Room 616

I checked into the Halcyon Hotel on a Tuesday night in October.

The air outside smelled like wet leaves and smoke, the kind of night that makes your thoughts louder. I didn’t plan to stay—I wasn’t even sure how I got there.

I’d been driving, aimlessly. Trying to outrun something I couldn’t name.

Grief, maybe.

Or guilt.

The hotel was a tall, pale structure tucked between a shuttered gas station and an empty stretch of woods. The sign outside flickered in and out of existence, like it wasn’t sure it belonged there.

But the light was warm.

I stepped in.

The lobby was all polished wood, oil paintings, and that old-book smell that made it feel like time moved slower inside. No music. Just a ticking grandfather clock. The woman at the front desk wore a red silk scarf and smiled like she knew me.

“Checking in?”

“I think so.”

She tilted her head. “Long drive?”

I nodded.

She slid me a key. A real one—brass, heavy.

Room 616.

I didn’t ask for a room. I didn’t give my name. But the key had it engraved anyway.

Room 616 was at the very end of the sixth floor hallway. I passed rooms with peeling numbers, flickering lights, and closed doors I swore I heard breathing behind.

My room was immaculate. All burgundy and cream. Old wood. Thick carpet. A large bed and a mirror over the desk.

No phone. No TV. No clock.

I set my bag down. There was nothing in it.

I didn’t remember packing.

I first noticed something strange when I saw the photo on the nightstand.

It showed a man, sitting on the edge of a bathtub, holding his head in his hands. The photo was black and white, slightly warped.

The man looked like me.

But I didn’t remember the moment.

Or the bathroom.

Or why I was crying in it.

I tried to sleep.

But at 3:33 A.M., I heard knocking.

Three knocks. From the closet.

I froze. Waited.

Nothing.

When I finally opened it, there was no one inside.

Just a suit. My size. Dry-cleaned. With a note in the pocket.

“Put it on. You’re late.”

Late for what?

The next morning, I woke up with blood on my hands.

Not much. Just enough to panic.

The sheets were clean. My clothes too. But the mirror had fogged over from inside, and the message “Remember her” was written in it.

I hadn’t taken a shower.

Hadn’t turned on the water.

The front desk clerk—now a different woman, older, with gray eyes—handed me a manila envelope.

“Someone left this for you.”

Inside were five photos. All of the same woman.

Dark hair. Green eyes. Familiar in a way that made my stomach turn.

In the last photo, she was asleep.

Or… dead.

I didn’t remember her name.

But I remembered her scent.

Each night, the hotel shifted.

One night, my window looked out over a city I didn’t recognize—lit by a thousand streetlamps and no stars.

Another night, it opened to a brick wall with scratch marks on it.

And once, it showed my childhood bedroom, untouched since I’d left it at twelve. The mobile still spun above the bed.

But the spinning… was slowing.

Like time was running out.

Room 616 was not a room.

It was a confinement. A memory prison. A spiritual hotel lobby between dimensions—between guilt and acceptance. Between forgetting and being forced to remember.

And the longer I stayed, the more I saw.

In the elevator mirror, I saw someone behind me. Always behind. Never in focus.

In the hallways, I heard my own voice whispering things I never said.

And in the stairwell, I found my name written in a child's handwriting. Over and over and over again. Until it smeared into red.

On the sixth night, I met her.

In the bathroom.

She stood at the sink, looking into the mirror, even though I hadn’t turned on the lights.

“Do you know me yet?” she asked.

Her voice was water in a steel bucket.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

She turned. Her eyes were hollow, but they cried anyway.

“You promised you’d never forget. That was the deal. That’s why they gave you this room.”

“Who are they?”

She just smiled.

“You’ll remember when the seventh night comes. You always do.”

On the seventh night, the door locked itself.

The lights went red.

My phone—off for days—buzzed violently.

A single message.

“Don’t open the mirror.”

But I did.

Behind it wasn’t a cabinet.

It was a tunnel.

Carved into flesh. Breathing. Wet.

I crawled through.

I came out… into the bathroom from the photo.

And there I was.

On the tub.

Crying.

Holding something wrapped in a towel.

Something small.

Something not moving.

I screamed.

But no sound came.

Because that wasn’t the moment I killed her.

It was the moment I remembered.

They say grief erases.

But guilt preserves.

Room 616 wasn’t a hotel room.

It was a sentence.

And I had been here before.

Dozens of times.

Every time I broke.

Every time I snapped.

Every time I asked to forget, they made me remember.

Again. And again. And again.

Because that was the deal.

You can run.

You can forget.

But eventually…

you always check back in.