She had promised him she would be there for him when they reviewed his final project and nothing was going to prevent her from keeping that promise. So when the TA wouldn't let her into the auditorium she knew she had to find another way in. He was always so outwardly confident that most people who'd only ever seen him online would never believe how nervous he really was. He was counting on her and she wouldn't let him down.
Emerging, slightly out of breath, from the stairwell into the unlit second-floor hallway she paused to listen for any sign of other people. No one should be in this part of the building at this hour, but here she was so it was possible someone else was lurking about as well. When the film studies building had been built movies had still been on actual film so every auditorium was equipped with a projection booth designed to house the reels and film projector. The college had long since upgraded to digital projectors that could be hooked up wirelessly so the booths had become more of a storage space than anything and had been forgotten, for the most part. No one would be in there and she would be able to see everything from the window.
Slipping silently into the projection booth she eased the door shut behind her with a soft click. She'd worked in movie theaters when she was younger and remembered the projectionist warning her that sound in the booth could carry into the auditorium if you weren't careful. Without the giant projector running the booth was cold and dark. She paused in the darkness, her back against the cool metal of the door, and allowed her eyes to adjust. Slowly the darkness resolved into a landscape of greys before her and she picked her way through the accumulated junk. As she neared the auditorium window she could faintly hear his voice drifting up from below as he discussed something with his advisor.
Knowing he would be expecting her by now she pulled her phone from her pocket to fire off a quick text letting him know what had happened and that she was hiding in the projection booth. After hitting send and returning her phone to her pocket she cursed herself for not thinking to message him before letting her eyes adjust. Even with the brightness turned way down her eyes had readjusted to the light and all she could see now was the dimly lit window into the auditorium. From below she heard his text notification go off followed, after a short pause, by a flashlight beam sweeping across the window, further ruining her night vision. As she blinked away the bright spot in her vision the lights in the auditorium dimmed and the voices from below faded.
Before she could take a step toward the auditorium window, a scream shattered the silence. Her heart lept into her throat as a second scream, followed by a third and fourth, echoed from the auditorium. Pain and fear badly distorted the voice but she could tell that it was him. This wasn't part of the project, though she'd heard him scream bloody murder for several past ones, there was something raw and far too real about these screams. She lunged forward in the darkness of the booth desperate to look down into the auditorium and caught her foot on something unseen. His screams continued to ring out in the darkness as she stumbled awkwardly to regain her balance.
Disentangling her foot from what sounded like a snarl of film she found her footing once more in the darkness and moved toward the window. With a rustle almost unheard beneath the ever more anguished screams a loop of film wrapped itself around her wrist and pulled at it spinning her sideways. With a curse, she tried to pull the wrist free only to feel the film pull harder against her. More loops of film appeared from the darkness grasping at her ankles and thighs, tangling themselves around her other wrist, and wrapping around her torso.
The screams from the auditorium took on a wet, gargling note without any decrease in volume or intensity as she struggled against the coils of film. The mass of celluloid dragged her inexorably back away from the window no matter how hard she fought against it. Coils upon coils of film wound themselves around her body like the cocoon of some deranged celluloid spider. She tried to call out as the film wrapped tighter around her, crushing the breath from her lungs, but was prevented by several loops of film coiled across her mouth. Her muffled screams now a counterpoint to the tortured screams from the auditorium. A duet of horror and pain being wrung from them by unknown forces.
