The hotel had twelve floors. I knew this because I'd booked a room on the twelfth and I could see the building from outside — twelve floors. I verified it in the lobby: twelve floors.
The elevator had buttons for floors one through twelve, plus one unlabeled button between seven and eight.
I looked at it for a moment. Then I pressed it.
The elevator moved. Not between floors seven and eight — it moved in a way that didn't correspond to any direction I could identify. The sensation was elevator-normal except for a subtle wrongness in the physics of it, the way the settling and slowing happened.
The doors opened.
The hallway was identical to the other floors I'd seen — same carpet, same lighting, same wallpaper pattern. Room numbers visible at the far end: 729, 731, 733. Odd numbers only on this side of the hall.
I stepped out. The doors closed behind me.
The hallway was absolutely silent. Not quiet — silent, in the way of a place where sound has been removed rather than a place that simply doesn't have sources of sound.
Room 733's door was open.
I didn't go in. I stood at the doorway and looked.
Standard hotel room. King bed, desk, window. The window was wrong — it showed a cityscape that didn't match the hotel's actual location. A different city, at a different time of day than what it was outside.
The bed was made. On the pillow was a key card, and on the key card in small printed text was my name.
I did not pick it up.
I went back to the elevator. The unlabeled button was not there. I pressed seven. The doors opened on the seventh floor. I took the stairs to twelve.
I checked out the next morning and have not returned.
But the key card with my name — a key card I never picked up, in a room I never entered, on a floor that shouldn't exist — was in my coat pocket when I got home.
It was warm.