everything is better (when you're everything)

“It’s a goddamn eyesore’s what it is.”

The sparks of an oncoming headache danced behind Jeanette’s eyes. The lights were too bright. The patrons were too loud. The acrid aftertaste of her drink sat heavy on the back of her tongue- she was going to regret this tomorrow. Rosa sat across from her, arms slung over the back of the booth like she owned the place. If she was making an effort to take up as much space as possible, it was paying off. Whether out of discomfort or just outright fear, Robin had squished himself against the wall. It was as far away from Rosa as he could get, but he still clutched his cardboard-colored cardigan around his bony shoulders with a white-knuckled grip. The longer she spoke, the tighter he pulled. It’d be a damn shame if it ripped, Jeanette thought, idly stirring at the ice of her empty glass. He’d look actually naked without it.

“It’s supposed to be demolished soon. Besides, that part of town is borderline empty nowadays. I’d argue it’s not making anyone’s eyes sore.” His voice was little more than a whisper, barely audible over the barroom chatter. Apparently Rosa wasn’t done ranting, judging by the glare she shot him even as he opened his mouth to continue. Whether those were tears budding in his eyes or just the reflection of the lights in his glasses, Jeanette wasn’t sure. If she really strained her ears, she could just pretend they weren’t there. Her bed plead for her company from the other side of town, and she’d be answering its call as soon as she could.

The familiar sounds of the crowded haunt bubbled up around them, but Rosa’s presence commanded attention, and God help anyone who didn’t turn their eyes to her when she started speaking. Hell, she even styled herself like it. Wild, curly hair that puffed out around her head and down to her shoulders like some mockery of a bowl cut. Gaudy Hawaiian shirts in tropical neons bright enough to sear any sane person’s eyes out. There was a reason that she rarely, if ever, interacted with any customers. She’d scared off plenty a self-respecting man, and the few friends that remained at her side remained mostly out of fear for the repercussions of speaking out against her. A select few just found her crazy. Crazy in the fun way, but crazy nonetheless. She had a way of making herself seem like the only person in the room, and the aura of confidence she gave off was strong enough to melt steel. Even as Jeanette sat there, she could feel the ice in her glass getting less and less solid.

"The debate’s fuckin’ stupid," Rosa spat, brow creasing and fingers pinching at the bridge of her nose. “It’s supposed to be ‘bringing in tourists.’ It’s bullshit. All of it. The beaches are what’s bringin’ in the tourists. All that rotting hunk of bricks can do is get Buzzfeed listicles written about it and clog up the skyline. The thing’s condemned, for Christ’s sake! What good’s a ‘tourist attraction’ y’can’t even get anywhere near without getting arrested?”

Jeanette trained her eyes on her straw as she pressed it back against her lips. “Buzzfeed listicles.”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Despite the ever-present background chatter, the air still managed to fall stagnant. She didn’t dare look up. She could feel Rosa’s eyes on the back of her neck, two points of heat on her skin and a growing weight in her chest. Across the table, Robin stared at her in something like pity, biting down hard on his thin lips. She didn’t realize she hadn’t blinked until the table suddenly quaked. Rosa had her chin cupped in her hands, filling her companions’ fields of view with nothing but her. The way her round cheeks pressed against her mouth disguised the gummy grin spreading across her face. “Listen. I got an idea.”

Robin scoffed, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “You always have an idea. I’m not getting arrested again, Rosa.”

“Not even for widdle 'ol me?” The expression Rosa plastered on was probably supposed to be charming, but it resembled something closer to an old porcelain doll. The kind that felt like they were always staring at you, planning something.

"Especially not for you."

“Whatever.” She tossed herself back in her seat, arms slung behind her head. The way Robin winced, anyone could’ve sworn he was expecting a slap across the face for that. Even after she started again, the tension in his shoulders didn’t fade. “I got a couple jugs’a gasoline in my trunk, a bag of those bigass camping firestarter things, and a lighter. Jeanette and I will go fix the problem ourselves 'n leave you here.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Jeanette’s pupils shrunk to barely more than pinpricks. Having adopted the same posture as a shrimp the entire outing, the way her back straightened itself out sent a resounding crack across the room.

