White with Red
As any connoisseur would have been able to guess, this is not mine. It’s a creepypasta that’s been making the rounds since ye olden times. I’ve had the idea to start posting some of the classics (and should-be-classics) here, on the grounds that they could all use some touching up and they ought to appear on a site that’s not drowning in ads. The original text on which I’m drawing is here: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/White_with_Red. My version will differ insofar as is dictated by prescriptivist requirements and personal taste.
A man went to a hotel and checked in at the front desk. The woman who gave him his key told him that, on the way to his room, he would pass a locked door with no number that no one was allowed to open. She explained that it was the entrance to a storeroom, and that the storeroom was out of bounds. She reminded him of this set of facts several times before allowing him upstairs.
The man followed the woman’s instructions, going straight to his room and thence to bed. However, she had piqued his curiosity, so the next night, he walked down the hall to the storeroom door and tried the handle. Sure enough, it was locked.
He placed a hand on the door; it was colder to the touch than he’d expected. Then he bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. What he saw was not a storeroom but a hotel bedroom much like his own. In the corner was a woman whose skin was incredibly pale. She was leaning her head on the wall, facing away from the door.
The man stared in confusion for a while. Was this a celebrity? The owner’s daughter? He almost knocked on the door to ask, but decided not to.
As he was looking, the woman turned sharply. He jumped back from the keyhole, hoping she would not notice that he had been spying on her. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room.
The next day, he returned to the door and again looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make out anything besides a distinct, unmoving red color. Perhaps the room’s occupant knew he had been spying on her the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red. He felt embarrassed that he had made the woman so uncomfortable, and hoped she had not lodged a complaint with the front desk.
He decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and asked, “Did you look through the keyhole?”
The man told her that he had, and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story of what happened in that room. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife there, and we find that even now, anyone who stays there gets very uncomfortable. But this woman is not ordinary. She is white all over, except for her eyes, which are red.”