Character Hotel

"Right. Well. I'm rather worn out and feel like trying to sleep tonight. See you all tomorrow." Johnson stretches and goes to slink off.

"I should check out the room! Wonder if there's any TV signal?" muses Tag. "Probably not. Anyways, night, all."

"You don't actually have to follow me." mumbles Johnson. "I'd think you'd want to stay with the people and cause a commotion."

"Yeah." confirms Tag. "But I'm so worn out that I can barely keep up with what's going on! And some of those people are scary. I hope none of them are secretly serial killers or something." He strikes a cheesy pose. "But don't worry. I'd defend you with my life, buddy."

"You mean I'd defend you while you hide under the bed?"

"Pretty much. But my dignity-sacrificing girlish scream will be the distraction that gives you a good shot!"

Their flippant, tired argument echoes down the hallway.

Noriko gives a minute glance at the card in the girl's hand. She thinks it might be the black card, but as she takes it, it's only the Six of Batons (Victory). "Thanks." In her pockets it goes too.

She can still remember that wave of terror that swept her in the dark, almost as fresh as her experiencing it. She wasn't afraid of the darkness, as you would think; she had her four other senses to use if she was blind, and that reassured her. No, what frightened her was the feeling of a sixth sense inside. Like her mind was groped at by something that wanted hurt.

She doesn't feel it now, looking at all the other people here. Maybe her suspicions at Sassello — but even then his lies must be petty in nature compared with that unholy presence.

Noriko can hardly keep her eyes open. As long as she has someone with her when she goes to sleep, whatever it takes. She'd better hurry; she can see them already going to their rooms. "L- Listen," she says, "I would gladly pay you double the staying fee tomorrow." However much she tries to hide it, the desperation comes out with her shaking voice. "All the money I have is in my car outside. I promise that. But please.. don't let it take me let me stay with you."

edited 15th Sep '10 7:50:32 PM by QQQQQ

(This clone post is taking a vacation in Hawaii , wait for the beep!)

edited 15th Sep '10 7:44:34 PM by QQQQQ

edited 18th Aug '12 1:15:18 AM by PsychoFreaX

"I'm not sure," Noriko says, walking alongside Zoe down the room hallways. "I had that deck for eight years, telling fortunes. I went through every one of the 108 cards it has, out of curiosity, and I would surely remember if there was—"

She pauses, noting the room numbers. 234.. 235.. 236...

"—if there was a black card in the mix." She can only wonder where it came from. Is it a sign from God? The Devil? Why is she asking these questions even, she isn't religious. "How far away is your room?"

edited 15th Sep '10 7:57:51 PM by QQQQQ

edited 18th Aug '12 1:15:31 AM by PsychoFreaX

Noriko sighs, shaking her head. "No. I'm afraid not. It.. it disappeared— got lost during the blackout shortage. I wouldn't want to hand your own ill omen over to you anyway. This is.. are you superstitious perchance? I feel like it would be handing you all the terrible bad luck out there in the world."

Then she hangs her head down, low in contemplative thinking. She isn't in the mood to talk anymore. There has already been enough happening on this strange day.

Yesterday late at night, she heard the death of her father in the airplane explosion as he came for a surprise visit to her. This afternoon, as she drove over to the funeral, Winter drowned the roads with snow — middle of summer.

Now.. she is beginning to be quite sure something is not right in the air.

edited 15th Sep '10 8:09:07 PM by QQQQQ

edited 18th Aug '12 1:15:41 AM by PsychoFreaX

"Well, I think I'll be off to bed as well. Hopefully this storm will have subsided in the morning."

Sassello walks down the hall opposite to Itou, keeping a close eye on her as both of them faded to black.

Scary, isn't she?

Stay out of her way and we have nothing to fear.

Do you think... I mean if push came to shove...

Could we kill her?

Sassello glanced back one last time. Now he could see nothing but her silhouette, black and strong. He left her image behind him, and found his room.

I don't know.

Don't know?

He turns the knob, retreating into the blanket of light and snow covered windows. For a moment, it almost seemed as if he was smiling to himself.

Fun.

edited 15th Sep '10 8:40:02 PM by KSPAM

It was probably a good thing that Eos had barely gotten her hiking gear off, because the lights went out and pandemonium erupted in all the rooms. By the time she'd grabbed a flashlight and turned it on, however, the power was back as if nothing had ever happened.

Eos sighs, puts her coat back on, and checks to see if her gun is loaded before turning the safety on and going back to the stairs. A look into the lobby reveals the person who'd been missing earlier, talking to the woman from earlier (Noriko? No, it started with some sort of vowel. I-something). The rest of the crowd is dribbling up to their rooms.