“I never agreed to anyth-”

“I’m not payin’ for an Uber for your broke asses.”

Off to the side, one of the buttons on Robin’s cardigan snapped off. That budding headache returned in full force, and everyone let out a collective groan. Everyone except Rosa, still beaming from ear to ear.

“Great answer. I’ll foot the bill, then.”

---

Rosa braced her weight up on the hood of her old beat-up Hummer, neck craned back to get a better view of the imposing building in front of her. Jeanette had never actually been this close to the thing before, but now that she was, she could definitely see why anyone’d want it gone. At some point in time, it had probably been glorious. It was massive, for Christ’s sake- the corridors stretched back into the distance farther than she could see. Despite the wear and tear, some aspects of its former glory remained. The ornately carved trim making perfect floral swirls along the entryway. The grand double-doors with their rusted bronze handles, worn smooth from decades of hands and weather. Logically, Jeanette knew she wasn’t the first to visit the Carnelian after its closure, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. What she expected out of an abandoned building, though, was something frozen in time, at the mercy of the elements. The door handles carried the distinct slick of skin oil, though. Someone had been here recently enough for it to still be present, but she couldn’t see any other signs of human life in the area. No footprints besides their own, no parked cars or bikes or any other transportation. Just three kinda-friends-mostly-just-coworkers and a hotel.

“Goddamn. Look at the thing,” Rosa tutted, shaking her head. “Tonight’s gonna be the night, ain’t it? We’ve lived in its shadow for too long. Can’t wait to see this on the news tomorrow.” Robin stared in her direction like a deer in the headlights, choking down a lump so thick you could see it sliding down his throat. He shook like a leaf despite the tepid summer air not carrying any hint of a breeze, and what he wouldn’t say, Jeanette could- just in a more subtle manner.

“Hey, why don’t we try getting inside?”

Rosa cocked a brow in her direction, watching as Jeanette pulled her tight ponytail into a messy bun. “What for?”

“I mean, there has to be some stuff in there the last guys haven’t looted. Memorabilia. Even if we raze the place to the ground, there’s gotta be someone out there aching for Carnelian merch, right? There’s money to be made here.”

Rosa’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of money, pulling herself up straight. Robin almost leapt out of his skin at the sudden movement, letting his fingers worry along the edges of his cardigan once again. He didn’t make eye contact with either of the women. Apparently, the broken windows and crooked beams of the hotel before him were very, very interesting. Far more interesting, at least, than having to listen to Rosa’s half-baked nonsense again. Before she even moved towards the doors of the Carnelian, she had already rolled up her sleeves and cuffed her pants, almost too eager to toss herself inside. Jeanette swore she could see dollar signs gleaming gold in the deep brown of her eyes the more she brushed her hair out of her face and tied it back into a ponytail more of a glorified man-bun.

“Jeez, Jeanette, I could’ve sworn you had a stick up your ass! So you finally decide to live a little, huh?” The smile on Rosa’s face was very audible in her voice, each syllable ending in almost a squeak. The woman in question only stared at her with her brows knit and her lips pulled tight against her gums, not daring to respond. Rosa didn’t seem to care. “Yeah, this place was fuckin’ loaded back in its day. No way in hell there isn’t something of value in there. Even if it’s, like, riddled with asbestos or something. We can make do, yeah? Sell it on eBay for a couple hundo?”

“I doubt we can get that much.” Robin quivered, shrinking into himself more the longer he had to tear his eyes away from the watchful gaze of the Carnelian. “I mean, what’s of value in there that hasn’t already been l-looted? If you’re so dead set on getting rid of the thing, can’t we just light it up and leave?” His voice belied an underlying feeling of dread, one that was creeping into Jeanette’s bones too the more time she spent standing before the maw of the hotel. Already, she was starting to regret her decision. It’d bought her time, though, and Rosa seemed pleased with it- there was no stopping her when she had her mind set on something.

