| abstract | - It was on the 4th floor of a hotel room when everything unraveled. A man walked in the hotel after what seemed like days of traveling on the road. The receptionist looked at the man as if he was sick. To be honest, he did look like he was sick He asked if he could stay for about three nights, after explaining the events that happened. He told the receptionist how he had traveled from some country for the last couple of days on a business trip. It was the last hotel he would ever stay at. The receptionist at the front desk listened intently to the man's story with awkward delight. When he was finished, he asked the woman for his key and the amount it would cost him to stay there. She said it would cost him a mere $30 to stay the three days and eagerly gave the man the key. She said that there was only one room left in the hotel, and that it was on the 4th floor, only three doors from the stairs to the left, six from the right. Before he departed for his room, the lady leaned over the desk and whispered something in his ear. I couldn't make out any words, but after she was done, I heard him. He had a voice that could soothe someone. He seemed nice, too. Kind and polite, thanking the woman twice before he proceeded to his room. Later that night, I heard the most blood-curdling scream coming from two floors up. It sounded like that same man again. He ran down the stairs yelling for the receptionist, but to no avail. She had retired to sleep as well. And with no one there, I couldn't help but awaken out of bed and follow the man. I watched him run, nearly tumbling over himself. Scrambling for the front door like a madman. I followed him outside into the cold and over to where he stood, horrifyingly frightened over the events that had happened. I asked him in a sort of frantic tone, “What happened?!” He explained everything to me. He told me that when he went to go to the bathroom that same day, a misty image of a creature from a nightmare came inching toward him from the mirror. He quickly dismissed it as, “Just my imagination." He told me that it wasn't until tonight he had truly got a good look at it. He told me it was smiling. Not just smiling, but almost as if the corners of the thing's mouth encircled its entire head. And his teeth, how much he detailed the teeth. The man described the teeth as having a ghostlike appearance, but they were bloodstained, razor sharp and pointed. The man told me that the thing's teeth looked like they were almost decayed, and how some of them seemed to puncture through the creature's lips. Then he described its eyes. I froze when he told me that its eyes were a red-purple color. They looked like empty voids into the nothing where someone could get trapped in. He asked if I had seen this … this thing. I told him that I didn't see the creature of which he mentioned. The man then went on to describe its skin. How it was a deep green-gray, falling off to show bone, and head that had bald spots, and looked like it had been cut. The hair he described looked like it was cut from a razor, but cut so close to some places, it seemed to rip itself from the head. The hair, he said, looked like it, as well, was decaying. The scream he told me it let out was eerily maniacal. He described the sound as, “A scream of a witch and a zombie with a tinge of suicidal rampancy.” He told me that it just stood there at his door, glaring at him then pointed a broken finger at him. A finger whose flesh seemed like it was melted away. He also mentioned that it had a ghostly trail behind it. A black, ghostly trail that looked like it was swaying, like it had a mind of its own. He told me that the trail slowly crawled towards him and the thing was suddenly in his face the moment he blinked his eyes. He asked again how I could not have seen such a nightmare. I, again, told him I have not. That no one has ever seen anything like that. After a couple hours trying to convince the man that he was just hallucinating, he wearily walked with me to his room. The next morning, I went to his room to see if he was alright, and found that it looked like it was kicked in. Deep scratches lined the door like a raptor's claws. It had a weird symbol on it but I shrugged it off thinking that someone had burglarized this part of the hotel. I walked in slowly and looked around. The room looked like a tornado ran through it. Torn clothes, broken pictures and vases littered the floor. The floor was ripped up, and the mattress was in a heap. Deeper claw marks lined the mattress. Holes in the walls as well as scratch lines. And again, there were more odd carvings, like something of demonic nature. It wasn't until I noticed a large pool of blood in the middle of the room and followed it. The eerie blood lines led to the 4th floor's bathroom. What I saw, I couldn't comprehend. There he was, laying in inhuman ways in the bathroom shower. His arms and legs were seemingly nailed to the walls by boney nails. His head was on a torn-out part of the wall with a sharp end shoved right through. He had no eyes. They'd been ripped from their sockets, as well as the rest of his body parts. His torso was in the tub, bathing in the owner's own blood. The smell of it was enough to make me want to gag and throw up. What I saw on the mirror haunts me to this day. It read, “I have claimed yet another victim,” in the man's own blood. I never went back to that hotel ever again and to this day, I will never enter the 4th floor of any hotel for fear of this creature lurking in my shadow, waiting for me to make the same mistake that poor man had. And I tell you, who are reading this, never venture past the 3rd floor of any hotel. Especially the bathroom. For all we know, this thing could be lurking in the smallest shadow, waiting. Watching. Hoping for you to let your guard down, then tear you apart and hang you like ornaments.
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