No One Stays Long

‘It doesn’t feel like home.’ She wrote under the faint light that slipped past the top bunk. ‘I’ve tried making friends, I’ve tried fitting in, but I’ve failed to. The only thing that keeps me afloat is you, Mr. Journal.’

It had been a week since the 15-year-old Sameeksha had moved to the dorm, dropped off by her parents, who bid her adieu with welled eyes. She wasn’t as strong as her parents, though, as tears streamed on her cheeks, and she continued sobbing into the night.

‘The lighting here is bad. It’s almost terrible. I can barely study and share my thoughts with you, but I try to make an effort, try to make the best of it. Today, I couldn’t stand the noise in the classroom. I wanted to scream, but with a headache that took over for the rest of the day, I could hardly be myself. My roommate Avi seems nice. We’ve exchanged greetings but haven’t had time to talk much—as she moved in just this morning—but she’s quiet and doesn’t disturb me at all. Hopefully, we can connect soon. I will keep you updated as always. Good night.’

Sameeksha hid the diary back under the mattress, wishing that no one would find it. All these days, she stayed alone in the room, passing the time without a mobile phone—the hostel didn’t allow one—or someone to talk to. As she wrote, it wasn’t for her lack of trying. It felt like the people there were aloof toward newcomers. But she wasn’t going to do that to Avi. She had already decided: Avi would be her best friend.

She looked around. The dim tube light flickered a little at its corners. She didn’t think much of it—despite the tube light darkening the room more than she liked—as she relied on her table lamp for studying. It was the only equipment that worked as intended, the rest caused the room feel depressing. She walked towards the table, making sure she skipped the tiles that squeaked.

As she adjusted in the chair, the knock on the door startled her. She stood up and opened the door to find Avi standing with books in her hand. Avi walked in and greeted Sameeksha, adjusting her glasses with one hand and placing the books on her table with the other.

“Hi, Avi.” Sameeksha returned the greeting. “Long day?”

“Hmm-mm.” Avi sat down in her chair.

“How did it go?”

“It was okay. I had to run around finding the classrooms. Anyone here barely helps, right?”

Sameeksha had a twinkle in her eyes. Avi was opening up to her. “I felt the same thing. Nobody here wants to talk. They’re absorbed in their own lives and stick with their groups. I’m not sure what keeps teenagers like us busy. There isn’t much to do here.”

“Exactly.” Avi said.

That was the end of the conversation. Neither of them knew what they wanted to keep talking about. Avi left a sigh and relaxed in her chair. Sameeksha turned to her books.

* * * *

The night had fallen silent.

Sameeksha woke up with a jolt to a noise that broke the quietness. At first, she didn’t understand what had caused her to jolt, but once she settled down, she heard it. It was a faint, guttural voice. The voice hummed, but not so loud that it could be easily heard. She could hear slow huffing. She shifted in her bed and paid attention to where it came from. It came from above. She gave it a second to see if she was being deluded and realized that she was not. The noise indeed came from above, sounding both like Avi and something else, something that she could only describe to herself as a muffled cry.

“Avi?” She whispered in the dark. The noise stopped. Sameeksha waited for a minute and thinking that it was her imagination at play, tried to go back to sleep. After about twenty minutes, she dozed off.

* * * *

‘They took Avi to the hospital today. When I woke up in the morning, Avi ran a high fever and looked pale. Must’ve been something in the air yesterday, or maybe just the change in the weather. She did come from a hotter city than this one; I heard it from the warden. I hope she gets better soon.’

Sameeksha replaced the diary and headed off to her class. She didn’t think much about what would happen to Avi; all she could do was pray Avi would get better soon. After all, Avi was supposed to be her best friend before long.

* * * *

After a long day, when she returned to her room, she was puzzled by the thought that Avi wouldn’t come back to stay with her as she had been relocated to another room. Avi hadn’t returned from the hospital yet, but the warden had told her to check if the staff had accidentally left behind something that belonged to Avi.