“Shut up, stringbean. You’re comin’ too.” Jeanette shot him a you don’t have to listen to her glance, a just get back in the car, we’ll come back for you glance, but Robin nodded anyways and trudged towards the doors on feet like bricks. As much as he wanted to just let the other two go about their little adventure, he just… couldn’t. His face was pale, almost green, but Rosa’s word was tantamount to law. “Alright, guys. On three. To riches?”

“Shooting too high. Maybe pocket money.”

Rosa rolled her eyes. “To pocket money. Alright.”

“One.” Jeanette gripped one handle, already preparing to brace herself on her heels.

“Two.” Both of Robin’s fists clamped down on the other. Even in the calm night air, he clung on for dear life.

“Three!” The two of them threw their weight back, watching as the doors swung open to hit them with a column of stagnant air. Dust billowed out in thick clouds, sending the two closest to the blast into a brief coughing fit as Rosa looked on with hands on her hips, chest puffed out in pride. She inhaled deeply, taking in the fruits of the others’ labor- and immediately started coughing as well. It stank of years of dust, mold, rotting wood and probably other, less savory things. The marble tiles of the foyer, grand as it was, had chipped and broken to the point of the embossed mural being all but unrecognizable. Chairs and tables lay overturned, shards of broken vases surrounded the dessicated remains of long-dead flowers, and light fixtures lay shattered among them to the point that what had been what was entirely obscured. Arches that had once led into dining halls and ballrooms had long collapsed under their own weight, the gold paint that they had once glittered with having chipped away until only the underlying wood was left. Even the air itself was heavy and oppressive, urging them to turn around, leave, and never look back. It seemed far too vast a space to be left so empty for so long, and just standing inside the building itself was making Jeanette feel lightheaded. Over her shoulder, she could see Robin dry-heaving, his hands covered with the baggy sleeves of his cardigan.

All Rosa saw, though, was dollar signs.

“Alright, ladies!” She clapped twice, taking a step further in. Even with all of Rosa’s confidence, she’d stopped repeatedly to shake her head, let a wave of chills wash over her body- it seemed to be getting to her, too. “No time for lollygagging! We’re in, ‘n this is our last chance to get what we want out before we wipe this joint off the map. Now get up and start rootin’ through this shit. It’s already 9, and we’ve all got work in the morning. I don’t wanna be here any later’n 2 A.M.”

Jeanette silently thanked herself for wearing flats that day. If she’d had to tromp through an abandoned building that practically had a glowing ‘TETANUS RISK’ sign plastered to the front in heels, she might’ve just let herself collapse there and then. With hungry eyes, Rosa had already made her way over to the checkin desk and hauled her squat frame over the counter to get at whatever was on the other side. Robin’s dainty fingers trailed over shelves upon shelves of chintz and other knickknacks- shelves free of any dust. Of course people had been here before, and of course they’d touched things, but… why leave them?

“Hey, hey, spread out! C’mon, we ain’t gonna get anything done if we’re all stuck in one damn room all night!” Both Robin and Jeanette’s eyes fell on Rosa, who only scoffed at their shocked expressions. “What, are you scared? Worried some sexy, sexy ghosts are gonna come up behind ya? It’d be reeeeeal awkward if one slapped my ass right about now!”

When nothing happened, she only shrugged. “C’mon. Y’know those are, like, kids’ stories, right? There’s no reason to be all freaked out over a fuckin’ building. Now get to work.” The other two stared at each other for a second before silently nodding, waiting until Rosa’s back was turned to make their way into a cordoned-off side room. On the walls hung rows upon rows of hat racks and coat hooks, some with coats still hanging on by their last threads. The only light in the room was the little that could filter in from the still-open front doors, trickling through the cracks just enough to illuminate the grim look on Robin’s face. That, combined with his fair hair and slight frame, made him seem almost ghostlike. Maybe that had something to do with the rancid vibe she was getting from the place.

