Voicemail from Room Seventeen

"Voicemail Recovered From the Highway Motel After Room Seventeen Was Sealed The voicemail started

at 2:36 a.m. without me pressing anything, a dry click followed by the ice machine coughing in the

hallway. Then a man whispered, “Wait for the compressor,” and laughed softly when the unit outside

kicked on with its steady roar. More messages stacked up while I lay awake, staring at the blinking

smoke detector and the crooked painting. Each clip caught mundane sounds: a keycard beep from

next door, the soda machine thunk, the rattle of the A/C as it cycled.

Over them, the same voice narrated timing—“three minutes,” “housekeeping cart passes,” “now.”

At 3:11, the voicemail recorded metal scraping and a muffled drill, perfectly buried