English and Dead Animals

Our English building on campus is old. Most of our school is old, in fact; but the English building has a particularly interesting history. You see, now it is beautiful... with white walls and deep brown wood, a basement full of teachers offices and two floors of class rooms, with a beautiful staircase and huge windows over looking the lake. Its a gorgeous building... very elegant and classy... very much like an English building should look. But it wasn't always an English building. It actually used to be a slaughter house. Yes, you did read that correctly. You see, if ever you passed it and wondered why there was a large ditch/moat around the basement of the building someone might be wise enough to tell you about it being a slaughter house and the ditch actually where blood from animals was caught and ran off into the ground. Lovely, huh?

Tonight, Matthew and I discovered the old building to be unlocked. We're both English writing majors and o trying to see if the front door was open was more of a joke then the reality it soon became. It was warm... we'd been outside on campus a while, so warm was good... really good, as a few minutes prior I thought my feet were going to freeze off, so warm was feeling really nice at that moment. But we found it odd that the warm, still quiet buildingwas unlocked and many of the lights were still on. Matthew looked into an open class room where the light was still on and food sat out on a table. He shurgged and we decided that no one was home... but boys... with boys, that's never enough. "Let's explore! See if anyone's here!" Of course, it'd be worthy to note that it was 1:25 in the morning while all this was taking place.

"Do you think we could get in trouble for trespassing?" I asked-- always the cautious one. "No." he said simply as he continued up the stairs to the second level to see if any of the class rooms were open or lights on. We didn't try any doors, but from the lack of light under the doors nothing looked awake. So, we headed down to the basement where he checked to see if anyone was around their either... Nothing... just silence. "Matthew, can we leave now?" I asked. "What's wrong?" he asked, probably noting a horrified look on my face. "I just keep thinking someone could still be here and we could get in trouble." "Not likely. They would have heard us walking around by now." He had a point.

So, we started toward the side door, to exit the building when we hear a sound... The sound of a computer turning on... A little musical jingle, you know those sounds if you have a fairly new computer, I'm sure. Matthew and I froze and looked at eachother wide eyed. "Oh, someone's here.. let's leave, please!" I said, moving toward the door, "No wait, what if the fire alarm goes off?" "What?!" "Let's go back to the front door." I shook my head at him as that was the direction the computer jingle had come from. But before I could protest, another computer turning-on jingle was heard farther down the hall and Matthew had grabbed my hand and we were moving as quietly and quickly as possible down the hall toward the front door, where once outside we made a mad dash back toward the dorms.

I couldn't tell you why the building was unlocked and seemingly empty, or even why computers were turning on throughout the halls, or why no one was there and lights were on at 1:45, when we ran from it... But the building was creepy at night--

--just take my word on it.