Hotel Hell

The fog curled tightly around the ornate neoclassical edifice of Hotel Harris. The building’s constitution was peculiar—so much time and attention had paid tribute to the building’s façade facing Congress Street and Canal Street, but the remaining side of the building was sheathed off in run-of-the-mill red brick. It was almost as though the architect wanted to incorporate the nondescript architectural accents of the industrial revolution—insipid red brick, neatly stacked in in tight little rows—with grout breaking up the monotony. The brick arches over the windows on the brick side stood out only when the windows came into focus—at the arches of the windows the bricks were laid vertically, causing an optical illusion; a tidal eddy of fire kissed brick. Three sides of the grand hotel were meticulously constructed by the masterful hands of the Freemasons’—they gave it the 33rddegree on all three sides, but the brick side—the brick side was purely vapid-utilitarian.

The Hotel was a time capsule within a time capsule in the old mill town—Congress Street loudly proclaimed the history of a bygone era—a time of prosperity and excess. Congress Street was just another name for the Main Street of Rumford. It was here, for about a quarter mile—give or take—that commerce would take place well before the epidemic spread of electricity would infect the poles which once held only telegraph wires. The Hotel’s features contradicted themselves in a back-and-forth battle for attention—it was the offspring of another time—a time in which blended architecture was beginning to hit its stride. Inside the grand lobby—Art Deco and the latter part of the Victorian Era engaged in an epic battle—timeless in time—perpetually vying for attention.

This building was a gem in an otherwise decomposing pile of dog-shit—it had an electricity to it—a life all its own. . .Its imposing presence conveyed an intimidating foreboding feeling which resonated deeply in the pit of the guests’ stomachs—it resonated fear on a primal reptilian-brained instinctual level; guests were never quite sure why they were fearful—just that they were. And for good reason—the screams once echoed between these walls were still tangible—nearly a hundred years after the fact.

Mitchell Martin, or Mitch as he preferred for sternness and brevity, had come here on business. Early in his career, he’d spent a fair amount of time peddling Ponzi schemes to working class folks who wanted a taste of Wall Street on a budget. He did well, but put his MBA from Wharton to good use on the business end of industrialization; first textiles then paper—specializing in acquisitions and mergers. He worked for Verso Paper, and he’d come to pitch an acquisition and merger deal to the board of the independent paper mill the town had risen up around. Unlike his usual trips to places like this, he had a guest in tow. On a whim, he invited his new girlfriend Valerie to travel with him. This was unusual for Mitch because he never liked to mix business with pleasure—but for some reason, he threw caution to the wind this time. He really liked Valerie and she had a way of really bringing out the best in him. She melted away the walls Mitch constructed around himself as a defense mechanism—a carefully cultivated division between himself and the world around him. Such a wall is great in business, but not so conducive to maximizing the return on human capital—or so he often thought. Mitch was always an unusual guy with alternative propensities and proclivities; he related every aspect of his life to business principles—and that alone illustrated just how different he was. But with Val, she often inspired a transient shadow of change—which would at times materialize in his life like a thirsty mirage in the desert.

Val elicited things from Mitch he hadn’t known he possessed—she had a way of stripping away his reticence—which for him was bittersweet—he liked the effect she had on him by-and-large, but he didn’t like the feelings of vulnerability she conjured. As for Val, she had mixed feelings about travelling with Mitch; she wanted to get closer to him—but felt like something of an interloper at times during this trip. When their plane touched down in Portland—about one hundred miles south east of Rumford—as the crow flies—Mitch and Valerie were in good spirits. Despite this being an important business trip—Mitch was looking forward to doing a little exploring in the mountains of western Maine in his off hours—and Valerie…well Valerie was basking in the presence of her new love interest. This was the first trip they’d taken as a new couple. Work or not, Valerie was going to win him over. It wasn’t often that a girl found a smart, funny, and handsome man all wrapped up in the same package and tied off with a bow of considerable wealth. He was the man every girl like her wanted—a unicorn—a man to “accidentally’ get pregnant with.

The drive out to Rumford was a quiet one. Mitch in his typical pre-game reticence, was internalizing the best way to memorialize the deal Verso was hoping to make. What the independent paper mill didn’t know, was that after Verso acquired the production facility, they would incrementally scale back production in Rumford, while ramping it up at their facilities in China. Profits would soar, overhead would dip, and consequently the town of Rumford would die a slow and painful death. Mitch would look even better to the chairmen of the board of Verso, and would secure a hefty seven figure bonus for doing what he did best—sniffing out a dollar.

