Chilled Vacancy

Written for:

"The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week"  13+: Write the best POEM in 24 hours or less and win 10K GPs!

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The large casino was buzzing with life, people pressing buttons, throwing dice, spinning wheels, talking, laughing, drinking, spending hard earned money only to lose it moments later but continuing to play on in hopes of winning it all back. I had seen it many times, too many times. People having to be dragged out in tears, mostly screaming that they couldn’t help it, that their chance was coming, begging the casino owners not to tell their partners or loved ones. I had been in their shoes once. I thought that I could get away with it, but I found the wrong people to help me.

Ever since that day three years ago I have never left this casino, even when I wanted to go I couldn’t. I was attached, stuck to this place in ways too hard to explain. I wandered the halls seeing the corruption, the sex and the drugs. No one ever saw me; I was invisible to the world. I returned many times to my room to find it empty. My husband had left me three years ago, alone and cold.

Standing in the room filled with slot machines I listened to the sounds. The bar staff dodged in and out of patrons raising their hands for more to drink. It makes me sad to stand there, no matter how much I try to tell people that they will lose all their money, my voice goes unheard. Shrugging I make my way back to my room and stare into the mirror.

The reflection I see is backwards, the bed and tables. The one thing missing in the mirror is myself. The thing that brings me back to the realization that I am not there. My body had been stuffed into the walls of the bedroom which is why it was mine. The bedroom my husband and I had stayed in was on the other side of the hotel. Ever since I had been stuffed into the walls, this room had never been able to have a patron.

The lights flicker and the room doesn’t heat up, no matter how many times the electrician comes in to fix the unbroken heater. It doesn’t matter to me; I don’t feel it any more. I feel nothing but the looming sadness of being stuck in a place like this. I remember the hotel manager telling my husband that I was seen getting in to a taxi the morning I disappeared, they didn’t tell him that it was one of their security guards that had killed me.

I remember the pain, it wasn’t fast with a gun, it was slow and painful. The large mammoth came to our door to collect money that we owed, I had told him that my husband had gone to get the money but the guy didn’t listen. The blade was cold as it entered my abdomen. The steel was sharp and slid into me with ease. Stumbling backwards I fell onto the thick shag carpet. He rolled me up and hauled the carpet over his shoulder like he was taking it out for a clean.

I was bleeding heavily as he dumped me onto a cold floor made of concrete. At the time I had no idea where I was, but now I know it was where they take their victims to die. He ripped off my blood soaked dress and tossed it into the corner. Now I could see the wound. It was long, longer than I thought it was. I cried at him to let me go but he just stared. There was no emotion whatsoever in his eyes. He then came at me again with the knife, with the loss of so much blood I couldn’t move, I was in shock. He drew his blade across my neck and before I passed out I felt him carve something into my throat under where he had cut.

The next moment I was above myself, I could see the hotel owner nodding to the security guy, I bent low to look. CGB. That bastard had carved his initials into my neck. I swung my arms at him to no avail, going right through him. I screamed, trying to get their attention but nothing worked. The mammoth picked me up and dumped me into a makeshift bathtub in the room. He washed the blood from my body. Caressing me as he went. What a sick-o. I shuddered from the thought of his hands on my body.

I followed him as he carried my body, now in a large mail bag. He walked to the section being renovated and pushed me between two support beams, covering me with thin plywood sheets. The wall between the bedroom and the kitchenette is where my body now lay. I followed him out of the room and into the lobby where I saw the end of the conversation my husband was having with the owner. I watched him hang his head and walk from the hotel. I ran after him, through living people but felt something pull me back, like an invisible leash. I was stuck here. Stuck until my body is found and given a proper burial. The room I inhabit has gotten the hotel publicity, saying that they must have disturbed an old burial site or some bull shit like that.

All I know is that while I’m here no one is ever going to stay in my room. The owner has tried many times but each and every time he had let someone in they have asked to move minutes later. I may not be able to do a lot but there are things I can do. As well as the lights and the heating, I can control the door, when they use the microchip card. Then the marble bench top always has thick dust on it, no matter how many times housekeeping comes to dust. Written in the dust are things like: CGB must die!