Hope you enjoy it -
33
By Neville Raper
Richard looked at the key fob in his hand,
the imitation leather matched his propensity to lie. He had reasons for being
here, and they were all his own. The fob was embossed with the number 33, the
gold lettering was all but faded erased by the hands of a thousand temporary
lodgers. He looked along the long corridor of floor 3, no doubt, in its day
this landing reflected the height of distasteful opulence, but that was, in its
day, this day was now dead.
Threadbare carpet nearly pounded out of
existence by soles on souls, the flocked wallpaper dripping from the walls the
shed skin of an age old lounge lizard. The corridor was
Dimly lit by the odd 2-watt bulb, more were
obsolete than worked. As a consequence, the dimly lit room doors resembled
upturned coffins ejaculated by the spoilt ground.
#
29, 30, 31, 32….33… The door, a plain
thing, obviously a replacement for the original as this in no way matched the
surrounding decayed grandeur, stood 7 foot by 4. A bog standard thing, cheap
paint daubed on cheaper wood, no finesse here. A plywood panel pasted over a
cedar skeleton. In places, the paint, as used up as the people who touched it
flaked and bubbled with age. No doubt, it was originally a deep brown but now
had become faded and corrupt by exposure to years of use. There were cracks and
holes in the wood surface the odd kick here the mistimed punch there.
The door furniture though was a something
completely different, a large shiny round door handle covered in ornate
carvings, words and symbols not spoken for a very long time, and as a
contradiction of this, it looked new, brand new.
#
He looked at the doorknob and found a slot
for a key, he once again looked at the fob, and for a split second felt a
slight feeling of displacement, a fishhook of somewhere else tugged in his
brain, the barb ripped a tiny hole in the fabric of his own reality and in that
instance somewhere a long way away a word was whispered. He blinked the tear
away.
The key slid into the lock like some lovers
secret place, he heard the audible click of the internal workings, withdrew the
spent key and gripped the handle. It felt cold in his hand, so cold it could
burn, a tingle ran up from his hand to his elbow it felt as if static had
infected his muscles, he put this down to the nylon in the carpet and the metal
earthing him, he never felt so grounded.
The door swung open, surprisingly, without
any resistance. Richard had expected, given the state of the rest of the hotel
that the hinges would have screeched out their outrage.
He stepped into the room.
#
He waited for the inevitable smell of old
semen sheets and the dust of illicit affairs to assail his senses. He was
surprised when it didn’t, in fact, there was no smell at all, a complete and
utter absence of any olfactory odours.
A double bed dominated the room, it was so
plain and in its place, it was almost invisible. There was a small desk
crouched in the corner corralled by a cheap upright chair. A bedside table made
of some indeterminate laminated substance, bolted on it sat a lamp, it appeared
to be tethered so it didn’t escape, perhaps it and the desk were planning an
escape, he thought to himself. Next to the lamp sat a phone a beacon of
connection to the world outside this microcosm.
Richard sat on the bed and looked at the
walls, they were the colour of spoilt eggs, but, again he was surprised that
they appeared to be in good condition. As if to reflect the chaos and
deterioration outside this container. The carpet, although as thin as the
current reality he felt, was spick and span, in fact, the room was spotless,
scene of crime clean. It felt hermetic, a bubble.
It should not have been this way..................
N Raper 2017
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