Looking back, I guess it started last May, right at the end of spring. I remember the front desk was decorated with multicolored flowers on either side of the receptionist. The arrangements added splashes of color to the otherwise dull lobby. The pine wood floors, the faded green carpets, the black desk . . . it all looked so lackluster. Even the scant photographs on the walls were boring. One showed a sunset over a river, another showed a path in the woods, and one more showed a glossy, smiling family in a park. I dreaded walking into the hotel every day, seeing the same old decorations day in and day out. I longed for change, for anything of interest. My wish was granted that May, but I now see how idiotic I was.
Whenever the doors opened in late spring, the powerfully sweet aroma of hyacinths would float across the room. Without fail, my gaze would shift to the source when I caught a draft of the pleasant smell, which just so happened to occupy the same space as the delightful receptionist. She had a perpetually cheery face, pale and beautiful. She always brightened the room and was always ready to greet guests. She never noticed my glances, though.
One particular night when the doors opened, I was struck by a foul odor. It was different from the saccharine smell of decaying flowers. The stench was even sweeter, almost sickeningly so. Also, the bouquets were still fresh. I wrinkled my nose and brushed it off as some floral aerosol drifting from the restroom. However, as the night dragged on, the pungent smell did not dissipate. Judging by the expressions of everyone who passed through, no one was bothered, except for me.
At the end of my shift, I was vacuuming the ghastly pale green carpet in the lobby and half-watching the local nightly news. If I had access to the remote, I would have changed it from the twisted station that constantly spewed liberal lies, but I was out of luck. The current segment was about the immigration crisis. It was difficult not to express my alternating rage and humor. I had to resort to quietly scoffing and sighing.
My boss yelled my name. After shutting off the vacuum, I turned around to see the fat man with his hands on his hips. He beckoned me to follow him to his office. Those nosy, foreign cleaning ladies watched as we walked. They knew it wasn’t their business, but that didn’t stop them from imposing. I heard their whispers, though I couldn’t understand their language.
The boss sat behind his large wooden desk and looked at me.
“It’s the twelfth,” he said. I knew he was fishing for something, but I didn’t know what, so I simply nodded. He continued: “How many times must I remind you that we check the boiler room on the second Tuesday of every month?”
“Actually, I went down there this afternoon. Everything’s in working order.”
“Ah. So you just didn’t think it was important to give your manager an update, I see. You know corporate demands a report on the machines once a month.”
“I’m sorry, I just forgot to tell you,” I mumbled, avoiding his scrutinizing glare.
“Honestly, I don’t know how you got that degree with so little going on up there,” he said with a sigh. “Anyway, go down and check again before you clock out. And remember to tell me this time.”
The boss, being accustomed to big, bustling hotels, would have berated me again if I didn’t do exactly as he ordered immediately after he said it. There was no way I was going to sit tight and get told once more that I needed to “work harder and smarter.” No thanks. I didn’t need that from him, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to exhaust myself in this dump.
The boss’s insult to my intelligence was nothing new. In fact, I sometimes agreed with him. If I really were so smart, then why was I working such a low-class job with such little pay for so long? I deserved more than getting chummy with these degenerates. My wife agreed that I was overqualified, but she couldn’t understand the shame in the position. Thinking about the situation made me clench my jaw and ball my fists, made my pulse quicken, made hot humiliation rise to my face.
The doors parted once the elevator arrived at the basement, revealing open, dusty spaces bathed in flickering, fluorescent lights. The smell that was similar to burning sulfur but sweeter entered my consciousness again, and its renewed force made my eyes water. Squeezing them shut, I focused on relaxing my tense muscles. The odor got stronger as I walked farther into the room.