The tense silence in the car was palpable as Mitch drove onward with divided attention. The headlights of the Hertz emblazoned Cadillac Escalade carved a path along the long and winding ribbon of country road. The trees lining 232 burst in intermittent color as the headlights set the last vestiges of auburns and reds of the remaining foliage ablaze. Despite the irregular intervals of color, the deciduous tress appeared skeleton like. As Mitch drove on stoically, he thought about how he might buy one of these 60-thousand-dollar SUV’s with his ill-gotten gains. Mitch also thought the landscape was something out of a Stephen King novel—it was eerie with a hint of Deliverance. Mitch pictured an inbred, banjo playing, snarled toothed boy jumping into the northbound lane of Route 232 with a banjo in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. The thought was enough to give him goose bumps.

Val broke the silence in a long winded and tangential monologue. “I can’t wait to get to the Hotel! Do you think Verso arranged for a suite? Maybe we could spend the night sipping Dom Perignon and relaxing before your meeting.” Mitch continued driving as Valerie’s superficial musings barely registered in his conscious. An awkward silence overcame the well-trimmed cab of the Escalade. Just as Val was about to follow up with an offering of herself to her quiet driver, Mitch cut her off. “Val, would you please shut the fuck up? Please! I thought I told you to never interrupt me while I’m thinking. Jesus Christ, I don’t want to be the bad guy, but I have a huge business deal in the works, the likes of which your average mind couldn’t possibly comprehend.”

Although the cab of the Escalade was dark, the silhouette of Val’s face responded with an unspoken understanding. She wanted to respond, but she knew better—better to acquiesce to his request than resist—she’d be wearing her Chanel sunglasses for the rest of their trip if she so much as quipped a word or deflated with an exasperated sigh. They arrived at the grand hotel some time later—weary and red eyed from their long journey from the Portland Jetport. As they pulled up to the Art Deco awning in front of the hotel, it seemed the grand entry would be more at home in New York than in a small mill town smack dab in the center of the Maine wilderness. The pretentious entryway implied valet parking, so the two of them waited for spell, before Mitch finally jumped down from the driver’s seat and walked through the vestibule into the palatial lobby of the hotel.

The lobby was unmolested by time, and all of the original furniture and accents were proudly displayed throughout. Mitch arrogantly sauntered up to the concierge desk and tapped at the brass bell rhythmically with annoyance. Almost as quickly as the the rich note of the bell’s ding emanated from the desk, an elderly bellhop, adorned in a rich crimson velvet jacket and top hat materialized in the arched doorway behind the desk. To Mitch, the bellhop seemed to know he was there well before the Escalade ever inched to a rest on the curb. Mitch looked down at the old man as he retrieved a leather bound ledger from beneath the concierge desk. The man’s vacant eyes made Mitch shudder under his skin, as a sensation of a sharp talon seemed to lightly trace the nape of Mitch’s neck. Mitch thought of the Eagles’ song before the old man elevated the ledger toward the maple desktop. “You can check out any time you like—but you can never leave. They stabbed it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.”

The old man knew the answer to Mitch’s question before the words could materialize on his thickening tongue. The hotel was whispering faintly around the two men as they stood at the desk. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” The whisper was barely audible above the sound of the thick droplets of rain that began tapping rhythmically on the thin glass panes of the lobby windows. An echoing boom of thunder resonated through the frame of the old hotel as a single flash of lightening flickered like a camera flash through the windows of the lobby. As Mitch was watching the old man scrawl in the ledger in antiquated longhand, he could have sworn he saw shadows outside of the hotel through his periphery when the lightening flashed.

The old man spoke with veneration, shattering the eerie silence in a raspy baritone. “You can sign here, Mr. Martin.” The man ceremoniously spun the ledger around on the pristine desk, presenting it in much the same way a soldier passes a crisply folded flag. Mitch glanced down at the ledger, inspecting it closely. The old man’s palsy wasn’t noticeable in his handwriting—the long and flowing letters looked more like calligraphy than a reservation booklet. Mitch signed beneath the man’s well formed penmanship—suite 3—checkout indefinite.

