The Corridors Between Worlds

Eager for her breakfast, it wasn’t until Alice looked around, after locking the door to her room, that she realised she wasn’t in the hotel any longer.

She stood, staring around, up and down the corridor, not quite able to believe it.

Admittedly, she had been tired when she checked into the hotel the night before, but she remembered the long straight corridor, almost anonymous, sparsely decorated with the normal bland hotel pictures, fire safety instructions, and the other odds and ends of a typical modern hotel.

This was not that corridor.

For a moment, Alice was not sure, but she remembered that last night, next to her room was a storeroom. She remembered the door propped open as one of the chambermaids filled its shelves with freshly-laundered sheets. The chambermaid had looked up as Alice passed by and exchanged greetings, asking if she needed anything. By then, all she wanted to do was wash, eat a quick meal in the restaurant and then crawl between some of those freshly-laundered sheets and sleep.

Now, here she was in some… suddenly it reminded her of a visit to a stately home from school. One of those school trips that is supposedly educational, but ends up with a herd of wild kids rampaging through the grounds as though being chased by some ravenous pride of predators.

Alice shrugged, thinking that maybe, contrary to what she thought she knew, her room had more than one door that led to more than one corridor and the parts of the hotel she had been in last night from reception to her room to the restaurant and back was part of some modern annexe, and this she was now in was some old ancient part.

She turned to her door, pulling out her key card and found not only was her door locked, it had an old-fashioned lock that needed a key: a big heavy metal key, judging by the size of its keyhole. She looked around over every inch of the doorframe fro top to bottom, but there was no sign of a key card reader, sighing she turned and looked for someone to complain to, but the corridor was empty and the place felt deserted.

Alice shivered, suddenly not wanting to know what lay at the end of the corridor.