Room Service

There was the steady drip of a leaky faucet. We could all see it. No one paid it any mind. Within the blink of an eye, a hundred years had passed. The sink suddenly sprang into a million pieces, finally submitting to the pressure. What a tragedy. Such pretty white porcelain. All it would have taken to save it was a little twist of the knob…

Lamenting the loss of the sink, some horrid demonic choir started blaring away to my right. I appreciated the sentiment, but the execution was a bit much for me. There was a perverse rhythm to their song, finely attuned so that the exact moment you were sighing in relief that it was finally over, it started back up. I kept falling for it, too.

For some reason unable to turn my head, I started blindly stabbing at the air, trying to reach the source of the sound. My hand landed on something cold and hard. The image of the ill-fated sink faded, and my eyelids slid open.

I found myself in a dark and unfamiliar room. The back wall was entirely obscured by a massive curtain, presumably blocking out a windowfront. Next to a small coffee table stood an armchair which was facing the bed. My clothes for the next day were laid out on it: suit shirt and jacket stretched over the chairback, legs of my pants dangling from the seat, rolled-up sock wad tossed onto the crotch area. That suit jacket had been a gift from my late father. Seeing it calmed me down.

I was supposed to be here.

The sound returned in full force. I could feel its vibrations in my hand. I turned and realized that its source was the hotel phone on my bedside table, an old rotary model. Instinctively, I picked up the receiver.

“Hello…?”

A somewhat muffled voice answered. Somehow, it seemed replete of any defining characteristics, nothing that could hint at the sex or age of its owner.

“Hello. This is room service.”

“Oh, hello…”

The ensuing silence was tense. It was only broken by an occasional crackling noise coming from the other side of the line. Despite the tension, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. While I was steadily sinking into a nightmare about a wide-eyed horrified bridge troll gnawing on the bones of the vagrants whose spot he had taken, the voice came through again.

“Stay with us, Mr. Nakategawa. This is important.”

Hearing my name jolted me sufficiently.

“What? Is something wrong…?”

A popping sound on the other end, followed by shushing.

“This is room service. This is important. Stay in your room. You will be serviced.”

Obviously, I was dumbfounded.

“I 'will be serviced'…? I’m sorry… I didn’t order anything. You must have the wrong room…”

The voice shook its head.

“No. You are Mr. Nakategawa, you will stay in your room, and you will be serviced. These are in-dis-pu-ta-ble facts.”

The voice stretched the “indistputable”, less for emphasis and more to sound it out, at least that’s how it came across. I tried to remember what the person behind the counter had looked like at check-in but could only remember their uniform. I was starting to get frustrated.

“I don’t want any service though! I don’t know what orders you have received, but it’s-“

My eyes darted around the room, but there was no clock in sight. Perhaps it hid itself somewhere along the left wall, which was shrouded in darkness. Anyway, the voice had understood.

“We are committed to round-the-clock service. We are committed to delivering the ultimate customer experience. We are room service, and you will stay in your room.”

The voice’s insistence on the latter point was particularly grinding my gears. I had never been the rebellious sort. My wife affectionately referred to me as her 'little mollusc', a nickname I wasn’t too fond of but would never have dared to disagree with. Now, however, I could feel long bottled-up spite rising from somewhere deep within me. There was a strange and unknown pleasure in it: Here was an authority I could rebel against to my heart’s content- I was paying them, after all.

Without another word, I freed myself from the blanket, put my glasses on and got up. The voice didn’t seem to notice; the crackling noises proceeded at their usual frequency. With the receiver pressed to my head, I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The walls were lined with identical doors placed at a consistent interval. I imagined my coworkers sleeping behind them, their suits and blazers laying neatly folded on a chair, ready to be put on for tomorrow’s professional development conference. For a moment, my courage left me. I listened intently, but there was no sound outside of the crackling reaching me through the phone. I took a first tentative step down the hall.

Then another…

And another…

And-

“Hold it right there, young man!”

I almost threw the receiver away. Why was I even still holding it…? A different voice had just spoken to me. It was much lower and more raspy than the first. Its owner must have been a lifelong smoker.

“Where do you think you’re going, huh? Back to your room! NOW!!”

I froze up. I could neither find the courage to continue walking, nor was I able to follow the voice's command. A loud wet pop came through the line, like someone had stuck their finger into their mouth and then rapidly flicked it out.

"I'm not telling you twice!"

Suddenly, the phone cord wrapped itself around my arm, so tightly that I let out an involuntary yelp. I was lifted off my feet, reeled in like a careless trout who had all too happily taken the bait thrown out for it. The rooms of my coworkers flew past me like the cabins of a night train setting off into the darkness. All the while, the second voice was laughing; an ugly, arrogant laugh that constantly hovered on the edge of a coughing fit. Before I knew it, I was back on my bed. The door was closed once again. Had I closed it...? I was startled by another loud pop.

"Now stay put, you little bastard! We're not doing all of this for fun, you know."

The cord now looped around my neck. I didn't dare make a retort, afraid I'd be choked out by this opponent I had gravely underestimated. The first voice reemerged with a crackle.

"Thank you for your co-op-er-a-tion. Service will commence shortly."

With a hiss, the ceiling lamp began dispensing a strange fog, and the curtains on the other end of the room slid to the side.