I was 27, working nights as a security guard in a student accommodation block in West London, and at first it felt like any other dead-end job. Long corridors, buzzing lights, noise complaints, lonely hours, and that constant feeling that the building never really slept. But after a while, the place started getting under my skin. Little things at first. Knocking where no one was there. Voices through the intercom.
The sense that someone was always just out of sight, watching, waiting for me to come a little closer. I kept telling myself there had to be a rational explanation because that is what people like me do. You do your rounds, write it down, and get on with it. But the deeper I got into those nights, the more the building seemed to close around me. What scared me most was not just the feeling that something was wrong, but the sense that whatever was there already knew me, and that I had stepped into something old, violent, and unfinished.
Even now, years later, I cannot think about that place without feeling the same cold dread in my chest. Some jobs stay with you because they are hard. That one stayed with me because part of me never really left.
I was 27, working nights as a security guard in a student accommodation block in West London, and at first it felt like any other dead-end job. Long corridors, buzzing lights, noise complaints, lonely hours, and that constant feeling that the building never really slept. But after a while, the place started getting under my skin. Little things at first. Knocking where no one was there. Voices through the intercom.
The sense that someone was always just out of sight, watching, waiting for me to come a little closer. I kept telling myself there had to be a rational explanation because that is what people like me do. You do your rounds, write it down, and get on with it. But the deeper I got into those nights, the more the building seemed to close around me. What scared me most was not just the feeling that something was wrong, but the sense that whatever was there already knew me, and that I had stepped into something old, violent, and unfinished.
Even now, years later, I cannot think about that place without feeling the same cold dread in my chest. Some jobs stay with you because they are hard. That one stayed with me because part of me never really left.