Work Text:
ROOM 375 - CAM HARTDEN
1.?
The Manager’s music begins.
MANAGER
Tonight's hotel is short, and to the point. The Lobby is tan and red in equal, a few sparse and understuffed couches to the side near the straight-edged doors, a direct path from them fenced by dark and elevated plants to my front desk, which stands as how an obelisk might, sturdy and rectangular.
Tonight’s guest matches the architecture. A short and to the point person, hair buzzed close to the scalp and cloth bandages wrapped about their arms and pressed dress pants making a slivering sort of noise as they walk solidly along the direct path to the desk.
They have no suitcase. Just a duffel bag that hangs limply from their shoulder.
CAM
A room for tonight please. Cheapest you’ve got. You take cash?
MANAGER
Of course.
They hand me a small stack of bills, secured neatly by a rubber band.
I tuck it into one of the desk’s drawers.
CAM
That enough?
MANAGER
Yes. The lobby boy will show you to the room.
My hand goes to the bell. Before I can ring it-
CAM
Wait. One moment.
MANAGER
Yes?
CAM
I do need a room without windows. Sensitive to the sun. Are there any available for what I gave you? Sorry.
MANAGER
Of course. Room 375.
The hotel can easily accommodate that condition. I can almost hear her shifting, to remove a single window like an extra tooth.
Front desk bell DINGS.
The Lobby Boy’s music begins.
THE LOBBY BOY
The guest moves fast. Makes sense considering how little they’re carrying. The bag doesn’t even look full. Still, I offer to take it.
They don’t let me take it. There are important things in here, they say.
I don’t say anything else, and try to keep up behind them.
Their skin doesn’t look…right. They’ve covered it on their arms and their legs, but I can see it on their face and their neck.
It looks a bit like mine, drawn tight and yet sagging and gray. There are blisters and small open wounds where their shirt meets the skin, red and raised and screaming.
Walking so fast might be hurting them. As long as it gets them to their room faster. I can almost hear them gritting their teeth.
The elevator ride is short, but it feels like it’s longer. They don’t look at me, they don’t talk to me and they’re gripping the bag so hard it looks like their knuckles will burst from the tension and..friction of it. Friction isn’t good for exposed skin.
The doors open with a muted noise on the third floor and they walk even more briskly down the rows of doors that lead nowhere until they reach the door that does go somewhere-375.
CAM
…Thank you. You can go now. I don’t need any help.
THE LOBBY BOY
I leave, walking back down the hallway to the elevator, and leave them to their room. I can hear the door close behind them with a soft and secure clicking noise.
I did not build the room. I know what will happen, though.
They’ll set down that rectangular bag, on the bed maybe. Taking out neatly everything in it, whatever important things were in there that I could not be trusted near. Maybe it’s things for their skin. Guests have brought things like that to the Hotel. They usually don’t get the chance to actually use them, though.
It’ll all be on the bed, as put together as they are. After that’s done and nothing is confirmed to be missing or damaged, they’ll sit down on the red chair that matches the tan walls, like the couches in the lobby but smaller, and rest. Rest from walking so fast. Rest from the repeated friction. They’ll take off the bandages on their arms.
I can picture what it looks like, under the bandages. It isn’t nice. Or normal.
Blistered like their neck was, red and yellow and grayish all over. Diseased, maybe. Or just unfortunate. Thin skin, vulnerable.
They’ll look at it. Maybe they hate it, the annoyance of it, of having to make so many accommodations for it. Or they’re tired of the annoyance of it.
It doesn’t matter.
They will feel an urge to scratch the blisters. The ones that are there, and the ones that aren’t. The little scabs will look so..peelable. Like they will simply slip off.
The compulsion will overtake the sense to NOT do that, to resist the itching, very quickly.
It will relieve them a little, at first. It’ll feel nice…and cool…and…right.
Until it doesn’t. Until the wounds begin to peel a little more than the scab threshold, wringing pus and blood and clear brassy liquid out from under the dried parts and from the newly freed underneath.
It’ll start to hurt, then.
It would burn, I suppose. That…happens to me sometimes, if my uniform is too tight. It isn’t pretty, I’d imagine, even though I haven't seen it myself. The friction of clothes would make it easier.
Their skin peels and peels, beyond the epidermis, beyond the dermis, and beyond that, until there’s nothing to scratch but nerves and muscles on their arms. Then, they rip off their pressed dress pants as if the garment was alive and begin scratching their legs. They won’t stop. They have to stop the itching, and they can only stop it by scratching.
This will continue, frantic and squelching and stinging, moving to another part of themself when a section or a limb is flayed to bits, until even their face has no skin. The red chair will be stiff with blood, and the carpet soaked to the Hotel’s bones.
They will scream short and loud with a mouth that no longer has lips, and die on the chair, released of the burden of the blisters.
The important things will still be on the bed, unused.
As I get into the elevator and press with a soft and rotting finger the button to descend to the lobby, I can almost hear the sound of the guest sitting down in the understuffed chair.
Front desk bell DINGS.