“Jeanette,” he growled, clamping his hands down on her shoulders, “I don’t know how much of this you’re going to believe, but something doesn’t feel right. I know Rosa’s fucking-” his hand flew in wild circles beside his head- “Y’know, batshit, but that doesn’t mean we have to be. Can you feel it too?”

Jeanette could see her blanched face in the reflection of his glasses. She nodded.

“Right. I’m not some kind of paranormal enthusiast. I’m not a ghosts and goblins kind of guy. But something- Something does not want us here. Outside, when Rosa was on her little spiel, I saw something. In the window. Swear, to god, it was a person. Looking down. At us. It looked me straight in the fucking eye, and then it pulled the curtains closed. I don’t- I don’t know if it was, like, a squatter or whatever, but I’d rather face Rosa’s wrath than whatever the fuck is up there.”

Through the crack in the door, she could still see Rosa hunched over behind the checkin counter. The sound of paper flapping against paper echoed through the high walls of the foyer, a pile of files rapidly accumulating behind her as she squatted with little care as to just what she was tossing about. She was in her own little world, and it was beyond Jeanette to even consider what she was looking for. Whatever it was, she couldn’t bring herself to value what little money she might be able to make off of the rotted husk of the Carnelian over her own life.

“So are you proposing we just-”

“We just leave, yes. It’s not like she’ll notice. The door’s wide open. Either I crash at your place or you crash at mine, and we somehow make it to work in the morning like nothing happened. Deal?”

“Oh, thank god you’re sane. Deal.”

As they left the closet, Jeanette could’ve sworn something in the room had shifted. The doors were still wide open, the chairs were still upturned, the vases still lay toppled. She grabbed onto Robin’s shoulder as she wracked her brain, so sure despite all evidence to the contrary that something wasn’t right. The wind whistled through the empty corridors, and it finally hit her.

She couldn’t hear Rosa anymore.

Robin asked her something like what’s wrong as she turned toward the checkin desk, but she could hardly hear him. Rosa was the one with the keys, so Rosa was the only one who could access Jeanette’s purse and Robin’s medications and god damn, where was she? Even the piles of files, the piles that Jeanette could’ve sworn she’d seen while she was planning their escape with Robin, were no longer sprawled across the floor. The cabinet was open, yes, but the files inside were all neatly labelled and ordered as if no one had disturbed them to begin with. God, the corners weren’t even wrinkled. They were like brand new. Imagine that. Brand new manila folders in the hundred-year-old cabinets of a hundred-year-old building. She closed the cabinet with a shudder, stepping back and-

Oh, god.

Something squelched.

Her shriek was audible all the way across the foyer, where Robin was already making his way towards the door. The harsh thud of his shoes on the tile was overpowered by the blood rushing through Jeanette’s ears, louder than anything she’d heard before. She knew she’d stepped on something. It had sunk beneath her feet without much resistance, sighing quietly as the air was pushed out of it. When he finally arrived, though, Robin couldn’t find anything amiss. Just Jeanette, soaked in sweat and chest heaving. Her eyes darted between him and the floor, gasping like a fish to spit out words that, no matter how hard she tried, just wouldn’t come.

“Jeanette? What’s going on?”

She stared up at him, wide-eyed, before heaving herself up from the floor like it had wronged her. Because it had. Whatever she’d touched was clearly, distinctly not right. Robin jumped as she shook the thought from her head and grabbed him by the hand. “We’re leaving. Now.” She could feel the tendons shifting under her grip, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear him yelp and question her motives, but she was determined. She was going to get out of this hellhole as soon as possible, and she was never going to go anywhere near it again. The cops could find out what happened to Rosa later- it wasn’t her problem anymore. Her free hand extended in front of her, ready to plow her way out through the doors and into air that didn’t stink like an antique store.

Doors that she could’ve sworn existed just a little over an hour ago.

Doors that were definitely not there now.

