Somewhere Else.

…or are you not in the hotel and somewhere else entirely, in a place where the floors breathe and the stairs occasionally decide to move themselves? The door to the room you just walked through may no longer exist; it has retreated into a wall and now blooms like a chestnut flower, scented with other people’s memories.

You walk on, but the carpet beneath your feet turns into a dry riverbed of stamps and forgotten birthdays. The light on the ceiling blinks in Morse code: “Don’t stay too long, the room is getting attached.” Someone — or something — breathes on the wallpaper. Not scary, just practical. A room needs to know who you are, so it can adapt to your dreams, your fears, your body odor in June.

There’s a clock on the wall, but the hands have been replaced by two outstretched fingers pointing to where you used to think you were. Time there has congealed, like jam on a napkin in a breakfast room that might be a hospital, or a prison, or the inside of your skull when you dream of suitcases packing and unpacking themselves.

Someone whispers your name in a language that doesn’t exist yet. Maybe it’s the concierge, or an echo of an echo. The elevator has stopped on the third floor and refused to move since then. She doesn’t want any more passengers, she says, she just wants to fall down, slowly, surrendering to gravity like a long, mechanical sigh.

There is a houseplant in the hallway, with eyes. She blinks sometimes when you look, but never moves if you could prove it. You ask her if this is still the hotel. She doesn't smile, but loses a leaf in the shape of a key.

The walls here are filled with conversations that were never had, a beating archive of what people thought but never said. If you stand very still, you can hear someone apologizing for something you never did.

Perhaps you’re somewhere outside the hotel, in a corridor between two possibilities. The air here smells of wet matches and yellowed postcards. You step into a room and the bed shakes slightly, as if happy to see you again. On the nightstand is a note that claims to be written by your future self: “Rest assured, all this is temporary. You, less so.”

You laugh. Or cry. Or melt into a chair made of shreds of the past. The room smiles back, very slowly, through the folds of the curtains. Someone knocks. Someone knocks. Someone knocks.

…or you are not in the hotel and somewhere else entirely.