The Ghosts of Spaces Occupied

Room 37

[Generated for Wattpad Wednesday on June 4, 2014. Prompt: write a story about what might have happened in the past inside the current HQ building.]

Will has lost the will to live, but not the will to write to the last minute, to his last drop of breath.

Checked into a lonely room inside the Promenade Hotel up on Wellington Street, he scribbles furiously onto the pristine walls. Quill and ink bottle in hand, unleashing his final fiery manifesto onto the world. He cares not that ink taints his fingers, cotton trousers and Oxford shoes like poison. For all he knows, the poison erupts from within, volcanoing through his skin and becomes visible to all.

On these walls, he writes about worshipping and being worshipped. Wanting to genuinely connect with a soul without being on a pedestal. Desiring to be caressed by caring feminine hands. All of his angst, disappointment and turmoil come tumbling out, forever absorbed into the walls of this room.

It is thus no surprise that Will's body is found hung to the ceiling lights days later. Immediately after, police investigations. Two weeks later, fresh painted walls in the room, followed by ignorant new patrons. Then a couple of decades and a few fires pass, and the building gets taken up by a hip technology company. The irony is not lost in the fact that the company enables people to tell their stories.

But here is the secret: you can still feel every word in the room. Unmasked by decades of paint, it seeps through your skin and poisons your thoughts. And if you listen carefully enough when you dream, you can hear Will's voice, narrating his story.