A Night in the Hotel | Story

A Hotel Story

The room was cool and quiet. And small. Johnson sighed and leaned back against the door, looking at the mop and bucket propped on the floor in front of him. Paper towels and cleaning sprays stood on a shelf built into the wall next to him. Across from the shelf was a small locker where he could put a few of his personal items while he was working. And that was about it for the janitor’s closet. Johnson sighed again.

It’s not that he minded cleaning. It’s that the whole reason he had to clean in the first place was because most people simply didn’t pick up after themselves. He realized that he had a job because of that, but still. He reached for the mop. The yellow-painted wood was cool beneath his fingers. If people would just pick up after themselves, he could focus on regular maintenance, regular cleaning. Like vacuuming. He liked vacuuming. He shook his head. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

The lighting was dim. It was the middle of the night so the hotel turned the lights down to be more comfortable for the guests. Johnson walked down the hallway, heading towards the room at the end, his feet plodding on the rough red carpet.

As he approached the door he thought he heard some sounds from inside. He reached for his master keycard and paused. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the room. The guests were supposed to have cleared out earlier in the day and now he was going to clean up a mess they left in the bathroom.

Listening carefully, he didn’t hear the noise again, so he shrugged and slid his keycard through the lock. With a soft click the light beside the slot turned green and Johnson entered. Everything looked normal… a little disheveled, a bit of a mess like rooms often are when guests leave… but there was a strange odor lingering in the air. He couldn’t quite place what it was. It was sort of sour, and strange. He thought it must have something to do with whatever mess he was there to cleanup in the bathroom.

The door just inside the room on his left lead to the bathroom so he pushed it open. Water was sloshed all over the floor along with a strange green ooze. In the tub lounged a figure with long green legs and arms hanging over the sides of the tub and a very round head sporting short triangular ears on top. “Hey there, bub,” said the figure.

Johnson stood there blinking for a few moments then slowly closed the door, turned around, and walked back down the hall back toward the janitor’s closet.
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