Jeanette blinked, an incredulous laugh forcing her way from her lungs. So that was it, then! She was going insane, too! Maybe she’d just gotten turned around. The doors were on the other wall, yeah? She’d just turn around and try those. Then she’d be out. Out and on her way to bed where she could sleep off this entire crazy ass experience.

Her hand met damp wallpaper yet again. She turned. She tried. Wallpaper. She turned again. Tried again. Wallpaper. No matter which direction she tried, which wall she slammed her whole body weight into, there were no doors. No windows, even. The whole space should’ve been enclosed, pitch-black, but she could still see her hands in front of her face, right? So there had to be a light source somewhere, right?

Hands?

Where was Robin?

He couldn’t have just disappeared, she’d been holding onto him the entire time, right? The room was entirely enclosed, anyways, there weren’t any doors or anything he could’ve left from. So he had to still be in the room. So she just had to call his name.

No response.

She’d try again. And again. And again and again and again to no avail until her throat was sore and hot, salty tears streamed down her cheeks. Whatever had happened to Rosa had happened to him, and oh god, she was alone, and she didn’t have a way out, and she couldn’t call for help because she’d left her damn phone in her damn purse in the DAMN car. Some good that did her. She couldn’t just lay down and die, though. She screamed what was left of her voice away until it was little more than a hoarse whisper. She pounded on the walls until they warped and bent around her bruised knuckles, more elastic than plaster had any right to be. She turned over every piece of furniture in the room looking for some way out, but all that yielded was more wall and more floor and more stinking, melting hotel decor. She’d exhausted her options. She’d exhausted her options, but she was still frustrated, and if she couldn’t find a way out, she’d have to take that frustration out on whatever was nearby.

As soon as she’d hoisted the end table above her head, she heard something sliding.

It wasn’t from anywhere in the room. Somewhere distinctly outside the room, actually. So there was still an outside, so she could still get outside, and she could still get out. But something was sliding. The hotel had ceased its shifting long ago, and it wasn’t accompanied by the sounds of creaking wood, so it was unlikely for it to be wayward furniture. She didn’t know of any Californian wildlife that slid, much less anything large enough to create an actual, audible sound. In her curiosity, Jeanette spared the end table, setting it back down on the floor to press her ear to the wall.

Scratch that. The door. It wanted to be a door now, so it was a door, and Jeanette tumbled face-first into the hallway. Unlike the hotel she’d entered, it looked almost… clean. The wallpaper was still peeling and the carpet was still torn up from the floorboards in places, but it wasn’t any worse than any given roadside motel. The walls were lined neatly with doors upon doors, with number placards firmly affixed onto the front of each, so they had to be rooms. The longer she looked at them, though, the more her head swam. They were rooms, and most hotel rooms were numbered, so they had to be numbers. What she found herself looking at, though, were distinctly not numbers. She wasn’t sure what they were. Her mind couldn’t wrap around just what kind of shape they were trying to portray, so it just gave up.

She could still kind of read them, though. Which was strange, since the rest of the hotel had been pitch black, and she and Robin had to navigate by moonlight. Despite the building she was sure she was still in having sat dormant for over half a century, though, it was perfectly lit by rows of electric wall sconces with frosted glass shades shaped ever-so-lovingly like flowers. That’s what she told herself they were, anyways. She’d ran her hands along one and found it pleasantly cool to the touch, to say nothing of the texture being less akin to glass and more to a human fingernail. Thinking on what they were actually made of wasn’t going to be good for her mental wellbeing if she wanted to find a way out.

So Jeanette hauled herself to her feet, dusted herself off, and started down the hallway. The sliding noise hadn’t come back since she first heard it, but she couldn’t care less if it did. She was in a hallway. Hallways had a start and an end. Usually, at the start of a hotel hallway, there’s an elevator or a stairwell or a path to the lobby or something, so as long as she kept walking, she’d eventually get out. It was a sound enough plan, and she didn’t press herself to think of any potential flaws. If she did, she’d get distracted, and if she got distracted, she wouldn’t be walking fast enough. So she started moving, and she tried not to think about the way the walls pulsed around her. Her head ached. Her knees wobbled. If she didn’t fall facefirst into a bed soon, she was going to die. She knew it. This was cruel and she’d had enough and something’s on the floor.

