15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

Unconcerned guests passed by the hotel lobby in their droves, many of them businessmen sporting leather briefcases and weary expressions. Families also made up a significant proportion of the visitors during these summer months in the city, no doubt hoping to spend the next few weeks touring the area, and scouring the major high-street brands for something expensive to bring back home as a boasting souvenir.

Janice and Eliza glanced at each other from across the room, stooped over their mops at opposite ends of the tiled lobby floor in their grey overalls. It was ten in the morning, and already perspiration was beginning to transpired atop their deeply contoured brows. They had set up their yellow warning signs around the area they were cleaning, but it was remarkable to them how many people would walk directly across their paths anyway, too preoccupied with whatever purpose they had dedicated their minds to that day, far from the the world of lowly cleaners in hotel foyers.

Eventually, they were finished with the floors, along with the dusting and polishing of various displays which offered the area a sense of finesse, unless one were to look more closely at the make and quality of such items. They ushered themselves into the nearest elevator which took them up to the first floor. They dragged their hoovers and mop buckets behind them, stepping out into the deserted corridor, and dark-haired Eliza, with her severe, high-positioned bun proceeded to take the left, whilst fiery-haired Janice continued to the right.

Suddenly, they both stopped, and glanced around with shifty eyes as they surveyed the empty hallway and its blue patterned rug that stretched most of the way down. The area was utterly without disturbance, and at once a smirk blossomed across Eliza's face. They each closed their veined hands around the wooden handle of their mops, tensed and taut, pausing for but a moment, before drawing them out of the holster of the red, plastic buckets, and swinging them round with precise aim at each other's torsos.

"BANG!" Janice screamed, triumphantly.

Eliza ducked for cover, and pushed herself against the nearest wall, clasping the mop against her bosom before swinging it back round to aim once again at Janice, who had taken to concealing around the next convex bend in the wall, her breathing heightened, and her pulse racing.

They both jumped at the sound of approaching footsteps, and rushed to claim the rest of their equipment before ambling back down their diverging routes, just as the tall, mustached manager sashayed towards them from out of the adjacent lift. He looked them up and down with unbridled pertinence and unquestioned authority, stroking his chin in a curious fashion as he did so. His eyes roamed over the two seemingly oblivious ladies, and his eyes creased to thin lines below his even finer eyebrows, as with an uncomfortable silence he took out the keys for an empty room, and entered through the veneered door of No. 68.

Neither Eliza nor Janice risked an exchange of glances, committing their line of sight to the opposing walls before them, but they each donned an unmistakable smirk, their painted lips pulled very slightly at the corners. But once again, their hands clenched firmly around the mop handles.