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Two Week Notice?

by Miles Rooker
Chapter 1
Night shifts are slow enough
that I make my own ghosts.
A woman buying ice becomes a revenant.
A tired salesman turns into a creature
dragging secrets in his suitcase.
It keeps me awake,
this private little game
of finding terror in the harmless.

Then he arrived.
A man in a quiet coat,
face worn like a wallet left in the rain.
He asked for Room 17,
voice soft as motel sheets.
I watched him cross the lot
through the window’s sleepy glass,
watched him climb the short stair,
watched the door of 17 swallow him whole.

The door never opened again.
No footsteps.
No shuffle in the hall.
No shadow moving behind the curtains.
He was tucked inside that room
like a seed under frost.

So when the bell chimed
and he stepped through the entrance
a second time,
coat still wet,
eyes still tired,
asking again for Room 17,
my breath felt borrowed from someone else.

I handed him the key he already held.
He thanked me in the same slow voice.
Then I watched him cross the lot
in the same tired stride,
watched him vanish into Room 17
as if he’d never entered it before.

But the first version of him
never walked out.
And the second one never paused
to question why the air smelled of him already.

I locked the drawer,
kept both copies of his signature,
and wrote this down in the ledger.
The halls feel colder now.
I will look into Room 17
when the moon climbs higher
and the world feels thin enough to tear.