"I need a room," said a young, male voice.
Basil Fawlty looked up from the counter in the lobby of his hotel. He began to reply, but stopped himself when he saw that the young man standing before him was wearing pointy ears and green face paint. Finally, after studying the boy carefully, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm afraid we don't allow pets here, or mental hospital escapees for that matter."
"I 'idn't escape from no mental hospital," the young man defended himself. "I'm in town for the convention."
"Oh yes," Basil replied. "The Future Leaders of Britain Convention, I'm sure."
"No. The Extraterrestrial Enthusiasts Convention."
Basil's eyes widened. "Extraterrestrial enthu…No. I'm afraid we haven't got any rooms. Sorry. Better luck next time. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
The young man turned and began to leave when Basil's wife, Sybil, entered the lobby and stopped beside him.
"Sybil," Basil said, "have you been advertising in the Dimwitted Weekly? I swear, it's like we've become a magnet for the socially hopeless."
"Oh, quiet, Basil," Sybil replied, as she began looking over a stack of receipts. "There's a big convention in town. If you'd quit being such a louse, we could attract a lot of business."
"A louse, you say?" Basil shook his head. "Well I'm not the one prancing about town dressed like a Christmas elf."
"They're not elves, Basil. They're aliens."
"Oh, well pardon me then. And here I had assumed there was something wrong with them."
It wasn't ten minutes later that another pair of aliens entered the hotel, this time a young man and woman dressed as lizards from Star Trek. They were excited and very giddy, clearly a romantic couple judging by the way they held hands and nudged one another. Basil sighed as they entered the lobby.
"Reservation for Joe Davis," the man said.
Basil sighed once again and rummaged through his papers. "Yes, room 19." He grabbed a key from the wall and handed it to the man. "Manuel will help you carry your things. That is, unless you plan on sleeping under a rock." Then he shouted for Manuel the Spanish bellhop to come and assist the strange young visitors.
Before he could even get them out of his sight, though, yet another young man in an alien costume entered the hotel. This particular guest was wearing a green mask with an oval-shaped head and large, black eyes. Before he could even make a request, however, Basil pointed him to the door.
"No!" Basil insisted. "Absolutely not! I'm sorry, but we have already reached our maximum capacity for mutants today. Goodbye."
"Basil!" Sybil shouted from the next room.
"Fine!" Basil said with gritted teeth as he rolled his eyes. "Do you have a reservation?"
The man removed his mask. He appeared normal enough, except for the strange symbols painted on his face. "Worthing," he replied.
Basil groaned beneath his breath and checked the records. "Very well." He handed him the key. "Oh by the way, you've got a bit of a smudge on your face there."
"That's no smudge," the young Worthing replied. "Those are the characters that were carved into my back by the aliens after they abducted me. I'm hoping someone at the convention knows what they mean."
Basil's patience was wearing thin. "The abduction, eh? And by any chance were you inebriated at the time of this supposed abduction? They say large quantities of heroin have been known to attract alien life forms from beyond the cosmos. Yes, perhaps if it weren't for the Druids' insatiable love for opium, we wouldn't have Stonehenge, now would we?"
The young man didn't reply, at least verbally, but gave Basil a strange look as he backed his way up the stairs.
It was shortly thereafter that Basil's employee Polly entered the room.
"Oh, Polly, thank God you're here!" Basil exclaimed, though somewhat lacking in genuine enthusiasm. "Listen, I don't think I can deal with any more of these irredeemable misfits of society today, so you look out for customers and I am going to go have a lie-down. Thank you."
"Yes, Mr. Fawlty," Polly replied simply in her soft-spoken voice. "Though I think it's rather neat seeing all these people in costume."
"Yes, I suppose you would," Basil mumbled on his way out of the room.
Manuel was cleaning up the dining room when the man in the lizard costume entered. It was a seemingly quiet afternoon, with nothing extraordinary transpiring, that is, until Manuel caught his first glimpse of the man in green.
"Excuse me?" the lizard man called to him. "Are you Manuel? My wife and I need some help with our bags?"
"Si," Manuel replied as he began to turn around. "Is no problem." But when he saw the lizard man, he jumped up and began crying out in terror. "Monster!" he shouted in his thick Spanish accent. "Monster! Monster!" The man tried explaining that he was only wearing a costume, but Manuel would not listen. He simply ran out the room, continuing to shout "Monster! Monster!"
He continued to shout all the way up the stairs and then began pounding on the door to Basil's room.
Basil, who was trying desperately to get to sleep, was not at all amused by the incessant pounding. "What is it, Manuel?" he shouted in anger from his bed."
"Is monster!" Manuel shrieked. "Downstairs."
Basil pulled himself out of bed and marched toward the door, cursing under his breath all the while. "What?" he shouted as he swung the door open.
"Monster!" Manuel repeated with a jump. "Downstairs."
"Monster? What the hell are you talking about, Manuel?"
"Downstairs!" Manuel shouted in desperation. "Is green!"
