Chapter 5 :Welcoming Humans to the Hotel
Time passed, which had only been a year. By now, Dennis, Martha and Luna reached the age of three. For the first time in Dracula's life, the hotel was open to humans. Monsters and humans mingled in the lobby, all dressed for vacation. The lobby had been redecorated with a stand-up video display highlighting the available activities.
"Oh my goodness, Leonard," the Fly chuckled. "If you really looked that hideous, I don't think I could hang out with you."
The Fly and Leonard, a yellow skinned and wart covered monster bellhop, watched a zombie bellhop play with a picture on his new smart phone while neglecting to answer the ringing reception desk phone until their boss, Count Dracula, suddenly appeared.
"Guys, what's the deal? Is this a party? Pick up a phone!" He scolded them in an annoyed tone.
The Fly and Leonard quickly got back to work. The Fly answered the phone while the zombie showed Dracula the picture, groaning.
"I don't care if Johnny says it's a 'cool app,'" Dracula complained as he did the finger quote, "Johnny's still new here." He glided up to the next bellhop. "Now, Porridge Head, did you call a hearse for the Gremlinbergs? No, you're checking your Facebook page…again."
Porridge Head rolled through the hotel's new computer system on, his Facebook page all about brains and brain food and stuff.
"Drac, I told the guys that social media is the best way to promote the hotel," Johnny explained, as he walked up the lobby carpet with the nerd zombie playing with his own cell phone beside him. "Right, Clifton?"
Clifton groaned eagerly in agreement.
Johnny casually leaned against the reception desk and said, "So, Drac, I wanted to go over some ideas I had as your new Human Relations Coordinating co-assistant."
Leaping over the desk, Dracula placed a hand on Johnny's shoulder and said, "Sure, it's a real job. Not a cheap excuse to keep Mavis happy and keep Elida home so you never leave here."
"Right… So I was thinking, since we have so many humans now, maybe of update some of the acts? Like, maybe the magician?"
"What's wrong with Harry Three-Eye?"
"Well, he might be a little old-school for the humans."
Harry Three-Eye, the squid-like monster magician in question was good, though many of his tricks, such as classic card tricks, would be seen as pretty gruesome by most humans in the audience.
"No, Harry's great," Dracula refused, seeing nothing wrong with Harry's acts. "Can't blame Harry for the crowd not being hip."
"Okay, what about Wayne?" Johnny asked.
"Wayne? Are you nuts?" Dracula yelled with a whirl. "He's my boy."
"Then maybe something other than tennis?"
Wayne got the job as the tennis instructor at the hotel. While he was good, he had a tendency to show more dog-like behavior with chasing down the tennis balls and burying them, then panting happily.
Just then, Dracula felt a weird vibration in his pants, accompanied by a strange buzzing sound. He freaked out and tried to look behind himself. "What is that? What's the noise? It's on me!"
"It's just the cell phone I got you," Johnny assured him as he took the IPhone out from Dracula's back pocket. "Clifton's sending you a text, so you can learn to text back."
Across the lobby, Clifton waved to Dracula, who groaned and took his phone back from Johnny to try and write a text.
But as he tried, he pressed with his long sharp nails against the screen and nothing happening, which made Dracula frustrated, "Ehh... What the… It's not doing it!"
"I got it." Johnny offered to help and easily pressed the phone's screen to read the text message, "Dear Drac, (zombie gibberish). Now you can text Clifton."
"Alright, fine," Dracula groaned, but when he tried again his nails still got in the way and it kept him frustrated. "How do you do this?!"
"Maybe it's your fingernails," Johnny pointed out the obvious and decided to be a teacher for Dracula's problem to learn how to text. "It's easy. Look. I'll text Mavis." He demonstrated for the Count to watch and texted a message to Mavis, "Psyched for date night? See?" His phone dinged to signal he got a reply and he said happily, "And now look, she texted right back. Gotta cancel, can't leave Dennis, Martha ." This was embarrassing so he texted a disappointed message, "Okay. Are we ever allowed to be alone again? I need to feel loved, too. And send."
Dracula just stared at him, frowning. "Okay, all that taught me is that you're pathetic," he said, clearly wondering what it was his daughter saw in this human, even though he's a good kid.
"Yeah, got it," Johnny agreed. "Maybe you should just get Bluetooth."
"Okay," Dracula shrugged and then called to someone in the corner, "Blue Tooth, come over here!"
A real-life giant blue tooth monster walked up to them and stared off lazily.
"So, now what?" Dracula questioned.
Johnny could only stare in surprise at how this suddenly became literal.
It is now one year later at the hotel. Dennis, Martha and Luna have reached the age of four. In the hotel lounge, Ericka was busy doing her rounds as the Countess and as a real assistant manager of Hotel Transylvania.
Her phone buzzed and when she checked the photo of the caller's identity, she was surprised to see it was her old childhood friend; Molly Mia -Hale, calling from Pennsylvania. The smiling woman's photo on the screen had short golden curly blonde locks of hair with sea blue eyes, wore an off-shoulder long sleeved ruffled pink dress shirt with blue jeans with silver high heels. It didn't both Ericka though, she had been sharing calls or text messages with her over the years. Pressing a button, Molly's face appeared on screen.
"Hi, Ericka , what took you so long?" Molly asked.
"I've been busy, you know, running the hotel and raising a child." Ericka shrugged. "How about you?"
