HONORABLE MENTION, SUMMER 2022
THE SCREW TURN FLASH FICTION COMPETITION
BY MEG JOHNSON
Windex gets stains out of carpets, if you get to them soon enough. If you need to get blood out of a sheet, wash it in cold water first. Those awful brown paper towels that tear up bleach-dried knuckles are perfect for cleaning mirrors without leaving streaks. The trick to folding a fitted sheet is that the corners are not where you think they are. You can unclog a drain with vinegar and baking soda.
Aubrey ran through all the things she wished she’d been taught her first day so she could pass them on to the newly hired housekeeper. Hair slipped out of her ponytail and into her face as she scrubbed her ninth toilet of the day. She tried to move it aside without touching it, so as not to get toilet water in her hair. There was probably already toilet water in her hair. She sprayed the shower with the foamy bleach that would sting her eyes and stain her clothes and linger in her nostrils. She wiped the plastic walls in an accustomed rhythm, in tune with her thoughts.
She would fill her in on the customers too, most of them regulars.
The men in 107 are hiding weed in their dresser. The couple in 103 is married—but not to each other. The woman in 207 is going to stain the towels with mascara, just like she does every time she drives from Canada to visit her boarding-school basketball star. Clean 106 first, even though it’s not first on the list, because if you’re not done before he returns, he’ll make you listen to his karaoke recordings. And you’ll have to smile and say it sounds nice. 105 has a dog, even though no dogs are allowed. But he tips well, so he doesn’t have a dog. 110 is going to a wedding. They will come back drunk. You will be cleaning up vomit. Do not go in 209. They will come to you if they need towels. They will need towels.
Aubrey hung a shower curtain with a practiced motion, sliding each loop onto a hook and each hook onto the rod. She positioned it just so and left a tiny, perfumy bar of soap on the edge of an intricately folded towel.
When you clean 212, there will be long black hair caught up in the vacuum when you’re done. No matter how much we clean we still find more. It’s happened since the girl overdosed in bed and the whole hotel woke to her sister’s screams. Rachel says in 211 you can hear laughter sometimes even if no one is there.
She vacuumed the carpet and polished the tabletops with a lemony, greasy spray. The phone rang. She hated it when the manager called the room she was in, instead of walking to find her. The sudden shrill noise in the still, silent room always frightened her. “Hello?”
“Can you please swing by room 206?”
“Ha, ha.” She put the receiver down.
That reminded her, she should probably warn the new girl about some other things.
Don’t fall for it when Shirley tells you to take linens to 206. There is no 206, it’s just the stairwell. Don’t let the night clerk strip the linens—he steals tips. Don’t bother calling the manager before 11 on weekends, even if it’s an emergency. She won’t answer. If Rachel tells you to clean something, just clean it. Even if you just cleaned it. It will save you having your lunch break wasted on a lecture.
Maybe if she trained the new girl well enough, she could leave and not feel bad about it. Not that she owed this place anything. She showed up on time, cleaned her rooms, stocked her carts, and went home. The hotel gave her a check for every minute she worked and not a penny more; neither party owed the other any more than this. But she felt a duty to the job because it was her job. She didn’t want to leave the place behind without a replacement, and one who would work as hard as she had.
Not that all that hard work had ever paid off. She’d worked until her muscles stiffened and her fingers blistered, just to hear Aubrey, there are fingerprints on this coat rack. Aubrey, there is a stain on this carpet, how could you leave it looking like this? Aubrey, you should be ashamed of the way these pillows sag, you don’t fluff them as well as Becca. Aubrey—
“Aubrey!”
She jumped, nearly tripping over the coiled cord of the vacuum cleaner. She looked around, expecting to see her boss, or a guest who had taken a glance at her nametag and therefore felt an unearned familiarity with her. But it was just the wind, or a creaky wheel on her cart, or her mind getting the better of her.
These hallways get longer every time you walk them. Once you take a job here, you’ll just get caught in the revolving door. You’ll tell yourself it’s just until you find something better. You’ll wait until it’s the “right time” to leave but then you’ll wake up one day and you’ll realize you’ve been here six years, then ten. You’ll wait for something to happen, anything to happen, to help you get out of here, but you’re stuck—
“Aubrey.”
She turned and was facing a door—a door that, for the last 11 years, had not been there. It was a door that didn’t exist.
Room 206.
“Aubrey.”
The door began to open.
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Meg Johnson currently studies creative writing at the University of Virginia. “Twenty-Eight Doors to Nowhere” is her first published short story.
