A Story A Day. Story 298 of 365: Apparitions.

It was late in the evening, and all of Ari's labmates had already gone home. He was a night owl, however, and prefered to work late and sleep in. Many of his colleages had told him that they didn't like the lab at night, it was full of weird lights and noises, making it the creepiest place on earth. He didn't care, he knew that the machines made noises, but it was because they were working. And he was never alone as the security guard made his rounds every thirty minutes, they had become fast friends as soon as the older man had seen Ari spending all his evenings in there.

On that particular day, Ari was working on fume hood which had a glass protecting him from the toxic gas. Every time he moved, he would see part of his reflection on the glass, making it look as if there was someone behind him. More than once it did seem there was actually something behind him, but he told himself he was being silly, that it would have been some light blinking. He went through his stuff, completely focused on his experiment, listening to some old rock classics on his phone. It shouldn't take him too long, he realized. As he raised his stare to check the time, he meet another pair of eyes on the glass. It weren't his, it weren't the security guard's. They were the eyes of a young woman who had her hair up on a tight ponytail, blue eyes behind safety glasses. With a blink of an eye, she was gone. Ari turned around, looking for her, but there was no one behind him. The air was chillier than usual, and he felt uneasy, so he finished his job as fast as he could.

The following day, after having slept on it, Ari decided it was just a matter of his exalted imagination, that he had been tired and he saw things that weren't there. So he stayed on his schedule, and completely forgot about what he had seen. However, around the same time, she appeared again. He saw a flash of blue, her blue eyes, on the glass but that lasted a second, next really cold air blew on his neck, and he heard a soft voice telling me "Get out of my lab". Ari dropped everything and ran away, bowing to never go again to the lab at night.