THE 7th FLOOR

No one lived on the 7th floor of the Palemore Hostel. Not officially.The building, an old stone colonial relic in the heart of Kolkata, had seven floors — but only six were listed. Students joked the 7th was haunted. The elevator skipped it, and the stairwell ended with a rusted gate welded shut long ago.

Arjun, newly admitted for his journalism degree, didn’t believe in ghosts. He believed in stories. And he wanted the best one.

The seniors warned him with nervous smiles.

“They sealed it after a student disappeared.”

“Sometimes you can hear knocking, even though it’s empty.”

“The cleaners don’t go near it. Not even during Diwali.”

Arjun laughed it off — until one night, he saw it.

While returning from a late-night chai run, he noticed a flickering light above the 6th floor. Not the usual soft hallway glow — this was a cold, fluorescent blink. It was coming from above the sealed gate.

The 7th floor.

A sudden ding — the elevator behind him opened. Empty. But the panel inside showed something strange:

7

Arjun blinked. That floor didn’t even exist in the system.

Heart pounding from a cocktail of fear and excitement, he stepped inside.

The doors shut. The elevator didn’t move.

Then it dropped.

Only for a second. Then it jerked to a stop.

The doors slid open to total darkness.

🔦 The hallway was wrong.

Too long. Too narrow. Arjun’s flashlight trembled in his hand.

The walls were lined with doors, each identical — except there were no numbers. Just thick, old wood. No windows. No peepholes.

Until he reached the end.

A door stood there, painted bright red. Numbered in black:

7

He opened it.

🕳️ Inside was a room that shouldn’t exist.

The bed was made. Walls painted. No dust.

On the desk lay a journal — its pages yellowed and curled, the ink smeared by time.

Arjun flipped it open. The handwriting was frantic.

“This room knows when you're alone.”

“Don't sleep. It feeds on silence.”

“The mirror is not a mirror.”

“It copies you. But not right away.”

Arjun looked around. There it was — a tall antique mirror near the closet. For a moment, his reflection didn’t move.

He froze.

Then his reflection smiled.

He hadn’t.

⏱️ Time fractured.

He backed away — but the room bent around him. Walls warped. The door vanished. The ceiling stretched.

The journal was gone. The mirror now occupied the entire wall.

His reflection moved on its own — walking, mimicking him a few seconds before he did.

He tried to scream. Nothing came out.

Then his reflection whispered something. Mouthed words he couldn’t hear — until they echoed in his own ears, from inside his head.

“You came looking for a story.”

“Now you are one.”

The mirror shattered.

🩸 They found Arjun the next morning.

At 6:30 a.m., a cleaner claimed to hear crying inside an empty storage room on the 6th floor. When they opened it, Arjun was curled up, hands over his ears, eyes wide open but unseeing.

He had aged. Wrinkles traced his face. Hair had thinned. His phone battery was dead — though it had 98% charge before.

His notebook had only one thing written in messy red ink:

“The 7th Room isn’t a place.

It’s a copy of you that waits to take over.

And when it does…

You disappear.

It walks back instead.”

They say Arjun recovered, but no one speaks to him anymore.

Because he still lives in the hostel.

And every now and then, someone sees him leaving his room — only to find him already inside.

💀 Final Line:

“He left the 7th Room…

But something else returned.”