A Series of Shutting Doors [Emma]

Midnight. Every surface was scrubbed and scrap-less, swept and swabbed. The chrome-coloured kitchen gleamed under the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The kitchen closers had their bags and aprons flung over their shoulders as they filed out into the long-closed dining hall, holding the kitchen doors open for one another, until—Chathra remained.
“Chef, you coming?” One of the closers called into the kitchen from the doorframe. He was a refrigerator-sized man with a bandana around his balding head.
“Nah,” Chathra said. She didn’t look up from the prep counter where she was coring and slicing heads of cabbage from a hefty box beside her. “I’m gonna work on this.”
“We’re going to Crystal’s,” added another closer—a plump pink-skinned woman who already had her lips coiled around an unlit cigarette.

The other workers piled their concern on top, voices layering into a chorus of ‘yeah, come on, you make us look bad’s, and ‘come on Chef, we can’t leave you here’s, but it was the refrigerator-sized man who made the chef look up.
“Ay dios mio, we can make coleslaw tomorrow,” he said, throwing up the hand that wasn’t holding the kitchen door open.
“Coleslaw won’t move,” Chathra muttered back, pausing her slicing to rub her eyes with her forearm.
The kitchen closers collectively groaned. “Yeah? And what, kids are gonna pick okonomiyaki over pizza?”—“Just cut your losses, Chef!”—It’s Roy’s fault for confusing it with lettuce anyway…”

“Hey!” the chef smacked the counter for their attention, “we eat together, we shit together,” she continued, gesturing with her paring knife as she talked. “I made the bad call. Shouldn’t have sent a dishwasher to pick up the shipment.”
Another collective groan. The closers shuffled away from the kitchen doors, heads shaking. “Whatever, goodnight, Chef…”—“Yeah but cook or not cook, who the fuck thinks cabbage and lettuce are the same thing…”
The layers of voices faded as Chathra’s co-workers left the dining room.
“Don’t stay up too late,” called the pink-skinned woman, gesturing for the refrigerator-sized man to move on, “ok, Chef?”
Chathra waved and muttered a vague, “yeah, yeah”. The kitchen doors swung closed.



The sliced cabbage rinsed under a tap as she slid open the door of a walk-in fridge. Lifting a lukewarm mug of coffee to her lips, she looked for inspiration in the shelves, prodding at the prepped ingredients with her free hand. Two hours to come up with a cabbage-based dish the students would eat. Two hours, she set for herself, because her next shift was in ten hours and at some point, the words—“don’t stay up too late, ok Chef”—would hit her. At some point, she had to take her workaholic ass and go home, go shower, go sleep.

Chathra loaded a few things into a crate—thin-sliced chicken thighs, a bag of grated carrots, a pair of scallions and some fresh chillies she didn’t remember ordering—and turned for the door handle.
She couldn't turn it.
She set down the crate and her coffee and pulled at the handle with both hands, grunting with effort—nothing. She pushed it instead, pressing all her weight against it—nothing. “Holy fuck,” she muttered after myriad more attempts, weary eyes waking and widening as she frisked her pockets for her phone—nothing, it was on the prep counter with the cabbage, charging. Gritting her teeth, she went for the last resort—pounding on the door. With luck, someone—one of her co-workers fetching something forgotten or campus police patrolling—would hear her.

The skies outside were dark and murky, with small flecks of bright stars littering the canvas of onyx twilight. It couldn't have been more than a minute past midnight, for the abstruse academy was eerily quiet, and everyone should have been fast asleep -- however that was not the case. Through the bay window of a certain brunette's room, moonlight spilled in waves upon cream carpeted floor, dust particles floating in the rays of moonlight as the inky glow gave color to the placid white walls that obtained a silhouette.

In the sereneness of the night, a young female who did not look much older than the age of eighteen swung her legs tiredly over the feathered bed that contained her body, hands gripping the corner of a lavender spread as it was pulled clean from her flushed bodice. In the pale moonlight, the female was quite the looker, with snowflake colored skin and small patches of freckles dotting her features, a pair of beautiful cornflower eyes that shimmered in the moonlight, and a lanky physique that looked dainty. Odele brushed a few strands of sable from her tired features, raising arms above her cranium as the female let out a little yawn. The girl's blue oculars trailed along the carpeted floor to the person across the room, same gender and age as the little female who looked like she could be a ballerina in a musical box. It appeared that her roommate was fast asleep, and would not even notice that she had gone missing sometime throughout the night. Rising from the comfortable bed, the female undid the scarf around her neck, a long stretching scar that was faded with age, yet showed a gruesome backstory as well. Knotting it around her neck once again, the female slipped on a pair of lavender slippers and exited the quiet room, entering the hallways with ease.

There was a bright and fleeting light that lit up the hallways for a moment as the eighteen year old molly quietly shifted into the form of a smaller animal, a feline. Through numerous wanderings throughout the night, Odele found it easier to travel in feline form, and if she were to get caught for being up past curfew, she could make a quick getaway. The transformation was a painful one, for the female's bones had gotten smaller, it sucked a lot of energy from the female, but it was well worth it to wander the halls at twilight. The sable haired feline wandered the stretching halls with ease, ears pricked for any unwanted signs of danger as her steps were tedious and cautious. Padding down a flight of stairs, a long elongated tendril brushed against the walls, and yet her senses tingled as the sound of pounding on a door caught her attention. It sounded from the kitchen, and yet curiosity killed the cat. With a little frown of worry, the female transformed back into a human, re clothed and looking the same as she did before she had ever transformed. Dressed in a light blue shirt and darker colored shorts, a navy colored cardigan wrapped twice around her small figure, and she wandered more aimlessly into the kitchen. Approaching the door that was being pounded upon, the female hesitantly reached forwards and pulled with all the strength left in her bodice, tumbling backwards as the door was swung open, to reveal a tired looking cook, and she gulped nervously. The female spoke in a naturally light voice, that was soft and light against the ears and could never give you a headache.

"I'm terribly sorry for entering the kitchen this late at night! I couldn't sleep so I wandered about and heard you pounding on the door, s-so I decided to help. Are you okay?"