Basil groaned, realizing what was going on. "No, Manuel. Not monster. Only idiot. Harmless idiot. Now go away." He pushed Manuel into the wall of the hallway and then closed the door once again.
"But Mr. Fawlty!" Manuel shouted in reply, his voice muffled from outside the door.
"My word!" Basil mumbled to himself on the way back to his bed. "I ought to just fire him now and hire a chimpanzee."
When Manuel returned to the main floor, he began frantically expressing what he had seen to Polly, which unfortunately was not easy for him articulate, nor was it easy for Polly to understand. All she could make out were the words monster, green, and big nose.
"Manuel, there are no monsters. They're just regular people dressed as aliens."
"Alien?" Manuel echoed.
"Yes, Manuel. Alien. But not real aliens. Just pretend."
Manuel nodded and stepped out of the room, somewhat dazed and confused. He returned hesitantly to the dining room and was relieved to see that the only person there besides himself was a very regular looking young man with dirty blond hair. Manuel laughed to himself, repeated the word 'pretend' and began to walk across the room toward the kitchen. Little did he know, the young man seated at the table was the same man who had entered the hotel with the large alien mask and face paint. He still wore the paint, which normally would have seemed odd to Manuel, but judging by what he had seen only a few minutes ago, this seemed utterly insignificant.
"Only alien," Manuel mumbled reassuringly to himself as he crossed the room.
"Wait!" said the man at the table, jumping to his feet and turning to Manuel. "Did you just say 'alien'?"
Manuel nodded his head, his thick mustache twitching slightly. "Yes. Only alien. No monster."
The man rushed to Manuel and grabbed his shoulders. "Are you saying that there is an alien here? In this hotel?"
"Manuel nodded. "Si. Alien."
The man released Manuel and nearly fell to his knees. "Oh dear!" he lamented. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! They've found me! I knew coming to this convention was a bad idea!"
Manuel could see the concern on the man's face. "I am sorry," he said. "My English is not so good. Is eh...something...wrong?"
The man wiped the sweat from his forehead. His face paint was beginning to smear. "Perhaps…" He stopped and stared off in deep consideration. "Or perhaps not…" He turned quickly to Manuel. "My friend, I may have formulated a plan, but I'm going to require your help."
"Help," Manuel echoed, slurring his h. "Yes. I help. You hungry?"
"No, no. Not that sort of help, my good man. We may be able to catch these aliens. Then I can interrogate them and find out what they want with me! Then maybe...just maybe I can be free!" He took a deep breath. "Now listen, my good man. Up in my room I have a net. If you're willing to help me set the trap, then together we can catch these beasts."
"Si," Manuel said, absolutely clueless as to what the man had just said. "I help you."
"Good, good. I'll go get ready. But be mindful, my good man. The treachery of these creatures knows no bounds."
Manuel gave the man a puzzled look. "Que?"
"The aliens," the man said. "Very dangerous."
Manuel's eyes widened. "Danger? Alien?"
"Yes. Very, very dangerous. Try and keep as much distance as possible until I return." The man then ran off, leaving Manuel alone and terrified in the dining room.
About half an hour later, Basil came staggering down the stairs, annoyed that he couldn't get any damn sleep, in part because of all the noise and in part because Sybil had entered the room and wailed at him for trying to waste the afternoon away while Polly did all the work. As he made his way down the stairs, he mumbled frustrated comments about her beneath his breath, calling her names like "cantankerous old goat."
When he reached the desk, Polly was predictably nowhere to be found. For someone who supposedly doing all the work, she was remarkably absent from the place where most of the work was done. Well, he figured it would be useless to just stand around, so he began sorting accounts and straightening up the desk. He noticed that one of his bizarre alien guests had left his giant oval mask near the desk, though Lord knows why. Basil certainly didn't want anything to do with it, and with the kinds of riffraff polluting the hotel on this day, it would likely be stolen if left out in the open. Still, Basil chose to ignore it.
A few minutes later he was greeted by his latest in the seemingly endless batch of clearly-virgin space guests. This time it was a young Jamaican man with dreadlocks and a spacesuit made from foil.
"Hello," he said as he approached the desk. "I am looking for a room."
That was the last straw for Basil Fawlty. With his blood boiling and his nerves about to burst, he took a deep breath and then gave the boy a piece of his mind. "Now you listen to me, and listen good! I have had about enough of your kind traipsing in here with your big ears and stupid clothes, trashing up the hotel with your amoeba-sized brains and ludicrous stories about abductions and cavity searches. Now would you kindly leave here and find a family of gypsies with whom to take refuge, because I regret to inform you that the circus left town more than three months ago!" He paused and took a deep breath. "And if I am forced to deal with even one more of you today, so help me God I'll perform a cavity search of my own!"
The young man was stunned. As he bit his lower lip, he turned and marched toward the door. "I shall be telling everyone I know about the racism that pervades this establishment!" he shouted on his way out.
