There was no second thirteenth floor. Priya told the fire warden that three times before he stopped nodding at her like she was concussed, and even then he wrote something in his little book that she wasn't allowed to read.
Three weeks earlier she'd walked that corridor for the first time with a clipboard and a torch app open on her phone. The Beaumont Inn, on the Leith Walk stretch, had failed its last two inspections on emergency lighting, and head office had sent her up to check it herself before the contract renewed. She'd stopped for a coffee at the place two doors down first, the one with the broken sign that just says COFFE, and thought nothing of it.
The corridor on the third floor ran longer than the building's footprint should have allowed, if you'd looked at it from the car park, which she had, twice, before going in. Room 301, 302, 303. Fire door. Ice machine that only dispensed lukewarm water, always had, according to Fraser. Then the numbers kept going past where the floor plan on the back of her clipboard said they'd stop. 310, 311, 312, 313. 313.
She stood between the two doors marked 313 for a long moment, the kind where you check you've read something correctly by reading it again, slower. Both brass numbers. Both slightly crooked, the screw on the second one's 3 loose enough that it hung a little sideways.
A housekeeping trolley sat outside the first 313. Fresh towels, a spray bottle of something citrus. The door of the second 313 had no trolley, no do-not-disturb card. Just a strip of light under it, on, at two in the afternoon.
She didn't open either. She wrote duplicate room number, third floor, flag for maintenance in the margin of her report and went down to reception, where a nineteen-year-old called Fraser told her the hotel didn't have a room 313 at all. Superstition. They went straight from 312 to 314. Always had, he said, twice, like he was reading it off a card.
He came up with her to prove it. There was only one 313 when they got there. The trolley, the towels, the citrus smell, all present and correct. Fraser laughed and said the heat up here does things to your eyes. Priya let him believe that. The alternative was telling him she'd counted the doors on the way down, out of habit, and there had been fourteen between the lift and the fire exit, when there should have been thirteen.
Now it's a Tuesday and she's back because the file needs closing and someone above her wants a second signature. The corridor smells the same. Warm carpet, old smoke that no ventilation ever quite lifts. She counts the doors as she walks, quietly, under her breath, the way her mother used to count stairs in the dark, though her mother counted up and Priya, she notices, is counting down without meaning to.
The second one is there again, just past the first, exactly where it was. No trolley this time. The strip of light under the door has gone out. She stands close enough to feel the temperature difference coming off the wood. Cooler than the corridor. Cooler than a room with the heating on should be.
She knocks once, out of the same reflex that makes you check a door is locked after you've already checked it. Nobody answers. She tries the handle. It isn't locked.
Inside, the room is made up exactly like 313 next door. Same bedspread, same print of the Forth Bridge on the wall, slightly crooked, the way pictures in hotel rooms always are if you look. Sitting on the end of the bed, facing the door, is her clipboard from three weeks ago, open to the page where she wrote flag for maintenance, the biro resting in the crease of the pad. Exactly where she remembers leaving it, in her bag, on the bus home.
"Well-lit Hotel Corridor" by pasa47 is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.