Author: Jessica Brooks
There is no room 237 in Ramsay Hall.
I checked.
Several times, in fact. I guess each time, I was scared it would suddenly have appeared out of thin fucking air.
They say these hallways change at night.
They want to believe this place is enchanted,
and though I would enjoy such a sanitized way of looking at this place,
I know better.
And though I live in one of the few rooms with a bathtub
in this hotel-turned-dormitory,
which puts me at risk for seduction by a creepy half-drowned spectre,
at least I’m someplace where you can’t reach me.
Not that you even want to reach me.
You with the Djarum Blacks you finally stopped smoking--
you were happy enough without me that you stopped smoking.
That knowledge alone was worse than any harsh words at the typewriter.
You with that face, those eyes that always looked half-empty or more,
the endless, endless consumption of alcohol, complete with snide words to the bartender.
With the ex far prettier and more talented that I can ever hope to be,
and the Advocaat and blood staining the hands that held my waist.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say
that you were Jack Torrance
and that I was Wendy,
but the fact remains
that one of us got out in the end
and the other one didn’t.
The hard part is-- I can’t tell who is who.
One of us looks like a caricature, a Neanderthal
with eyelashes frozen over,
but the foil doesn’t stop long,
gathering the traumatized remnants of those two short months
and getting the fuck out of dodge.
One of us is descending the mountain,
safe from the elevator that threatens to drown its patrons in crimson.
But the other has had their brains bashed in,
right the fuck in,
and I think it’s me that the Overlook Hotel has claimed for the last hundred years.