The Last Desk Before the Void

It was the morning of my architecture entrance exam at the Colombo School of Design, held in an old colonial building that had been converted into a temporary examination hall. The corridors smelled of dust and stale varnish, and the wooden floorboards creaked under every step. I was assigned Room 12, a high-ceilinged classroom with tall windows that let in the gray monsoon light. The desks were arranged in four neat rows, each bearing a small paper with a roll number. I found my seat in the third row, the last desk before the back wall. It was number 41. The desk directly in front of mine was number 40, occupied by a girl with long, ink-black hair that fell over her shoulders like a curtain.

As I settled, I noticed she looked strikingly similar to a girl I had seen in my drawing class—Nayana. But when I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her answer sheet, I saw the name ‘Ishini’ written in neat, slightly trembling script. I shrugged it off and asked if she had an extra pencil. She turned, and her eyes—large, dark, and oddly empty—met mine. She handed me a pencil without a word, and I noticed her fingernails were bitten down to the quick, the cuticles raw. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and the exam, but she spoke in a monotone, as if reciting lines she didn’t believe.

The exam began with a paper on spatial reasoning. I was deep in a question about isometric projections when I felt a cold draft on my ankles, as if a door had opened behind me. There was no door—just a blank wall. I turned to check, and that’s when I saw it: faint, almost invisible pencil marks on the wall behind my desk. They formed a line of numbers, descending from 40 to 1, with dashes and scratches. At the bottom, barely legible, was the word ‘DON’T’ followed by an arrow pointing to the ceiling. I looked up and noticed a pattern of water stains on the old ceiling, arranged in a way that seemed too orderly to be accidental. They formed an arrow pointing down, toward the desk.

I tried to focus on the exam, but my mind kept wandering. I glanced at Ishini. She was sitting perfectly still, her head bowed over her paper, but I could see her hand moving—not writing, but drawing. Curious, I leaned closer. She was sketching a face on her answer sheet, a face with hollow eyes and a mouth stretched into a silent scream. It looked like a self-portrait, but the features were distorted. Her hand moved with unnatural speed, as if guided by something else. I tapped her shoulder and whispered, ‘What are you doing?’ She didn’t turn. Instead, she stopped moving and her head turned slowly, unnaturally, until her eyes met mine. And then she smiled—not a human smile, but a wide, lipless grin that split her face. She pointed to the clock on the wall, which was ticking backward.

Time began to warp. The hands of my watch spun counterclockwise. The other students seemed frozen, their pencils hovering over their papers. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t move. Ishini stood up, and as she did, her features began to shift—her hair thinned, her cheekbones sharpened, and her skin became taut. She was no longer the girl I had seen; she was a gaunt, hollow thing with eyes like black pits. She spoke, but her voice came from everywhere, as if the room itself was speaking: ‘You were supposed to be at desk 39, but you took 41. A mistake.’

Then she reached into her desk and pulled out a roll book, yellowed and brittle. She opened it, and I saw a list of names with dates and times. At the top was a name crossed out in red ink, and below it, in the same handwriting as the wall, was written: ‘Vega. 822. Died. 2005.’ I recognized the number 822 from the front of the paper I had seen earlier, but her name was Ishini, not Vega. She said, ‘You heard the whisper, didn’t you? The one that calls from the back of the room when the clock strikes nine. You chose the last desk, so you must answer.’

I looked at my answer sheet. The squares where I had drawn my solutions had changed—they now contained a single word repeated over and over: ‘STAY.’ Across the room, the other students began to turn their heads in unison, their eyes glazed, their mouths opening and closing like fish. They repeated, ‘Stay. Stay. Stay.’ The walls began to bleed, not with blood, but with dark ink that seeped from the old plaster, forming symbols I didn’t recognize.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. When I opened them, the exam was over. The room was empty, the desks cleared, and the clock read 12:00 PM. My paper was blank, but at the top, in red ink, was a number: 822. I stood, trembling, and turned to leave. At the door, I looked back at the back wall. The numbers were gone, replaced by a single phrase: ‘You have been counted.’

I never spoke of it. I passed the exam and joined the college, but every year on that same date, the clock in my room (I had taken it from that exam hall—I don’t know why) ticks backward for exactly one minute at 9:00 AM. And in the mirror, for just a second, I see a face that is not mine—a girl with long black hair, smiling the same lipless smile. And I hear a whisper, faint but clear: ‘The last desk awaits your return.’