Winner of ❝A Word for A Story❞ contest

by the_shadow_jackal

I am holding my breath trying not to be heard and yet in my efforts to hide I feel a contradictory fear that I might never be discovered because I am on a floor that does not exist. I only want to avoid the cops, I do not want to become lost here forever.

I hug my knees into my chest and try not to groan as I feel the damp spatters of another's blood press through my t-shirt to my skin. Under my fingernails I can still feel the sequins of another's dress. Dust worries at my nose threatening to expose me with a sneeze but all I can do is try to ignore it. This room is dark and devoid of light. It gives me an advantage but it adds a layer of unease to my situation as I cannot tell one shadow from another.

I hear footsteps at the door and tense as I heard a hand starts to push at it. Lesson one for avoiding cops, don't leave the door for the room you are hiding in ajar.

I grit my teeth and push my body forward so that I can move at a crouch. I crawl quickly through the room as the door is pushed inwards. Since I am on the thirteenth floor of a hotel that doesn't have a thirteenth floor I don't know why I'm surprised that the door to this room didn't require a key card for entry.

I am in trouble.

Light illuminates the room as a switch is pressed. A crackle follows as the overhead chandelier's bulbs burst in sync. For a moment I am frozen, listening as wires pop in glass over and over. It gives me some shadows to hide in but the wall lights still remain on to betray me.

I have made it under the table in the centre of the room, partially concealed by a forest of chair legs. All it will take is one glance down and I will be seen. Lesson two for avoiding cops, hide better.

"Aw geez look at the light." A male cop talks with a strong city accent that sounds a little alarmed. "Why is it swinging like that?"

"Probably because the bulbs blew, shoddy wiring," his partner, another male, grumbles back.

I catch a flashback of their faces staring down a busy lobby directly at me. It is odd but I can see them clearly yet I do not think I even properly took them in at the time. I can visualise one middle-aged, hook nosed and frowning as he stared at me in irritation from beneath the brow of a worn blue cap. The other appeared his opposite, younger and greener, wide eyed and open mouthed, full of horror for my scene.

My scene. That was where the trouble started. Just a handful of minutes or so ago my life had been normal and crime free. One fateful trip down a hotel elevator and I had become a wanted woman.

I peer past thin columns of unpolished mahogany to see where the cops are standing. I see one pair of blue clad legs and black shoes moving to the right as I hear shoes rustle over the unwashed, emerald carpet.

The entire room has a sense of neglect. I can see a variety of stains on the green carpeted floor and the spoiled edges of peeling wallpaper. The air has a taste of staleness to it, unaired and undisguised by perfumed fresheners.

Another pair of legs in matching trousers remain still, the black shoes are rooted between the table and the door, blocking my escape.

I glance to the doorway where the light of the corridor pours in and tense. There are a third pair of legs lurking there, ink black in colour. I study them, wary of a third cop but they are unusual. I cannot see any wrinkles to suggest the material of trousers and when I follow them down to the carpet I see no feet.

Wondering how I should get myself out of this troubling situation leads me to consider once more how I got into it in the first place.

I had spent a plain and uneventful night in The Black Prince Hotel and awoken with a desire for breakfast before checkout. At around eight in the morning I stepped into the elevator to take it down to the hotel cafe for breakfast. Instead of ferrying me down to my destination the elevator stopped at the third floor.

When the brass doors of the elevator slid open a woman's bloody body fell through upon me.

It's odd but I can still hear the horrid jangle of her pearl necklace as she tumbled. All I could do was catch her, trying to stop us both from falling to the cold floor of the elevator. In my confusion I did not notice the elevator doors sliding closed upon us or the elevator moving to take us down to judgement. The woman had felt slim and light but I had still struggled to support her jerking body.

I remember the surprising sensation of softness as my hands had brushed against the woman's feather garnished headband in an effort to stop her from falling. She had keeled forward to expose the large hilt of a knife burrowed in her back.

When the doors had pinged open to reveal the lobby one keen observer's scream was all it took to make me the centre of attention. I know how it must have looked, the perfect scene of murder, me now bloodstained and holding the victim with the murder weapon.

It was just my luck two cops had stepped through the lobby doors right in time to see me holding her. When the body had slipped from my hands and dropped out through the doors I saw guns getting raised and wondered if anyone would believe my bizarre story when I lacked proof and witnesses.

Lesson three for avoiding cops, don't get hotel elevators with broken cameras.

I don't remember pushing the elevator buttons but I must have. I suppose knowing the trouble I faced I had let my desire for survival take over. Odd that the elevator should have gone upwards without delay, taking me to a floor it did not have marked on its panel. When the doors had opened to show me Thirteenth Floor on a gilded panel on a wall I had considered staying in and chancing another floor. Self-preservation had won out and urged me to hide up here.

