Karen woke up with a splitting headache. A hangover? When was the last time she'd had one of those, twenty years ago?
She opened her eyes and the light streaming through her window sent a bolt of pain through her brain causing her to shut them again. She remembered drinking some wine at the wedding rehearsal dinner the night before, but not enough for her to feel this terrible. The wine itself had been terrible, something she'd been sure to be loud and vocal about during the meal, insisting that a better vintage should have been used, even if it had just been a "practice" dinner.
In all honesty, she didn't know wine that well, but her ex-husband Steve's niece's fiancé was, in Karen's eyes, a notorious cheapskate who had, at first, not even wanted to invite Karen to the wedding. (She was still Christy's aunt after all, even if she had divorced Steve.) Karen had put a stop to that at least. Still, she'd decided to take it upon herself to help Christy out by calling the managers at the wedding venue and hotels and haranguing them to get the best possible price. Sure, the upgraded service would cost them more than they'd initially planned, but Karen knew they'd think the money was worth it.
Slowly, she opened her eyes again and saw that she was in her bed in the hotel room. The sense of relief she felt about this made her realize that she couldn't remember how she'd gotten back the night before. In fact, after a certain point of the dinner last night there were no memories at all, just a blank spot in her mind.
Her head pounding, she looked around hoping something would jog her memory. Without her glasses she couldn't really see the details of the bedroom, though it appeared to be a total mess, with blankets, pillows, and clothes scattered all over the floor and furniture. Despite this, the room still pleased her. When she'd gotten to the hotel the day before, the room she'd been given had been much too small and didn't even have a balcony. A total disgrace! She'd called the front desk and then, after they'd said it wasn't possible to transfer her to another room, the head office of the hotel chain. After telling them that her room was unacceptable they had upgraded her to a suite, as she deserved. She'd made sure to gloat to the desk clerk who moved her bags that their rules didn't apply to her as she was much too important.
Reaching up to rub her eyes she realized her face felt sticky. "That's weird," she thought. "What could it be?"
Gingerly she touched the tip of one of her fingers to her face and then to her tongue. The flavour wasn't unpleasant, but also didn't ring any bells for what it might be. Deciding that if she was going to have a hangover she'd rather be clean and have a hangover, she pulled herself upright, planning on having a shower.
A wave of nausea almost sent her back to the bed, but she managed to persevere and stay standing.
It was at this point that she realized she was completely naked. "Huh," she said out loud to the empty room. "I wonder how that happened."
Karen wasn't sure the last time she'd slept naked (maybe never), as she always used silk pyjamas. She'd even packed two pairs as she couldn't make up her mind over which one to bring. It had seemed a little silly considering she was only going to be gone for three nights, but the brief length of the trip had meant that she'd had enough room in her second suitcase even with the outfits she'd picked out for the wedding and she'd gotten her second "carry-on" suitcase onto the plane for free by complaining to the employees at the gate until they'd let her check it.
Gingerly she walked towards the en-suite bathroom, battling feelings of nausea along the way. When she got there she almost poured herself a glass of water from the sink before thinking better of drinking the tap water. "Disgusting," she muttered to herself as she walked back to the minibar and took out a bottle of water that she drank slowly as she returned to the bathroom. She knew it should cost $7, but she also knew that once she asked to talk to the manager she would almost certainly have the charge removed from her bill.
Back in the bathroom she leaned close enough to the mirror to be able to get a good look at herself without her glasses and realized she looked the worse for wear. Her makeup was smeared and both her face and breasts were covered with a half-dried white substance.
"Cream?" she thought. There had been plenty of desserts at the dinner the night before, but she couldn't remember eating any. The servers hadn't even been able to tell her the calorie count of the gluten-free options and she'd made them go find out for her. The staff at an establishment like this should know those things and it was her right as a customer to know, even if she hadn't planned on eating any of them.
Wondering what on earth the sticky substance could be, Karen turned towards the shower and was about to step into it when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to look at the small object lying on the floor next to the garbage can but without her glasses couldn't figure out what it was. A candy wrapper? She shook her head and stepped into the shower.
Lathering up (using the soap she'd brought from home because you could not trust hotels not to reuse soap between customers these days) she cleaned the white stuff (whatever it was) off her face and chest and stood under the hot stream of water until her headache started to disappear a little. But that thing on the floor still stuck in her mind. What was it and why was it bothering her?
Getting out of the shower, and feeling slightly more human, she wrapped her hair in one of the many large fluffy towels she'd insisted they bring to her room the day before--they'd only given her four, which she'd made sure to tell them wasn't acceptable--and went to put on some clothes. She found her suitcase with the outfit she'd planned to wear that day (not the outfit for the wedding itself, of course, but the pre-wedding outfit she could wear to breakfast), got dressed and put on her backup glasses. Finally being able to see again she went back to the bathroom to look at what the thing on the floor had been.
When she saw she stopped, shocked. It was a--no--it couldn't be--could it? A condom wrapper? She knelt down next to it. An opened condom wrapper! How on Earth had that gotten into her hotel room?
