Thank you to everyone who wrote a short story for our mini-activity opener challenge in @TheShortys. The team was blown away by all your entries, and it was difficult to choose a favourite. One chilling entry particularly stood out, and it was written by @Between_Pages
Read it here:
I woke up, startled, to the ringing of the campus bell. A chill ran down my spine as I spotted a shadowy figure running down the hallway.
The bell shouldn't have been ringing. The university had been abandoned for months, sealed after a student mysteriously vanished. Yet I had awakened on a dusty dormitory mattress with no memory of how I had arrive.
I ran after the figure. It flickered beneath the broken fluorescent lights, always a few paces beyond my reach. At the end of the corridor, it slipped into an old classroom.
The door creaked open.
Dust covered the chalkboard, but hundreds of photographs covered the walls.
Every one was of me.
I saw myself crossing the quad, studying in the library, laughing beside the campus gates. The photographs seemed to span years, but I had never attended this university. At least, that was what I remembered.
The shadow appeared behind me, blocking the doorway. Panic flared as it reached for me. Then the darkness shifted, revealing its face.
Mine.
Memories struck like shattered glass: an argument beside the campus lake, my hands against another student's chest, his body falling backward, the terrible splash—and afterward, my frantic lies.
I had attended this university.
I knew exactly why it had closed.
The shadow was not hunting me. It was the part of me that still remembered, dragging me back to the truth I had buried.