Molly was video chatting to her friend standing in a huge parking lot outside of a building with big white letters spelling Mall-Mart in the distance, while her husband, a sand-blonde haired man in a business suit, and her son William, who closely resembled his father, loaded several bags into the family van's trunk and her daughter Paulina, who inherited a remarkable resemblance of her mom, tugging at her mother's pants for attention. "The usual. Raising my kids, trying to get Jimmy to take a break on his acting career, and buying some extra things while planning a special vacation to Transylvania to see you!"
"That's great!" Ericka beamed. "I'll be looking forward to seeing you when you get here." There was a shout in the lounge, catching her attention. "Could you excuse me for a second, please?"
"That's okay! I got to drive home anyway," Molly replied in understanding.
A grumpy aquatic Gillman, Mr. Gill, waved Ericka over as she hurriedly approached him.
"Yes, good evening, sir. How are you doing tonight?" Ericka greeted with a friendly grin, trying to be polite despite his grumpy face.
"Mrs. Dracula!" Mr. Gill complained. "What's with this food? COOKED steak?! Who would do that to steak?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gill," Ericka apologized, though she saw nothing wrong with cooked steak because that is how humans like it. "You must have gotten the human dish by mistake." She quickly took Mr. Gill's dish away and spotted the human couple struggling with a plate of live monster food that is biting them. "I believe this is yours, Mr. Perry Reynolds." Ericka kept on her usual grin trying not to show the worry in her eyes while she placed the steak on their table.
"Yes, the steak," Mr. Reynolds said worriedly. "What's this food? It's biting us!"
Ericka looked at what food they had, both Mr. and Mrs. Perry Reynolds had terrified expressions on their faces as they watched the tiny monster food jumping around and snarling with sharp teeth, as one of them bit Mr. Reynolds' finger and another bit his nose.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. That's the tasting menu," she tried to reassure him, but the couple looked at her funny. "But, don't worry. Here is your steak, as I see there's been a mix up. This is Mr. Gill's order."
Ericka immediately took the tasting menu monster food (and off Mr. Reynolds' nose and finger) to the proper table and Mr. Gill stuck his tongue out to allow the monster food to jump onto his tongue and he started eating happily, finally receiving his order after waiting impatiently for a while.
She sighed heavily at having to take care of that food problem between the Reynolds and the Gillmen, another disaster averted, and she left to go check on anything else to make sure everything was perfect. While Ericka did her rounds in the hotel lounge, Nick and Marilyn, having witnessed the food mix-up, started chatting together.
"Did you see that?" Nick pointed to the mixed up orders, and how the monster food bit Mr. Reynolds. "It's things like that which worries me, if living food bites a grown man, I don't want to know what it could do to a small child."
"I understand, Dear," Marilyn agreed, shaking her head in disgust. "And monster children play too roughly with the human children. Ericka has made a mistake of marrying into a family of monsters. You have the right idea about them moving. Ericka should make the right choice, for Luna's sake and for her own. But I have a feeling it won't be easy to convince her to come home."
"Then why don't we contact her family," Nick huffed. "She has to see the reason of her mistake and understand the true responsibilities of parenthood, and not just let her daughter do whatever she wants in an unsafe hotel. I'm sure her father can talk some sense into her." He thought for a moment, before an idea came to him. "But, if they don't convince her... perhaps James can persuade her. After all, her father said he's been like the son he never had."
Unbeknownst to them, Dracula had overheard their entire conversation from a nearby corner. A hurt expression of concern made his face drop, along with his aching heart at the terrible thought of losing his family.
In the corer of the room, Ericka went to a Deathspresso machine, a latte-making device, to get herself a cup of coffee. Taking a sip, she leaned against the wall to admire the union of monsters and humans mixing so well together.
"Are you done yet?!"
Ericka almost dropped her latte cup upon hearing her friend's voice coming from her pocket. She pulled her smartphone out and could see Molly's face still on screen as she held Dawn in her arms. "Oh! Sorry, I had to take care of other things."
"That's fine, we already made it home. We'll see you in a couple of days, and I'm really looking forward to meeting this hunk of a vampire you married." Behind Molly was a huge dull green two story house with a chimney and a large driveway fit enough for two cars and a garage on a flat land, a neatly trimmed front yard with a few multicolored windmills, a turtle and snail statues in the front garden, a windchime hanging by the porch, and two cute spaniels racing around her youngest daughter at the long driveway. Ericka couldn't help but feel slightly envious of her friend's lovely home and large happy family she had earned.
In the background, William had turned on the sprinkler to get his sister wet, who screamed in surprise. Paulina laughed humorously at his little prank. Cozy, their brown spaniel, and Pinky, their white furred pink-nosed spaniel, got wet and freaked out by zig-zagging in-between James' legs, causing him to fall back and land on his bottom. The children laughed out loud at their father's predicament.
But Molly didn't find it funny as she turned her head around to scold her son in a sharp voice, "WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT PULLING PRANKS WHILE I'M ON THE PHONE?!"
Ericka sighed, shaking her head amusingly.
"I have to go. Those kids are driving me up the wall," Molly said. "You should've seen my son during our vacation in Napa Valley when he stole the grapes used for winery to... Wait, sorry, I'm blabbering again."
"If you were a vampire, you'd be up the wall by now," Ericka joked. "Bye,Molly ." And she turned off her smartphone to get back to work.