A Spark in Chemistry

Jackie, He Wants to JAC-Kiss You

Jackie made the journey to Strong Hall, a battlement structure more castle than a science facility, which sat perched anachronistically on busy street-lit roads.

Strong Hall—like most older institutions—was large, looming, and white. Already quiet during the daytime, its subdued night atmosphere choked out all sound within its field, deafening the stillness into a suffocating silence. Small lights lit up the walkways and stairs leading up to the imperious structure, but they did little to illuminate its image in the mind's eye—instead, shrouding the figure in planes of shadows and corners of black where anything or anyone could hide.

Watching.

Jackie shivered.

It wasn't that she was scared of Strong Hall possibly being haunted (she was already pretty sure it was), but that night had been a particularly cold one, unusually so. Other than the odd weather, she didn't mind so much the ominous quiet or the eerie silhouette of her destination. To her, Strong Hall looked like a large face where its small corner lights highlighted a jutting double-chin, and she couldn't take that image seriously much less find it frightening. It was in her philosophy: no paranormal creature's going to scare you if something's too funny to make you feel tense—the mood just isn't right for that.

She made the trek across the bridge, hefted the cooling pizza boxes for tonight's club meeting in her arms, and opened the entrance doors—plunging into the building's gaping maw.

Hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she passed the threshold, like someone had walked over her grave.

The door slid shut behind her.

Inside, she was met with the sound of nothing, the kind of nothingness where not a living soul could be heard. It surprised her considering the fact that the space around her felt lived-in, like someone had passed through and left a heat signature behind. Then again, this was a public use building. Maybe she was more unsettled by Strong Hall than she cared to admit.

Gripping tighter onto the boxes, Jackie crossed the distance to the classroom their club typically reserved for their meetings. She peered inside and found the room lit but completely empty. The door was even locked when she struggled against it.

Odd. Why would someone lock the room after leaving the lights on?

Shifting the pizzas to one arm, she fished for her phone in her pocket and read the time.

6:13 P.M.

She was late.

Where was everybody?

Jackie attempted to ask the GroupMe chat, but no one could answer her. No Wi-Fi.

She called a few of the club officers. No cell service.

Ha, it's almost like this is the start of a horror or psychological thriller movie. Ha-ha, how cliche would that be?

Normally, Jackie would've waited a few more minutes in case anyone should show up, but she didn't feel safe waiting alone. It sounded stupid, a grown woman getting the heebie-jeebies over being alone at night (actually, that doesn't sound too far-fetched at all), but the fact that she had absolutely no other methods of communicating with someone else in case something happens to her made whatever hypothetical danger seem all the more possible. As if it could manifest after hearing that she had nothing to protect her. Inviting it to become real.

Maybe she could wait for the rest of her members at the library while she tried to figure out the situation with her phone.

Jackie hoisted the remaining pizzas on her arms before making her way to those double doors and pushing on them.