Using a wad of toilet paper she picked it up and threw the wrapper into the toilet and flushed, not caring whether it would get stuck in the pipes. Maybe it had stuck to the bottom of her shoe? But even then, how had it gotten to be somewhere that she could step on it? However it had appeared, it was clearly extremely unacceptable and proved to Karen just how terrible and unprofessional the staff at this hotel were.
"I'll call the hotel immediately," she thought. "No, calling will not do, I need to march down to the front desk and insist on seeing them in person."
"I bet it's those damn Millennial sluts." She thought about the younger women she'd seen at the wedding rehearsal the night before wearing what were, to her, outfits that were far too revealing. An opinion she'd made sure she'd talked about loudly enough for them to overhear. "It's disgusting that they can't even go to someone else's wedding without having sex."
She returned to the bedroom and began sorting through the mess, looking for her primary glasses. When she talked to the manager she'd have to have him send a maid to clean everything up.
In her purse she found an unfamiliar bottle of sleeping pills. Looking at the bottle Karen thought back to the dinner the evening before.
***
"Darn it," she'd said after taking her vitamins out of her purse to take with the wedding rehearsal meal. "I forgot my sleeping pills. Mary, I know you have some, so give me some of yours." She'd stuck her hand out across the table towards her ex-sister-in-law Mary.
"Okay," Mary had said. "But they have side-ef--"
"They all have side effects, just give me some!" Karen had insisted.
Mary had handed the bottle of sleeping pills to Karen.
"Don't take too many," she'd said, knowing that trying to tell Karen to do anything was pointless.
Later, as the meal was ending, Karen had taken two and washed them down with her glass of wine, intending to head straight back to her hotel room and avoid whatever socializing would happen at the hotel's bar.
Now, reading the warning label on the bottle, Karen saw that it warned against mixing with alcohol. "May cause black-outs, memory loss, extended sleep, or exacerbated hangovers."
"She knew," Karen hissed to herself. "That bitch knew." She'd have to get her revenge on Mary somehow later on. Still, at least now she knew why she couldn't remember what had happened the night before.
Returning to the search for her glasses she turned to the bed, where she'd slept the night before. Shaking out the covers she saw something purple and picked up what at first seemed like a piece of garbage.
It took her a moment to realize what it was. A condom. A used condom. A used condom that she was holding in her hand. She screeched and threw it across the room, where it impacted with and stuck to the glass door leading out to the balcony before slowly starting to slide down to the floor.
Karen rushed to the bathroom where she immediately began washing her hands under the hottest water possible. Then, suddenly, it clicked what the sticky white stuff that had been on her face and chest was: semen.
Her nausea returned, stronger than ever, and she managed, just, to get to the toilet before she began to throw up.
***
Fifteen minutes later Karen sat on the floor of the bathroom wondering what had happened the night before. Had she been raped?
"It must have been one of the servers," she thought, feeling the rage build inside her. They'd looked distinctly untrustworthy and she was almost certain that some of them were illegal immigrants.
"One of them must have roofied me," she thought. "I'm going to sue this hotel for everything it's got." She felt an element of her confidence return.
Suddenly, she heard her phone buzz. Looking around she saw it was on the floor nearby.
She reached over for her gold iPhone 13 Pro and saw that she had a text message from a number she didn't recognize. Normally she ignored those, but for whatever reason today she decided to open it.
Hi Karen, have fun last night? ; )
Was this a message from whoever had done this to her the night before? She furiously typed out a reply.
Who are you? Whoever you are Im going to make sure you end up in prison.
She was enraged, though also (and she wouldn't have admitted this even to herself) scared at the same time. Who was this person? What did they know?
Oh Karen, that's not a very nice thing to say to the person you were intimate with last night.
Intimate? You raped me! I'll call the police! I'll call the manager!
Wait. Stop a minute. You weren't raped. Hell, you wanted it pretty badly!
Never.
But Karen paused. A strange, niggling doubt in her mind. She hadn't had sex in years (Steve had called her "frigid" during the divorce), but she also couldn't remember what had happened the night before. What if she had wanted it? Could that have been possible? Her phone vibrated as she received another message.
Do you want some proof?
No, she didn't want proof. But, she had to know.
She started writing a reply, but before she could send it a video file arrived.
Cautiously she opened it.
A shaky camera shot began in the hotel hallway. It showed her walking down the hallway and looking back over her shoulder, wearing the same outfit she'd worn to the dinner the previous evening.
She heard her own voice saying "Hurry up," in a tone that sounded entirely sober and she wasn't staggering or acting like she was drunk.
The video cut to the inside of the hotel room with her standing next to the bed.
"Can I film this?" a muffled voice, presumably the camera person, asked.
"Yes, sure whatever, just hurry up."
Despite the poor quality of the video, it was definitely her. The same room, the same outfit, the same voice, the same body language. Yet she couldn't remember any of this happening.
"Where do you want to be fucked?"
