The Swiped Shades
by D. L. Wells
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
For a bit of time, I sat on a chair next to a brown-painted door, thinking about how I could get into room 47. I thought about stealing a card, but there was no telling whether or not it would unlock the door. I could waited until that employee went on break, and spoke to next one that took her place. But even that probably wouldn’t work. I didn’t know if all the employees were told to give no one access to room 47, and I couldn’t risk being noticed by any of the others.
While I was sitting there, the door’s electronic red light went off, and the door was pushed open Out came two security guards. They were a bit too big for their uniforms, as most hotel security guards are. Both of them left the building shortly afterwards.
I didn’t need to go in the room — I didn’t know what I would find — but there was a chance I might find some clue for me to follow. Besides, if I waited too long, the door would close, and my chance would be wasted. I slipped past the door before it could close.
The door led me to an empty hallway that was completely different from the lobby. The walls around the narrow passage weren’t painted brown but white; and the lighting wasn’t dim and soft, but bright and blinding.
After I got over the change, I found that there were two doors: one on the left, and the other on the right. The one on the left was labeled as a bathroom, while the one on the right wasn’t labeled at all. When I pressed my ear up against the door on the right, I couldn’t hear anyone in there, and when I opened the door I found the room unoccupied.
I also realized that this room was a security station, with a bunch of screens showing the feed from active cameras. It was a nice surprise to say the least.
The security footage was easy to access, since the guards hadn’t thought to sign out before they left. And, lucky for me, I was able to find the files from the previous night. I flipped through them as quickly as I could and found the footage of the fourth floor, with yesterday’s date. I fast-forwarded through most of the tape, but when I saw Vanessa walking down the hall, I stopped and played it.
I saw her walk to her room at 9:45 p.m. She opened the door and walked inside. But then the tape went to static and when the static had dissipated, I found that the time had jumped to 9:54 p.m. and that there was a streak of green slime along the floor leading to her room. The door was open.
Static consumed the screen, but for too long this time; when the video came back, the door to room 47 was closed, and the streak of slime now appeared thicker than before. I didn’t think it was possible for this job to get any weirder, but it did. I wanted to examine the video again but I saw that, through an active camera, the two security guards were coming back in the building. Damn!
As quickly as I could, I exited out of the video logs and left the room, closing the door. I rushed towards the door at the end of the hall and opened it. By the time the security guards set foot in the hotel, I was already back in the chair where the guards had first seen me; that is, if they had been paying attention.
I got up off my seat when the guards were through the door and left the lobby taking stairs up to the fourth floor.
* * *
When I arrived at the fourth floor, for some reason I had the feeling I was being watched. The other thing that stood out was the cleanliness of the floor. I couldn’t see any trace of the green slime that had showed up on the camera footage, and the entire hallway reeked of bleach. It was easy to put one and one together.
The only question on my mind was: How do I get into the room? After all, I had no key, and I didn’t know any way to break in. But then that one of the cleaning maids came out of a room straight ahead of me. I guessed I had finally caught a break.
I walked up to the maid and bumped into her. “Oh, I am so sorry,” I apologized — or pretended to apologize — as I stole the key card out of her pocket.
“No problem, sir,” she said with a smile. The maid walked over to the elevator and went to her next location. Well, at least there’s someone here who has manners.
I approached the door to room 47, looking to make sure that no one was watching. When I put the card in, the green light flashed. I pushed the door open and, suddenly, a stabbing pain shot through the back of my head. I remember only the sensation of falling before everything turned to darkness.
II
You know, I can think of better things to do with my time. But, being tied to a chair in a grimy cellar is not on the list, I’m sorry to say. And, no, I didn’t know exactly where I was. I was in a creepy cellar, I knew that much. I did have a pretty clear idea how I got there, but where there was still remained unknown.
There wasn’t anything in the room that could have given me a clear idea. The walls were made of concrete, but the paint that coated them seemed to be peeling off piece by piece. It might’ve been distinct before, but the small town of Beaufort had had a population increase; more concrete structures were built, which made it difficult to determine where I was.