When she pushed the unlocked door to her room, she found Neeti, the girl from the classroom beside hers, unpacking her belongings on the table.

“Hi!” Neeti came forward.

‘Much more cheerful than Avi…’ She thought.

“Hello.”

“You must be Sameeksha, right?”

“Yes, I am. And you’re Neeti, correct?”

“Correct you are!”

Sameeksha paused and scanned Neeti from toe to her head. She wasn’t what her best friend would’ve looked like, but it wouldn’t have hurt. She just needed a companion—someone she could laugh and cry with. And Neeti was harmless. At least she was cheerful, something that Avi was not.

“Neeti, I would love to talk, but I must complete Mr. Wagh’s assignments. It’s nice to meet you, but I’m sorry, please excuse me today.”

“No probs!”

“Thank you!”

“Please let me know if you need anything. I’ll have my dinner now and return. I’m pretty sleepy by the dim lights here. These are too dim for one’s liking, don’t you think?”

“I do. I feel the same.”

“I knew it. Anyway, I’ll meet you later.” Neeti waved and left, the door ajar behind her. Sameeksha stood up from her bed and closed it shut. She was too worried about finishing the assignments to even notice the scattered clothes that Neeti had left on the top bed.

* * * *

The clock ticked close to one in the morning. A few yawns later, Sameeksha moved to fetch a bag of chips. It wasn’t unusual for her to stay up at night; she did that a lot back home. It wasn’t due to the lack of sleep, but her phone. She kept scrolling through videos, only to realize that she’d skipped her sleep by a few hours. So now, it didn’t feel unnatural. The only difference now was that her fingers cramped due to writing and not by scrolling. And that came with a lot of shaking out her hand to ease the pain.

Today, she didn’t have the time to speak with her diary. It wasn’t a daily ritual per se, but it had become a habit to pen down the events of the day. If she missed it, she would feel incomplete, as if she’d betrayed a dear friend. But she knew she didn’t have a choice. Her grades were more important than filling up the pages with her thoughts. From tomorrow morning, she had Neeti anyway, to discuss how her night went and the subsequent days.

Immersed in these thoughts, she kept writing the remainder of the assignment. It wasn’t until several minutes later that she realized that Neeti had sat up straight on her bed, staring into the distance, blankness washing over her face.

* * * *

Sameeksha couldn’t believe what she saw.

Neeti sat still. Her eyes had stopped blinking. Her fingers held tight to the bed. Her feet swung back and forth, dangling over the edge. She stared, fixating on the wall in front of her.

Slowly, her lips parted. The same muffled voice came out of her—the one that came from Avi.

Sameeksha leaned in to hear what Neeti was murmuring. At first glance, it seemed like a poem of some sort, with a rhyming scheme that was identical to that of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. But the words—they were incomprehensible. The voice, however, was guttural, like a thousand nails running through a wooden board at once. She didn’t understand what she said, but she did see her appearance change: from cheerful to something she could only explain as demonic. A chill ran through her spine. She froze in her chair, watching in shock what unfolded in front of her, her eyes unblinking.

Sameeksha was riveted, horror etched across her face. She was so engrossed that she didn’t realize the chilliness in the room had increased and the flickering of lights overhead. She felt tremors in her hands, and toes curling as her nails scratched the floor.

A few minutes passed, and Neeti pushed forward and fell to the ground. A loud thud echoed through the room. The lights stayed dim and steady this time. A small stream of blood appeared from the back of her head, flowing through the cracks in the floor.

Sameeksha stood up, hastily unlocked the door, and sped across the corridor to find the warden. As she ran out the door, she could hear the last of Neeti’s murmur, shaking her to the core once more.

* * * *

The news of Neeti’s passing spread like wildfire. Everyone who had asked Sameeksha about her death, had not believed the story she told. Why would a person—who was completely fine till the end of the day—throw herself violently off the bed? Neeti wasn’t suicidal either and didn’t have any history of epileptic episodes. Sameeksha didn’t know what to explain. That was the only account she told, both to the people who asked and the police officers that visited the dorm earlier in the day.

