9

The only reason that I haven’t quit on the spot is out of sheer curiosity. I’d probably quit when the day was over. To work around such bizarre rooms every day was too much for anyone. I wondered how the patrons themselves can stand it. It would have been nice just to see one normal room. Of course, when one thinks that in a hotel that might as well be sentient, said hotel starts playing tricks on you.

I was called down to the next room with two extra pillows. It seemed like a normal enough request. I could only imagine how it would play out. I knocked and entered the room.

I was shocked. There was nothing wrong with the room. I smiled for a moment, and touched the mahogany flock wallpaper to make sure it was real. I rubbed my shoes on the thick dark blue carpet in case carpet stopped being soft. There was exactly one normal room in this hotel.

Then there was the man inside the room. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, a pair of comically large headphones and tortoise shell horn rimmed glasses. He saw me an silently panicked. I was standing there with the two pillows, just happy nobody was yelling at me.

The Hawaiian shirted man briskly walked up to me and whispered in my ear. “Thank you, but you need to get out of here quickly. They can hear us.”

“Who? Is someone spying on you? Did you need me to call the police?”

“Okay, you don’t know. Listen to this:” The Hawaiian shirted man gingerly took off the headphones and put them on me. Over the headphones, there were great big booming footsteps. I consciously avoided speaking too loudly, asking the man to turn the volume down. He lifted up my left earphone and told me that those things were just outside.

“What are they?” I asked taking the headphones off.

“I don’t know, but they hear us talking, and I can only hear them through those headphones. I don’t know what they want, but if I’m quiet, they won’t have any reason to crush me. Now PLEASE get out.”

I stepped out the room, and the door softly clicked shut behind me. I could have always asked if he wanted to move to another room, but he probably wouldn’t think the giants were gone because he moved two doors away. With this room, he at least has those headphones.