Knowing I would be pursued, I had roamed the corridor and hastened into the first door that granted me entry.

"Look at the walls!"

The first cop's voice of alarm prompts me to look around again. One of them has moved to the left side of the room, I can see his black shoes close to the baseboard of the wall. I try to view the cause of his alarm but I can only view peeling cream wallpaper and not much else.

"Well it's an abandoned floor, probably some punks graffitied here," the second cop suggests. "Happens with places like this, they get in over their heads financially, don't get the business so then things start to slide and they just start closing up their rooms because they aren't getting the money for them."

"Right." The first cop does not sound convinced. Neither am I. This floor hasn't been closed up, it does not exist.

I am starting to think my trouble has extended beyond a murder.

"She looked young, didn't she," the second cop murmurs. "She could be a victim too you know."

"That runs from cops?" The first cop has swapped his fear for sarcasm now, probably a preferable emotion for him but it's not so good for me. "Sure and she just happened to have her hands right near the knife."

"We don't know anything yet and we shouldn't make presumptions."

For a moment I consider standing up in surrender and crying out that yes this cop is right, I am frightened and a victim of circumstance but suspicion that this might be a tactic of theirs keeps me where I am.

"Let's check the bathroom then," the second cop grumbles.

I hear their feet moving away slowly and have to crane my neck to follow their shoes.

I hear another door open and see the flicker of a light.

"Oh Jesus!"

It is the sudden blasphemy from the first cop that holds me in my place. I should be seizing my chance now to crawl for the door but I cannot move.

I am taut, rabbit still as I too fear a hunter's gun ending me. My heart is so loud I worry they might hear it and for a moment I am breathing fast, quiet but so often surely they will detect it.

"Where the hell did all this blood come from?"

My breathing quickens again, heading towards the danger zone of hyperventilation.

"My radio's not working, try yours." Second cop speaks again but I can hear a new edge to his voice and know he is growing scared too.

Are we all in trouble now?

"No," the first cop answers fearfully. "What's going on? Shouldn't we have a signal up here?"

The panic has become contagious.

"Let's get out of here and get some back up," the second cop suggests. "We'll have the entrance and exit watched for our bloody lady."

Bloody lady? Do they mean me? The words conjure a wretched image of spectres from childhood ghost stories.

I look ahead to the ajar door, ready to rush for freedom but the black figure remains there.

I hear footsteps again as the cops retreat from the bathroom. They are moving quickly now and I suppose I can leave when they are gone. The problem is I no longer want to be left alone in this room.

I watch in frozen fascination as the room's entrance door moves, shifting back before it swings closed with a loud bang.

"Who's there?"

I heard the metallic clicks that signal guns being readied and I realise dumbly that they probably think it's me out there.

I get a flashback of the woman in the elevator as I remember turning my head down to view her face as she spilled into my arms. I feel an odd sensation in stomach as I catch an image of a face devoid of features, bruised smudges where her eyes should have been and a gaping hole of nothingness in place of her mouth.

The door starts to rattle and three heavy knocks sound in sync on all the walls. We are surrounded by invisible intruders.

"What the hell is going on?" The first cop cannot help but speak. His nerves betray him too easily.

There is a roar of noise above me and my hands reach up to shield my head as I scream. I see a rain of rainbows on either side of the table and wonder briefly if I am passing through to some other terrain. Glancing at the carpet I realise the rainbows are shards from the chandelier, which has come toppling down on top of the table.

"There you are!"

I look up to the ashen face of the hook nosed cop. He has a gun pointed at me but we both know it is a half-hearted gesture. He must see that I am helpless in all this.

"Come out of there now," he barks an order at me.

Hearing the walls begin to bang again prompts me to move hastily. It is a struggle as the chair legs become an ever tightening jungle of wood that confines me. I grasp and push at them, trying to free myself from this mahogany prison. I am convinced the chairs have moved though I did not see it happen.

"Help!" I become hysterical as I stretch my hand out for help to someone who might see me locked up for a crime I have no part in.

A hand grabs at mine and hoists me out roughly, dragging me to my feet before I can catch a breath.

Lesson four for avoiding cops, don't avoid them if you have something worse to face.

I turn up to the cop fearfully. "Are we in trouble?"

The corner of his mouth rises slightly as he stares me down with puzzled grey eyes. I understand his confusion, he came chasing after a potential murderer, the question should be 'am I in trouble' but I know whatever is going on is far worse than that. I stand by my question, I think the three of us are caught together in the kind of dark trouble one only hears about in whispered passing under the guise of myth. Whatever danger we have come across it is not natural.

"Yes," the cops answers me at last in a somber tone, "We are in trouble."