You religiously watch everyone at work go home for the day, but when you fall asleep for a few minutes you wake up in a dark, empty office and find the night workers. They're all weird and creepy and you don't know what to do.

I’m an accompanist for a few voice teachers at a local conservatory, and they all have lessons until 7. Sometimes I have to wait for 30 minutes because they’re being slow getting there or they haven’t found a room yet, but I still have to keep an eye on the door because they’re extremely to-the-minute with the start of their lessons. I stop by the library in the morning and work on a project for a few hours, then show up at 330 for a few hours of lessons, then I’m done.<br><br>I was frustrated because I got there at 3, and the woman who I was going to sit for wasn’t even there yet, and none of the other professors were back. I had to wait until 330 to talk to them for a few minutes, and then I had to wait for my woman to arrive. If I had known I’m going to wait half an hour, I could have stayed at the library longer and spent time not languishing in the foyer if the building. It was the last straw; I was fed up.<br><br>I decided to change my way of doing things; I was gonna be more organized and instantaneous. So, from now on, I was going to observe the building from opening to closing, and I finally felt like I wouldn’t have to walk there an hour early. I’d stay all day and learn all the nuances of the university. I’d know when they’d start to close and when they shut down the WiFi, when the night professors would show up, when the teachers stop coming to work. I’d be the most efficient I’d ever been and I’d know exactly when to show up to have enough time to talk to who I want and be ready to do my work.<br><br>300-500, I’m in the library. Nobody is here, professors have a smattering of students, most of the upstairs is shut down. I’m still here because there’s no real reason for me to be in the conservatory, the front part of it anyway, and I’m not brave enough to go into the dorms yet.<br><br>The sun is setting and I sit at the base of a giant piece of metal in the courtyard that catches the light and shines it on the front of the building. People inside are getting homework done or talking to professors or having private lessons, and even though I’m doing homework I feel skeptical that people can get anything done at 5 in the afternoon with all the noise around them. Plus the acoustics are bad and you can’t really hear yourself sing properly.<br><br>I don’t need to hear myself sing anyway since I’m not practicing right now. I’m an accompanist, so I don’t have to practice, I just have to show up and do a good job. Recording lessons are good enough practice for me.<br><br>I don’t like to practice very much anyway because I’ve never been that good, and thinking about how much I’ve neglected my abilities makes a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. But it’s okay, because I’m getting paid to be here. <br><br>I go back inside and lurk in the hallway as everyone packs up to leave. I don’t think it makes a particularly good impression to be lurking at the door waiting for your boss to leave, so I go into the main auditorium. It’s dark and empty and quiet and peaceful, and I feel like a kid hiding in a huge empty place when I was little, when I wasn’t supposed to be there. No one would ever come in here at this time of day, and no one checks the seats. I sit there and listen to people pack up and walk out, and I can feel myself becoming one with the destruction of capitalism. I can imagine I’m a causalities of capitalism, forced to live quietly on the fringes of society, lost in the ruins we can never escape and that we helped build.<br><br>I hear them gathering by the front door and I hear my boss call out “good night, stay a good boy,” and I don’t know who that’s directed at, but I feel a little like it’s talking to me when nobody else responds. After that, it’s pretty quiet, except for the sound of a few doors closing and the occasional “Y’all be good tonight.”<br><br>Then it’s a few minutes of silence. I should have paid attention to how a few minutes felt. Then I leave, and the hallways are empty, and everyone’s gone, and I get to see the building in a way I’ve never seen it before, empty but still warm. The lights are still on and the heat is still on and the building feels happy and free. Then I leave, and I walk home, and I don’t feel anything when I get home, and I know that I’ve never been a part of the school. It’s just a place I go. Then I leave, and I walk home, and I don’t hear the other sounds I never noticed before, the creaks and the groans. Then I go to bed. I wish I had never left the conservatory.<br><br>When I wake up, I’m a little muddled, and I’m tired, and I have a headache from falling asleep in a chair. It’s just a few minutes after everyone left. Am I dreaming?<br><br>The only way to find out is to go over to the mirror and see if my reflection is still there. It was, and I wasn’t dreaming, and nothing would ever be the same again. I don’t know why I didn’t go back right there and then. I should have told myself “yeah, this isn’t for me,” and gone home. Maybe it was too late and I knew I’d still be awake. Maybe I couldn’t get myself to leave. Maybe I was trying to prove a point to myself. Some kind of self-testing.<br><br>Whatever the reason was, I blame the night workers for everything. If they were normal, and they didn’t mess with my head and twist my mind, I’d probably still be going to the library from 330 to 500 and walking in to the warm conservatory and feeling happy. <br><br>I decided to try to find someone I knew. None of the professors were back, and the secretaries at the front desk go home at 5. No one else had to be there at this time, and even a quick glance told me that nobody else was there.<br><br>I walked down the hallway, trying all the doors in case professors were grading exams or something. They were all locked, so I kept walking. The teaching studios are arranged in a kind of loop, so I was a few minutes from circling back around to the main entrance when I walked past the one door that was ajar.<br><br>I pushed it open, hoping my woman was there, because at least she was a woman, and I’d be safer. But it was a guy. A young guy who couldn’t have been much older than me. Maybe it was a kid a few years older than me; maybe it was a professor; maybe it was a weird creature. He had curly brown hair and he was wearing glasses. He had a little beard, but a perfectly clean and trimmed beard, so that didn’t make sense.<br><br>Then I noticed he was sitting in the chair, the throne that belongs to the teachers. The weird thing is that it’s not even that big, and it’s not an impressive chair, but it still commands respect. The student sits on a little metal stool in the corner of the room. No, today I was the one who should be commanding respect, and today I should sit in the chair.<br><br>“Please, I was just sitting there,” he said when I hesitated, and I had a feeling that he hadn’t said that at all, he’d said something that sounded like that, but it wasn’t true. “I was in the middle of a lesson” he explained, and I realized he was a teaching assistant, but none of the TAs for voice teaching lessons right now.<br><br>“So we’re a little late.” He said to me. “Okay, where were we? Your dynamics were pretty good overall, but remember to work on your head voice for the next few weeks. Did you have any questions before we started today?”<br><br>I shook my head. “I have a few questions,” I said. And I did. But I knew they were for him, and not for me. “Did you get them down?” I asked.<br><br>“Of course,” he replied, and I don’t know how I knew it wasn’t true, but I knew it was a lie. “Now do you want to start with some breathing exercises or go into the lesson?”<br><br>I shook my head. “I don’t learn voice,” I said. “I play piano.”<br><br>“I must have gotten it wrong,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t sorry.<br><br>“What were you singing?” I asked anyway.<br><br>“Latest song,” he said. “Do you want to learn it?”<br><br>I shook my head, and he started to sing. It was my lullaby. “That a familiar one?”<br><br>“Yes, it is,” I said.<br><br>Then there was a silence.<br><br>“I think you may have missed your lesson time,” he finally said.