My job is watching a woman trapped in a room.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I took the job. It was an ordinary help-wanted ad in the newspaper: Janitor at a substitute university. I had no idea what that even meant, but it was close to my neighborhood and paid well, so I decided to apply anyway. A few weeks later I received a call from a man who claimed to be an employee of the university. We met at a coffee shop, where he explained the details of my employment. I was to be an overnight janitor. From 8PM to 8AM, Monday through Friday. No holidays. No days off. The hours were long, and I had been expecting more regular part-time work. But the pay was triple what I had been asking for, and I really needed the money.<br><br>I decided to take it. I accepted the offer, and the man left me a key and a list of instructions. I would start that night, and he would see me in exactly one month to hand out my first pay check.<br><br>I waited until the man was gone to read through the instructions. Most of it was mundane; cleaning the offices, sorting recycling, re-stocking paper and soap and toilet paper and all the other supplies. But one of the bullet points stood out from the rest. I was to never, under any circumstances, open any of the doors with a red stripe painted on them. The man who gave me the instructions was gone, and I had no way of contacting him with questions. There was nothing I could do but wonder. *What was behind those doors? How was I even supposed to know which doors had red stripes?*<br><br>I decided to focus on the rest of my job and worry about those questions later. I had a lot to read through. I spent the rest of the day learning about “substitute universities.”<br><br>I was surprised to learn that I had even attended one before. Substitute universities or “Sub-U’s” are facilities created to house classes that can no longer function in a normal university. In my case, it was a meteorology class that was supposed to be held on a boat in the ocean. The idea was to study the weather at sea, to get a better understanding of storms and climate and the way weather behaves in different parts of the world. But the class never even got to start. On the third day, the boat was hit by a massive Category 4 Hurricane. Twenty-five people died. They called off the class indefinitely, but the grants had already been accepted and there was no way to get the money back. So the Sub-U was created. They built a massive two-story building on some cheap land in the middle of the desert, filled it with offices for the former crew and professors of the boat, and left it to rot.<br><br>I read all about it in the articles that were included with my instructions. It was a big deal at the time, but it had all but been forgotten now. I had even taken the meteorology class myself at university, just without knowing it was in a Sub-U. My teacher was one of the three chow-cooks who had survived the shipwreck. She was a nice person, although a bit strange. I remembered her talking about the ocean and how she couldn’t wait to get back out on it, but that was as much as I knew about the incident. In retrospect, I remembered the floor being decorated with nautical items, and all the students complaining about the obviously “nautical-themed” lessons. But I never realized I had been in one of the classrooms that was meant for the ship. It was called Building 3.<br><br>It was all very interesting, but the day was wearing on and soon I was going to have to get to work. I read through the rest of the instructions and gathered the cleaning supplies before setting out for the university. It was one of those strange small-campuses where the buildings were all numbered instead of named. I parked my car and walked across the campus to Building 1, reading the instructions to find out where I was supposed to begin. I had a four-hour walk before I could even start cleaning. I read the full instructions twice by the time I was done.<br><br>I walked through Building 1 and into Building 2. There were a few buildings that connected the three, and walking through the whole university took me across the entire campus. I decided to get to work as I went, sweeping and picking up discarded trash. It was an empty, small university, but it looked like a real university. There were even classes going on in some of the classrooms; students sitting in rows of desks and professors talking to them from chalkboards. I have no idea why these classes were going on, but they were. There was no point in substitute classes for the Sub-U. The classes were being held in a substitute university. I guess the students just felt like it was better than nothing.<br><br>It was about 1:30 when I reached Building 3. It was a bit smaller than the first two buildings. I read my instructions carefully, to make sure I didn’t forget anything. It was the nautical-themed building I had learned about, and I could tell right away. There was a ship’s wheel hanging above the door, and the walls were adorned with fishing nets and pictures of the ocean. I remembered seeing an old diving helmet in my class, and sure enough it was hanging above the classroom door.<br><br>I found the janitori’s closet. I grabbed the trash bags and started picking up the trash around the rooms. The buildings were pretty empty, but the few students and teachers I saw were kind. They smiled and said hello, and none of them seemed to find it out of the ordinary that a janitor was picking up their trash. It was 5:30 before I knew it, and I had already finished over half of the classrooms.<br><br>I decided I needed a drink of water. I had been working hard, and my mouth was parched. I went to go get a drink from the water fountain, but to my surprise it was broken. I tried the next one, and it was also clogged. I went from floor to floor, but none of the water fountains worked. I was annoyed, but not too scared. I decided to go back to the campus cafes, which I had passed on my way across the campus. But when I left the building, I realized how long it had been since I had seen an actual person. The students had all gone to their dorms or wherever they went after classes, and none of the offices were being occupied. I was alone, and it was starting to feel that way.<br><br>I tried the water fountains in buildings 1 and 2. None of them were working. I was starting to get thirsty, but I decided to keep on with my work instead of looking for an off-campus convenience store or something. I knew they’d all be closed by now anyways, it was almost 7 and not many places were open late on weekdays. I decided to just continue my work and wait until the end of my shift to get a drink.<br><br>I picked up the rest of the trash and swept the floors. No water fountains worked. By 7:30, I was getting really thirsty. But there were a lot of closed offices, and I decided to check them for water coolers or vending machines or anything to drink. I walked into each office and turned on the lights, looking around the room or calling out to see if anyone was there. It was pointless; I knew I was alone. But it was better than nothing. I got some weird looks from the students, who must have been studying or something, but none of them offered me a drink or even asked how I was or why I was talking to myself.<br><br>I had almost searched every office. But there were still two floor’s worth of offices with red-striped doors. I had been saving those for last, apprehensive about what might happen if I broke the rules. I decided to give myself a compromise. I wouldn’t *open* the doors. I would just look through the windows.<br><br>There were three red-striped doors on the second floor, and none of them had windows. I walked down to the first floor to check the rest of them. There were about ten red doors in total, spread out across the three buildings. I was starting to wonder if I really was alone. Maybe whoever was behind those doors would let me in for a drink. Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait until the end of my shift.<br><br>I walked down the hall, to each of the doors in turn, trying to peer through the windows in the doors. The first couple didn’t have windows. I starting to feel disappointment setting in. But the third door did. I stepped to the side of the door, close to the window, and peeked inside. The room was small, not much larger than a janitor’s closet. And there, sitting on a small cot, was a woman.<br><br>She was young, and pretty. With long, flowing red hair and a bright green dress. I couldn’t see her eyes from the angle I was looking from, but her facial expression seemed calm and collected. I was about to turn away when she moved. I stopped, and watched. She was looking at something, her arms outstretched. I realized she was knitting. I didn’t know much about it, but it looked like she was working on a sweater. I kept watching, and she kept knitting.<br><br>She didn’t look up, and I could tell she hadn’t seen me. She was just focused on her work, knitting away. I watched her for a long time, until I decided to move on to the next door. I had almost forgotten how thirsty I was in the meanwhile. I was so interested in the knitting woman that nothing else mattered. Including my thirst.<br><br>Over the next hour, I watched almost all of the people behind the red-striped doors. Most