Mitch singed sliding the ledger back to the old man, noticing the key as the old man offered it with his skeleton like fingers—they were long and avian like; the nails were a peculiar shade of brownish-yellow, the skin dry, liver spotted, and flaking. In repulsion, Mitch furrowed his brow, calling attention to the dimpling groove between his thick eyebrows. He hesitated as he looked at the old man’s hand as it swung the brass key and red fob back and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum. The gold 3inscribed on the red fob glowed as if illuminated by a supernatural light, brightening and darkening in an ephemeral way. Mitch reached out, accepted the old man’s offering, and stepped outside park the Escalade. A frigid temperamental breeze nipped at Mitch’s exposed neck as he stepped of the curb. A few dry leaves scraped across the pavement, creating a preternatural scraping sound which made Mitch feel a little uneasy.

When he and Valerie slid open the brass cage on the lift, Mitch silently wondered why this antiquated elevator hadn’t been replaced with a modern up-to-code elevator—before shrugging in dismay—dismissing it off and chocking it to an historical society resistance. Surely this place was on the National Registry of Historical places—the elevator was probably grandfathered. Mitch and Valerie settled into their room with little fanfare. Although, the canopied four-poster bed was something out of a Jane Austin novel, and they both glanced over in appreciation at the finely crafted piece. The fireplace in on the far side of the room was nearly big enough for Mitch to stand in. The cast iron log holder was pristine, but the mantle over the fireplace was beginning to show signs of its age and use, with a soot blackening shadow over the trim in an almost exact symmetry—as though the trim was kissed by flame in a centered area equidistant from the left and right corners of the trim.

Much to their surprise, a bottle of Dom Perignon awaited the two of them. It was in the parlor area of the suite. A crystal ice bucket was placed over a laced doily on a rich mahogany claw foot stand between the two overstuffed antique chairs facing the fireplace. Mitch reached down to draw the bottle from the bucket. The ice clinked and clattered against the hard crystal as he retrieved the bottle with great care. The label on the shaded glass looked vintage—it read 1923 in bold Old-English print. He shrugged it off, assuming his boss at Verso made special arrangements for the vintage champagne.

Mitch poured two liberal servings of the chilled champagne into the delicate long stemmed crystal glassware next to the ice bucket. The color of the champagne was a light amber—agitated with a trillion little bubbles floating toward the surface of the glass, before being caught in the whitish froth where the liquid met the top of the frosty glass. He presented a glass to Val, before pinching the the stem of his own, offering it toward hers in a mock toast. They sipped on on the champagne, scrunching their faces ever so lightly as the bubbles danced around on their tongues and the bitter dryness of the alcohol warmed their throats.

They continued sipping the bubbly, glass after glass—it was as though the bottle never emptied. After about four or five glasses each, their faces became splotched by the alcohol—their inhibitions relaxed—and the fun about to be initiated. The soft ambient lighting of the suite, mixed with copious amounts of champagne, had a soporific effect on both of them. Valerie excused herself for a warm bath to relax, but Mitch didn’t mind—he needed to delve into the voluminous file in his leather messenger bag, so that he could refresh himself on the numbers before the first round of negotiations would commence in the morning.

When Val emerged from the bathroom—she was a salacious and alluring mixture of class-and-trash—just the way Mitch liked it. She wore a form fitting negligée with tight lacey black thigh high stockings—a polar shift from the demure look she had earlier in the evening. The well sculpted cheeks of her ass flirtatiously emerged from the hemline of the negligée in way that made Mitch’s loins tingle from the warmth of the booze and the forbidden fruit standing in front of him. The crotch of his pants suddenly tightened around his groin, making him desire her all the more.

He stood up, stumbling to gain his balance and composure. The champagne had rocked him pretty hard, and would have given him a limp noodle, but he brought a remedy for that. He reached into his bag, digging around for the pewter cylinder containing his blow. He poured a little mound onto the coffee table, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He withdrew an American Express Black and divided the mound of coke into four generous lines, rolled up a dead president and bumped the two largest lines on the table with the vigor of a Kirby vacuum. He gave himself a vicious case of the sniffles, but in about 2 minutes, it would matter naught—he’d be flying high and ready to fuck until the sun came up.

Val seductively sauntered over to the sitting area and kneeled slowly across from the coffee table where Mitch had just blown his two lines. She huddled down and squatted listlessly for a moment to gain her balance and composure. As she kneeled, Mitch took careful notice of the robust cleavage pouring from the low cut top of her negligée. She reached for the rolled bill, tightened it up a bit, and mirrored Mitch’s effort—but one line would be enough for her. Before she’d met Mitch, she’d never so much as hit a joint—say nothing of coke. The line took the lethargy from their champagne buzz, but left just enough of the numbness.

