“Double the annual salary, room and board included, promotion to sous-chef after one year.” Clutching the job ad, I rushed into the Naples Hotel, thinking I’d finally found a lifeline.
Then the head chef handed me a stack of crumpled Employee Rules:
“Return to your dormitory before 10 p.m. Do not open the door after 11 p.m.”
“If you’re wearing the wrong uniform, don’t speak to anyone.”
“Never answer calls that come in on the morning of Friday the 13th.”
I thought these were just the hotel’s weird policies, until I heard sticky footsteps creeping through the hallway at midnight, slithering in through the crack beneath my door. I saw the child in Room 2003 smiling at an articulated doll, and found these words written on the back of the rules in dark red ink: “Don’t trust the person in the mirror. It’s imitating your breathing.”
When the clock struck midnight and black hair from under the door wrapped around my ankle, I finally saw the last line of the handbook, torn off:
“The ones who escape are never the ones who follow the rules.”
