HAUNTED
HOTEL ROOM
Simone, her head buried under a thick pillow, slowly
opened her eyes. What was it? What had woken her from a deep slumber? Still
groggy with sleep, she heard the sound of a woman morning. Slowly pushing the
pillow off her head, she perked her ears… The sound had stopped. The room was
semi-dark.Only a patch of dark blue carpet glowed dimly from the bedside
nightlight.
Gradually she remembered where she was. She was in a hotel
room. She was seeing an important client tomorrow. They were going to finalize
a business deal… The distant sound of construction work marred the silence of
the night. What had disturbed her was probably the high pitched sound of drills
that in her sleep sounded like a woman’s wailing. Simone squinted at the alarm clock
built into the night table 12: 10 a.m.
Drawing in a deep sigh, she slapped the pillow back over
her head and began to slowly drift off to sleep. She woke with a start. There!
There it was again, the same sound of a woman pitifully crying, but sharper,
more piercing. Yanking the pillow off her head, she sat up, now wide awake. But
again, it was only the sound of distant drills.
She cursed silently; sleep was impossible now. It would
take her at least an hour to drift off to sleep again, and the night was short.
Tossing her legs over the edge of the bed, she groped with fumbling feet for
the hotel slippers. She needed to go to the bathroom.
Clicking on the overhead light, she stood before the vast,
shiny mirror positioned over a blackwash basin with glittering brass faucets
and a array of brand name toiletries. Bleary eyes stared back at her, brows
creased with the nagging thought of a botched business deal at tommorow’s
meeting. Her eyes swept over the reflection in the mirror of the bathroom’s
luxurious interior behind her. Gleaming black marble walls, two black toilet
bowls with separate function, snow whitetowels, and in the far corner a glass
walled shoer cell, all evidence of one of the perks of being a CEO: a five star
hotel.
Suddenly she gasped, staring at the tubr of special
toothpaste for sensitive gums she had brought from home. Crooked and dented
from frequent pressing, the tube had begun to slowly rock up and down. It took
a good ten seconds before it gently came to a stop again. Simone’s skin
crawled, her body rigid eith shock. Forcefully blowing out her breath, she
tried to shake off her terror. It was’nt real. She had been hallucinating. It
was because her sleep had been messed up. What was she thinking? She wasn’t a
kid anymore; she was the 35-year-old Chief Executive Officer of a huge, well
known company, for heaven’s sake. Shuffling back to bed, she tucked herself in.
pulling the bedcover over her head, after what seemed like hours, she finally
dozed off. Gently, ever so gently, a small thin hand rose from beside the bed
and tugged at her bedcover, revealing the sleeper’s fetal position. Then :
POUF! The light went off…
“What the….!” I cursed loudly. Just as the movie was
starting to get really scary, there had to be a power failure! Hoisting myself
up from the armchair across from the TV set, I stumbled my way in the dark
towards the kitchen where I groped for the oil lamp sitting on top of the
fridge. A soft crunching sound behind me caused goose bumps to sprout on my
arms and raise the hair on the back of my neck. Stifling the scream rising in
my throat, I hurriedly struck a match and lit the lamp.
A big fat mouse sat on the kitchen table clutching a
chunck of toast left on the table earlier in the evening. He stared at me with
glittering, bold bleck eyes, a bit of brunt bread stuck between his teeth.
After a few seconds he dropped the snack, leapt off the table and scurried away
to the dark corners of the kitchen. Oil lamp in my hand. I made my way back to
the sitting room. As I was sitting down to wait out the blackout, the light
popped back on. I grabbed the TV remote and stabbedyhe ON button. As the screen
glowed to life, across the middle was prominently splashed the words “THE END.”
