Dan left his dorm nearing midnight, out into the hall, Converse crushing carpet, and into the elevator where he met a few pals. None wore the costumes they’d agreed on. A few hushed words resounded between them as the elevator hummed to the ground floor. Through KMY, they found the doors of Miller open for them and a riot followed. Half the campus must have been stuffed in there and the friends jammed themselves inside. The hall was a headache. Each room had been opened up, and smaller parties jived inside of them. People cluttered around windows for air. Blue LEDs pulsed all around him.
As he pushed through the press of sweat and bodies, someone handed him a Solo Cup. He wasn’t quite sure how it got there, but took refreshing swigs of it anyway. The liquid inside was crisp and sweet, maybe cider? It did the trick anyhow. With the shaking of the crowd, he lurched forward, slamming his nose into the back of another party-goer.“Hey, sorry,” he said. They turned, a black sheet covered them. Their face was covered in a white plastic mask fashioned with small splintering eyeholes. “Hey someone’s in costume! What are you?” They said nothing. On closer look, the mask was made of plaster, with ripples where layers hardened, and all over the surface were swirls the size of thumbprints. “That mask is awesome,” he yelled over the crowd. “Are you an art major?” And as the words left his mouth, so did the cup in his hand. They snatched it in a blue-black blur and spun ‘round. The masked-person dashed into the crowd. “Hey,” he called out, following. Other people seemed to close in around him, but with elbow and knee, he pushed forward. The figure found the door to the stairway at the end of the hall and went. “What the hell man?” Dan reached the door and shoved it open. The moon gleamed through the windows against the vinyl floors, casting gentle light that soothed the head pain that he had developed. He climbed up the fluttering sheet tails of the figure dashing to the next flight. “Dude, come on.” He snagged a glimpse inside the second floor where people stumbled against each other in a haze of thick smoke.
Dan hustled to the next landing, and again the masked figure eluded him. The party on the third floor was quiet. The people lay on the floor, unmoving.
He chased the figure to the top, where they entered the fourth floor. Inside, the darkness pushed all but the faintest green tints away. He could hardly see the floor he walked across. The masked person stopped halfway across the hall. Dan said, “Hey man, stop. Do I know you?”
It nodded, raised the cup, and tipped it over onto itself. The mask stained this stale yellowish color as the cider flowed down onto the floor. The figure fell away, the body beneath the black vanishing, only a pile of clothes left behind.
A pressure held his ankle, and from where the shadows fell darkest, other little piles of black cloth twisted, forming gnarled figures too spindly to be human. They closed in on him, grasping his limbs and twisting. They were wet, soaked with something. He screamed, and a soaked section of cloth shoved itself inside his mouth, gagging him. Chewing on the fabric released sickly sweet cider. With each scream, he choked and spat. As cider replaced the oxygen in his lungs, it hoisted him into the air. Looking back down the hall, the white mask peered through the door’s window, the figure turned and walked down the stairs.
