"Room 249"

Room 249 was a dive. Frayed carpet. Chipped furniture. A missing ceiling tile. Jasmine hardly cared. She’d sleep hard, rise early. But she woke in the night to the sound of moving air.

At first she thought it was wind. Then the AC. She rose, considered using the toilet, getting a drink.

She did neither. Instead, she staggered out of the room and into the parking lot where she shivered until dawn. Above her bed, she’d seen sickly luminescence leaking through that missing tile, a bulbous mass swelling and shrinking with each patient breath, waiting for her eyes to close.

Room 249 by I Saw Lightning Fall

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