When I arrived at the boiler, which was installed against the far wall, I heard a clicking noise. Shit, I thought, we have rats again. I bent over to check under the tank. There was nothing but dust. The sound was certainly coming from somewhere around the large machine, but I couldn’t fathom where. I thought if I tapped on the tank, I might see something scuttle away. The container itself sounded hollow, but there was a pained mewl that responded to the knock. I wondered, how could rats be in the boiler? There weren’t any holes in the tank through which the vermin could enter, and that confused me more. My knuckles rapped on the metal frame again. I was rewarded with a low whine. I trailed my hand around the sides of the cool cylinder in an effort to find some clues where I could not see. It didn’t take long to find a groove at the top. I curled my fingers to grip it, causing the side of the boiler to move slightly. I pulled hard and the machine snapped open.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
A ray of unnatural yellow light filtered into the boiler as a stream of repulsive odor filtered out. It was even stronger than it was when I first entered the basement. When I peered inside, the tank was not empty. There was something that looked like a pile of wriggling limbs. Four distinct extremities sprouted from the angular mass. Just how this thing was assembled wasn’t clear, as it was folded in on itself. Dramatic convulsions seized the ruddy pink shape. The tremors calmed slightly while I lowered the side of the boiler to the ground. As the metal scraped the concrete floor, the shaking paused. A clump of flesh lifted from the pile. It had two eyes and what looked like a hairless German Shepherd’s muzzle, so I assumed it was a head. The eyelids were twitching, constantly opening and closing, clenching and lifting. Was this creature in pain? Well, that would suit me just fine, I thought. It’ll die soon enough and I won’t have to kill it. I shuddered at the thought of having to kill it myself. The thing might fight back, or at the least leave marks of its pathetic existence on my hands. Deciding to let nature do its work also meant I wouldn’t have to tell anyone and take the risk of the pest getting rescued. Something so hideous didn’t deserve to live. And there was no way the blame could get pushed on me. Picking up animal remains was not in my job description, even if they did expect it from me. I wouldn’t have to fill out any pointless paperwork either.
On that day, I couldn’t bring myself to get any closer to it. The horrid smell and the accompanying unease made me impatient to get back to the lobby. I closed the tank and hurried to the elevator.
Over the next four months, only three guests complained about an odor. The first was a woman who was checking out after staying for a weekend. I was working in the lobby when she suggested we have the vents cleaned, because some repulsive stench was drifting throughout the hotel. The second complaint was from a man who checked in for one night to have a rendezvous with a prostitute. He said something about the smell and asked the whore if she wanted to find another place. She looked at the clock, likely assessing how much time she had until her next appointment, and declined. The third guest was a young boy trying to get his mother’s attention. The receptionist always apologized and promised to look into the problem. I trust that she did tell the boss of the reports, yet nothing ever happened.
Checking the boiler room every month was not only an unwelcome chore, but a source of dread as well. I was tempted to open the machine each time, to see if the creature was dead yet, to finish this awful sequence. I was weak, however, and simply checked the meters and gauges when required. It was like forcing the same poles of two magnets together when I went down there.
By the time the slow season began, in early September, I stopped noticing the smell when I was in the hotel. When not working, though, my senses were plagued. It started as a minor annoyance and gradually consumed my life. The odor followed me when I was driving my car, first intermingling with the cigarette smoke, then quickly overpowering it. The smell followed me when I was out doing errands, blowing in my face every time doors opened and closed. The stench followed me at home, when I was watching TV, eating dinner, and even sleeping. It crept into my dreams, tainting the good ones with reality and giving the nightmares the stink of waking life.
The turning point was Thanksgiving. The wife’s parents came to my house, along with her two siblings and their young children. I had no one from my side, as usual. The wife barred them from the meal a couple years ago on the grounds that conversation got “too political” with them. What she meant was that my family made hers uncomfortable. My in-laws had always been spineless pushovers, never willing to get into confrontation, even for important matters.
At some point in the night, they were talking about a cousin who was getting married to his Russian girlfriend.
“She probably only wants him for a green card,” I muttered. The comment earned me a kick under the table from the wife. Little did she anticipate that it would make me angrier. “What? You think that’s not on her mind?” I said loud enough for everyone to turn and face me. “Come on, she obviously wants to stay in this country. We can’t allow that, though. We can’t keep letting all these immigrants infiltrate the borders. They want to replace us. I sure as hell won’t let them. My ancestors devoted their lives, gave their blood, to protect this soil. What have immigrants done for us?”
“I thought his grandma was from Austria,” my sister-in-law said under her breath.
The kids looked at their parents, hoping for an explanation.
As I was about to impart some wisdom, the wife’s mother said, “Let’s change the subject.”
“The sweet potatoes are really great this year, Mary.”
Getting ready to bring the conversation back on track, I became distracted by a sudden gust of putrid wind. It hardly took a moment for me to place the smell.
“Goddammit!” I slammed my hands on the table. “Where the fuck is that smell coming from?”
Her family exchanged worried glances, and her sister even rolled her eyes.
