Chapter 14.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the guts to take a look right now, and the only thought on my mind was to simply make it through the night until daybreak. I recited all the digits of pi that I’d memorized to try and pass the time in my head. Altogether I’d memorized a thousand digits, so it was a decent way to pass the time and keep my mind off of the sensation of being spooned by a ghost, whom in all likelihood was a figment of my imagination.

It was still an agonizing process playing the waiting game like this, but as time passed by, seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours. After an unknown duration of time passed by, I finally made out the sounds of vacuums going off in the room adjacent to mine. With that, I was certain it was morning and housekeeping was making its rounds to clean up the hotel’s rooms. I patiently waited until they arrived outside my room and I finally heard the glorious knock I’d waited so long for, along with a Juanita-like sounding voice, “houzkeepen.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Houzkeepen.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Houzkeepen.”

Clink. Beep beep.

The door swished open almost silently and I heard the steps of my Mexican savior as she magnanimously strut her way into the room. I couldn’t see her yet as I was still cowering while wrapped up in the comforter, but that was how she appeared in my mind.

It didn’t take long for her to notice there was still someone in the bed.

“Oh so sowwy. I deedn’t knoooo.”

With the words of a beautiful sounding Mexican angel acting as a trigger to set me free, teary-eyed, I leaped out from under the cover and prostrated myself on the ground, thanking her profusely for her fine work as a valued housekeeping lady.

“Sir deed yo wan me to clean up naw or layta?”

“It’s fine, I’m checking out now. You can go ahead and do your fine respectable work. The world truly doesn’t appreciate housekeeping women like you enough. You, my good woman, deserve a raise.”

In response to my words heralding her as mankind's savior, she shot awkward expressions in my direction like she didn’t know what to do. It took me a few seconds before I realized the reason behind her dilemma. All that presently covered my body was the towel from last night after I ran out of the bathroom.

“We don offa that type of serveece here, sir.”

“Hahaha. Sorry. Sorry. My bad, I forgot to get dressed after I took a shower last night. It’s definitely not what you’re thinking.”

She still looked doubtful despite my explanation, but I chose to ignore it and get out as soon as possible. When I passed her by and stepped into the bathroom, I glanced in her direction momentarily and I noticed her shooting me a wink, “but eef it’s fo yo I make eekseption.”

I suddenly felt more scared than last night, so I donned my clothes in record time before I sprinted out the door and ran down the corridor to safety. I handed in my keycard at the front desk, made a mad dash to my car, then sped off to make it to work on time for my shift. I’d heard the boss was a stickler on tardiness and docking people’s paychecks unreasonable amounts for even a single minute.

When I entered the building I greeted everyone as usual; however, I noticed that the junior technician Rick wasn’t around. When I asked a few of the others that were on good terms with him, nobody knew where he was. It was already an hour after when he was supposed to start his shift. He also didn’t call out sick today and this was apparently the first occurrence of this happening. He’d never failed to call beforehand to notify the office that he would be late or absent.

“Hey, Dio, you were the last one with him yesterday last night, right? Did he get drunk enough to the point that he wouldn’t be able to make it today? Did he mention anything to you?”

“No, he didn’t say anything about not being able to make it today; but now that you mention it, he did seem to be a bit out of it when I dropped him off at his place. When he got out of the car he’d mumbled to himself that he was way too wasted and mentioned how he was even seeing things, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t come in today. That’s all I really know though.”

“Dio, can you check up on him at his place after work?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

In all honesty, I’d rather not, but since I was the last person to see him, it was sort of my responsibility to check up on him and at least make sure he was okay. Thus, after work, I made my way over to his place once again.

Similar to me, he lived in an apartment complex, but he lived on the 14th floor. I made my way into the building and headed over to the elevator. Ah, such mundane events were so nice, normal lackluster events like this where nothing scary or traumatizing happened was what I lived for. When I put one foot into the elevator, I suddenly realized something. For some strange, but inexplicable reason, I felt like taking the stairs today. I really needed the exercise after all. Also, nothing scary ever happens on the stairs, right? Compared to the shit show, horror infested elevators where you’re trapped in an enclosed space with nowhere to run when shit hit the fan, the stairs were surely a better bet.

At least on the stairs, I won’t be confined to a small space where I’d be trapped if the power mysteriously went out for some inexplicable reason that could only be called an act of god, right? Better to be safe than sorry was my favorite motto after all.

Although, now that I think about it, none of my precautions have ever actually gone well. Should I use reverse psychology here and actually take the elevator to play mind games with said nonexistent ghost girl? No, but what if this theoretical ghost girl, or in other words; my possible case of insanity, was aware that I was trying to use reverse psychology and it ended up backfiring resulting in countless jump scares being thrown at me while on the elevator? 

Yeah, my insanity has human-like characteristics and has a mind of its own. Is there some sort of problem with that? I liked to imagine if my insanity were a person; he’d surely wear a top hat, speak with an English accent, have a fancy curled mustache, and wear a monocle.

However, ignoring my unrealistic perception of my insanity, this was truly the dilemma of the century. That was of course until I had a brilliant idea. I just needed to get a sucker to walk behind me up the stairs so I can sacrifice them if worse comes to worst. When shit hits the fan, one cannot be judged if it’s for the sake of their survival.

Thus I patiently stood by the entrance of the stairwell waiting for some poor sap to walk up the stairs. I waited and waited until a cute white chick who sported runners and shorts made her way towards the stairwell with her overly expensive fancy looking wireless earbuds in her ears. 

A rather nefarious smile floated to my face as I thought to myself with a villainous voice in my head, ‘excellent.’