She didn’t expect to find a body in the bathtub when she moved the shower curtain, but there it was. The eyes had developed a milky, distant look, and the mouth was agape. Was it fear, or surprise? Lividity had colored the lower places on the body as it had rested, the extremities a dusky purple, and ugly bruises intertwined and danced around her neck.
Working as a motel maid was not the easiest job in the world, and she had already cleaned a few crime scenes over the years, wiping blood and gore from walls and ceilings so the owner could have everything repainted and replace the carpet for the worst scenes. Sometimes, no matter how many ways she tried, dried blood just wouldn’t completely come out of carpeting.
What disturbed her most, though, was that they never changed the mattresses. A new mattress cover, new bedding, but the same, blood-stained mattresses. She found herself often haunted by work. Strangled prostitutes, dead johns, the occasional suicide and the rare death by natural causes piled up over the years as intrusive memories she definitely was not paid enough to keep.
The maid looked at the corpse carefully, barely breathing, aware that too close, an accidental touch might contaminate the crime scene. Years ago she outgrew the horror that made her screech when finding things like this, and it slowly grew towards a curiosity and possibly strange empathy.
“How did you get to this bad space in our world?” she whispered to the unidentified woman.
She crouched closer, even as she was aware that she still had other rooms to clean. At least this was the last of the motels she worked for. One motel quit being enough to pay the bills a couple years ago. Her breath caught as the head of the corpse turned towards her creakingly in an otherworldly movement, not quite fluid, almost as if something were turning the head from outside the body.
“I never meant for this to happen,” she heard, even as the lips did not move. The head sagged to the side a bit now, as if it failed to fight gravity once it changed position. The blind looking, milky eyes seemed to stare into her soul. Her breath caught.
“I was just trying to get away. That’s all. I just wanted to get away,” came as a whispered sigh from the motionless lips. The maid nodded at the nameless corpse.
Scenes suddenly rocked her vision. Frightened moments from childhood, life on the streets as only a teenager. So much violence and danger. Someone so young.
“I hoped I would be safer away…” came a sad sigh.
New visions of dumpster diving, harassment, assault, sleeping in doorways, chased off by cops. Cardboard signs begging, and finally prostitution, drugs. Quiet tears began to trace their course down the maid’s cheeks. The girl in the tub was beyond them now.
The maid felt searched and measured by the corpse’s senseless gaze. She studied the girl more closely now. She was fully dressed, even her shoes were still on her feet. She wondered what last moments brought her here, to this non-descript motel room, where she was discarded in the tub to be found by cleaning staff. She looked away a moment, then looked at her again. Her head once again faced forward and up, just above the shower head on the wall. Perhaps the whole thing was nothing but her own imaginings. She should let the owners know so they could call the cops.
As she began to stand, she heard a final whisper. “Don’t forget me.” There was an urgency in the sadness. The maid closed her eyes.
“I can’t.”