Room 109

Masaru clicked the lights on in Room 109 upon entering the threshold. Bulbs clicked awake, and within a second, heavily saturated pink and crimson brightness shone out from the side sconces. Little light came from the ceiling, because that space was wholly taken by an enormous mirror that spanned nearly the entirety of the room.

He entered the room fully, and the door closed behind him. Deep red carpet led to the center of the room, where Masaru beheld the strangest bed he’d ever seen. Instead of a traditional bedframe, the western-style mattress was held by a massive plastic hand. It was the sort of material that children’s play equipment was made of. Years had robbed it of its synthetic sheen, but the empty casing still looked absolutely surreal. Proportions were respectfully accurate, with the mattress fitting fully into the hand’s palm and fingers. A massive thumb angled up at the back edge, becoming the closest thing to a headboard.

The sight was so overwhelming, Masau didn’t even notice the room’s mural. When his focus finally moved from the bed, across the dark wood cabinets, and past the bathroom entrance, he saw them.

The eyes.

Pick.pick.pick.pick.pick.pick.

The eyes were always there.

He almost yelped in shock. Along the main wall, a sensual painting of nothing but two enormous feminine eyes looked out at him. Their gaze was frozen directly on him as he stood there in silence. Age had turned the whites to browns, and the overall detail was slowly disappearing into nothingness, but there was no mistake- two eyes, each over two meters in width, were peering at him through their eternal decor.

The tug was there again. Instinctive reaction caused Masaru’s hand to raise to his pressed collar and pull it from his neck. The fabric was too rough. His neck was too aggravated. This room was colder than the hallway. They didn’t blink. They never blinked.

Masaru forced himself to look away. Intentional breaths helped him calm his mind and return to his efforts. He’d come to inspect the room, and it seemed fine. He had no desire to check for the hidden camera or confirm its functionality. One less camera was one less invasion. He’d seen enough.

But then the mirror’s reflection caught his attention.

haveyoueveractuallyseenyourselfwithoutamirror?

Even though the mirror was mounted flatly on the ceiling, directly facing the bed, when Masaru looked at it, all he could see was the mural of the eyes on the nearby wall. It should have been impossible due to the angle, yet when Masaru checked again, the mirror was very much reflecting the eyes that were out of perspective, and not the bed that was beneath it.

Curiosity overpowered logic, and Masaru moved closer to the center of the room. The air conditioning cycle ended, and the sounds of the circulation faded, returning everything to near silence. Masaru took several slow steps to the edge of the bed and looked up. Now, the mirror wasn’t showing the eyes, but its had become clouded and unrefined. He could make out the basic shapes of the bed and himself, but it was warped, smeared, and muted in color or detail. He made sure to keep his eyes on the mirror as he stepped backwards towards where he had been standing. To his surprise, the imagery slowly came back into focus, but the perspective remained purely on the eyes.

Everything about the moment unsettled Masaru, and logic returned, driving him to leave that room. As his heart rate began to rise, he turned and made his way back to the door. When his hand moved to the handle, it didn’t budge.

pick

The automatic lock had triggered.

Now his heart rate was rising even faster. Sweaty palms shook the handle again and again, but nothing happened. As he patted his pockets, he realized he had left the keys in the door. He was locked in the room.

“No, no, no…” Masaru sighed as his heart began to race.

He didn’t like this room. The mirror was wrong. Why was everything always wrong? He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be THERE, in any of this building. More pulls of desperation shook the door, but the handle didn’t budge.

So Masaru began to pound on the door in the hopes that the cleaner would hear him.

pick

“Hello?! Helllllooooo!!!!” Masaru shouted as he pounded his hand on the door.

He shouted and slammed for minutes, but the cleaner didn’t come. For all he knew, the man had left for the day once Masaru had arrived.

After several more minutes of banging, pulling, shouting, and nearly panicking, Masaru resolved himself to accept that he was stuck. The air conditioning never reactivated. The room was beginning to feel stale and humid. The carpet felt moist beneath his shoes. His neck was raw. The darkness began to spread in his eye. A migraine was on the way, and he was trapped in this small enclosure until the timer expired.

Nerves threw Masaru to the reservation terminal that was mounted on the wall. He prayed the system hadn’t triggered a full night stay. To his great relief, it was only set for one hour. Fifty-four minutes remained.

pickatthehealing

He had to stay calm. A panic attack in a room like this would not be a pleasant experience, and he couldn’t afford to spiral. All he could do was try to focus his breathing and ignore the scent of the cleaner that was coating the air he strained to pull through his mask.

Pick

Breathe

Pick

Breathein

Pick

breatheout

pick

breathepickin

breathepickout

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Trembling legs led him to find comfort. There were no chairs in the room, only the bed. He didn’t want to lie in it, but he also didn’t want to sit on the damp, stained ground. So the bed won the vote of disdain.

Ripawayeverybitofhealing

Sweat ran down his brow as the room began to feel stifling. Muscles strained to lift bone and soul as Masaru found himself lurching into the bed with a groan. Everything was heavier now. It was hot. So hot. It shouldn’t have been this hot. Suddenly, he was beyond exhausted, and the bed embraced him like a womb. As his body settled onto the firm and welcoming comforter, a drowsiness struck him that hadn’t been present even minutes ago. Fabric was cold to his face even though he was drenched in sweat. He didn’t want his face to touch the cloth; he always hated that. So he turned onto his back and faced the mirror.

