The hallways were deserted. The sound of her heels clacked softly in repetition until she reached the door at the end.
X.O. lived alone. She dined alone. She traveled alone. She drank whiskey alone to feel a twisted connection to her Irish blood. And she slept alone. She considered most people ancillary characters who loitered around the moats of her castle. She had long given up on the exceptional ones as they were only fleeting bright lights like shooting stars and the loss of having touched something so beautiful eventually always filled her with regret. She had convinced herself through years of repetition that she preferred this. She wore her icy resolve with an industrial fatigue like that of a factory worker who’d accepted her fate.
It wasn’t until the key to room 107 appeared in a thick cream colored envelope that things began to strangely change.
