The woman behind the hotel counter looked up from the computer in front of her and raised her arms up in an X. Behind her arms, the plastic mask she wore blushed brightly. She then retrieved a stack of index cards from a cabinet and shuffled through them, selecting several, which she arranged on the counter in front of me.
I had checked into this hotel about 45 minutes ago. They had moved my bags up for me, but after spending a few minutes in the room, I felt strongly that I would be more comfortable in a different one.
That didn't seem to be in the cards.
The woman cocked her head slightly, waiting for my response. I reread the words in front of me several times, mutely, heart sinking. I nodded. She bobbed her head in response and gathered the cards up. With a flourish, she gestured to a generously stocked tray of complimentary toiletries. I pocketed a small floss dispenser wrapped in plastic.
I glanced at my phone. It was 6 in the evening. I was stuck with my room for another 14 hours. I patted my pockets. Shit. I had left my wallet up in the room. I walked past the counter to the elevators and hit the button. When the elevator door opened, the small spaced was filled with a family of masks, who regarded me silently. I stepped out of the way, and they filed into the lobby. I entered the elevator and hit the button for my floor.
At the door to my current room, the one I was trying desperately to get out of, I hesitated, thinking through what I needed to get. There was a small desk in the room. My wallet was probably under the attractions pamphlet I had ambitiously grabbed from the lobby. I slipped my key card out of my pocket. If I took long strides, it would be three strides to the desk, grab it, three strides out. The door shouldn't be closed yet.
I raised the key to the door lock. Click, green. I pushed the door open. The last rays of cold winter sunlight lit up the small room, colliding with the warm lighting in the hallway. Everything seemed calm in the room, though I thought I caught a movement at the edge of my vision, near the bed. I kept my gaze fixed on the desk, taking large quick strides. I pushed aside the pamphlet, grabbed front left pocket, turned on my heel and strode out. As I reached the door, I heard a chittering and a few hisses. I didn't look back. The door had closed faster than I expected, and I grabbed it and swung it open, slamming it into the door stop as I fled the room. Then I pulled the door shut behind me.
Heart still pounding, I listened at the door. I heard some soft thumps, another hiss, and then a thin, slow, almost gentle scratching at the door. My stomach heaved.
A hotel employee walked past and bowed his head, his mask betraying nothing of what he thought about this bizarre display. I slipped front left pocket away, straightened my coat out and headed to the elevator.
In the lobby, the father of the family that I had passed in the elevator was gesticulating wildly at the woman behind the counter. I could see his face reddened behind his mask, sweat leaking out and down his neck. He jabbed his finger intensely into his cupped palm. I could hear his heavy breath against the inside of his mask. The woman behind the counter held her arms out, palms uplifted, as if offering something, though her hands were empty. I walked past this pantomime, thought the sliding door to the street outside.
The hotel was a small boutique hotel tucked away where two alleys crossed. There was an outdoor space that seemed to be called a park directly across from it, though it appeared more like a multipurpose fitness space and only had a couple of trees. Groups of people walked past in their masks. A couple of bicycles weaved through the pedestrians. I wondered if the masks would make it hard to see while bicycling. Next to the sign for the park, a poster of a cartoon police officer had holographic eyes that shifted as I walked past. I went to the convenience store nearby and used coins to buy one caffeine patch and three sugar patches. I would probably regret the caffeine patch, but what's one more regret. I walked back to the park and sat down on the bench next to an old man with a nicotine patch on his thin forearm. His mask looked worn. The material was scuffed and frayed at the edge, and it had been repaired in a few spots. He gestured at me when I sat down. When I didn't understand, he tried a few more times and then gave up. I slapped on the caffeine patch and one of the sugar patches.
I pulled out my phone. It was 6:17. I skipped ahead to 7:03. The sun was setting and it was getting colder. I was only wearing a light coat so I rubbed my hands together to try to warm them up. I slapped another sugar patch and sent a text to Serena. She probably wasn't awake yet. I watched a live stream of the fires for a bit. I skipped to 8:24, when Serena texted me back, to see if I wanted to talk. I did. When I called she answered.
“Hey, how are you feeling?”
“Okay I guess,” I replied sullenly.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
“Yeah, it's okay, they said that they have another room for me tomorrow morning, so I just need to make it through the night.”