She looked so slutty as she blew the line, that the seams of the crotch of Mitch’s pants felt like they were going to split like when Bruce Banner gets angry—an analogy which seemed wholly appropriate given the perfectly sculpted female form kneeling in front of him. His cock began to throb with an intensity of a bass drum resonating through his groin. She sucked up the line like an addicted hooker, before she crawled over to where Mitch was seated. Her eye shadow was darkened underneath her eyes, giving her an animalistic look—she focused fastidiously on Mitch’s zipper like a lioness gazes at a gazelle from the cover of prairie grass—with focus and insatiable hunger. He’d only seen her this cock-hungry twice—both times in New York, and both times fueled on booze and high-test coke.

She artfully unzipped his pants and took his whole cock into her mouth with enough suction to suck the chrome off a Buick. Mitch may have been a narcissistic businessman like Christian Bale in American Psycho, but the rule of reciprocity was sacred when it came to all things sexual—he didn’t mind putting in the hard work to make them moan—in the end—the reward was always worth the toil. After she took him deep a couple of times, he picked her up ravenously and threw her on the four-poster bed, splaying her out like an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Y.

He started working his way in from her thighs in concentric circles with his tongue, getting closer and closer to her sweet-spot before changing course. She began to moan in anticipation before he rewarded her with what she was inaudibly begging for. Her body tensed up in spasms as she presented her hips closer to his face—her lower back arched, and she collapsed into the mattress in a 110-pound heap. Mitch smiled, but there was no way he was letting her off that easy. He flipped her around in a lightning-quick and pronounced motion, laying her on her belly, and then he propped her ass up to groin level and entered her from behind—she gasped and moaned as he began thrusting deeply into her.

She began panting as her chest heaved in deep breaths of pleasure. She came, and came, and came again. Just as Mitch was about to explode, he saw the most bizarre thing—Val turned her face almost a hundred and eighty degrees, distending her neck like a contortionist—when he blew his load—he didn’t come into Valerie—but rather, the face of a haggard old woman turned to look at him, speaking with a weary and high pitched voice—it got deeper and raspier—the apparition juxtaposed over Val’s face looked like a mummified version of Gollum from Lord of the Rings; it’s neck tenebrous, hair thinning, and skin that resembled aged leather. It smiled, revealing a gapped and blackening smirk. “Fuck the EVIL out of me! Fuck the devil out me!” The face smiled knowingly, and in mock prayer cried out. “Oh God, yes! Oh. My. God. Yes!”

Mitch recoiled sharply from what his eyes were telling his brain. He fell backward from the foot of the bed, releasing a shrill scream. When his head hit the red-maple bed rail—he felt a thud reverberate through his skull—it throbbed and ached intensely—then blackness. When he came to, a perspired Val with sweat glistened hair was leaning over him, shaking him awake. She was wrapped tightly in a white bath robe. The muted light of the full moon filtered in through the windows, illuminating the bathrobe in a postmortem glow. He thought for a moment that the figure leaning over him looked somewhat translucent—no, transparent—almost ghostly. He hit his head a good one—am I dead…in a coma? No, maybe a little concussed, pain like this doesn’t exist in the after life. He looked at her, through squinting eyes, to make sure it was her and not what he knew he just saw. “Baby, are you okay? Are you alright?”

Mitch sprung up with reflexive haste, wanting to be ready if that face materialized over Valerie’s face again. He stumbled to his feet, using the post of the bed for balance—he placed himself on the damp sheets of the bed to gain his composure—trying to rationalize what he’d just seen. It couldn’t have been the coke; it was from the same ounce he’d been using all month. Maybe—he thought—just maybe, the dimly lit room, the booze, and the coke were playing tricks on him—he couldn’t have seen or heard what he just saw and heard before he hit his head… Sometime around 3:00 am, the two of them collapsed in post-coital exhaustion. Yesterday had been a long day, and last night an even longer night.

Visceral screams echoed in the mashed up throbbing space between Mitch’s ears. Children, men, woman, all screaming—the pangs of childbirth—the screams were like the wailings referenced in the Bible—except they came not just from women—but from men and children alike. The screams emanated from the halls and seemed to follow the long corridors of Hotel Harris, all of the way to Suite 3. Mitch sat up, thick beads of sweat trickled from his matted chest hair as the cool air of the suite chilled the moist parts of his torso.

He groggily swung his feet off the edge the bed as they clumsily danced around on the floor to find his slippers. He slipped them on, not bothering with the matching shirt to his two-piece pajama set. He cautiously walked toward the entry of their suite—to where the screams were coming from. He stood inside the the door leading into the hallway of Suite 3, hearing the screams—but there was something else—a sizzling sound of a steak landing on the cast iron grate of a char-broiler—tsss…tsss. The screams seemed far off now, as though he—they were in a vacuum—a place devoid of atmosphere through which sounds waves could travel.

