Reptile Room

- I can't stand you- he growls and then quickly moves closer and glues our lips tightly together. Seconds later, he pulls away and leaves the dressing room, pulling his hair...

I could always hear strange noises coming from the room next to me. A cacophony of people having intercourse. The noise kept me awake all night. But the strange thing was, he lives alone.

When dorm picks opened, two beds were left. My hometown girl, Chloe Parker, beat me by a step and grabbed Room 501—the honors suite. That left me with Room 502, the rich-girl suite. In 501, the try-hards rode her nonstop. She made grad school. In 502, I ran errands and pulled five grand a month. At graduation, she snapped and shoved me off the roof. "It's all your fault. Without you, I wouldn't wake up every day buried in studying. How'd you stack hundreds of thousands in four years while all I got was a useless grad school offer?" I opened my eyes. Dorm selection day. Behind me, Chloe shoved past and lunged forward. "I'm picking first. I want 502."

At a company party, Taylor Kennedy plays a game of mouth-to-mouth cookie biting with his female assistant as everyone watches. I blend into the crowd and laugh along. The room instantly falls silent. The assistant bursts into tears and plays the victim. Taylor lets go of her, turns to me, and coldly scolds me in front of the entire company. He berates me for not knowing how to read the room and being a buzzkill. Then, without hesitation, he wraps his arm around the assistant and kisses her deeply as I watch. If this were before, I would've stormed over in a rage and ripped them apart. Then, I would've humiliated her in front of everyone, not caring whose pride I trampled. But now, I feel nothing. Not even as I watch them kiss. Not even though today marks my ten-year anniversary with Taylor.

Waking up in an unfamiliar place (Hotel), Meifeng found herself bare and cold, with pain scattered all over her body. Unable to recall how she got there, her mind filled with horrified thoughts, as a shiver ran through her spine. Just then the door of the bathroom attached to the room opened, revealing a man wearing black bathrobe. Her eyes widened, shock evident on her face as she pointed towards him, “Yo…You…” She stuttered. Instantly panicked about the girl, he ran towards the bed, trying to touch her face, only to see her flinch in fear and drill herself in duvet in the next second. Wrapping herself like a sushi, the girl only revealed her eyes, which darted towards the messy condition of the room with clothes scattered all over. “How am I here?”

After regaining my hearing, I happily march over to the room of my arch-rival, eager to flaunt in front of him—only to hear him moaning my name as he does what all guys do for pleasure.

On Mother's Day, I was planning to give my mother-in-law a special gift, but to my surprise, I saw her enter a room with a Black man. When she came out half an hour later, her face was flushed…

In a cruel place where there's no room for failure because failure means blood and death. The challenge is simple. Survive and escape the claws of your doom. The race against death's door begins once you enter the door...

My firefighter husband had fallen from a great height during a mission and was rushed into the emergency room, covered in blood. As the only person capable of saving him, I stood just outside the operating room, calm and composed. Reaching for my makeup bag, I began carefully applying my makeup. Another doctor, panic-stricken, rushed toward me and shouted, "Dr. Warhol! The patient's kidney has ruptured! You're the only surgeon in all of Switzerland who can perform this life-saving procedure! If you don’t act now, he’s going to die!" I continued shaping my eyebrows with steady precision, not even glancing in his direction. "Quiet," I said coolly. "If you keep yelling, my brows might end up crooked."

Chloe, the maid I share a room with, is dead. I watched the head housekeeper and another maid pin her to the floor. I watched them as the housekeeper vomited up a slimy, black web of fungus and forced it down Chloe's throat. I should have screamed. I wanted to. But my selective mutism took over, trapping the sound in my throat. It probably saved my life. The next day, Chloe was alive again. She walked into the young miss’s room to brush her hair, just like always. I was so scared I dropped the water basin I was holding. As I stood there, frozen, the young miss leaned in close, her voice a whisper only I could hear. "You've noticed it too, haven't you? They're not themselves anymore."