Something’s last meal

Trekking through Butler 9, seeking our way to the slightly hidden and incredibly low-traffic private bathroom, we came across the remains of a pack of beef jerky. It seemed to have been quickly scarfed down and then stuffed into the crevices of the ninth floor wall.

Weird, we thought, that hadn’t been there yesterday. When we stopped to wonder about the strangeness of it all, we realized that we hadn’t actually seen anybody on the ninth floor. Ever. Regardless, we reasoned, whoever stuffed their study snack in the crevice was probably no more dangerous than your average Butler Beer Camper.

Continuing forward, a sudden chill coursed through our body. The hairs on the back of our neck stood up. Some evolutionary psychologists believe that this is a reaction, that humans still have primal survival instincts, leftover defense mechanisms from a time when we were not the masters of the hunt, but the victims. They say our bodies can identify the telltale signs of pursuit even if we don’t consciously recognize them: figures in our peripheral vision, the slight sounds of footsteps behind us, a feeling of being watched. Our hair rises, we feel a chill throughout our body, and millennia of evolutionary experiences tell us to run.

We dismissed such thoughts. After all it was probably just the air conditioning creating a cool spot in the hallway. We continued onwards. The resonance of our feet hitting the marble floor was creating a rhythmic clacking. The sounds seemed to bounce from one end of the cramped hall to the other, reverberating off the whitewashed walls and echoing back as if somebody, further down the hall behind us, was carefully following.

Something caught our eye, and we suddenly stopped to scan another crevice in the wall. Strangely, it was more jerky wrappers stuffed behind the wall piping. The echo hadn’t stopped and as we slowly turned to face the opposite end of the hall, the shadow of something moved out of view around the corner. We were being followed.

We didn’t stay to find out what was stalking us, but quickly ran through the exit and down the stairs. With adrenaline pumping through our veins we crashed through the door to floor 6, embracing the safety of civilization. People gave us strange looks, and we could hardly blame them with sweat on our brow and pupils dilated in fear, but they didn’t know what we had been through. We had stumbled into the lair of something, and could only hope it hadn’t followed us.

People jokingly call Butler 9 a ghost floor, but maybe that title is a little too appropriate. Something is up there, and it has a taste for meat.