The Corpse on the Ceiling Fan

At the end of the hallway, my roommate was dragging a stillwarm corpse. He snapped his head around and stared dead at me.

I stood in the pitch black, gripping my water glass, pretending to zone out at thin air.

To escape the endless night parties and the vicious fraternity bullying, I had faked severe night blindness medical records.

The entire campus fully believed I was legally blind the second the sun went down. My roommate was also certain I couldn't see a damn thing.

He casually smeared the blood across his face with the back of his hand which reeked of heavy metallic copper, his muscles coiling tightly as he cleaned up the crime scene right in front of me like a satiated beast.

My fingernails dug so hard into my palms they almost broke skin, forcing my body not to bolt for the police. Chapter 1 First, the killer I saw was my roommate, Jude.

Second, when he was dragging the body toward the stairwell, there was clearly someone waiting to help him. I had no idea who that second person was. I couldn't even begin to guess.

It was already winter break. We were the few stragglers left stuck in the dorms. In my suite, it was just Jude and me. So his accomplice definitely wasn't one of our suitemates.

With the building practically a ghost town, it made sense why he had the absolute audacity to butcher someone right in the hallway. Snuffing me out would probably be even easier.

Calling the cops right this second was suicide. If the police showed up and couldn't find the body they just hid, I'd be the one locked in a cage with a psycho.

Sure, I could pack up and flee campus, but what if the cops never found the victim? I wouldn't even survive tonight, let alone see tomorrow's sun.

I could barely guard myself against Jude, let alone an unknown accomplice lurking in the shadows. Besides, Jude knew all about my night blindness. He swallowed the lie whole.

If he didn't, he would have slit my throat the moment I stepped out of my room. I should be safe. At least for tonight.

I had to survive until morning, wait for the corpse to be discovered, and then figure out a way to handle this. I exhaled a shaky breath and turned to head back to my room.

But the second I spun around, Jude's face was mere inches from mine. My heart slammed against my ribs. He must have circled up the opposite stairwell and crept right up behind me.

I completely missed his footsteps. But years of flawlessly playing the sick, helpless girl kept my body from flinching.

I instantly let my eyes lose focus, furrowing my brows as I forced a confused smile. "Is someone there? Who is it?" I asked.

Jude's facial muscles were tight, but he forced a chillingly casual tone. "It's me, Jude.

Can't you see me from this close?" Suppressing my violent heartbeat, I kept that dazed smile plastered on my face and blindly reached out, groping at the empty air between us. "It's not that I can't see anything at all.

Up close, I can make out a blurry dark shadow.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked, and I definitely wouldn't have come out for some fresh air." Jude's expression remained icecold, contradicting his relaxed tone. "Right. Good.

But it's way too late. Heading back to sleep?" I nodded, maintaining my harmless facade. "Yeah, I'm getting pretty tired. Let's go." We walked into the dorm together.

I played it cool and effortless, moving exactly like I did every other night, fighting the tremor in my knees in case he caught a single slip in my act.

Meanwhile, his posture was wired tight. He looked exactly like someone who had just pulled off something massive. Which meant he bought my performance.

He didn't even bother hiding his tension from me. Before crawling into my bed, I turned my head and threw out a casual question. "By the way, why are you back so late?

Where were you hanging out?" Even though my eyes were still unfocused and my voice smooth, the question hit him physically.

He instantly stiffened, his dead eyes locking onto me again. After a suffocating twosecond pause, he answered. "I was grabbing latenight food with a buddy.

It's totally normal to be out this late." I dug through my memory. He did have a habit of hitting the diners late. I had seen him with that crowd before.

His closest guy friend was Cole. So, as I pulled myself onto my mattress, I kept my tone completely indifferent and pushed a little further. "Was it your buddy Cole?

Is he not heading home for the break either?" Chapter 2 Jude didn't even miss a beat. "Yeah, exactly. I was with him." A heavy knot formed in my stomach.

That meant his accomplice wasn't Cole. If it were, he wouldn't have dropped his name so easily. "Man, I'm exhausted. Time to crash." I pulled the covers over myself.

Sleep was off the table tonight. But I had no idea that even if I wanted to close my eyes, this nightmare was far from over.

About an hour of suffocating silence later, Jude's mattress creaked. His silhouette slowly rose, looking like a phantom in the pitchblack dorm room. He rotated his head toward me.

I could feel his gaze burning into my skin, checking to see if I was dead to the world. I kept my breathing deep and even, playing the part of a sleeping log.

