my coworker told me a horror story and never explained how it ended

Okay so there was this girl at my part-time job. Dark vibes, quiet, always looked a little anxious. Not the type I'd naturally click with, honestly. But we got scheduled together constantly so we'd talk during slow hours. Except. We had literally nothing in common.

She was into gaming, I don't care about video games. I love sports, she couldn't care less. Music? Completely different. The one thing we both had was books, but even that was a stretch. I'm a science guy so I'm reading Dawkins, Lorenz, that kind of thing. She's reading Nietzsche and Sartre. Like, okay bestie.

But we kept at it and eventually found some overlap in mystery and horror lit. Edogawa Rampo came up and suddenly we're actually TALKING. Like genuinely vibing for the first time.

Then she goes, "have you ever experienced anything scary?"

I said not really. She got this little smirk and said she had. Once. Something really messed up. "No ghosts or anything," she said, "just... kind of disturbing. Might make you feel weird."

And then she told me.

---

So. Middle school. She was being relentlessly bullied. Like bad. One afternoon she's running from these kids and she ducks into the basement of the old school building, which apparently had an old music room down there. Creepy as hell by anyone's standards but she said at that point the bullies scared her way more than some spooky basement.

She gets in and finds another door. Leading somewhere deeper.

I almost interrupted to ask "wait was there actually a door" in that jokey way but something about how she was whispering. the way she said it. I couldn't bring myself to.

She opened it. Unlocked. Beyond it was a staircase going further down.

She propped the door open wide and went down.

Halfway down the stairs. SLAM. The door just. shut.

She nearly fell. Grabbed the railing, scrambled back up, grabbed the door handle and pulled. Nothing. Pushed. Nothing. So she starts banging on it and screaming, assuming it was the bully kids messing with her.

"STOP IT. LET ME OUT. OPEN THE DOOR."

Usually when they pulled stuff like that she'd hear them laughing, swearing at her through whatever barrier was between them. But this time. Silence. Total silence from the other side.

She told herself it was a thick metal door. That's why she couldn't hear anything. But her body didn't believe that. She said she was shaking so hard and the cold sweat was just running down her sides.

Okay but here's where it gets interesting. She sat down at the bottom of the stairs and actually THOUGHT. If those kids locked her in, eventually they'd let her out. But what if nobody locked it? What if it just... closed on its own? And what if nobody finds her?

The room above was semi-basement level so there were windows. The room she was trapped in had none. Pitch black.

But then she calmed herself down with logic. This is a school. They wouldn't build a room that can only be locked from the outside with no way out from inside. That would be insane.

She went back up and started feeling around the door for a latch or lock mechanism. Something kept bumping against her fingers, weird little protrusions all over the door. But no obvious lock.

And then something knocked against her foot.

Just. bumped her foot in the dark.

She said for one second she had a Very Bad thought. Then she crouched down and felt around and.

A flashlight.

She clicked it on. It worked.

She shined it at the door.

And there, all over that thick metal door, were torn-off human fingernails driven into the surface. Bloody. Just. embedded in it everywhere. And written across the whole door in what was clearly blood were the words:

"please help me..."

---

She looked up at me and smiled.

Long pause.

I finally managed to say, in a completely dead voice, "so... then what."

"Then what?"

"I mean. THEN WHAT."

And she went, "oh, were you expecting me to say I found a skeleton on the floor when I shined the flashlight down? yeah that would've been scarier, but no. this is a real story so that's just. how scary real life gets. anyway we should get back to work."

No. NONONO. That's not what I was asking.

How did she GET OUT.

That's the part she never told me.

And I never found out because she quit that same day without saying goodbye to anyone. Just. gone. Never came back.

I still think about it.