench of death that somehow overpowered even the dorm’s usual funk. People plastered themselves against the walls to avoid him, muttering, "Holy crap," and clutching their phones with shaking hands as they tried to call for help.

I cursed under my breath about the Resident Advisor—dude was supposed to be in charge, but somehow this mess had gotten in under his nose.

Kicking at the sticky edge of the hallway rug, I muttered, "Unbelievable. Guy gets a free single, all the perks, and this is what we get?" I could see it now—the RA chilling in his office, probably glued to TikTok while everything went to hell out here.

Way after lights out, the RA finally dropped a message in the group chat:

"Yo, everyone—lock your doors. There’s some dude losing it in the stairwell. Seriously, don’t open up for anyone."

Every phone buzzed at once, lighting up the room. A couple guys fired off Scooby-Doo GIFs, someone linked a Reddit thread about haunted dorms, and memes zipped by, but the laughs were forced or just didn’t come at all.

Not long after, there was a knock at our door.

It wasn’t the friendly kind—just heavy and off-beat, way too wild for a pizza delivery or a drunk friend coming home late. We all froze, glancing at each other, hearts in our throats.

I crept to the peephole. There he was—the lunatic.

He was so close to the door his bloodshot eyes looked huge through the lens, searching, like he could see right through me. My hands went cold. Part of me wanted to laugh it off, but the rest of me just wanted to run.

But the next second, I realized something that made my stomach flip. That lunatic was actually—