We were all sitting in a hotel room, me and eight friends. I'm usually the kind of person who prefers smaller more intimate crowds, however we were all together this one day, drinking and mocking people out with our circle, but who are generally well known for specific traits. You know the kind of people you see everyday who stand out somehow with an oddity. Like a guy who wears a yellow poncho on beautifully sunny days, or a lady with hair in worse condition than any stray animal I've ever seen's fur. Then there's another guy who brings his own headset to karaoke evenings and sings in a monotone, grating voice. Seriously, he sounds like a robot. In fact, I've been tempted more than once to kick him a few times just to check and see if his voice actually went higher or lower or remained the same.
Anyway, I feel I have gone off in a tangent when really this story wasn't about any of them at all. So, back to the story at hand, we're all sitting around hanging out, having a laugh when all of a sudden from nowhere a huge rock is thrown through the window, which lands right in front of my friend's foot, miraculously missing every person in the room. Completely bewildered by this weird happening, I'm keen to investigate further and look out of this window. However, when I do so, I'm stunned by the scene, or rather lack of it. No traffic noises, no birds, no people. Obviously completely lost in entertaining each other with jokes etc, we'd become completely oblivious to all of the usual sounds which would be commonly heard at around 3pm disappearing.
I explained all of this to my friends who obviously weren't keen to look into the matter any further since it would upset their drinking schedule, and was reminded that I hadn't taken a shot for ten minutes, which really should have meant a double for me. I was glad that no one mentioned the double, a single shot of sambuca was enough. Enough for me to get up the courage take a walk outside alone to see if it was just my imagination before.
My friends barely blinked an eyelid as I threw on a jacket and picked up my phone, telling them I'd be back in five minutes. Outside in the hall of the hotel was eerily quiet too. I found this to be so peculiar. I'd stayed in many hotels which weren't all that busy, but there were always familiar noises in my surroundings that could have put me at ease before. Things such as the bell of the elevator beeping, the sound of a telephone ringing, or even something such as hearing voices in the background of a maid, or porter. Today, none of that existed. Superstition got the better of me, and I realised that there was no way I'd be taking the elevator from the sixth to the ground floor in such circumstances.
Walking down the stairs seemed to take what felt like hours, as I became only too aware of the noise of my feet hitting the stairs as I tried to calmly, walk down them. The last thing I wanted to do was run. Though the hotel seemed deserted in all areas I'd gone by, the stairs were darkish and I could well be wrong about there being nobody around. Running just did not seem like a good idea.
I reached the bottom which led straight to the reception desk which was also empty. What kind of hotel has no one at reception? Nothing seemed right. The revolving doors were still, and suddenly the hotel felt huge and I felt more alone than I had before. My first instinct was to call one of my friends upstairs and ask them to come outside with me, but then I realised how stupid the call would have sounded. Superstition is annoying. I changed my mind, closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, before re-opening them and striding forward towards the still doorway.
Standing outside I slowly looked around before taking another step forward, all too aware of the unusual stillness of everything. I felt that with every step I took, I was somehow disturbing the tranquillity, that something just wasn't right. I seemed to somehow lose myself for a few moments, zoning out listening for something, anything. Even a leaf crunching underneath someone's boot, before jumping to my senses, hearing my friends shouting out of the window asking what the hell I was doing. . Rolling my eyes I turned back to look up at them. I had planned to shout something sarcastic back up at them, but changed my mind and continued to walk a little. I figured I could walk perhaps five minutes or so to see if I met anyone else en route.
Walking for five minutes turned into ten minutes, and I realised that somehow I had managed to think up various different scenarios as to why I hadn't so much as seen a butterfly. Stupid things such as everyone getting sucked into a vortex and being trapped there, with me as the main character in a game unknowingly attempting to find objects and clues to rescue them... Yes, it was definitely time to stop thinking for a moment. I called Jodie.
Our phone call lasted approximately five minutes, three and a half of which she spent laughing, and it wasn't even THAT scenario I had shared with her. She was worried that I had been gone for this long, leaving my alcohol unattended with a bunch of vultures that'd drink urine if there was a label on the side of the bottle saying it was beer. Knowing that something was clearly wrong since I hadn't asked if my alcohol had disappeared, she decided to come out and meet me. No doubt to try and persuade me that the whole thing was a much smaller deal than I'd made it out to be.
Walking back to meet her, I began to look at the bigger picture, instead of just trying to notice things right in front of me. It was only when I began to do this that I noticed blood on the side of a tree I had passed previously. Obviously too focused on life, or rather the lack of it, I had failed to take into consideration still life. Kneeling down in front of the tree, I tilted my head, examining it. For some odd reason I felt an overwhelming urge to touch it. The blood was definitely recent. It sure as hell didn't look like it had been there for long. Shaking the natural curiosity to the back of my mind about touching the blood I quickly returned to my feet and looked around. There was something walking towards me.
I'm not sure if I could class it as a walk in fact, it was more like a stumble, and I was sure there was a limp. The closer it got, I realised that it WAS human, or at least had been at one point. What remained was something quite frankly very sinister. As it continued walking towards me I stood frozen for a moment, frozen in my thoughts. I began to think that there were probably many humans who looked like this thing did on the inside, and my mind drifted towards people who abused animals, murderers, rapists before snapping out of it. I was standing here thinking about something which would help me in no way at all. I began calling out to this thing. Perhaps I shouldn't be this judgemental. This could legitimately be someone who was born this way, or somehow scarred in some form of fight or attack. The creature didn't even respond to my greeting, it just continued walking towards me completely oblivious to my voice. Maybe he was deaf, what if I wave my arms around. I waved my arms around and still it walked towards me. By this point it must have been around five metres away from me, it stopped for a moment, turning to the side, gagging and making noises like a bag of cats being swung against a window repeatedly. Something fell out of its mouth. What the fuck was that. As soon whatever fell out of his mouth began to burn the weed next to him I knew it was time for me to be going. I gave it one last look before running in a different direction. The last thing I wanted to do was lead this thing back to my friends. I hadn't seen another single person here bar my friends back at the hotel, and this thing didn't look like it enjoyed being forced to partake in Tequila shots because he'd held his drink in his right hand instead of left.
As I continued running, I suddenly remembered about Jodie who'd said she was coming to meet me. Quickly grabbing my phone out of my pocket I called her back. She answered after a couple of rings. Hearing my obvious breathlessness she stopped mocking me about my previous stupid theories and asked me what the hell I was doing. Knowing it was completely unbelievable that an acid spitting creature thing was chasing me, I told her that someone had tried to mug me and was chasing me. Just as I was finishing the conversation I tripped over a rock and hit the ground with a thud, landing on the side of my foot, before falling to my knees. The phone slipped out of my hand and landed next to the opposite tree.