“Yeah, but still it sucks. I mean, you're definitely going to be fine. There's no way they could be in business if...you know...if that was in there. It wouldn't make any sense.”
“Yeah, I know, it's not logical, but I just can't get it out of my head you know?”
“Yeah, I know”
“I didn't bring the right clothes for this weather either.” I had intended to buy a coat once I was arrived here, but with the situation in my room, I hadn't had the bandwidth to go shopping.
“Of course you didn't,” she laughed. She started telling me something that had happened at her job. I pretended to listen, but I just kept playing that chittering hissing sound over and over in my head, thin claws scratching at the inside of my skull.
“I just –” I choked, “I just want to be with you, and be safe. I don't want to go back in there.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically.
We went back and forth like that for a bit longer. She hadn't heard the sounds it made. I knew she was right, and everything was fine, but still, I was the one that had to sleep in the fucking room. There was no getting around it. I promised to tell her when I had moved into the new room. As I hung up, I imagined that it was the last time we would ever speak. The vague idea of our future together crumbled into a short, bitter nightmare. I saw her looking down at me in a hospital bed, tears in her eyes. I imagined lying to her, telling her it would be alright. Telling her that it was okay to move on. All the while, hiding what it was like inside, the clawing in my head, digging into my brain, trying to rip its way out. The whole fantasy was pointless and tragic, and it evoked in me a primal and selfish bitterness.
For my last meal, I slapped the last sugar patch. The old man had left a while ago. I was freezing.
I headed back across the street into the hotel lobby. Smiling masks bobbed their heads in greeting. I imagined them finding my body. I took the elevator up to my floor. At the door, I paused, but my ideations had already exhausted me, and there was less energy for fear or hesitation.
I opened the door. It was dark now that the sun had set. I slotted the key card into the power slot. The room lights came on, coloring the white sheets cream. It was a small room, the bed blocked on three sides by a wall. I emptied my pockets onto the desk and changed into a pair of shorts. I used the toilet, brushed my teeth. While I brushed, I stared at the running water, trying to decide if I was afraid of it.
It was past 10, less than 12 hours left. I decided to read at the desk for a bit, procrastinating what I knew would come. Occasionally, I'd head a quiet dragging sound from the bed behind me, or catch a small movement out of the corner of my eye. I tried to ignore it, focusing on the book I had been reading for a few weeks now. It was on the legacy of violence of the British Empire against their colonial possessions, and I kept reading out of sheer inertia, pretending that I had a future in which to benefit from this knowledge and that I wasn't spending possibly my last night as a cogent sane living human trying to “be more woke”. I was moderately successful, at least for a time.
But finally, it came time to sleep. I got into the bed, turned off the lights, and lay down. I put my sleep mask on. I took long slow breaths. I actually felt a bit drowsy. Maybe it was going to be one of my rare good days.
That was when I heard the sound. Not a squeak, much louder. Can there be a single chitter? If so, that's what I heard, and at a volume not trying to disguise itself. It jolted me awake, heart pounding, alert. I shifted on the bed a bit and slid my sleep mask off my eyes. As my eyes adjusted, I thought I saw something small and hunched moving in the corner of the room. I sat up in bed and squinted to try to make it out. As I did so, my hand pressed deeper into the mattress, and there was a crunch.
There was a shrieking hiss as the bed dissolved into a pile of furry clawing bodies, furiously clawing to escape. A cacophonous chittering sound filled the room and I flailed for anything solid to pull myself out, swatting at them as they scrambled over me in a frenzy. I could feel their small hands, like a child's, pulling on the sheets, batting my hair, scratching my skin, and I slipped underneath, into the dark mass of fur and claws. I opened my mouth to scream and several small limbs immediately entered, causing me to choke and gag.
I reached out one last time, trying to find the light switch, but the weight of their bodies overpowered me, and my hand slipped back under.
I looked down at the index card that the woman had placed on the hotel counter in front of me.
I held my arms up in an X.
At the beginning of a trip to Japan, I started to get sick, and for some convoluted reasons, couldn't shake the idea that I was dying of rabies. I was not, I just had a cold. This story is inspired by those first few days in Tokyo.