Mitch glanced down toward the bottom of the door; warm smoke began to pour in, slightly at a first—but with increasing volume as the moments passed. The smoke began crawling on the floor of Suite 3 like the thick grayish-blue clouds from a fog machine—slowly spreading out and enveloping the hardwood floor and ornately embroidered oriental carpet. The smoke hung low in the air, resting about two feet from the floor in a condensed cloud.

Mitch was calm, the smoke wasn’t spreading, and there seemed to be a lull in the screaming. He reached out with his hand to touch the brass knob on the door with the back of his hand—he remembered that was the way to do it—to make sure the knob wasn’t hot. He also thought about how they say to crawl on the floor to avoid breathing in toxic smoke—it was a reverse image of a typical structure fire. The smoke laid low instead of rising. It was heavy and thick—and surprisingly cool—like fog, not smoke.

He opened the door against his better judgment. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach—in the deepest recesses of his psyche, a faint voice told him to stop, to stay away—but that faint voice was overshadowed by a louder one—not the voice of sanity or reason—but the voice of curiosity. He opened the door and arched his neck just to the left of the doorway—taking a quick peek but keeping the rest of his body behind the door trim for cover—just in case, he thought. A warm glow like the flicker of many lit candles ebbed and flowed in soft waves of light, casting shadows in different places each time. There was a fire in the walls, but getting out wasn’t urgent just yet—this was the time to take a gander, like a train wreck, Mitch couldn’t help but to satisfy his own morbid curiosity. He walked down the hall with his body pressed tight against the wall.

He walked toward Suite 10 down the hall. This was where the lapping flames and bright yellowish-orange light was most intense. The plaster on the wall began to flake and the lead paint began to peel, revealing glowing wooden slats. Through the slats, Mitch could see into Suite 10. He leaned in for a closer look. Much to his surprise the burning slats weren’t hot—not even warm—they were refreshingly cool. The rules of physics—of thermal dynamics, didn’t apply here—there weren’t any rules—it was alarming and wonderfully freeing in a strange way.

Mitch focused on a four-inch space where the slats had burned away. He could see into the suite with unworldly focus—almost as though he were omnipotent and omnipresent here—he was outside of the suite physically, but metaphysically his conscious existence was inside of the suite—he was in two places at one time—in two dimensions simultaneously. Time no longer existed where and when Mitch existed. He was here for an eternity, but an eternity was a fleeting moment.

What he saw between the slats would have jarred the most decorated of sociopaths—but Mitch watched with objective voyeuristic indifference. Two ghostly apparitions in the form of a young boy and girl were huddled on the floor of Suite 10. Their skin was bubbling and peeling like the casing of a sausage on a charcoal grill—it was sloughing off in blackened layers revealing flesh and bone—intact but peeling—the skin was perpetual energy for the flames. The fire engulfed and enveloped the children at first, but Mitch began to see the ordeal unfurl in reverse. Sinister smiles registered on the faces of the children—they looked like children—but upon closer examination—they weren’t children, they possessed a demonic aura of evil. They were demons cloaked in the burning flesh of children.

A man, dressed a formal dinner suit with a top hat walked over to the children, opened the kerosene lamp on the mantle, and poured the oil on the children. They screamed and pleaded with the man. “Daddy, please no father, please, we’ll be good.” They were crying and pleading as their likeness flickered, giving way to scaling skin and reptilian eyes. The towering man leaned over at them, struck a match and lit a corncob pipe he removed from a pouch in his dinner jacket. He stoked the pipe and flicked the glowing match on the kerosene soaked children. Bluish flames burst on them, glowing red and orange as the flames began the cycle anew in evil perpetuity.

Mitch’s indifference began to evolve into an entirely different state of being—first curiosity, then anger, and then great sadness. He was beginning to run the full gamut of the human condition. The feelings weren’t feelings here—knowledge of darkness, not of light—he began to experience only the bad. Good was a foreign concept in this dimensional plain of existence. The man in the top hat looked familiar—but how, from where? Mitch saw the man’s hands cup the bowl of the pipe as the man drew in selfishly from the wooden stem, as though each drag would be his last. He exhaled a dark plume of smoke from his lungs which hung in the air around his face in the center of Suite 10. Those hands, Mitch thought, those are the hands of the old man from the concierge desk! The man burning his children was the old man from the desk! Lines had etched deeply into the very same face, where none existed here in suite 10, mere hours later—or decades earlier. Time wasn’t linear in this moment—monochronism gave way to polychronism as both concepts relate to time in the way Mitch was accustomed to perceiving it. The eyes, although more tired looking at the hotel desk earlier in the evening, still appeared vacant through the slats.

