Iliya watched his phone for any changes, any notification that they had found another challenger. Nothing. Huffing, he tapped the screen a few times. Still nothing. Not wanting to exit the game, Iliya looked up at the clock on the wall. It read 4:44. Iliya thought it was a little early for dinner, but he considered grabbing his little bag from the communal fridge. He didn’t want to go back to grading yet, and he didn’t want to stare mindlessly at his phone for a few minutes either. Just as he had decided to only grab the apple from his little bag, and nothing else, he heard a knock on the door of the Garrison kitchen.

He looked up, and noticed one of the building’s professors was standing on the other side of the door. Professor Antoni was a tall man, bending his knees to look in the door’s window. Though he was in his fifties, he almost unanimously received student acclaim not for his skill at teaching or writing, but for how attractive he was. But peeking through the window, he didn’t quite live up to the hype. His eyes were wide behind his thick-rimmed glasses, and sweat was visible on his brow. Neatly styled going-grey hair was plastered to his nervous face. Iliya waved, confused. Why knock on the door? Was Professor Antoni worried about bothering Iliya? That probably wasn’t it. He had taken the professor’s class on Romantic poetry in his first year of grad school, and the two had differing opinions on interpretation. But the real kicker was that Iliya couldn’t help but fall asleep during the 8:30 am class. After playing video games until the early hours of the morning, staying awake through a class that started at 8:30 was really, really hard. Professor Antoni did not appreciate Iliya’s nodding off, and on the off chance that he was coherent enough to offer his opinions, well. Let’s just say that the professor didn’t belong to the same school of thought that Iliya belonged to.

Professor Antoni gestured at the door with one hand in a hurried manner, clearly wanting Iliya to open it. He then looked down at his phone with his strange wide eyes. Again, why? Both Iliya and the professor had key cards that could easily open the kitchen. Had the professor lost his? Iliya swept his eyes around the room, wondering if it had been left in Garrison kitchen. He didn’t see any obvious signs of a missing key card, so he put down his phone and went to open the door for the professor. That’s probably why he’s so nervous, Iliya thought. He probably lost his key card.

Iliya opened the door, and the professor stared at him, unmoving. “Um, can I… Help you, professor?” Iliya asked.

Professor Antoni pressed a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “The killers, from the news, I think one of them’s here,” the professor whispered, his voice shaking.

Iliya froze. “What makes you say that,” he asked, matching the professor’s tone.

Between his studies and work, Iliya didn’t have much time for other pursuits. What little time Iliya had, he liked to spend playing games or hanging out with friends. Even still, Iliya had caught wind of the serial killers that were blossoming up all around the world. No one had seen them, but corpses had been appearing in the strangest of places: hidden underneath cars, on top of buildings, in locked rooms and so on. All of them had been murdered in different ways. Some had been stabbed, others drowned, asphyxiated or decapitated. One memorable victim had been made into a human stick. Investigators still hadn’t found even one of his limbs. Even stranger was that there was no set victim profile. It didn’t matter who they were. Victims came from every race, nationality, class, gender, and sexuality. It was almost egalitarian. There was only one reason why all these murders were linked- all the victims had their phones face-up on their chests. Whether it was an iphone, android, or even an old flip phone, the phones would refuse to turn on. Data from the phones themselves were unretrievable too.

“I was on my way out of Garrison after my last meeting of the day. I left my office and went down the stairs, when I smelled something bad. Like a sewage tank had emptied, mixed with cooking meat. So I turned left and,” the professor squeezed his eyes closed, as if to block out the memory, “I turned left into the lounge to see what had happened, and there they were. There were three bodies. Horribly burned. I couldn’t recognize them. But their phones were intact and sitting on their chests.”

Iliya gave the air a curious sniff. He couldn’t smell anything like fire, and none of the fire alarms had gone off. A few days ago, one of the undergrads had set off an alarm in a Garrison bathroom. He thought he was clever by covering the alarm with his jacket before smoking. However, the sensor’s alarm was sensitive enough to force the entire building to evacuate. Somehow Iliya couldn’t believe that all the sensors in the building would break in just a few days. If there was no fire, how could three people have burned beyond recognition? Were they electrocuted? Or was the professor right? Someone must have killed them and moved their bodies, but why to the lounge?

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“Did you give the bodies a closer look?”

