Room 13 | The Substack Zone Story

A regular stay in a hotel turns into a nightmare for an overworked Henry Standring

Nov 24, 2024

66 years ago we’ve been gifted with one of the most genius pieces of storytelling in the televison history. Today, 66 years later, 31 authors took on the challange to recreate the Twilight Zone structure and pay tribute to the genius of Rod Serling. If you enjoy my story below, don’t forget to check these amazing authors and their stories too ⬇️

“Yes, I understand,” Henry said, fists curled up. “For sure, Mr. Sulivane, I’ll ensure the client is taken care of.”

Another salve of insults and screams bursted out of the telephone.

“Yes, Mr. Sulivane, I keep the shareholders in mind,” he pushed on his burning eyes, fighting the pain of many sleepless nights. “You got it, boss!” he said, forcing a laugh before hanging up.

Henry banged his head against the glass of the phone booth. “This can’t be real,” he muttered under his breath. Dark circles hugged his eyelids, and dozens of wrinkles kept them company on his weathered face.

He screamed into the night, visions of home, freedom, and his bed vanishing like the morning mist against the sunlight. Henry’s fist met the wall of the booth. In a chase for riches, he became a corporate slave, a puppet stringed along to his boss’s play. Weeks were spent on this work trip, and when he was just about to go home, it was denied once more.

“Just one more day in this city,” he mumbled to himself as he walked towards the glowing hotel sign. Another night in a foreign bed awaited him.

Henry Standring’s world was one of pent-up frustration and rage fits that passed from the top of the pyramid until they fell on the lowermost people. The roaring flame inside him needed an outlet, a target that would eat up his anger, just like he did for his superiors.
Someone living outside of his bubble, perhaps an unassuming, tender hotel receptionist—expected to serve and endure his frustration without complaints or questions.
But tonight, Henry Standring is about to learn that anger, once unleashed, can return transformed into something more twisted. And sometimes, the cost of taking it out on the innocent is paid in unexpected ways—in a place we call the Twilight Zone.

The lobby was nothing fancy, with a couple of couches, some older furniture, and a smell of cheap lavender perfume in the air—a fittingly shabby hotel for his mood. Fatigue kept pulling at his eyelids, and he didn’t bother to notice the men playing chess in the lobby, nor their stares.

Instead, his heavy hand banged on the receptionist’s table, sighing loud enough to make it known: He’s got no time for this. A couple of moments went by before a young blonde lady showed up. She was a pretty one, with long hair and a slight tan.

“Good evening, sir,” she greeted him with a wide smile.

Henry didn’t say anything back; he just threw his ID over the desk. The plastic card slid over the wood, and the receptionist awkwardly tried to catch it.

“Do you have a reservation, sir?” she asked, stunned by his rudeness.

“I gave you my ID, didn’t I? Obviously, I have a reservation, Jesus.” he snapped back. His frustration expanded, pushing at the sides of his chest, trying to rip into the world. This day was bad enough as it was; this lady couldn’t make it any worse.

The lady looked down, taking a deep breath before she began to shuffle in the guest books. Her thin fingers were scanning the reservations for good ten minutes before Henry lost his patience.

“Hurry up, will you?” he shouted, catching some more stares from the people skulking around the lobby.

“I’m sorry, sir. There is no room under your name here. Is it possible that someone else made the reservation for you?” her voice was shaking a bit.

Henry smashed the desk with a fist again. “It’s under my name! My secretary made it for me!”

Henry didn’t have a secretary, but words spiked with anger were set loose, and the language borrowed from the people he hated the most took over his tongue. “Do you know who I am?” his voice boomed. The lady behind the desk seemed to shrink.

“My name is Henry Standring, and if you don’t get me my room right now, I’ll make sure you’ll end up jobless, and nobody will ever give you another job in this town! Are we clear?”

Boom.

Suddenly, all the lights in the hotel blew out.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Henry yelled, his anger drowning out the soft giggle that spread through the hotel.

The lights flickered back on. A chill bit into Henry’s body, as if the power surge syphoned all the heat out of the building. Henry looked around, the light’s seemed to be dimmer. The lavender smell was gone, suddenly the air felt stale and old. The two gentleman playing chess were looking straight at him, eye sunk deep into their sockets.