His eyes closed as he tried to focus. The panic was there. Pick. Rip. HEwasALONEandhewouldbeALONEforever. Pulses came like fists. His ribs were sure to crack any minute. An hour was an eternity, and he would spend it in this room. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. His eyes opened, and he let out a screech. The (E)e(Y)y(E)e(S)s weeeerree STIIIIILLLLLLLL watching.

The eyes. The real eyes were back.

“No! No!” Masaru begged.

They were there above him. Deep in the smudged reality of the mirror, the orbs were back and as clear as ever. The mural of eyes watched Masaru flinch in dread as the shining orb eyes looked down with malicious teasing. Something was oh so very wrong anditwasonlygoingtogetworse.

Then he heard the voices.

Someone else was in the building. More than one person. Masaru almost started to call out, but then he heard a woman’s voice. It was a man and a woman.

Their words were muffled to the point of merely being strange, guttural drones, but he could tell that there were two. So he froze and waited.

There was a clicking noise on the other side of the wall, and the two guests entered the room connected to his. Only a few inches of insulation and drywall separated them, and now Masaru could clearly tell that he was correct in his assumptions. One voice was feminine and flirtatious, albeit trying and theatrical. The other was tired and gruff. Their words were still unrefined, but he heard enough.

There was another click as the door locked them in, and the feminine voice let out an overdone laugh as something happened.

“Please, no,” Masaru sighed as he realized he was going to have to hear everything.

Something shifted and fell to the floor. Bodies moved with force and chaos. False, performative moans sounded out. Swift, ravenous demands and requests tumbled from hurried lips. Masaru covered his ears as the eyes stayed open, staring at him from the warped glass.

Creaks and thuds told him something was shifting and pushing against the wall nearest him. At first, they were slow, then the thuds became faster. More exaggerated cries and sighs slipped through the room divisions and between Masaru’s fingers. Her voice, though unclear, was carving into his mind.

More sounds bled out. Masaru clenched his eyes shut and pressed his palms to the sides of his head as hard as he could, but her voice was still there. The eyes were still there.

Sighs morphed and devolved into deepened, rage-filled howls.

Layers of vocal tearing built upon themselves as moans became screams and exclamations became shatters. The teeth were at his neck once more.

The walls shook.

Screams coated his being. Everything was freezing now. Was she screaming in hate or in terror? Or in both. Animalistic wretches echoed in the ducts. Chattering teeth echoed from the corners that he couldn’t see. The hand seemed as though it was closing. His heart threatened to explode.

Then it stopped.

The eyes were gone.

The walls were no longer shaking, and the voices calmed. Seconds of silence passed, then footsteps moved away from the wall. The door opened, and the bodies drifted down the hall, away from Masaru and his prison. He dared to look at the reservation timer.

He still had nineteen minutes left.

His skin was starting to itch.

He had to get up.

He had to get out.

He couldn’t leave, but the moment that the lock undid itself, he would flee this place.

Even if he was simply returning to the back office space at the front of the hotel, it would be enough. He wanted to be far away from this bed and those mural eyes.

Masaru forced himself out of the bed, observing that his body had left a deep imprint in the mattress. More itches danced along his neck and scalp. Scratches offered no relief. He rose and stood facing the timer. Minutes crept like glaciers, but eventually the timer reached one minute. Masaru scratched at the back of his neck once again and felt bumps. Several of them.

Forty seconds.

Now his back was itching.

Thirty seconds.

Scratching that revealed even more bumps.

Twenty seconds.

Bumps everywhere.

Nine seconds.

Everything was itching.

The door unlocked, and Masaru ran. To his absolute relief, it flung open, and he gasped as he breathed in the circulated air of the hallway. His keys were still there in the door handle. After yanking those away, he pulled the door closed with all of his might and rushed back down the hall to his office.

His skin felt like it was alive, and he wanted to rip away every inch of it. Delirious fingers clawed at flesh and cloth as his face contorted into a strained grimace. Now his cheek was itching. A weak, hopeless grunt escaped his lopsided lips as he dug his nails into more bumps. Tiny red marks lined his hand as he looked down in terror. When he got to his office, he rushed to retrieve his phone. He wanted to take a photo of his skin to see what was wrong. He was breaking out in something, and he feared what it might be.

When he picked it up from his desk, the real terror settled in. He’d had a dozen missed calls. None were from work, likely just automated scams. But the date and time caught his attention.

His phone was telling him that it was mid-day, three days later.

“What?” Masaru muttered as his muscles spasmed then seized.

That was when he saw the sunlight.

Diluted beams of warm afternoon haze cut through the frosted glass of the front door.

“That’s not right… That can’t be right…” Masaru frantically whispered as he approached the entrance.

It was the dead of night when he entered Room 109. He’d only been in there an hour. For it to even be several hours later was beyond confusing. But now his phone said nearly seventy hours had passed. Trembling fingers restarted the phone to see if it was some manner of bug, but when the display reactivated, it once again confirmed the date and time as being almost three days after he had originally arrived.

More itches screamed across his skin, and Masaru found himself wanting to grab a knife and flay himself alive. As sunlight covered his face, he dared to take a photo of himself for confirmation. His hand raised to hold the self-facing camera to eye level, and he saw that his eyes were bagged and exhausted. Stubble covered his jaw. And to his abject terror, hundreds of small dots lined his cheek, neck, hands, and everywhere else he scanned.

“B-Bed bugs…” he whimpered as his fingers spasmed between confusion, terror, and rage.