Mike had exactly twenty-two minutes left in his shift when someone called the front desk for a noise complaint. He sat at a table with Rachael and Vince, the other two poor souls who took the Friday night shift on security for the dorms. All of them wanted to go home, it was just after two thirty in the morning, and none of them felt like going up to handle a noise complaint.

Greg, who worked the front desk that night, answered the phone. Mike, along with his fellow workers, looked over at the sound of the ringing phone and listened as Greg spoke, aware what the call was about, and sure enough, as soon as he set down the phone, Greg said, “Noise complaint on the ninth floor. Who’s going to go take care of it?”

Vince, who’d spent the bulk of the shift on his laptop, didn’t even acknowledge the fact that Greg had spoken. Mike looked at Rachael, who did the best job she could of using her womanly charms to convince Mike he should go. Mike merely shook his head, muttered lightly to himself, and stood up.

“Fine, I’ll go,” he said, and shot Rachael the meanest look he could. Rachael merely smiled in return.

“What room?” Mike asked as he walked up to the front desk.

“Nine thirteen.”

“Okay.”

He could take the elevator, but Mike felt like using this as an opportunity to waste his remaining time. His shift happened to be from eleven to three, normally not a bad one if the night wasn’t Thursday, Friday or Saturday, three nights no one felt like working.

So far Mike’s first two years of college had been spent working at the dorms, both front desk and security. Normally once midnight rolled around the noise complaints ended, but every so often someone who just got home from the bars would pump up the music as loud as they could and force someone like Mike to come up and tell them to turn it off.

Most of the time things went smoothly, but every so often he was met with resistance, and given how tired he was, one thing Mike didn’t feel like dealing with was resistance. Of course, if something like that did happen it wasn’t as if he could do a whole lot about it. A single punch from his end and he was fired.

The walk up the stairs was tiring, but did plenty to wake him up, and as soon as he set foot on the ninth floor he could hear the music.

This wasn’t just someone listening to his or her stereo with the volume turned up. This was someone with a sound system that probably took up half the room. He could feel the sound waves crashing into him, and he was still halfway down the hallway from the door.

A guy opened his door as Mike passed by and yelled something at him, but Mike couldn’t hear. All he could hear was heavy metal boosted up so loud the song was distorted into a roar.

Before Mike reached the door he knew knocking wasn’t an option. There was no way in hell someone in that room could hear the sound of a knock, or probably anything else ever again the damage to their ears must be so severe. Hell of a way to end his night.

Luckily for Mike his knocking problem was solved. The door wasn’t fully shut, offering him an excuse to enter the room when his harmless little knock just so happened to push the door fully open.

Mike didn’t so much as knock as kick the door open. He was expecting a group of people, but much to his surprise he didn’t see anyone from his current vantage point, and no one ran up to see who had slammed open their door.

A narrow hallway marked the front of the dorm room, and on the wall in front of him were two bunk beds. He stepped further in the room and around the corner towards the desks, and got a second surprise. There was no sound system, giant speakers pressed against the wall, shaking violently from the sound pouring out of them.

Apparently the source of the music was just a computer, like any other, surely incapable of producing the head splitting onslaught. And sitting in front of the computer was a guy, head and arms resting on the desk, asleep. At least, that’s what it looked like to Mike.

Yelling wouldn’t get the guy’s attention, so Mike walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder, first lightly, and then a little less lightly. When that failed as well, he looked at the computer and tried to find a way to turn off the music, except he didn’t even see a program up and running to cause the sound to begin with.

“Fuck this,” Mike muttered under his breath, the words lost even to him, and grabbed the back of the guy’s shirt and jerked him back.

Just as the sound blanketed out everything else, it also hid Mike’s scream when he saw the guy’s face, or what was left of it.

Both of the guy’s eyes had been sewn shut and his nose was cut off completely, granting a view inside his head. His mouth was sewn shut as well and crusted over with blood. Bloody tears stained his cheeks, still wet, glistening in the florescent light built into the ceiling above him.

Mike stumbled back and slammed into the bunk bed, unable to move for just a second as he stared at the guy’s face, whose head hung limply backwards now, arms touching the ground at his sides. The head rolled to the left just a little, towards Mike, and he could swear the sewn over eyes were staring at him.

That’s when he tried to run.

The closet door opening was what stopped him. Two closets stood next to the entrance, and from one of them a hand was reaching out. Bloodstains marked where the hand touched the door, pushing it open from within.

Only after he saw the bloody hand did he realize the door to the dorm room was closed. He didn’t know when it had happened, but with the music, still pounding his eardrums to mush, the door could’ve slammed and he still wouldn’t have heard. Of course, any thoughts about the door quickly ended when he saw what was in the closet.

He saw what had to be a man, naked, entire body slick with blood, most of it apparently his own. Cuts covered his entire body and from them thick red liquid pumped out. His face was the worst, and what drew Mike’s attention the most. His eyes and mouth had at one point been sewn shut, but apparently he was able to break free. The severed threads lined the tops and bottoms of his eyes, and his nose, while split in two, was still there.

The eyes were what held Mike motionless. They stared at him, the pupils a dark red, and the man smiled at him with lips mutilated by stitches.

The thought that this man was a victim never crossed Mike’s mind. The eyes and the expression on the creature’s face made this clear enough.

The door was the only possible escape Mike could see, and he tried to run for it, but the creature was too fast. Before his hand could even touch the knob the thing slammed him up against the wall. For just a second he stared into its deformed face, smiling at him, the smell of death emanating off of it.

Then the creature brought its hand up towards Mike’s face, and he saw sharpened nails dripping with blood coming towards him. This was the last thing he saw before the monster plunged its fingers into his eyes. He tried to scream, and felt sharp pain and tasted blood as nails dug into his tongue, latched on, and started to pull.

There was no fighting back and Mike didn’t even try to, any willpower he might have had already shattered. He just screamed into the pounding music as his face was torn apart.

Rachael had only seven minutes left in her shift when someone called down for another noise complaint. She sat at a table with Vince, Mike still gone for a different complaint, or so she thought until Greg called over from the desk.

“Another complaint, same room.”

Sometimes people fought them and maybe Mike was having trouble getting whoever was in the room to turn it down. Rachael really didn’t feel like going up, but knew Vince wasn’t about to, and didn’t want to leave Mike alone up there if he was having trouble.

“Fine, I’ll go get it,” Rachael said.

She stood up and started towards the elevator, curious what happened to Mike and how big of a hassle this was going to be.

No matter, she’d find out soon enough.