All day long, Sameeksha lay in the bed, reassuring herself that it must have been something psychological. Perhaps a glitch in Neeti’s brain? She had no answers. Who would? It happened so suddenly that one would think it was supernatural.

To her young mind, it was illogical. She vividly remembered how the dorm staff quickly took away Neeti from the room, and shushed Sameeksha, asking her to keep mum until they instructed her to. She did as she was told. She didn’t utter a word until the police officers came, and only after everyone was made aware of the incident did she start speaking about it.

As she looked around, she realized that once again, the night had fallen silent, the lights dim.

* * * *

’Hi Mr. Journal, it has been a long time since I talked with you. But what should I do? Within two days, I had to deal with two people leaving my side. With Avi, she hasn’t returned yet and Neeti, she went away forever in the clouds. I am frustrated, Mr. Journal. I don’t know what to think and what to talk about, as no one believes what I tell them, they think I am lying.

’But why would I lie? I have no motive to do so. I came here to make friends, to learn new things. And now, I am stuck with people going away and with no way to contact my family about it… the staff wouldn’t let me call anyone. They may be right, it could be coincidental and I just need to be brave, but for how long?

‘Honestly, I think there’s someone in my room. When I asked who lived here before me, the warden seemed tight-lipped, and simply said she doesn’t remember. Do you think I’m right, Mr. Journal? What if there’s a bad presence in my room? Should I stay here? Mum said never to believe in ghosts and spirits, but you tell me, what else should I think? What if I stay and it turns out to be my turn to die? Hmm? What if tonight, it is my turn?’

Tears flowed down her cheeks by the time she wrote the last line. She left the diary open as it was, and rested her head onto the pillow, trying to suppress her cries. She remembered her happy life back at home. How her parents cheered her on, how she helped with the daily chores, and how they looked happy to see her progress and come here. Sometime while recalling these memories, Sameeksha dozed off.

* * * *

Sameeksha woke up to a muffled voice late in the night. This time, she was alone in the room, so she had no reason to hear something like that. But she did. From the top bunk.

She quickly got up and clutched onto her pillow. She pressed it tightly against her chest and swallowed a breath. She moved upward, folding her knees on the bed, and tried to hear it once again. This time, she heard a scratch on the sideboard of the bunk above. She froze and felt a cold breeze on her neck. She recalled the horror movies she had watched all her life and couldn’t believe it was happening to her.

“It’s a dream.” She told herself.

Just as she did, the lights flickered for a moment and went back to being dim. The noises of the scratching stopped, and the muffled sounds continued—growing more guttural by the minute.

The poem, again. She could hear it more clearly this time. It sounded like the voice of a child, hoarse and dense. It was indeed singing the lullaby of the twinkling star. And as it did, the room went colder and a realization hit: the voice was now coming from next to her and not from the top.

She looked around—nothing. The lights flickered once again.

The voice grew louder. Second by second. Nearer and nearer. To the point that she couldn’t bear. She let go of the pillow and held her hands over her ears to shut them off. The room spun around and she let out heavy breaths.

Avi, Neeti, and now her. What was this abomination? Was it an imagination? Did the people of the dorm hide something from her? Was this the bad girl room? Were they punishing her? A thousand thoughts ran through her mind.

The lights flickered once again and the noise stopped. Perhaps it was over—the torture. Sameeksha believed she had survived whatever was in the room. The next morning, she was free to leave the room forever and move elsewhere. But why the next morning? Why not now?

She gathered the courage and tried to get down from the bed. The moment her feet touched the ground, she heard a scratch, not from above, but right behind her.

She recognized the sound. It was the pages of her journal. She turned around slowly, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, and there it was, written in bold red, wet like blood, dripping from the pages—“YOUR TURN.”

The lights went out. An ominous darkness filled the room.

A long scream traveled the dorm, and night fell silent.

THE END

Written by Aniruddha Pathak

© 2026 Aniruddha Pathak