Even if I was wide awake, the golden rule remained: I was legally blind in the dark. That one little detail made the agonizing wait ten times worse.

Because a few minutes later, the faint rustle of his blankets told me he was getting out of bed.

Through my halfslitted eyes, I watched Jude pull a dark mask over the lower half of his face, probably a physical reminder to keep his own breathing dead silent.

He crept over to the door and eased it open. A second figure stepped into the room, dragging that same heavy corpse right across the threshold.

They hadn't gotten rid of the body after all. I strained to catch a glimpse of the accomplice's face, but he was wearing a mask too. It didn't matter.

The fact that they hauled the victim straight into our suite meant they were stashing it here.

No matter where they crammed it in this cramped space, the second the sun came up, one 911 call would end this entire sick game.

But their next move shattered all my logical theories. Moving with agonizing caution, they looped a thick rope around the ceiling fan. Ice water dumped into my veins.

My bed was right next to that fan. And sure enough, they slipped the noose around the corpse's neck and hoisted it up into the air.

I lay there, muscles locked, watching a human head rise through the shadows until it was eyelevel with me. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped animal.

But when the faint ambient light finally caught the dead guy's face, my breath hitched, trapping the dead air in my throat. It was our third suitemate. Ashton.

But he had left campus for the break days ago, and he lived out of state. Why the hell was he back here, and why was he strangled to death by Jude? It was painfully obvious.

Jude and his masked buddy were staging a suicide. He hadn't actually hung himself, but the face of someone who had been strangled was just as horrifying.

The proximity forced every gruesome detail directly into my retinas.

His face was as pale as paper, his eyeballs bulging out of his skull from extreme blood congestion, and the ligature mark around his neck was so deep it was seeping dark red tissue fluid.

His jawbone was twisted in agony at an impossible angle, and his dead, lifeless pupils were staring straight in my direction.

You could see exactly how desperately he had tried to open his mouth to gasp for air or scream.

But it was all useless, leaving him to die in agony with that exact expression permanently frozen on his face. And the most suffocating part of it all?

I had to lie here and pretend I couldn't see him. A freshly hung corpse was swaying inches from my head, its dead eyes locked dead onto mine.

Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, I could feel that nonexistent stare burning into my skull. I knew from the second I walked in here that tonight was going to be pure hell.

I just never imagined the devil would be hanging right over my bed. Chapter 3 It didn't take them long to finish the job, wiping down every last trace.

I had to give them credit—they were terrifyingly efficient.

They moved like ghosts, not making a single scrape or thud that would give me an excuse to "wake up." The accomplice slipped out the door, the latch clicking shut with a sickening finality.

Jude slowly hoisted himself back onto the top bunk across from mine. That put the three of us—Jude, me, and Ashton's swaying corpse—in a tight, suffocating triangle.

All I had to do was open my eyes, and Ashton's ghastly face was suspended right above my space.

My muscles screamed to roll over and face the cinderblock wall, but I forced my spine to stay rigid. I was a dead sleeper; I never tossed or turned.

A sudden movement now would instantly paint a target on my back. The second he realized I was awake, my neck would be the next one in a noose. That was a certainty.

But as the initial panic receded, a cold, hard logic kicked in, bringing a twisted sense of relief. The body would be found the second the sun came up.

I could point the cops straight to Jude. And even if I kept my mouth shut, the homicide detectives would rip his story apart anyway.

Strangulation ligature marks looked entirely different from a real hanging. The medical examiner would spot it in two seconds. And then, the dead silence shattered.

A piercing ringtone blasted from Jude's bed. The sheer volume sent a jolt through my spine. I flinched, an animalistic fightorflight reflex.

Jude's voice floated across the dark gap between our beds, dripping with fake guilt. "My bad. Forgot to silence my phone.

Didn't mean to wake you." The realization hit me like a bucket of ice water. He blasted that alarm on purpose.

A guy who just executed a flawless, deadsilent coverup of a murder doesn't "forget" to silence his phone.

He cranked the volume up to maximum, specifically to force a physical reaction out of me. It was a calculated test. He wasn't done with me yet.

The thing about my "severe night blindness" was the strict medical protocol I had to fake.

If I looked at a blaring bright screen in the pitch dark, it would supposedly sear my retinas and trigger temporary total blindness.

Our dorm room was a lightless black box, far darker than the hallway. He was banking on the fact that I wouldn't dare open my eyes, let alone check my phone.

He was dead sure I was blind to Ashton swaying just feet away.