Nothing seems out of place, but Eos notifies the bartender that she'll come back around closing time, to look out for anything suspicious. Then she goes back to her room for whatever amount of sleep she can get.

edited 15th Sep '10 8:43:20 PM by Leradny

Everyone else seemed to be heading to bed, so Violet decided she may as well head to her room as well.

As she got ready for bed, she took stock of how she was doing. Maybe that psychologist's idea of taking her off the meds was OK after all. She hadn't heard the voice yet, or heard anyone's thoughts.

She did notice that she was feeling very little emotion. When she'd returned the card to Noriko, the woman's thanks didn't spark any guilt. That was a problem, but if she stuck to her rules of behavior, she should be fine.

Relaxing, Violet laid down to sleep.

edited 18th Aug '12 1:15:56 AM by PsychoFreaX

The first of Room 208 that greets Noriko and Zoe is the lounging room, with a loveseat couch facing a bulky TV set atop a counter.

Ahead, there is the bedroom◊ — the king-sized bed fluffed and stuffed to perfection courtesy of the loving Lakeside maids. The red drapes hang loose covering the windows. There isn't much to see out there, not when you're sleeping or watching the TV.

Overall it is a snazzy palace room for the fatigued student, who collapses onto the nearest bed available and sinks down into the sheets like quicksand.

To her, sleep is a familiar, lonesome friend coming to wisk her off to dreams. The world around disappearing.

(OOC: Nighty night for me too.)

edited 15th Sep '10 10:10:57 PM by QQQQQ

In their room, Phil Derby put down his cellphone and sighed. Still no reception, and by the looks of it the storm outside wasn't subsiding. The phone in the room wasn't working eighter. It would seem they'd be stuck here for a while.

"It's not that bad" Howard said. "This seems like a pretty nice place. We might was well enjoy our stay".

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one paying for the rooms. Still, not much else we can do."

"Look, I'll pay my share when we get home. Lets get some sleep now and check out this place tomorrow. I'm tired as hell."

Outside, snow continues to fall.

edited 18th Aug '12 1:16:11 AM by PsychoFreaX

She hears a lurch. A lurch that can only come from the deepest of the dark, for it shuddered her heart so, clear and penetrating like a nightmare.

Noriko opens her eyes. She wants to scream out all her breath at the world, but she says nothing. She is soaking in her hot sweat.

A staunch odour blasts her nose, all around. It feels like she is in the slaughterhouse with the humid air. Looking down, she sees the carpet bleed, moist and wet and red and bloody.

nnnnnnnnnnnn

To her surprise, it feels dry and yielding, like a leathery mattress.. or meat. A path paved with a bed of thick steaks. Maybe she can feel it pulse and beat.

As she stumbles out the doors to the hallway and collapses down against the wall helpless, the door creaks, inching to a halfway reveal of inside — its stink spilling out. Her footprints leave red splashes on the floor.

Finally, she is allowed to scream.

edited 16th Sep '10 8:13:49 AM by QQQQQ

There was no sound, no warning at all; just the sudden screams of surprise, as everything suddenly went black. Zephyr froze in place as he found himself suddenly blind to his surroundings. A few seconds later he felt a small hand slip into his. He knew that Nettle wasn't seeking comfort, she wasn't one to be scared of the dark.

He was.

Luckily the power was back as quickly as it had disappeared, and with the power came the light. Zephyr didn't glance down at Nettle, not wanting to see the paleness of his face reflected in her worried features. With a sleeve he wiped away the cold sweat that had formed at his neck. Now he definitely needed a drink.

—

Later a slightly drunk man and a semi-tipsy teenager made their way up the stairs towards their room, laughing and joking between themselves over a story about Zephyr and a nobleman so drunk, that he had mistaken the blond man for a woman. Suddenly a scream cut them short, and they shared one surprised look, before they started running towards the source of the scream. As they turned around a corner Zephyr eyed a crouched shape of a girl that seemed to have collapsed against the wall further down. "Hey, you alright there?" Nettle called out behind him.

Is the blood and all that in Noriko's mind, or real?

edited 16th Sep '10 9:35:27 AM by Tachi

Tag and Johnson's room door bursts open. Johnson stumbles drowsily out, and Tag quickly races past him in the direction of the screaming woman, stumbling and skidding the last few feet on his knees.

Is this suddenly a horror story or is she hallucinating? You sure like to inflict things on your characters.