“Did I leave something in the oven? I’ll go check.”
“No, sit down!” I roared. The wife obeyed, and I said, “It’s not from the oven, it’s from that damned, disgusting . . . thing! That thing in the boiler. Jesus Christ, how’d it get here?”
“Honey, there’s no smell.”
“Oh? There’s no smell? It’s all in my head, is it?” I asked.
“Please, just calm down, and let’s get back to dinner,” the wife’s brother suggested.
“Calm down? Calm down? How can I calm down when that—that alien is disrupting my life? I need to get rid of it, and fast. I’m leaving.” I was shaking with so much rage that I had difficulty slipping on my coat.
I walked to the front door and heard an in-law feigning concern, asking, “Is he alright?”
The wife apologized to her family, but I couldn’t care less about the scene I had caused. Maybe I had opened their eyes to the truth, or at least started the process. I slammed the door shut and stomped to my car. My breath was visible on the drive to the hotel, seeing that I did not have the patience to wait for the car to heat up.
When I arrived, I leaped out and left the motor running. The receptionist was at the desk, but for once she didn’t get a smile. I didn’t even look at her. I simply marched to the elevator and went down to the boiler room. Although I was the only person in the basement, the room was chaotic with noise. Aside from the usual hum of the machines, there was now a perpetual string of long, raspy breaths weaving through the area. A scream tried to erupt from my throat.
On my way to the far end of the room, I checked the backup generator, the steam blowdown separators, and the feed water system, moving along as each one proved to be in fine working order. There were no new grooves or hinges, no strange openings. I even hit the machines to make sure nothing was living inside. I only felt aggravation as I went along with my job, striking each machine with greater force as I went along. Hollow booms resounded throughout the room, intermingling with the frail gasps and sighs. I soon realized there was only one creature who was truly suffering down here, and it damn well wasn’t human.
At last I stood in front of the enormous “boiler.” I ran my hand up the side of the rusty cylinder until my fingers dipped into the long cavity at the top. I pulled the side of the machine open, shedding light on the source of the odor. I set the piece of metal on the ground and took a couple steps forward until I had to crane my neck down, completely inside the boiler. I kept as much distance as possible between myself and the grayish pink abomination. There wasn’t enough space in the machine to properly separate us.
The thing had hardly moved since I was last down there. It was still curled in a ball, still quivering, still reeking of some loathsome stench. The bulging, black eye that faced upward shined as it caught the light. A bead of the wet, viscous substance trickled into a cleft on the thing’s body. It looked closer to death than it had when I had left it, a bit paler and a bit shakier, which brought a smirk to my lips. Soon I would be rid of this disgusting growth. I would be free from the burden of keeping this atrocity a secret. I would burn its lifeless body and the smell would finally disappear.
“How you doing there?” I asked. “You about ready to check out?”
I could only chuckle at my joke for a second, because there was a sudden sharp jab at my temples. There was a brief, blinding pain, and when I opened my eyes, I was lost. The boiler room had disappeared. Instead of a poorly lit room crowded with machinery, I saw a glittering expanse of snow like a white desert. What the hell was going on? Bracing myself for a severe chill but receiving none only added to my confusion. I was just as warm and sweaty as I was in the hotel.
My sight was drawn to six figures quickly approaching me. As they came into focus, I tried to scream, to fight, to run, but I was mute and immobile. I was their captive. Their brown-pink skin swayed with every urgent step they took. All twelve of their eyes were fixed on me.
The six figures were almost identical to the interloper in the hotel basement, though they were more brown than gray, and they differed in size. One was large, nearly as tall as a fully-grown man, while the rest were small, about the size of lap dogs. They stopped when they were standing only a foot away from me. They stood in close proximity to each other, making me believe there was some sort of companionship, possibly familial comfort, among them. I took in their wrinkled forms with their sagging skin, their hunched postures, their scrawny arms, and their wiry legs. The smallest one opened its dark lips, showing me its crooked, rounded teeth, and let out a deep moan. It was a melancholy noise, somehow tinged with strains of sadness. I shut my eyes for a long moment, unable to bear the sight of the hideous face that accompanied such a piteous sound.
My eyes opened to find that I was back in the boiler room. I let the tension out of my shoulders as relief filled my chest, until I looked down and saw the thing was still there. Worse, it had lifted its malformed head to look straight at me. Both black eyes were twinkling with moisture. Its gaze mesmerized me. My heart felt heavy. It was as if there was something missing, something that I had loved and lost.