Swallowing the bile rising in my throat, I forced a groggy, annoyed groan out of my mouth. "Jesus, you scared the hell out of me… Whatever, man… Just let me sleep." I slurred the words perfectly, exactly like someone ripped right out of a deep REM cycle.

Right on cue, Jude sank his hooks in. "Hey, you hear anything about Ashton?" Ignoring the question wasn't an option.

Not when Ashton was currently suspended from the ceiling fan directly between us. I kept my eyes clamped shut and mumbled back. "What about him?

Didn't he head out of state for the break… Why?" Jude didn't miss a beat. "Nah, he never left. He stayed in town and messed with the wrong people.

Sounds like he got high out of his mind and landed in some deep shit.

He texted saying he was coming back tonight, but with how late it is, he'll probably have to dodge the security guards and sneak in." The puzzle pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity.

Jude was planting the seed. He was building an airtight alibi for Ashton "returning" to campus.

And the way he casually dropped the hint about the back fire exit—it was perfectly calculated.

The main lobby was rigged with twentyfourhour surveillance cameras and a front desk guard.

Popping the lock on the back fire stairs meant there wouldn't be a single digital timestamp of Ashton swiping his keycard. I understood completely.

Chapter 4 He was using me to fabricate his timeline. He was deliberately feeding me the narrative that Ashton snuck back in the dead of night, long after we were both asleep.

And that once he got back, he quietly hung himself in the dark. That way, Jude's hands would be perfectly clean. I scoffed internally.

Did he really think the cops were that braindead? A firstyear forensics student could tell the difference between ligature strangulation and a suicidal hanging.

Jude kept up his painfully casual charade. "You probably didn't hear, but word is he's in massive trouble. Owed a ton of cash, practically on the verge of skipping town.

With that kind of pressure, who knows what kind of mental state he's in right now." My peripheral vision caught Ashton's swaying silhouette.

Caught the grotesque, distorted mask his face had become under the pressure of the noose. Yeah. His state definitely wasn't looking too good.

But the game he was playing was obvious. He was spoonfeeding me the "Ashton was suicidal from massive debt" motive.

That way, when the body was discovered tomorrow morning, I would unwittingly parrot his exact words to the police.

I would be his perfect, naive character witness to corroborate the suicide theory. If that was all he wanted, playing along was my ticket to surviving the night.

So, I swallowed the bait, making my voice sound appropriately shocked. "Wait, seriously? What kind of trouble?

Is it bad?" Like clockwork, Jude opened the floodgates, spilling his rehearsed script. "Oh, it's bad.

He played the golden boy routine perfectly around the dorms, so you probably never noticed. But I'm telling you, the guy wasn't just gambling.

He got tangled up in an underground cartel's fentanyl ring and owed a mountain of loan shark debt. That's why he was terrified to go home.

Right when break started, he was talking about needing to make quick cash, trying to win it all back. My guess? He blew everything these past few days.

Probably didn't even have a place to crash, which is why he said he was sneaking back here. Anyway, if he does show up and he's completely unhinged, just ignore him.

Don't start a fight with him. I'm just worried he might do something drastic. Man, it's rough." He sounded so genuinely empathetic.

Acid burned the back of my throat at the absurdity of his empathy.

Because the very guy he was mourning was currently dangling from a rope three feet away, staring dead at me. "Wow… I had no idea," I breathed out a heavy sigh, ready to shut down the conversation.

All I had to do was validate his lie. Let him believe his manipulation worked. My brain mocked him again. The sheer stupidity of his master plan was laughable.

They burned all that energy staging this elaborate suicide and feeding me a scripted motive, oblivious to how easily it would fall apart.

The police wouldn't just take the word of two college kids over hard forensic evidence.

But right as I opened my mouth to deliver my final line, to confirm that I fully believed Ashton was suicidal, a jagged piece of the puzzle snagged in my mind. Wait.

They weren't stupid. The clinical precision of the murder. The absolute silence as they dragged a dead weight through a dorm.

The flawless, noiseless execution of rigging a body to the ceiling fan mere feet from a sleeping person. They weren't just smart. They were terrifyingly, methodically brilliant.

They had planned every single breath of this operation. So how could they possibly not know that an autopsy would instantly expose the difference between suicide and strangulation?

If they knew the cops would find out… why go through the trouble of staging it at all? A cold needle pierced the base of my skull. Numbness mapped its way across my scalp.

Because a new, paralyzing realization hit me. Another possibility. Chapter 5