New Orleans Hotel (Patreon)

This is a short story that I heard on TV many, many years ago. It's kind of a camp fire story, so it's completely in line with tradition for me to tell it in my way from the memory fragments I have of it.

I arrived much later than anticipated to New Orleans, and to my increasing desperation hotel after hotel I walked between were full. I had checked the big chains online already, and knew if they had any spare rooms they wouldn't hand them out to walk ins. The boutique hotels were also fully booked, and I was quickly going down the chain of prestige and further way from the center. Even the shabby looking money laundering facilities with sleeping quarters were full. I was mentally prepared to sleep on a bench at the airport when finally I got a break.

The place decidedly didn't cater to me. It's probably racist to say, but it somehow felt "black", not just from where it was located or the African-American night porter dressed like a hip hop rapper who dismissively looked at me as I entered. There was something with the interior and the entire feeling that made me feel perhaps not unwelcome, but trespassing never the less. But we were both winners. I got somewhere to crash a few hours before I needed to rush to the airport, and they got a nights payment for a room that would otherwise have gone unsold. I didn't try to haggle to half price or something. They still had the same costs even though I would just spend a few hours sleeping, and the quicker I got checked in the longer that would be.

They guy was in his late teens earning some extra cash when I interrupted his web surfing by being a customer. He was bordering rude with his few words, but he was quick. I paid in advance and requested a wake up call for 5:30. He nodded, wrote something on a paper, and went back to his phone without saying anything. I stood a few seconds waiting for him to say goodnight or anything, but then just left him for my room, 206. He probably preferred it that way. There was no elevator, so two sets of stairs and a few doors later I found myself in my room. Totally exhausted I just left my bag right inside the door, dropped my clothes in the pile, jumped into bed. I was out almost at the same time as the light.

The ring from the phone was loud and reverberated in the small room. When was the last time I'd had an actual, physical bell ringing in a phone? I was completely disoriented from the first signal to the second, when I realized it was a phone and I was in a hotel room. I fumbled with the handset of the phone, got it to my head, and answered "Hello?" in a husky voice. I cleared my throat. "Good Morning. This is your 5:30 wakeup call." I cleared my throat a second time and answered "Thanks" and hung up. I still sounded raspy.

The real shock came as I turned on the bed lamp. My arm was black! Not like ash, but like someone descendant from Nigeria or thereabout. Spooked I threw off the sheet and jumped out of bed. Clearly the rest of the body had similarly undergone a most radical transformation. Tall and lithe with the muscle definition of a manual laborer, free from body hair, and ethnically black. My head was spinning with questions. I put my hand behind my head as an involuntary "I can't believe this shit" motion, only to feel the prickly stubble of short, coarse hair. That just sent me into further panic. I went to the door and flicked the main switch to have a look in the full-length mirror by the door.

I wasn't surprised by what I saw, really. It's just the impact of seeing myself not as body parts but as a whole hit so much harder. My hand was feeling the wider nose and fuller lips. "How is this possible?" and "What happens now?" kept looping over and over in my head. Then I looked down at the burgundy hotel carpet on the floor. Where was the bag? I looked back into the room. Where's the pile of clothes? Then suddenly I got a realization and rushed to check the label on phone at the nightstand, and everything became clear.

They had called the wrong room.