Knocked suddenly back into reality, she stooped down for a closer look. She hadn’t seen any other signs of human life once she’d started walking, not a single light on in a room nor a “do not disturb” sign to indicate, at least, that someone was staying there. It was just her, the harsh incandescent lights, and the ambient sounds of pipes settling and appliances buzzing. A random, discarded item on the ground, then, seemed terribly out of place. It was an awful shade of orange, with big red umbrella-leaves and deep purple hibiscus flowers printed into the fabric. It was buttoned up to just below the collar, which flopped lazily about no matter how hard Jeanette tried to press it down. She’d seen this shirt before, just a few hours earlier. She knew she had. It was Rosa’s.

She stood there for a second, clutching the shirt in her fist until the skin went white and her nails dug tiny holes in the fabric. Why here? Why now? If this was her shirt, where the fuck was Rosa? Her hands shook. Her tongue sparked with the taste of blood- she’d bitten into her lip. No more distractions. She had to keep moving forward. If she let herself get distracted like this, she was never going to get out. Just keep walking, she told herself, you’re going to get somewhere if you just keep walking. When her feet started to ache- flats were not made for long periods of walking- she took only the time to yank her shoes off and keep going. In the worst case scenario, she passed out from exhaustion. She could already feel herself getting lightheaded. It wasn’t clear, though, if it was an actual risk, or she’d just inhaled mold spores. Maybe a little of both.

Behind her, the floor swallowed the shirt back up.

---

It didn’t end. It just didn’t end. The longer Jeanette walked, the longer the hallway seemed to get. The longer the hallway got, the farther away her goal seemed. The farther away her goal seemed- against all odds- the more she was driven to keep going. Keep going, and keep going, and keep going. It was just an exercise in insanity at that point. Walking until her legs gave out, laying prone on the floor for what was either 5 minutes or 5 hours, and hauling herself back up to start it all over again. It wouldn’t let her pass out. It wouldn’t even let her sleep. The second its sweet embrace came close, she was consumed by a primal, animalistic feeling of something’s close, not safe, something’s close, not safe and she had to haul herself up and keep. Going. She was determined. She was on a mission. She was going to see it through at all costs.

She’d found open doors, a few times. Some of them opened into a vast, empty blackness. No light, no stars, like someone tore a hole in reality. Some of them had trays of refreshments, pitchers of ice water still so cold that she could’ve sworn they were left out for her on purpose. Some of them were broom closets. Some of them were just more hallways. Some of them opened into human gums and human teeth and the hot, sticky inside of a very human mouth. Those she left alone.

The one she found herself before opened into a perfectly ordinary closet. A perfectly ordinary closet where a dull brown cardigan sat on a hook, torn to shreds and spattered with something that was definitely not blood- despite being similar in both color and viscosity, it smelled more akin to the chemical “floral” scent of complimentary shampoo. Despite all that she knew would be a “normal” reaction to something like this, Jeanette couldn’t find it within herself to be even remotely surprised. No matter how hard she tried, the most intense reaction she could claw out from the foggy recesses of her mind was a flat huh. So that’s where that went. The whereabouts of its owner no longer concerned her. She had work to do. She was headed… somewhere. She had to be headed somewhere. That’s why people walked, most of the time. To go places. So she was going somewhere, and it was at the end of the hallway, and she continued. The cardigan remained on the hook.

Jeanette’s eyes fixed forward. She moved automatically, robotically, with no regard to her surroundings or the way they warped around her. She could actually see the end of the hallway getting farther and farther away from her as she walked, but her mind refused to process it. All that she knew at that point was that it was there, and she was walking towards it, which was what she was supposed to be doing. That was what mattered. Not the walls narrowing around her or the floors bubbling and squelching around her feet or the patterns on the wallpaper pulsing like veins. They were part of the hallway, so they were supposed to be there. So she kept walking. And walking. And walking.

