Rot in Room 209 - Raine

The hallway stinks of bleach and piss.

The kind of sharp, eye-watering chemical reek that clings to your throat and makes you wonder if it’s worth breathing. I hold my breath anyway as I kneel outside Room 209, the bucket sloshing beside me, my knees aching from the cracked linoleum. There’s a dark stain on the carpet just inside the doorway, wide and dried around the edges. Brown now, but I know what it was when it was fresh. Everyone does.

No one bothered to clean it until I clocked in.

Figures.

I dip the brush in the solution and scrub with slow, practiced strokes, careful not to let the water spread too far. That always makes the smell worse. The sponge scratches softly against the floor, my only companion besides the hum of the flickering wall light overhead. That buzzes like a dying wasp.

Somewhere down the hall, someone’s yelling again. Another couple fighting, or maybe someone owes someone else money. It’s hard to keep track. This place attracts the worst kind of ghosts, loud ones, mean ones, and the kind that don’t go away when the sun comes up.

I keep my head down. That’s the rule; stay quiet, stay small, don’t get involved. Especially with the men.

A door creaks open behind me.

I don’t turn. Don’t need to, I can feel it, the change in the air. The way it always goes a little colder when someone like him steps into it.

“Hey,” the voice slurs, too close. “You’re that girl from last night, yeah?”

I keep scrubbing.

“You didn’t even say hi.” His boots scuff closer, sticky on the floor. “That’s rude. I watched you working. You bend down real nice.”

A cold knot twists in my gut.

“Let me help,” he says, suddenly kneeling beside me. His hand brushes my back, and I flinch before I can stop myself.

“I’m working,” I say softly, forcing the words out through a dry throat. “Please go back to your room.”

He laughs like I’ve said something cute. “C’mon, just a little fun. No one’ll know.”

His hand slides lower, pressing against the waistband of my jeans, and that’s it, my body moves before I have time to think. I shove backward, hard, knocking the bucket over in the process. Water splashes, soaking my pants and hissing across the hallway.

He grabs my wrist.

Tight.

Too tight.

I gasp, twisting, trying to pull away, but he’s stronger. Grinning, one that says he’s done this before and gotten away with it.

“Don’t be like that, sweetheart,” he murmurs, dragging me toward him. “You’re already on your knees.”

My vision blurs for a second, panic spiking hot and sharp. No one’s coming. No one ever does. Not for girls like me.

Girls who slip through cracks and learn not to scream. Girls with no family to call, no address worth staying at. The kind of girl who learned early that no one saves you, you get smart, or you get ruined.

I’m invisible. Disposable.

Fingers curled tight around my wrist, breath hot and sour against my cheek. I barely feel it. I don’t fight. There’s no point. I just let him drag me backwards, the door to his room swinging open like it’s done this a hundred times.

The carpet snags under my threadbare ballet pumps, the air goes stale, and the smell hits me first. Cheap aftershave, stale smoke, something sweet rotting in the bin.

I don’t scream. My body moves like it doesn’t belong to me. Limbs made of smoke, breath stuck somewhere behind my ribs.

It’s not the first time I’ve left myself behind.

That part of me; who I am, what I want, what I should feel, it slips out the back of my skull and watches from the ceiling. She’s calmer than I am. Cold and floaty. I envy her.

The door clicks shut behind us.

He’s saying something, laughing maybe, but I can’t make out the words anymore. Everything’s thick. Cotton in my ears. My eyes blur and sharpen and blur again. I can hear the blood in my neck louder than his voice.

I’m nodding, letting him pull. Because that’s what you do when you want to get out alive. You nod. You wait. You let it happen, and you hope the damage is something you can walk away from.

If you’re lucky.

And I stopped counting on luck a long time ago.

The door shatters against the wall, kicked by a battering ram. The man gripping me jumps, turns his head, but he’s too slow.

Heavy footsteps.

I look up, dazed, my brain trying to stitch itself back together fast enough to understand what I’m seeing.

He’s so tall. Towering, even in the dim light. All black, tailored suit, dress shirt open at the throat, no tie, no smile. His jaw is sharp, stubble clean, and his eyes…

They don’t look at me. They look through me. Past me. Fixed entirely on the man still clutching my arm like he forgot how to let go.

Then he speaks. A voice like nothing I’ve ever heard. Deep and smooth, but cruel around the edges, too quiet to shout, too sharp to ignore.

“Touch her again, and I’ll take your fucking balls.”

My breath catches.

The creature beside me stiffens. His grip loosens, but only slightly.

The man at the door moves like a predator with no need to rush.

“Let go,” he says again. “Or I’ll bite off every rotten finger that touched her.”