"Racism?" Basil exclaimed in a high-pitched voice that almost sounded soprano. "I was you referring to the way you look, you moron! No wait...I didn't mean it like that! I meant your stupid clothes!" But the man was already gone. "Ah, to hell with him," Basil sighed to himself. "I mean, honestly, all this talk about aliens is just complete nonsense." He picked up the alien mask that was lying beside the desk. "Back in my day, we had a bit of sense. None of this drug-induced tomfoolery." He put the mask on his head and began dancing around in a mocking fashion. "Look at me. Women think I'm repulsive, so I'll spend my life creating paranoid delusions in the hopes of fabricating some sort of meaning to my otherwise worthless existence."
"All right, my friend," said the man with the blond hair and face paint. "I've got the net. Are you ready?"
Manuel nodded nervously in response. The two of them were standing in the blond man's hotel room, surrounded by nets, harpoons and stacks of books about the paranormal. It all looked like a scene from Moby Dick.
"Now you're sure you saw only one alien?" the man asked.
"Si," Manuel replied with a nod. "I see one."
The man picked up the net. "Well it may be all I require to get the answers I seek." He handed one end of the net to Manuel. "Now you remember the plan." He opened the door. "Quietly now."
The two of them, each holding one end of the net, tiptoed out of the room in slow, meticulous silence and made their way down the stairs. About halfway down, they noticed their alien dancing in the lobby, muttering beneath its breath. This alien, though, was not the reptilian creature Manuel had seen earlier, but an oval-headed creature with big eyes and Mr. Fawlty's suit.
"There he is!" Manuel whispered, pointing down the stairs. "There is alien!"
The man nodded and put a finger to his lips. Then the two of them continued down the stairs, and waited until their alien turned its back to them before making their move.
"NOW!" the man shouted when the moment was right. Then he and Manuel rushed toward the alien and jumped at it, dropping the net over its head and tackling it to the ground. Meanwhile the alien cursed and objected in a voice that sounded remarkably like Mr. Fawlty's.
When Manuel and his new friend rose back to their feet, they watched their alien writhe and kick inside the net while continuing to scream in fury. Finally the alien even managed to remove its head, which turned out to be a mask, beneath which was in fact the head of Basil Fawlty.
Manuel jumped back. "Mr. Fawlty!"
The blond man looked sheepish. "Oh. Well it seems we may have made a bit of mistake. I thought that head looked familiar."
Manuel pulled the net off of Mr. Fawlty, knowing that a powerful slap on the head—at the very least—was about to follow.
When Basil rose to his feet, he looked completely infuriated. "Manuel, come here a minute," he said with a false calmness.
Manuel shook his head and continued to back away.
"Manuel, come here!" Basil said again.
This time Manuel turned and ran into the dining room. Basil then let out what sounded like a war cry and followed after him as fast as legs would carry him. The man with the face paint decided it would probably be wise for him to leave at that point, and ran upstairs to collect his things. Clearly this Basil Fawlty was not what one might consider peaceable.
Sybil entered the lobby about five minutes later and stood at the desk, noticing that the room was once again empty. Polly, she knew, had gone to pick up some meat, but Basil was probably back in bed, further demonstrating that he cared about no one other than himself.
As she stood at the desk filing her nails, a storm of people marched in through the front door protesting. Although there were about fourteen of them in all, no two people were chanting the same thing, so it was very difficult for Sybil to decipher what they were saying.
"Is there something I can help you with?" she shouted as loud as she possibly could, hoping to be heard by the crowd.
"We won't tolerate your prejudice!" one woman shouted, and then the others cheered in agreement.
"I beg your pardon?" Sybil replied.
"Where is the man who made the racist remarks?" said another woman.
"Oh no, Basil, I'm going to kill you!" Sybil groaned quietly to herself. "Listen, I want to assure all of you that here at Fawlty Towers, we welcome and respect people of every race, creed and culture. We do not discriminate based on-"
Just then, the door to the dining room swung open with great force and in came Basil Fawlty with both hands clenched tightly around Manuel's neck. Manuel was clearly choking and unable to breathe, but instead of letting up, Basil simply lifted the poor man off the ground and began slamming him repeatedly against the wall.
"I swear to God, Manuel!" Basil exclaimed as he continued with the slamming. "If you weren't such cheap labor, I would have you on the next plane back to Barcelona!"
Finally Basil stopped when he noticed that there were fourteen people staring directly at him with their mouths open in shock. Meanwhile Sybil was standing at the desk groaning and shaking her head in utter humiliation.
"Yes?" Basil said as he dropped an exhausted Manuel to the ground. "Can I help you all with something?
One of the women was about to speak when another person entered the hotel: a young man dressed in a green suit with antennae sticking out of his head. "Excuse me?" he said. "Are there any rooms available?"
Without saying a word but only biting his lip, Basil marched over to the boy, grabbed his collar and dragged him back toward the exit.
"Basil, where are you going?" Sybil called to him.
"Don't worry, dear," Basil replied. "I just have to perform a minor cavity search."
THE END