I must’ve been near the marsh, since the seams of the walls looked damp, too damp. The only thing that was different about these walls, however, were the dried stains of blood splattered along them. Needless to say, that didn’t do much to raise my optimism.
I wasn’t the only one in this creepy place. There was another guy to my right — tied to a chair as I was — but he had a brown sack over his head, and his shirt was stained with blood. I tried talking to him, but it was no use; he was out cold.
That guy didn’t really do much to calm me down either. When you first wake up in a place like that, just to find that the only other person in there is unconscious and bloody, your worries don’t go away. If they do, you must have some very serious problems.
What surprised me more than anything else, was how I had come to be in this predicament, to put it it a bit lightly. All of it because I had agreed to help a lady find her stolen sunglasses... It sounds a little silly, now that I think about it.
And that was the weirdest thing of all, all of it for shades: the missing bits of footage, the noncomplying, slightly-hostile employee, not to mention getting knocked unconscious, just to be tied down to a chair. Either those sunglasses were worth a lot of money, or that woman, Vanessa — if that was even her real name — hadn’t told me as much as she should have.
Not that I’m saying I was completely clueless. I knew I had to get out of there. I knew that for certain. Though, the question was: How? How do I get out of here? I doubted that my abductors would let me go with a pat on the back, if I gave them a nice smile and asked please. No, “please” wouldn’t help in that situation, and I didn’t think it was worth a try. There must be something that could help me get loose. But, I couldn’t use anything if my hands were tied together? Oh, goddammit!
Looking around the room again helped as much as it did the first time, which wasn’t a whole lot. All the cheery things around me — an assortment of rusty cutlery tools, and a rusty sickle on top of a dirty wooden table — didn’t give me any good reasons to feel fine. But the most unsettling thing of all was the dude with the bag on his head.
He was starting to creep me out more than he did before. He was alive, or at least I think he was; the blood on his shirt had distracted me from focusing on his breathing pattern before, but I could see that it was there. The creepiest thing about it all was the blood stains at the base of his neck, as if there was a large amount of blood coming down his face.
I guess I can add sadistic to the mix as well, though I don’t really want to. You know that saying: “How can it get any worse?” Right about then, I wanted to grab by the throat whoever said that and throttle him.
Finally, I started thrashing my hands around in every direction, and the ropes that bound my wrists slipped off. Apparently, my abductor never had never learned knots in Boy Scouts. And then I got a little mad at myself. Instead of sitting around helplessly, I could’ve gotten out of there sooner. It seemed I had acted too late, for I heard footsteps shortly after the ropes hit the floor.
The door behind me flew open and hit the wall with a loud bang. “Hey, my guest is awake!” a bald man cried joyously. He had a smile on his face, but I couldn’t see his eyes, because they were covered by metallic sunglasses.
Are sunglasses trending among crazy assholes, and nobody told me?
“Are you comfortable?” he asked, and I don’t think he was being sarcastic. Luckily he didn’t seem to notice the ropes on the floor, or he didn’t care.
“Um, no,” I admitted, “not really.”
“Oh that’s too bad,” he said with an unnerving smile. “But you could have it much, much worse, believe me.” The abductor laughed as he stared me down. “You could be like him,” he informed me, pointing to the guy with the bloody sack on his head.
“What... What’s wrong with him?” I asked, staring at the unconscious man.
My abductor didn’t say anything, as he walked over to the man on the other side, he kept on that same unnerving smile, as if he enjoyed doing this. At least he takes pride in his work. Then, he flung the sack off his head, and I found out that I preferred the sack on. The man’s face had no skin. It was as if someone had taken a knife and peeled his skin away, showing only the muscles that remained. They weren’t a healthy pink, but more like a very dark purple; several of the infected areas were leaking pus. But his eyes, his eyes weren’t there, they were gone. The very sight of it, made me want to hurl.
