Sophomore year of college, I decided to visit a close highschool friend of mine at his university. We had spent many a summer hanging out at the pool and biking around town, and considering I had been out of state the last couple years, it was to be a nice reunion. He was at a very well-known party school, but I figured I had done my fair share of raging so I could handle it. Considering the gallons of blood coating the building the next morning, holy fuck I could not have been more wrong.
I'll start with what I remember:
I arrived there, and dropped my stuff off at friend #1's apartment. A two-bedroom highrise unit, shared with a random student. Friend and his roommate were polite, but did not really know eachother. Roommate was a foreign guy and there was a language barrier, so they kept it very professional. So, friend and I head over to another friend's place, to catch up and pregame for bars later.
Everything is going well. The drinking rate is aggressive, but fuck it we all drank together a lot in highschool, we'll be fine.
Memories start to get less clear here, but I know we headed to a bar for a special. A special hour, where you paid once and could drink as much as you could order within that timeframe. A dozen or so of us basically filled every inch of our table with drinks, but otherwise had a great time, didn't cause any trouble.
Memory is very hazy by now, but I know that, according to everyone else, Friend #1 and I left this bar before midnight, intending to go get some drunk food then meet up with everyone at the next bar.
That's my last memory. 2-3 miles from his apartment, Friend and I set out from a bar full of old friends, blackout, into the snowy winter night to find food and rejoin our compatriots for more festivities after.
SUDDENLY, I WAKE UP. FUCK... WHERE AM I?
I'm laying on my friend's kitchen table. Weird, why am I not on his couch? Or even on the floor? Who sleeps on a table?
I sit up, and go to put my feet on the floor. It's wet. Welp, that explains why I didn't just pass out on the floor... until I look down.
BLOOD THE KITCHEN FLOOR IS A SHALLOW POOL OF BLOOD OH FUCK
I take off my shoes, and step into the blood, figuring fuck it I'll just wash it off, I need to get off this table. I go to my friend's half of the apartment (they shared only the kitchen) to wash off, and... it's locked.
Well, that explains why I didn't sleep on his couch. I check my phone - it's like 10am, he's probably awake, I knock on the door and my friend answers it, bleary eyed but alive. He steps out, with the usual oh shit do-you-remember-what-happened-last-night face.
He is ALSO surprised by the pools of blood on the floor. Okay, so that makes two of us. We check both of our bodies - no cuts, no indications that it is either of our blood. ...uh oh.
Just then, the door to the apartment opens, and it's his foreign roommate. We give him a slow greeting, only to be blown off by what is clearly a FURIOUS guy, who steps into his own half for a second. We stand there dumbfounded, and the roommate appears with a final box of stuff from his room, heading towards the door.
Weird.
"What are you up to man? Moving some stuff? Sorry if we were loud last night"
His response, which I WILL NEVER FORGET FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE, was to do this:
"I'm moving out."
This guy was not kidding. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? We're both ask him - "what happened? Why are you moving out?"
His only response? YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID
holy. shit. What the fuck DID we do? Friend and I just sort of stand there dumbfounded, as the roommate storms out with his last box of stuff. We check his half - yup, no personal items left. Dude was not kidding. He is moving the fuck out. Holy balls.
Obviously in complete shock, the two of us take a seat at the kitchen table, and try to squeeze out even an ounce of memory from the night. He pulls out his phone - nothing relevant, except... WAIT. About a hundred outbound calls to one of our friends, ranging from about 4am onwards. Fucking ominous. I get up to grab my phone to check for the same when, there's a knock at the door.
???
So, we answer the door, and it's apartment cleaning staff.
"Hi, can we help you?"
"Yes, I am here for the work order"
"Sorry, which work order? Nothing is broken"
"Uhhh, sir there was a work order request filed this morning to clean up the blood in the unit"
At this moment, we both realize it must have been ordered by his now ex-roommate. The cleaning lady sees that we don't know what's going on, and puts it all together.
"Oh sir, you must be the one who caused the blood all over the building. Must have been quite a night"
...did she just say all over the building?
So we step out into the hallway, and there is a clear trail of blood leading from the door to the elevator. As we're gawking, she continues:
"Yes sir, that's a lot of blood. All over the elevator walls and lobby as well this morning, too. Not to worry, though, it mops up easily"
Double dumbfounded, we step aside and let her in.
We call my other friend - turns out he was asleep by the time we started calling, but he is clearly concerned about the timeline. Even if we had walked home in the most convoluted path possible, it should have taken 30 minutes tops. Why were we calling until the sun came up? Where were we?
Of course, we couldn't answer that question.
We checked my phone - not a single phone call. Weird. However, there were images. Images that would prove to be our final clues. There were only about a half dozen of them:
That's it.
that's all I ever learned of that night - no friends know anything, his ex-roommate wouldn't talk to us, and this was before geolocation or anything useful from the photos.
We jokingly say that we murdered someone that night, but... well honestly we don't know that we didn't. lol.