I’m a very private person, it’s probably what most people know about me. People always used to say I blend into a crowd, that I personified the colour grey, and it did get to me, just a little bit, but I don’t care now. It helps me, I like being in control of things. I like being in control of who knows of me and what they know of me. I have a hobby that probably connects in some weird way to that, I like cleaning. Actually, I really love cleaning.

I don’t know what it is about it, if it’s the getting a job done, or being able to control how something looks, or maybe I just enjoy making something look brand new. It started with my house. I cleaned every room on a monthly basis. Scrubbed the carpets, hand-washed the dishes and clothes, and used the lawnmower on the grass. I use the old fashioned one, the one that you have to push along and it cuts the blades of grass as it rolls the cylinder of blades along. I don’t like using machines, they make noise and they’re so easy, it makes the cleaning go by so much quicker.

But, it wasn’t enough. My house was already nice. Neighbours always said that I took impeccable care. My local Homeowner’s Association voted it house of the year last year. I was on page 16 of the local paper. It slightly irritated me, I didn’t like that people would know about me, but it made things better for me, I got a promotion at my job so now I have even more time for my new hobby.

I check into different hotels in the city. I live across the river, its nicer there, city life is so noisy, and I get my fill of it when I go in for work. At night it’s quieter. I usually leave work and go home. I leave my car at home, take my suitcase, and leave on foot for the train station. The walk is about an hour. It takes me right to the centre of the city. I check into any hotel I suspect might be dirty, the dirtier the better. I usually do it on a Friday, but with my new job, I can do it on Thursday, I get a 4-day weekend.

I buy the cleaning supplies from the various stores around the hotels I go to. I buy various cleaning supplies, trash bags, maybe some food, although I usually prefer the local restaurants, and absolutely essential cleaning gloves. Some stores just don’t have everything I need, I’m very particular about which things I get. By the time I usually get back from these trips, It’s around midnight. The receptionist is usually busy with guests or asleep, these places aren’t exactly The Ritz, but you’d expect better service, right? It’s something that helps me though, lets me have all the privacy I would want.

I start with the carpet. I scrub deep into it. I don’t want to use too much water as that would leak. I do a broad clean initially. Light dropping of water and a pretty rough scrub with the chemicals. That gets most of the germs and dirt out of the thick carpets they usually have in these places. But some places require special attention. I don’t enjoy the deeper cleans more than the broad cleans, I think they both have their time and place and I enjoy them both in different ways. It usually only takes me about an hour, these rooms aren’t the biggest, and nothing gets past the carpet as it’s so thick.

I move onto the tables and chairs around the room after that. Sometimes they’re really messy. I make sure to use some of the trash bags I allocate for covering the floor. I cut them in half with my knife, it’s so useful and I enjoy sharpening it just before I go on my trips. I put them

under any surface I clean so if anything spills or falls over I can catch it, I don’t like to break the rhythm of the cleaning. There’s always a lot of dust on them, and it can get in the air and into the carpet, it just makes things complicated. Luckily, the covers they put on the cushions of the chairs is usually thick like the carpet. Nothing will soak under it.

I move onto the bathroom next. There’s always some mould here or there, you’ve got to really look for it. I use the chemicals again, getting in between the tiles, showing that beautiful white colour that holds the usual light blue or turquoise tiles together. I use the bath to clean all of the things that aren’t nailed down. The ceramic white means I can see anything I left behind really easily. I usually run the water on low, so that anything that I don’t want will slowly fall into the drain and I can be sure it won’t cause a blockage. Had a close call with that once, but I learn from my mistakes.

Finally, once I’ve done all of that, I turn my focus to the bed. I made a really big mess this time. It was all over the bed. I took precautions though, like I usually do. I had cut up more trash bags and placed them under the bedsheets. Anything that spills onto the bed won’t go in the mattress, I can’t ever clean that with what I have available. No. The carpet I can clean. There was a lot more than usual. I hadn’t had a break to do this in weeks, sometimes I try and resist it but I can’t for very long. This was the longest I could go, and it showed. I could even remember what it looked like anymore, but I didn’t care, no one else would care and did care about it when I took it off the street.

I washed its clothes in the bathtub. Slowly, with my gloves on. I didn’t want to touch it, it was so filthy. I really didn’t want to have any connection to it. I usually took the various items of clothing and put them into various donation piles throughout the city. It makes them go away. I had to wash the other things too. I needed to wash the handcuffs. They were probably the dirtiest. I put them on too tight. They were coated in it. I used the chemicals but it was the toughest clean I’ve ever had.

I cut it up slowly in the bathtub. I used my knife again, its really precise. There’s a deli across the corner from this hotel, lucky me. I made my way to the fire escape outside my window. I slowly crept down the stairs during the night. The dumpster was open and I threw the bags down into it one by one. I worked at the port when I was a kid during summers in college, I was good at throwing. The contents of the bag were soft so they didn’t make much noise, drowned out by the noise of the city.

I cut its hair into small clumps with my scissors so that they would go down the drain. They were almost tiny. I had broken all the bones and mixed them in the other trash bags already in the dumpster. I had cleaned up the bedsheets in the bathtub and they looked brand new. I had disposed of all of my supplies just as I had planned, I packed my suitcase again, and I put $200 into the ashtray.

No one needed to know what happened here.