Standing inside a broken cupboard with a math book in my hands

This incident happened way back in 1998. This was a time when the ghost and the darkness had completely lost me, and I had completely lost her… but somehow things around her were always bound to be weird.

In the true spirit of upholding the morality of female students (yeah right…) my residential college decided to hold a talk for all female students living there, and attendance was compulsory. There were rumours that the room would be checked during the talk to avoid truancy.

The problem was, the next day we were supposed to have a math exam and last minute work is what most of us are famous for. It was like living in a nightmare. Anyways, we duly attended the talk and were bored to death, even with the math text book. Sitting pretty near one of the exits, we hatched a plan where at certain intervals, one by one of us would get out and go back to the room to study. And it happened.

Sitting in the room and doing math questions as if life depended on it, my roomies and I heard the door across the corridor slam and a jingle of keys which at that moment sounded pretty ominous – they WERE checking the rooms for runaways!

Horrified, I turned to my roomies and we knew we had to get out from there immediately. Turning off the lights, we hopped out of the open window and I stood on the ledge of the building, holding my breath (why?) while hearing the horrible jingling sound come nearer and nearer, and doors being open and shut. The felo downstairs saw us on the ledge and looked again – most probably wondering at a bunch of girls’ abnormal studying habits.

A little while later the sounds ceased to exist and we went back in and continued studying (tried to - actually) but the nervousness never went off. However, one of us decided to head downstairs and check on another friends room. We had to warn them about them checking the rooms. And it ended up with all of us going downstairs to their room, still with that horrible book in tow.

At our friends’ room, they were all studying without much trouble. We then proceeded to inform them about the happenings upstairs and managed to frighten them also, as we soon began to hear the now familiar jingle of keys and opening and closing of doors. Now there were 6 very frightened people in this room and they had to ledge to hide in. The cupboards! Two of us got into one cupboard – in the dark, and with the math book, and another two got into another cupboard and two others – under the tables, behind some boxes. The cupboard began to creak – not meant for human weight I suppose ;-)

Credits and notes:
1. Title modified from “Standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my hands” by primitive radio gods
2. None of us were caught that night – the sound came from other runaways who weren’t so discreet

Originally posted on June 14, 2005