One of the blue tug boats spun in place as if trapped in a weak whirlpool, the other chased around it’s rear as though it were trying to mate with it. They were her two blue flip flips floating in a centimeter of water on the floor of the bathroom. Her eyes are focusing on them now and the questions are forming in her mind.

“Where was I?”

No, that’s the wrong question.

“Where am I?”

No, still the wrong question. It’s not just the place she finds herself unfamiliar with, but the water she’s laying in with one ear submerged in and the other towards the shower head. The bitter cold of her naked skin.

“This isn’t my house.”

It’s a cramped, dilapidated, cheap hotel room. Sparsely furnished, dimly lit, curt edicts to the occupant that there is no smoking in this room.

“How did I get here?”

There is a belief or expectation that after she had graduated secondary school she would take a year to travel abroad before attending university, but that belief, along with the whole narrative of her life and the world, are plotted by coordinates in time, and that sense of time has been amputated up to the torso. 

She sits up to immediate vertigo. It’s as if the entire planet has just rotated away from her face. Her arms are braced on the loosened linoleum of the floor. She feels the bubbled flooring give beneath her fingers.

“I have to call my dad. Or- should I call the police?”

The grogginess of her head and the hunger pangs in her stomach are thrust away by the sinking panic of potentially being a victim of date rape.

“Who was he? Was there a he?”

Gathering herself upright, picking up her clothes from the flooded floor of the hotel, she only needs to take one step out of the closet-sized bathroom to be in the main living space, most of that space taken up by a queen-size bed.

Twisting her clothes in her hands to wring them out on to the already-soaked carpet.

“The damage to the room will be expensive.” She thinks to herself. “It’s already moldy.”

She imagines what the cost will be. She doesn’t even know how much was paid for the room. She doesn’t even know where the hotel is. As she inventories more of what she does not know she is overwhelmed with panic. Rapid heavy breaths, stomach turning sour, holding back watery vomit, ears burning, eyes welling with tears, skin bristling, vision tunneling.

“What country am I in?”

She stares into the electrical outlets with widening eyes. They aren’t Australian, nor are they UK, nor are they Israeli, and they aren’t American.

“When you tour the states and canada you need a plug adapter or you won’t be able to charge your phone or your toothbrush.” Her mother’s voice echoes in her memory.

The outlets have three holes but she is completely unfamiliar with the configuration and shape. The adapter she bought online will not plug into it.

She slides her wet clothes on, frustrated by how they stick to her, tight around her hips and shoulders. Heavy. She is in denial that she’s sliding hopelessly into a panic attack. Her hands are tingling which makes it more difficult, but they are also stiff from being cold. She might even be sweating but it’s indistinguishable from her skin being soaked. 

Lifting the phone from the cradle and pressing it to her ear, there is no dial tone. The decal in the phone cradle indicating the directories reads “first press 9 to dial out of hotel, press 1 to reach the concierge, for emergencies dial 9901”

“What the fuck?” She says aloud while blinking her eyes.

Her vision is flashing and shrinking, her breathing rapid, hands trembling-

As she blacks out there is one last question on her mind.

“Why is it so dark?”

She wakes up, groggy, hungry, quietly sobbing through cracked breaths.

“My phone.”

She stands, dizzy, lost. Her eyes search for her phone but she can barely recognize objects by how fast her eyes dart across the scene. The dizziness combined with her rapid scanning of the room pulls her to the floor again.

There’s a rising tightness of sick pushing up her esophagus.

On her hands and knees she notices her back pack on the floor beside the foot of the bed.

She crawls towards it, hoists it on the bed while kneeling beside it, then digs through it. Makeup compact, tissues, tightly-balled plastic food wrapper, digital camera, sun glasses.

She stands and turns the bag over emptying it on the bed. A couple of books, birth control, cold medicine, prescription pills, flash light, chewing gum, wallet, notebook, outlet adapter, phone, toothbrush, cold medicine, books, sanitary pads, tampons, notebook, phone, flashlight, hair ties, sun glasses, lip balm, condom, phone-

Her phone.She doesn’t realize she’s looking at her phone for a few more moments.

There’s no charge. It won’t even power on.

The lights in the room are so dim she can barely tell what color the pattern of the bedspread is. Black, orange, white, pink, red. She can’t even notice how faded those colors are or that it’s tinged with mildew. She’s breathing too fast to really understand what she’s smelling.

“I’ll go to the front desk.”

She gathers up all her things in her backpack then approaches the door. The resistance to turning the handle worries her just until the edge of the door pulls away from the frame. The soggy carpet resists the door opening smoothly.

The hallway is dark but there are lights. The lights are dim or flickering.

“Maybe there was an accident.” She reassures herself. “I’ll be home soon. I just need to get to a phone.”

The call button to the lift barely lights up. It too flickers as though it’s on its last legs.

It’s too dark to see the amount of mold and mildew that has grown over every surface. The paint chips that littler the entire hall. The slimy texture of the algae and mildew as her wet flip flops press against the linoleum flooring.

The lift is very slow to arrive. She puts her ear to the edge of the elevator door and can hear the cables wiggling in the shaft.

“It’s so dirty here.”

It occurs to her that every surface is so severely damaged by moisture that the building should be condemned. She then wonders if the building isn’t already condemned.

When she enters the lift she sees the room she left behind. Then she notices a door that is open she didn’t notice before. As the doors to the lift grind shut she realizes the door is opening and someone is walking out into the hallway. 

She’s in a rush to leave. “It must be the adrenaline.” She tells herself as she pictures what she just saw behind the closed doors to the lift. “I’m seeing things. It would be ridiculous for that to be real.”

That thing she had just seen replays in her mind’s eye again and again, unable to clarify it. A big bug? Massive. Bigger than a man. Long chitinous legs with sparse coarse bristly hairs, like a tarantula's.

The lights in the lift are brighter but it’s also dysfunctional. The lights behind each number to indicate what floor the lift is on don’t all light up. It’s also missing the 13th’s floor. It skips from 13 to 15. So the top floor, the 16th floor, it really just the 15th floor.