“No!” Professor Antoni answered quickly, and loudly. “No,” he lowered his voice again, “the moment I saw them, my phone beeped. The screen, it went black. And-”

“Professor,” Iliya interrupted. The professor was clearly getting hysterical, and was starting to have a hard time controlling his volume. If there truly was something dangerous in the building, it would be better to help him inside the kitchen. They could move out of sight of the door, and call the police. Treat it like a shooter drill, Iliya told himself, taking a deep breath. Hide. If you can’t hide, run. If you can’t run, fight. “We shouldn’t stand here in the doorway.” Iliya waved for the professor to follow him in. Just as he coaxed the man inside, the professor’s phone beeped, seemingly for the second time. Iliya’s phone on the table chorused with his, vibrating hard enough to shake the cheaply made piece of furniture.

With a heavy bang, the door slammed shut behind them.

Iliya spun around, shocked by the sudden noise. Most of the doors in the building had extra padding to prevent that exact sound, as it could be very disruptive to an undergraduate class. The doors only slammed shut if a person forcefully closed it themselves.

The professor’s hand was on the door.

“Professor!” Iliya could barely keep himself from shouting. “Be careful with the doors!” If there really was someone dangerous in the building, that bang would alert them to Iliya and the professor’s location.

Then the professor turned around. It was like he had been replaced by another person. He no longer seemed frightened at all, as if he had simply been wearing a mask of fear. The professor’s posture straightened, pulling him back to his full six foot height. Then he turned around to face Iliya. His face was blank as he pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped off his brow. “Much better,” he sighed.

Iliya was struck with the feeling that he had made a terrible mistake. “You look like you’re feeling better,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say. “Were there even any bodies in the lounge?”

Professor Antoni checked his phone, and nodded at whatever was on screen. “Look at your phone, Iliya.” He didn’t bother to say anything else, or even look in Iliya’s direction.

Iliya looked to where his phone was still violently vibrating on the table. He didn’t want to turn his back on the suddenly calm professor, so he carefully tread backwards until he reached the table with his things. The moment his hand touched the phone, it stopped shaking. The phone was like a terrified puppy with separation anxiety, relaxing again the moment it felt its parent’s touch. Never before had his phone been so… sensitive. It was just a lump of technology, how could it know that Iliya’s hand was once again upon it? Was it a coincidence? Iliya was inclined to believe it wasn’t. He was a firm believer in narrative structure, or as other people liked to call it, fate or destiny.

“What’s going on?” Iliya asked the professor.

“Look at your phone,” the professor repeated.

A challenger has been found! Please wait patiently as we dispatch a Moderator to your location. Do not exit the loading station or you will be penalized.

“My… location?” Iliya repeated out loud. The game information was still on screen? Was this some sort of weird game, or prank? Iliya curled his empty hand into a fist, and studied the professor again. He was no longer looking at his phone, but at Iliya. Professor Antoni was watching him like he was a particularly dull student failing to properly enunciate a poem. Iliya came to a realization. “Are you the other challenger?”

“You invited me into the challenge yourself.”

Iliya’s brow furrowed. “By opening the app? No…” Iliya remembered how Professor Antoni hadn’t used his key card to enter the kitchen. “By opening the door.”

“Correct. This is your first game, I assume?”

“It isn’t yours?” His first game, huh? Did that mean there were more games? How did the games work? Iliya was burning with the need to know, but he couldn’t ask the professor. Iliya didn’t know the rules to this game, and it put him at a disadvantage. But by the way the professor was acting, this likely wouldn’t be a cooperative game, or even a game where they would achieve independent results. It would likely be player vs player. A chill ran down his spine as he remembered all the bodies that had been appearing. Professor Antoni even mentioned it himself. For now, Iliya decided to assume there was a connection, and remain on guard.

“This is not my first game.” The professor glanced at the door. Iliya guessed that someone else was bound to come. Another challenger?

Smoothly, the door slid open just as Iliya was beginning to panic. There was no one there. A ghost? Iliya thought. Then he looked down. There was a black cat slinking its way in. The cat entered the room and hopped up on the top of a chair. It wasn’t quite eye level with the two men, but they no longer had to tilt their heads completely down to see the cat.

“Welcome to Feed the Kitten,” the cat spoke. “I will be your Moderator for this game.”