The Fifth Floor Bathroom

I work the overnight shift at the Meridian Data Center, a sprawling, windowless facility that hums with the constant drone of servers. We’re a third-party storage hub, and our cleaning staff is contracted from a service called ‘PureClean.’ Most of them don’t speak English, and they all wear the same uniform: light blue shirts with black pants for the women, grey shirts with khakis for the men. There’s one exception, a woman named Elara, who always greets me with a shy smile and a muttered ‘good evening’ in accented English.

Our bathroom is on the fifth floor, down a corridor lined with server racks that click and blink in the dim red emergency lights. The door to the bathroom is heavy, a solid steel fire door that always sticks. It screeches like a wounded animal when you push it open, and slams with a deafening bang when you let it go. It’s a sound I’ve grown used to, a reliable marker of movement in the silence.

Tonight, at 3 AM, the call volume was dead. I’d been staring at the blank screens for hours, my eyes burning. I needed to pee, so I trudged down the hallway, my footsteps echoing. The bathroom door, as always, fought me. I leaned my shoulder into it, and it groaned open. Inside, the flickering fluorescent light cast a sickly green pallor over the cracked tiles. By the sink, there was a PureClean woman, light blue shirt, black pants, her back to me. She was stuffing a trash bag into the bin, even though the cleaning schedule clearly stated the fifth floor was done at midnight. I assumed it was Elara, though she seemed too tall, too rigid. I said, ‘Hey, Elara, you’re up late,’ and stepped into the stall.

The stall door clicked shut. I did my business, my mind drifting. Then I heard a sound that made my blood run cold: the heavy door to the bathroom didn’t just creak—it whined, as if someone was slowly pushing it open, and then it didn’t slam. It closed with a soft, deliberate click. I froze. I had never heard that door close quietly. It always slammed, no matter how careful you were. My heart started to pound.

I finished and flushed. As I opened the stall door, the bathroom was empty. The trash bag was gone, and the bin looked pristine. I tried to push the heavy door open, but it wouldn’t budge. I threw my weight against it, and it moved a few inches, then stopped. The door was stuck, but it had never been stuck from the inside. I pushed harder, and it screeched open, revealing the corridor. But the corridor wasn’t empty.

Standing at the end of the hallway, under the red emergency light, was the cleaner. She was facing away from me, her light blue shirt and black pants now looked darker, almost black. She wasn’t moving. I called out, ‘Elara?’ No response. She started to walk away, but her gait was wrong, too fluid, like she was gliding. She turned the corner and disappeared.

I hurried back to my desk, my hands shaking. I told my supervisor, Marcus, about the odd encounter. He shrugged, ‘Maybe she’s just covering a shift. Don’t worry about it.’ But I couldn’t shake the feeling. The way she moved, the silence of the door.

The next day, the same thing. 3 AM, I needed to go. This time, I was determined to see her face. I pushed open the door, it screeched. She was there again, by the trash can, but she was wearing a different uniform: grey shirt, khakis. That was for the men. But it was the same figure, same height. I said, ‘Excuse me,’ and she turned.

Her face was smooth, blank, like a mannequin’s, but her eyes were black, no whites. I stumbled back, hitting the wall. She smiled, and her mouth was too wide, full of needle-like teeth. She spoke in a voice that was not her own, a chorus of whispers: ‘We are always watching. We keep the floor clean.’

I ran. I didn’t even bother to use the bathroom. I told Marcus, but he said I was sleep-deprived. But the next day, there were no cleaners on the fifth floor at all. And the door to the bathroom was gone. In its place was a smooth wall, as if there had never been a bathroom there. I asked my colleagues, but they all said we never had a bathroom on the fifth floor. They pointed to the second floor bathroom.

But I know what I saw. And every night, at 3 AM, I hear the screech of the heavy door, and the soft click of it closing, even though the wall is solid concrete. And I see the cleaner in the corner of my eye, always watching, always in her light blue shirt and black pants, or sometimes grey, but always with that smile. I’ve started taking my breaks outside, in the parking lot. But the door follows me. It’s always there, just a few feet away, waiting. And I know, one day, it will open, and she will be on the other side, and I’ll step in, and I’ll never come out.