But then I inhaled. The reality of the situation returned. This unwelcome creature was the source of all the strife that had weighed on me through the nights and days of the past months. The stench never stopped. And now this thing was trying to manipulate me into keeping it alive, or welcoming its species, of doing whatever the hell it wanted. This thing wanted to cash in on my weakness. This fucking thing wanted control. I would not give in.
“Picked up a few things from us, have you?” I said with a disgusted sneer. “Trying to trick me with false emotions, huh?”
The breathing accelerated, and the thing lowered its head.
“That’s right, you can’t get me,” I crowed. “You and your kind will not come here and replace us.”
Its wrinkled mouth opened and another low groan echoed around me.
“No! That trick isn’t going to work again. How dare you try to manipulate me? How dare you try to control me?”
The noise continued, getting deeper and louder. Cacophonous waves of sound crashed around me. They seemed desperate, almost like begging.
“Stop that screeching! Shut up. Shut up!” I shouted, walking closer. “Shut the fuck up!”
I was finally able to act on the impulse that struck me upon first seeing the beast. On the last word, I brought my foot down on its body. The groans were cut short as the creature squealed. The sound was high-pitched and it dragged on until I stomped on it again. It tried to grab my boot with a shriveled hand, gnarled fingers curling around the toe. A quick jerk of my leg was all it took to free myself. Again I stepped on the body. I heard the crunch of its bones through the ringing in my ears. Blood spurted out of its mouth. Its eyes dislodged from their sockets, straining to hold onto the body with their veins.
A broad smile spread across my face. I remained in my victorious position until my heavy breathing returned to normal. I lifted my foot, waiting for movement. There was none. Inch by inch, I backed away from the corpse. I grabbed a fold of surprisingly thick flesh and picked it up. It was much lighter than I had thought. The hide was smooth as silk, yet it felt durable. I was reminded of the papery skin of my wife’s aged breasts. The key differences were that this thing brought no joy and that it was wet. Not only was there blood on the monstrosity’s skin, but there was also some sort of gelatinous secretion like mucus. I couldn’t endure holding the thing any longer.
I carried it out of the “boiler.” The swinging of the dead weight stretching from my hold was grotesque—both repulsive and amazing. Throwing that intruder into the furnace was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.
I stood in front of the fire, watching plumes of smoke rise as the limbs darkened. The wafts of odor from the flames made me wretch. My chest seized and my throat convulsed as I vomited my dinner. When at last my stomach was empty, I tried to breathe deeply and steadily, but once again my nostrils were assailed. Foul belches rose in my mouth as I dashed to the elevator, which seemed to take hours to arrive.
Once inside, I glanced at the overhead lights. They blinded me for a moment, forcing me to see those six figures in my mind again. Thrusting my head down and pushing my palms onto my eyes, I let out a guttural scream. Flecks of saliva landed on my forearms. My throat was tight and burning, but I couldn’t stop. It was not important if anyone heard me.
“Stop!” I cried. “For Christ’s sake, stop!”
Even when I opened my eyes, I still saw those repulsive creatures. I was back in that white desert. I shook my head, blinked, slapped myself, but nothing changed. I screamed again, but I did not hear my voice. Instead I heard that sad, low groan. They were mocking me.
In the distance I heard the elevator chime. I wanted to run back to my car and drive until I ran out of gas. But I was frozen. Another creature opened its mouth and whined. One by one, they all began to howl, constricting me with soundwaves. Pressing my hands to my ears did not block out the wailing.
Suddenly, hands wrapped around my shoulders. I tried to jerk them off. They only tightened. They didn’t feel any different from human hands, but I didn’t trust them. I put all my energy into fighting the physical contact, swerving around and elbowing whatever was trying to contain me.
Then I heard a soothing voice. It took a moment for me to realize that it was talking, that it was human. Most importantly, it was speaking English.
“Stop fighting, it’s okay.”
I relaxed my body and let my hands fall to my sides. Daring myself to open my eyes, I saw that I was back in the elevator. I looked around and noticed a beautiful face before me.
“What on earth happened?” the receptionist asked.
Would she have believed me if I told her? I drew in a shaky breath and broke eye contact. That’s when I saw the thick, red secretion on my boot. It just wouldn’t leave me be.