The apparition flickered as he looked down at his burning children with a wide smile. The way he moved reminded Mitch of the way dancing bodies seem to move under the bluish light of a strobe. Flicker, one position—flicker, a position closure—flicker—the man was standing at the wall between he and Mitch. His eyes met Mitch’s through the peeling lead paint, the crumbling plaster, and the burning slats. He leaned toward the space where Mitch peered in and exhaled a lung full of tobacco smoke. The smoke seeped through the gap in the hall and curled around Mitch’s nose. The smell was pungent, and sweet—with just a hint of sour decay. It smelled the same as it did when Mitch checked in, just slightly more intense.

The man spoke to Mitch without moving his lips, without murmuring, and without signing. The two could communicate without words—they were connected by some powerful telekinetic force. The man leveled his iris toward the slat, so that it was parallel to Mitch’s through the wall. Their pupils were perfectly aligned through the gap. The man’s eyes pulled Mitch in like a tractor beam—his steely gray eyes were infinitely deep and conveyed a depth Mitch had never been privy to. They possessed knowledge and understanding—contempt and intolerance—they were nothing and everything all at once. Mitch was transfixed in the man’s gaze like a deer caught in headlights. He was powerless to look away as he glanced into the darkness of the man’s eyes.

Mitch tried to speak but couldn’t. Who are you, what do you want? The figure still looked like a man, but Mitch knew he wasn’t. The figure listened without hearing, and spoke without talking. “I am he, the one you fear, Mitchell Martin. I existed before your world, and will exist after. You are mine, your soul belongs to me, and you will be here with me for eternity. You will serve me blindly—you will serve me faithfully. This hotel—Hotel Harrisis a place fit for a man of your stature. It possesses all of the trappings of the flesh.”

Mitch jolted awake with a scream. He was soaked head to toe in sweat. He leaned over to Val and shook her awake. The nightmare he’d just had was the most lucid he’d ever had. It was indistinguishable from wakefulness. The smells from his nightmare lingered in his nostrils while he sat awake in bed. Valerie awoke, and groggily spoke to Mitch. “Babe, are you okay?” Mitch, still trying to get his shit together, thought for a moment before responding emphatically. “No, get up, we’re leaving! We’ll go over to the Blue Iris Motor Lodge! I’m not staying here a moment longer.

Val got out of bed slowly. Mitch barked over at her. “Hurry up, lets go!” Val began to pack her suitcase with careful deliberation. “Hurry the fuck up! We need to go—now!” The two scrambled to get their things situated. When they made it to the lobby, the old man stood at the desk, filling out his ledger, barely pausing to notice the two of them walk toward the door. Mitch reached out to open it, but it appeared to be locked. He looked over to the concierge and spoke. “Sir, we need to leave, please unlock the door, now!” The man at the desk didn’t even acknowledge their presence. Mitch spoke again, this time with greater authority, mustering all of his strength to convince the man. Still nothing. Then Mitch began to carry like a cornered animal as Val watched with horror and dismay. Mitch clawed frantically at the door, then began kicking it. It didn’t so much as rattle. He walked over to the far wall and snatched a wooden chair. He strutted back to the glass door and swung the chair with all of his might.

The chair splintered into pieces on the glass. Mitch screamed, then hustled over the concierge desk to demand the man let them out. The man slowly looked up at Mitch and Val for the first time since they’d made their way to the lobby. “You signed in early this evening, and regrettably, I can’t let you leave. You’ve heard of the book of life right? You know…The one Jesus likes to write in…? Well you just signed your name in the the book of eternal damnation, and you signed in for a plus one. We’ve been waiting for the two of you here for a very long time. Mitch, we wanted you for your insatiable greed, and Val, we wanted you for your materialistic greed. You’ll find that with a little time—the two of you will get along just fine here—forever!’

Mitch and Val began screaming as the two demonic looking children from Suite 10 materialized at the desk to bound them into an eternity of bondage in this no man’s land between the physical and metaphysical dimension.

Submitted September 23, 2019 at 02:36AM by mike04281 https://ift.tt/2OfwgzW