Page 1 of 1
Closed Without Resolution

by Miles Rooker
Chapter 2
They came quicker than I expected.
That part keeps bothering me.

Lights in the lot.
Voices kept low like courtesy mattered.
Someone asked me to step back
and I did,
because that’s what you do
when authority shows up carrying forms.

They didn’t stay long.
That surprised me too.

Room 17 got a new status
before the hallway cooled down.
Closed.
Out of order.
Maintenance issue pending.
Those words moved faster
than anything I’d seen all night.

I watched them carry the sheets out.
Not the body.
That part was already handled.
The sheets though
were treated like evidence,
like they remembered something
no one wanted to hear again.

Management called while the door was still open.
They told me not to speculate.
They told me not to talk.
They told me I did the right thing.
That sentence felt pre-written.

By morning the hallway smelled normal.
Carpet vacuumed.
Lights back to their proper pitch.
Guests asked for extra towels
and didn’t notice the number missing
at the end of the wing.

Room 17 no longer appears on the board.
Not vacant.
Not occupied.
Just gone,
like it never learned how to be anything else.

I signed the incident log.
My handwriting looked steady.
That scared me more than anything.

I keep waiting for the shaking to stop.
It hasn’t.
It’s just learned how to be quiet.
I go through the motions.
I answer phones.
I check people in.

Sometimes I glance at the hallway monitor
and feel relief
when it shows nothing unusual.

That’s how I know
whatever happened didn’t end in that room.
It ended cleanly.
It ended officially.

The rest of it
stayed with me.