Room 313

The first rule of St. Eustace was: never look into Room 313.

Nobody explained it. No signs. No warnings. Just a rule whispered between nurses during smoke breaks and exchanged silently with nervous glances.

Jason had been working the night shift for six weeks when he finally asked.

"Why not 313?"

The older nurse, Dana, paused while writing on her clipboard.

"Because you’ll see something that remembers you."

He laughed nervously. She didn’t.

It started small.

At 2:41 a.m., the monitor in 312 beeped once, then flatlined—except the patient was still breathing. Wide-eyed, frozen. The line stayed flat, the heart still beat.

In 314, a woman woke up screaming. When they reached her, she only whispered, “It’s standing at the door. It knows I can’t move.”

Jason checked the cameras. Nothing unusual, except one frame. A single blurry freeze: an empty hallway with a faint smudge of red light beneath Room 313’s door.

He knew better than to check it. But fear has a strange way of dragging people toward the very thing they should run from.

That night, he stood in front of 313.

The air felt thicker. The overhead lights flickered—not like bad wiring, more like breathing.

He reached for the doorknob, pulse hammering.

It was locked.

Of course it was locked.

But someone had slipped something under the door.

It was a photograph.

A Polaroid. Faded.

Jason stared at it for a long time.

It was him, asleep in his own bed.

Taken from inside his bedroom.

He barely made it home that morning. Every reflective surface showed something wrong—mirrors slightly delayed, his reflection blinking before he did. The TV turned on by itself and played static in Morse code. He looked it up.

D-O-N-T-S-L-E-E-P

Jason didn’t.

He returned to work the next night with bloodshot eyes and a flask in his coat. Dana took one look at him and shook her head. “You looked, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t open the door,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

By 3:13 a.m., half the lights on the floor blew out. Patients screamed without cause. Monitors showed no pulses, though everyone was alive. Jason passed Room 313—and this time, the door was ajar.

There was a smell.

Not death.

Not rot.

It smelled like regret. Like a thousand apologies whispered into the dark, unheard.

He opened the door.

Nothing. Just an empty hospital room.

Except for the mirror on the far wall.

And in it… Jason was already inside.

Not standing at the door. Standing in the corner. Smiling.

He ran. But everywhere he looked—in glass, metal, windows—the reflection changed.

It wasn’t him anymore. It was the version inside the room. And it was watching.

It followed.

That was a week ago.

Jason hasn’t left St. Eustace since.

He walks the halls at night, whispering to empty beds, carrying the Polaroid in his pocket, repeating a mantra no one understands.

And Room 313?

It’s still open.

It’s waiting for the next person curious enough to look.