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(Audio video version is below – just click to play and listen)
You go to the back office and hit the power button on the old desk top.
It always takes a few minutes for this old boy to boot up. As you’re waiting you go back out to the front office to have a quick look, lock the door and put the “Please Ring Bell” sign in the window.
You go back and sit down at the computer. All up and running now,
You log in to your email and messenger service.
Once you log in, a bunch of messages from friends pop up on the screen.
“Hey, did you hear what happened?” said one message.
“Shit, wild night in the city, eh?” said another text.
“Holy fuck! Someone back on the Bath salts!” stated the final message.
You wonder, what the fuck is going on now. You click on a link in one of the messages you got. It takes you to the local news website. After about a minute of loading, the Headline reads….
“Chaos at a local Night Club”
You begin reading that violence broke out a club in the city. They don’t know how many were injured or what the cause may have been, only that police were called in and that there were even reports of people biting each other.
“Bath salts in-fucking-deed” you think to yourself. “Holy shit, Sarah!”
You quickly remember that your girlfriend is in the city tonight for a girl’s night out Birthday party.
You grab your phone and hit Sarah on your speed dial.
After a few rings, you hear Sarah’s voice…..
“Hey Hun, how are things back at the Love Shack?” Sarah jokes.
“Things are fine here. Quiet as shit!” you reply.
You can hear music in the background.
Sarah informs you that they’re all having a great time and heading back to their Hotel soon. You tell her to have fun and that you’ll see her tomorrow evening back at the house.
You just remember that website your friend was talking about, “www.scarychoices.com”. You type into the browser. The screen reads “Loading….”
“What is this going to be now?” you wonder.
Finally the page loads. It says “This site is currently under maintenance. Please check back in the morning.”
“Scary choices indeed. Scary choice of friends!” you think to yourself. “What a load of shit. Morning sounds good to me. Time to shut this down and get some sleep.”
You begin to power down the old P.C. and decide to step outside for a smoke before you call it the night. As you are walking to the door you can hear the hum of the fan, as the computer tries to say it’s last words, like it will never turn back on again.
As you click the lock on the door and open it, you hear the final electrical surge from the back room as the computer goes dead. Silence. You step outside the door and let it close behind you.
The stillness of the night has really emphasized with the lack of vehicles on the road in this area, and the lack of life at this time of night.
You pull out a cigarette from your pocket along with your lighter. You pop the filtered end of the cigarette into your mouth and hold the lighter to the opposite end. As you swipe your thumb across the wheel of the top of the lighter, it produces nothing but the grind of friction as the wheel rubs against the flint. The sound in this silence startles you even though you were expecting it.
A couple more quick swipes of the thumb finally produce a flame that seems to light up a good twenty feet diameter of the parking lot. Again, the brightness startling you and again, you knew it was coming. Maybe al this crazy talk is playing with your nerves after all.
As you put the lighter back into your pocket and raise you head towards the night sky to inhale the first drag of chemicals into your lungs, the darkness slowly creeps back in.
While exhaling and moving your head back down to its regular position, you notice a glimpse of light coming from behind the curtain over in room 16.
“Great! Fucking night owls. Just what I needed!” you think to yourself.
As you watch, that glimpse of light begins to flicker until it is gone. Darkness again.
The thought of it being strange crosses you mind, but you are also somewhat relieved that it looks like room 16 may be getting some shut eye after all.
That’s when your hear it. The faint sound of what seems to be a female scream. The scream seems like it’s miles away, but for some reason, you know where it is coming from.
You begin to hear other inaudible sounds, like groans, as they slowly creep across the parking lot, up your legs until they reach your ears.
CRASH ! THUD!
The thud sounding like something heavy hitting the inside of the door of room 16.
Something is fucking wrong.
“Jesus, Just what I needed.” You think to yourself. “Hotel guests scrapping it out in one of the rooms.”
You can’t tell what’s going on but there is definitely a struggle of some kind.
Then everything goes silent again.
It’s not the silence of relief that something is all over with. It’s the kind of silence that gives you an eerie feeling that something really bad just happened.
As you listen, standing there frozen to the situation, you suddenly feel the sharp heat of you cigarette on your fingers as it has burned right down to the filter.
“Shit’ you painfully say and throw the butt down on the ground, shaking your hand in the air.
Then you hear the rattle. It’s the rattling noise of someone fumbling with a door knob. It’s the sound of someone trying to open a door that they do not know how to use.
You look back in the direction of room 16. Click! It’s as if someone was trying to break into a safe and finally cracked it.
You stare as if you were the valuables inside of the safe waiting to see who or what has found you.
The door to room 16 slowly creeps open, revealing nothing but darkness coming from the room.
Then slowly moving into the frame of the door, a figure.
The figure is just standing there. As if it were staring back at you as you are staring at it. You can’t make out if they are injured or what is wrong, as you can only see the outline of the person.
It’s just standing there, staring. You begin to think that the figure is just staring into the night and doesn’t even notice you there. It’s not moving at all.
You have to do something.
“Fuck, so much for a quiet night!” you think out loud.
1) Make your way over toward room 16 to find out if everything is okay. .
2) Step back inside, lock the door and call room 16 to see if things are alright
