Creative Writing Collection

80th Floor

"Quinn. Open the door. You aren't gonna believe what just happened."

I knocked on the door with urgency. The more I thought about it, the less everything made sense. I just needed to talk to someone. The most bizarre thing had just happened and I needed to talk to someone about it. Quinn was the only one who would even try to understand. I knocked a few more times and an annoyed response came from inside the room.

"Thought you went cliff diving with some of your adrenaline junkie friends and wouldn't be back till sundown."

"They bailed on me, went to some concert. But boy do I have a story to tell..."

"Not right now, Vic. I'm busy,” Her sigh was so loud I could hear it from outside.

"I brought pizza. Your favorite. And some of your mail that got put into my mailbox, I think it’s more electrical stuff, I thought the school banned you from your little hobb-"

I didn't even get to finish my sentence when the door opened. My best friend and next-dorm neighbor, Quinn, stood there in sweatpants and an old band t-shirt. One wired earbud was in her left ear, playing 80's rock music so loud that I thought it was coming from a speaker inside the room. Sometimes I wonder how she hasn't suffered severe hearing loss yet. She took the pizza box and the mail envelope from my hand quickly and retreated back into her dorm, leaving the door open so I could follow.

I stepped inside her dorm and was greeted with the smell of something burning, and it certainly wasn’t any kind of scented candle. It was foul, like burning plastic. Quinn didn’t seem to pay any mind to the smell. She tossed the pizza box and mail envelope onto her bed, then she sat at her desk. Quinn’s walls were covered from bottom to top with posters, tapestries, and photos, leaving not even an inch of wallspace to spare. Her dorm was a mess, with clothes and electronics strewn all over the room, the biggest mess of electronics being spread out on her desk, with a small device sitting in the middle. A steady stream of smoke was coming from the device, like a candle that had just been extinguished. Quinn let it smoke for another moment, then the device erupted in flames, which prompted Quinn to grab a cup of water and dump it on the device, causing it to sizzle and the smoke to dissipate. I could only stand and watch, wondering: One, how the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Two, how Quinn hasn’t gotten kicked out of school yet. She’s a great student, one of the top students in the engineering department, she just has a few dangerous hobbies that make her a huge liability. She’s our RA’s worst nightmare.

“I thought the school banned you from making improvised explosives.”

“They’re limiting my creativity,” She responded flatly.

“The only thing they’re limiting is you accidentally blowing up the dorm building with your ‘creativity’.” I put air quotes as I said ‘creativity’, even though I know Quinn wasn’t looking.

Quinn’s only response was a shrug as she stood up from her desk and moved over to the bed, opening the pizza box and grabbing a slice of pizza.

I stepped further into the room, closing the door behind me as I walked in. I promptly went to ‘my designated seat’, also known as a beanbag in the corner of Quinn’s room. “I can’t believe the fire alarm hasn’t gone off yet,” I said as I practically flopped onto the beanbag.

“Don’t worry, it won’t.” She looked at me with a shit-eating (Author’s note: can I swear? I’m going to swear.) grin, looking so proud of herself, then she began to open the envelope on her bed. I was right, inside the envelope was strings of wired electronics and doodads I couldn’t even begin to name or explain the function of.

“How can you be so sure?” I responded, blankly staring at her.

“I disabled it.”

I blinked. “You what?”