Until she stopped.

Not of her own volition. She tried to move her feet, continue ever onwards, but the floor had wrapped its greedy tendrils around her ankles so she couldn’t take another step. So she tried to crawl, clawing at the carpet until her fingertips were bloody, but it only sunk her in deeper. The fight left her, and Jeanette shut her eyes and let herself go limp. Whatever wanted to claim her could claim her. She’d failed.

Or maybe she hadn’t. When she came to her senses, she was no longer in the hallway. Why was she in a hallway to begin with? She’d never left the foyer, and she hadn’t seen any doors. Or maybe she had. This definitely wasn’t the foyer, and she was the only one she could see present. Grand pillars stretched from the floor to the ceiling, circling a massive crystal chandelier suspiciously free of dust. And there was that sound again. The sliding. The sliding she’d heard earlier. How much earlier, she wasn’t sure, but the distinct sense of deja vu it gave her cemented that feeling in her gut. What had been a wall yawned wide open like the maw of a lion, and a new figure slid in. One she wasn’t familiar with. It wasn’t Robin (the hair was too dark) and it couldn’t be Rosa (the skin was too pale) and neither of them would be caught dead in a dress. It never occurred to her that it would’ve dwarfed either of them, even both of them sitting atop each other’s shoulders, or neither of the two had a crown of glossy, keratinous horns that brushed the ceilings when they walked- it just seemed irrelevant.

Without any visible light source, the room lit up as it made its way inside. The sliding sound that followed wasn’t accompanied by anything like footsteps- just the shrill squeaking of skin on tile. Suddenly, Jeanette found herself paralyzed. It inched closer painfully slowly, posture stock-straight and eyes fixed somewhere faraway. The figure loomed above Jeanette, trapping her in its shadow. She couldn’t look away- she couldn’t even move. She bit down hard on her lip again, wincing at the pinching and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her jaws clenched, her throat lurched, sweat beaded on her brow and rolled down her face in sloppy arcs, but the figure’s expression never faltered. The corners of its mouth pulled its lips into a tight, thin smile. Its eyes were vacant, faraway, milky and cloudy and dull. Dull like a corpse’s. As if an old porcelain doll made of wet, writhing flesh had come to life. It had the content, empty stare of a farm animal, not reacting to any of the stimuli surrounding it. Jeanette’s lungs squeezed tight anyways, and they squeezed tighter when the thing bent in half like the stalk of an anemone to lay a single, massive flipper across her body. It was like being trapped under layers upon layers of weighted blankets, a pressure intended to be soothing suddenly turned painful when used in excess.

“What do you want with me?” Her vision blurred itself with tears, still trying to comprehend just what was in front of her. The figure’s eyes, already half-lidded and rimmed in what was either dark eyeshadow or head-sized patches of mold, turned upward in almost-pity. Either a distant pipe burbled to life, or it laughed. Or both.

“Please do not remove anything from the premises.” Its voice was smooth and cordial, riddled with an unidentifiable crackling sound like a degraded tape. Despite the flat, customer-service tone, Jeanette could hear the barely-held-back snicker. Like it didn’t mean a damn word it said. Like it was enjoying itself.

As it removed its sleeve from her chest, the lack of pressure made it clear to her that something was very, very wrong. She’d been unable to move her limbs, but now? She couldn’t feel them at all. All around her, she saw herself absorbed into the warm, throbbing tile below, sinking deeper and deeper into flesh all too eager to welcome her to its ranks.

“And please, enjoy the rest of your stay. We’d love your feedback.”

And Jeanette tried to offer hers. It would be rather valuable, an important asset to the Carnelian if it were to fix itself up and finally achieve its goal of reopening to the public, and it needed all of the advice it could get if it were to effectively self-manage. To its knowledge, it would be the first (and possibly only! How thrilling!) hotel to do so, and the prospect excited it deeply.

Unfortunately, Jeanette no longer had a mouth to give feedback with.

Ah, well. C’est la vie.