Noriko is panting, panting hard. She can hardly say anything to them what she'd seen. Her mind races, trying to put to words the macabre imagery of the bloodied floor, without making it look like she has lost her mind.

"There's— the floor is—!"

Noriko calms down more, and tries to think. Why don't they smell it? "The floor had blood all over.. it had blood all over." She points her hand at room 208's door. It swings open fully.

The hotel room is as it had always been with its inviting decor. Noriko blinks. "I could have sworn."

Maybe it was a dream? But this thought did not relax her as much as it should, for some reason.

Finally with all the embarrassment she feels, she meekly says, "I think it must've been.. all a terrible nightmare.. I'm sorry."

edited 16th Sep '10 10:39:20 AM by QQQQQ

Eos opens the door of her room and heads towards the screaming sound at a brisk jog, soon encountering a small cluster of people around the corridor wall. She goes there at once, and finds the vaguely familiar silhouette of the tarot reader in the center of it.

After hearing something about a nightmare, Eos has to be thorough and asks, "Do you usually have nightmares which cause you to run out of the room?"

edited 16th Sep '10 10:39:33 AM by Leradny

"No," Noriko says, shaking her head. "No! I.. I have dreams and all— the fantastical kinds where I would fly, or wander through a forest, but never anything— horrifying as this!"

Noriko wipes off all the sweat from her face. "I don't think.. I could imagine this. I think I need a drink." Then she lays down on the floor, feeling out of place. "I'm not being myself lately.."

edited 16th Sep '10 10:48:54 AM by QQQQQ

Well, if Noriko didn't usually have dreams like this then she was either ingesting some sort of foreign substance causing hallucinations, stressed out for some reason, or someone was trying to get a message through to her. Or all three. Eos would prefer having just one thing to take care of.

"I'll take you to the bar," Eos offers. The question of how she will bring up the three suggestions is a tricky one, and might have an easier answer if Noriko is slightly buzzed.

The barstand stool is lumpy underneath her. But a few shifts in posture alleviates that. Noriko asks the bartender if she can have water, or coke — alcohol, she feels, would numb her brain and loosen her inhibitions enough to see her nightmares awake.

"On the house," the bartender says.

Drinking the coke makes her mouth fizz and bubble — the ice cubes adding a flavour of refreshment. When she has three shots to it, her mind is buzzing, completely awake from the caffeine. (Good, she won't have to fall asleep again.)

Noriko turns to Eos beside. "I always thought sleeping would give me a kind break from the pressures of waking life, for seven enough hours. I was a student over at Kyoto U. I was, until I heard that my father had died."

A beat.

"When I did, it was like all the light in my life had died, faded away only to be replaced with a constant quease in my heart. Everything else didn't matter to me anymore. I only thought of seeing my father one more time, face to face and say my last goodbyes. I wanted to believe.. that he found his peace in heaven, that.. at least, there is a heaven waiting for us, once we die."

She sighs from all the wishful thinking she's saying. It must all sound bullshit, being said in words, but she feels like she is confessing her innermost feelings - wanting to escape - to a close friend who would understand.

"Do you ever get any bad dreams, Eos?" she asks. "The kind that.. so real you can smell the things going on?"

edited 16th Sep '10 11:46:56 AM by QQQQQ

"Lots," Eos answers, feeling grumpy as she nurses her water. Being here on a job meant that drinking would be frowned upon by the brass anyway, but still. "Sometimes when I'm not even asleep."

Zephyr and Nettle skidded to a halt at the scene at the same time as several other people arrived, either bursting through nearby doors or emerging from other corridors. All called there by the scream, and most eyes slightly glazed over with the look of fading sleep, as they took in the scene with mixture of curiosity, worry and annoyance. At the "victim"'s explanation Zephyr had to resist the urge to roll his eyes towards the ceiling - all this fuss for a girl who had a bad dream? Oh well, at least that meant the situation was easily taken care of, and another female (the same one Nettle had robbed earlier, it seemed) was already there to take care of and calm the girl down. As the two of them wandered off to nurse ragged feelings at the bar (who said alcohol was never the solution?), he covered a yawn with his hand.

"Well, now that this catastrophe has been taken care of, I think I'll go to bed before bigfoot decides to attack any nearby blond girls. Nettle?"

As he gazed over his shoulders he was met with the largest puppy eyes of the definitely tipsy girl. "But, but, but... bar? They said bar." Eyelashes were battered, and he hoped she knew how ridiculous she looked. Knowing Nettle, she probably didn't care.

"And I said bed. Sleeping time, now. Gogogo. G'night people." And with that he herded Nettle in front of him down the corridor towards their room.