Flood

I was participating in a dance party with my suitemates &c. when a boy arrived at our door and announced that the basement and part of the first floor had flooded. So 10-ish pajama-clad girls all poured out of the third-floor suite, swept along the hallway, spilled down four flights of stairs...

and stopped abruptly on the bottom step, like people piling up at the edge of a cliff in movies. We stood on the forest-green linoleum and stared down at murky water: at least 5 cm deep, silt underneath it.

A few minutes later, we were all barefoot in the flooded rec room, swishing around and commenting on the probable fate of the hapless TV (which was chained to the floor). When our feet froze, we perched on the billiard table for a brief respite before splashing back in.

Who says college students are more sensible? Perhaps our mothers would be disappointed.

We left footprints on the dusty linoleum (rainwater patterns of toes and heels), and echoes of laughter in the cold stairwell.