Henry nodded at them and turned back to the slow receptionist. She was smiling again, eyes wide and locked on Henry. He stepped away with a gasp, blinking; she wasn’t this pale before, and that smile was slightly too wide.

Her voice was leveled and calm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Standring. It seems like I made a mistake. As compensation, please accept our VIP suite,” she said without blinking and handed him a key together with his ID.

Henry’s temper cooled a notch. He grunted and ripped the key out of her hand. “Fine,” he said and stormed away, stopping only after a couple of steps to ask for directions.

The receptionist’s wide, bloodshot eyes met his. She was standing behind him, motionless and smiling.

“The stairs are behind the corner,” she said monotonely, “the elevators are unfortunately out of order at the moment,” the smile widened, “room thirteen on the fourth floor. Enjoy your stay.” The way she said it made the hair on Henry’s body rise.

Henry turned away, spared a glance at the elevators and their burgundy-painted doors, and then, shaking his head.

Puffing, Henry ascended the stairs.

“Fuck!” a sudden scream bounced on the stairwell as Henry reached the midsection. A boy was sitting there, skin so pale he seemed translucent. Unmoving, he just watched Henry going past him with a pair of nearly black eyes.

“What the…” Henry muttered and ran up to another floor just to meet the boy again. This time, the boy stood in Henry’s way, blocking the following staircase.

“Hey!” Henry yelled at him. “I don’t know what game you play, but this is starting to be a bit creepy!”

The boy stood silent, cocking his head slightly.

Henry squeezed past him, but still, he felt the cold eyes burning a hole in his back.

On the third floor, the boy stood leaning on the railing. Henry just rushed past him, trying not to look.

On the fourth floor, the boy was there, sitting on the railing, swinging from side to side.

Henry frantically ran up the last couple of stairs and darted out of the door into the hotel’s corridor; he glanced behind just in time to see the boy smile and fall back into the depths of the stairwell.

“NO!” Henry ran up to the railing and looked down.

Nothing was there.

Henry gasped and backed into the hall. He smudged his burning eyes. “You’re just tired,” he said to himself, “it’s just your mind playing tricks on you…” he laughed, “look at you,” Henry watched his reflection in the glass of the hallway door. “Talking to yourself like a madman,” he shook his head and walked down the hall to his room. The air here felt even more stale than in the lobby. It felt almost forgotten as if no fresh air flowed through these halls. As if the hallways themselves were dead.

It reminded Henry of those old buildings they bought last month. Walking down the hallways of an old building that still housed a hundred people, knowing well that all of them will lose their home overnight; he wasn’t proud of that. But it earned his boss a nice bonus, and that meant a better bonus for Henry.

The memory still haunted him. Even though it wasn’t his fault that the company wanted to get the building. Henry just made the deal, just a puppet, nothing more.

As he made it to a door of number thirteen a gust of wind made him turn to the left. Another guest just stepped outside of a neighboring room, a woman in black gothic clothing. Their eyes met.

Henry froze in place. Cold sweat broke on his back. The milk-white eyes stared deep into his soul. Goosebumps covered his skin.

He snapped away, fixing his eyes on the key in his hand. It looked like one of the keys, that you use to open palace doors, but it was old and a bit rusty, it’s ending shaped strangely, almost like a skull. He stared at the key intently, his breath quick and shallow.

It took a long whille, before he dared to look back. The woman was gone. “I’m losing it” he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The key slid into the lock and turned.

“Ouch! Damn it!” Henry’s voice echoed back to him in the quiet hallway. A drop of blood ran over the key into the keyhole, and the lock clicked.

Henry stepped inside, ignoring the doors closing by themselves behind. The room was large, with red carpet, crimson blinds and large windows overlooking the city. Normally that would soften his mood, but Henry aimed straight for the bathroom; his focus was solely on the bleeding finger.

Henry aimed straight for the bathroom. He winced as the wound came in contact with water. The blood mixed with water and turned the sink into a pool of crimson. Henry kept scrubbing his hands to get rid of the blood, but it seemed like the finger was bleeding more and more.

No. Not the finger. Henry panicked trying to turning the faucet off and instead turned it on fully, spraying his clothes in ruby.