The abductor started laughing, the son of a bitch was laughing, and his laughter awakened the man with no eyes. The guy was screaming frantically, obviously in great pain. Apparently, my abductor did not take kindly to the eyeless man’s screaming. “Do you mind?!” he shouted, grabbing the sickle, which was coated not in rust but in dried blood. “We’re trying to have a discussion!” He plunged the sickle into the man’s stomach, and the screams get even louder.
“I hate it!” he screamed, jerking the blade harshly, across the man’s stomach with every word, “when you people interrupt me!” He jerked the sickle out, and out poured the man’s intestines, from the long, deep wound, but the man was still screaming.
In a fit of rage, the abductor plunged the sickle into the man’s heart and the screaming stopped. The eyeless man’s head twitched slightly and his head slumped down, a little stream of blood pouring out from his mouth.
Now, this is where I stopped trying to relate with the guy, which is in the text book for hostage-negotiation. I mean, I don’t typically like it when someone’s screaming at the top of their lungs, but I don’t shove a sickle into their stomach. I think I have more control than that.
“Oh, I’m sorry for that little outburst,” my abductor apologized. He took a small cloth handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to wipe the blood off his hands and face. “It’s just that, sometimes, I get too worked up, and I have to let it out, you know?”
“Yeah,” I replied, though I didn’t really feel the same way. “I guess you got to blow off steam somehow.” I just wished he didn’t do it around me.
“Right?!” he shouted in agreement. But, then, he gave me a look that suggested that there was something specific he wanted to do. Then, he grabbed a small stool that sat at the left end of the table; he placed it in front of me and sat down. “You’re probably wondering why you’re here?” he assumed.
I took a quick glance at the eyeless corpse, and then back to him. “The thought did cross my mind,” I admitted.
“Well, you were investigating a room, a specific room: a room that I would like to remain untouched. The thing is, I know who sent you, at least I have a good idea of who it was: Valshara.” He looked at me with a look of triumph, as if he had beaten me at my or, most likely, her own game.
“Who?”
“Ah, so she used a fake name, huh?” he asked, but not to me; it was as if he was talking to himself. “Okay, let me put it like this: a woman came up to you, probably giving you a hefty sum of money to find her sunglasses, which she says were stolen. Am I right?” He looked at me as if he didn’t need to ask that last part, but that he just wanted me to say it, so he could hear the words for himself.
“More or less,” I admitted.
He made a little victorious smile. “The thing is, Valshara ain’t gettin’ these back,” he tapped his sunglasses. “You see, I remember the looks I would get from you people, before I got my hands on these puppies. All the screams, all the crying, all the terrified looks your kind would give me, when I just walked down the street! Seriously! I’m doing nothing, and the next thing I know, someone’s calling the cops. Does that happen often? Is that a regular thing for you people?” he asked, though I didn’t think he wanted an answer. “Well, I’m not going back to that; you hear?! I’ve had enough!”
You got to be kidding me? It was all for sunglasses? Well, I guess that didn’t really matter anymore; after all, I had more important matters to attend to. For one, that guy was getting a bit too hostile for my liking. If I didn’t act fast, it might be the end of me. And I preferred to get paid before I died. I just needed him to calm down a bit.
“What are you talking about, man? You look fine,” I said, for then, I saw nothing about him that would cause random bystanders to scream at him unless there were wanted posters with his name on them, which had a high probability.
“That’s because I have these on,” he tried to explain, but all it did was leave me confused. By the look that appeared on his face, he could tell I was at a loss. “Oh, you don’t know. Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Why not,” I protested, “you’re going to kill me regardless, so you might as well tell me.”
He looked out into space as if he was thinking it over. “Good point,” he said, and sat back down on the stool. “You see, I’m not from here.”
“Many people aren’t; they come from different countries.”
“No, no, no. I’m not from this planet,” he said, very seriously. “Well, technically, I am, I’ve just been gone a while.”
Copyright © 2018 by D. L. Wells