“GOSH!” Henry screamed and stepped back to look into the mirror. There he was, looking like a walking corpse leaving the butcher shop. It seemed like he aged ten years in the last couple of days. “Sleep. You just need some sleep,” he muttered, glimpsing into the eyes of his reflection.

The reflection glimpsed back, its eyes wide open and with a smile cut wide.

Henry yelled and tripped backward. The floor met him with a loud thud, and he lay there, curling into a ball. “What the hell is happening,” he sobbed into his bloodied hands, the smell of iron turning his stomach over.

His eyes began to shut.

With great effort, he pushed himself back up. Ignoring the grinning reflection, he dried his hands in a towel and shuffled over to bed.

“They spoke about this on the news,” Henry said, “they-they called it a burnout or whatever,” the rambling continued, “yeah that’s it.”

Exhaustion took over fear as Henry fell on the creaking mattress. The telephone on his bedside table began to ring. Henry growled and pushed a pillow over his head. The phone’s ringing grew louder.

He grabbed at the receiver, and a mind shattering cacophony of sounds filled his head. Insults, rustle of the office, the voice of Mr. Salivane yelling at him, his other superiors screaming one over the other.

“Burnout, burnout, burnout,” echoed in the room.

Henry threw the telephone away, but the noise didn’t stop. He plucked it out of the electricity; it didn’t stop. He smashed it against the wall; it didn’t stop.

Henry pressed his hands to his ears, screaming for it to stop; it didn’t. It grew louder.

Henry gnawed on his own eyes and scratched his face. Cried. Screamed. Begged on his knees for it to finally end.

It didn’t.

The reflection in the bathroom laughed at him.

Crack.

Henry’s head smashed against the mirror. The shards flew across the bathroom, creating a thousand grinning images. The blood flowed from his forehead, dripping on his clothes.

With an animal like howl he ran for the door; they were gone. His thoughts felt like a liquid lead coursing through his mind. The noises were so loud his ears began to bleed.

With the last sliver of strength Henry gathered, he ran towards the windows.

The glass shattered. The lights flickered. The world spun.

Silence.

Henry blinked, suddenly staying in the middle of the hotel hallway, bathed in a mild yellow light. There was no lady in black in sight. No boy on the stairwell either.

His room, gone.

“Wha-”

Terrified guests were peeking from the rooms around him. Henry looked at the peeking couple in the room across the hall. “Help me,” he said, “that room, here. There was a room here!”

They stepped back into their room, covering from the mostly naked weirdo covered in red stains.

Henry panted, his breathing sped up. Tremble flowed through him. “What is happening?” he said, ripping his hair out.

“Hey, freak!” yelled a man with a thick mustache, “Get the hell out of here!”

“Wha-” Henry said, and the doors from the stairwell bursted open. Security stormed in, grabbing Henry, ignoring his nonsense.

They carried him through the hotel, the air was fresh, smelling of lavender. The lights were bright, the guests were normal. Nothing was out of the ordinary. There were no sounds. No screams. Henry’s reflections were all normal.

The blonde receptionist was still there, talking to the police. When she met his gaze, she pointed at him. The officers nodded and came over to take Henry from the security.

“No...No! You don’t understand!” Henry screamed as they dragged him towards their car. “This hotel is evil!” he yelled.

The receptionists eyes followed him and for a sliver of second—just before the doors of the hotel closed—Henry caught her reflection in the mirror.

A pale face with dark, bloodshot eyes, and a wide grin.

That night, a real estate businessman known as Henry Standring entered a place beyond comprehension. To this day, he mutters about a hotel room that never was—or perhaps, always will be. A reminder that unchecked anger sometimes opens doors better left closed. A door to a fifth dimension known simply as the Twilight Zone.

This piece was written for the cross Substack homage for the anniversary of the Twilight Zone. Super stoked that

Sean Thomas McDonnell

invited me and even though I never really watched TZ I think I made a decent tribute. Make sure to check all the other authors and their stories!

This was a great read. Enjoyed the tension and I really dislike Henry which means you did a great job writing his character. What an asshole 😤

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1 reply by Miguel S.

THE FICTION DEALER

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