The sick mind can really play tricks on a guy.
Oh, the many places we will go! Oh, the many ways we might die…
“Hey there, Boss Man! How can I help you this evening?”
At 9:15 pm on Night 2 of my COVID-cation (catch up starting here, if needed), and I found myself a nomad, as I had desperately wanted to extend my me-time, but the AirBnB I had been staying at was booked up after my stay.
Speaking of ‘stay’, I was now in the lobby of the local Extended Stay…appropriately named, as I was attempting to do just that: extend my stay. However, as I had rolled off the interstate and up into the parking lot, I quickly began to wonder if maybe choosing a hotel based on how cheap it was might–just might–backfire spectacularly in my face.
Maybe it was the fact that this was one of those places where all the doors were on the outside of the building…you know, where anyone could just walk up to your door off the street and do lord-knows-what.
Or maybe it was on account of some of the clientele I saw parking when I was wandering around trying to figure out where the hell the lobby/check-in was. Now, I’m neither confirming nor denying any racism and/or classism on my part here, but…well, if you’ve been following along these last few weeks you would know that I was involuntarily feeling a bit too ‘woke’ for my own comfort. Ya know…like this vignette, or when this happened.
And then, when I eventually figured out where the lobby was, I was greeted by…not a single living soul.1A G-H-O-S-you-know-what reference? Pysche! Got ya! After 5 minutes of killing time by checking out where “complimentary breakfast” was to be served the next morning–a barely 8’x8′ room that also housed the vending machines–the attendant on duty, a young Black man, greeted me with ‘Boss Man’?
You’re ----- kidding me right? Then–and then!–he kept using that term! Each time I cringed a little bit, thinking, “My man, you REALLY gotta stop calling me that–some racial wounds are still so fresh…and words like that, well…they sting.”
I was too tired at that point, so I just let it slide.
“Yeah, I have a reservation for [Last Name Sooooo White It’s Redacted By The Woke Police].”
“Oooh. So sorry, Boss Man, but we are all booked up for the evening.”
Ok, seriously now: you have got to be ----- kidding me.
“No, I just booked the room earlier this evening.”
“Oooh…was it through Travelocity or one of those sites? That’s funny, I just got off the phone with them two hours ago telling them we were out of rooms.”
I just stared at him blankly for a few seconds.
“I JUST BOOKED IT…less than an hour ago.“
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Boss Man, we don’t have anything. Here, let me show you…”
He flipped his touch pad monitor around and started tapping his way through their reservation system. When he got to the final page, there was clearly a room–Room 138–available, an outcome he clearly wasn’t expecting.
“See there are no roo–oh. Right. Oooh. Yeah…um…”
Feeling a sense of relief that my room was available after all, I started to take my victory lap.
“Oh, great! So I will have a room for the evening. Awesome.”
“Uh…yeah, that room isn’t supposed to be in the system. I thought I had taken it out… I tell you what, Boss Man, you can have that room if you want it. But I’m going to give you the key and let you inspect it before you decide.”
“So…did it just get skipped by housekeeping or something?”
He was having trouble gaining and maintaining eye contact with me at this point.
“Uh…how about you just check it out for yourself?”
“Sure…give me a key card. I mean, how bad could it be, right?” I chuckled.
He did not laugh at this.
“It’s not like there’s a phantasm of somebody who got murdered in that room lurking about, right?”2HAH! Got you again! Nope–that doesn’t count as an instance of the G-word. You gotta keep playing if you wanna win.
His silence was starting to worry me…
“The holy hell?!? I kinda wish I was looking at a bona fide murder scene. At least that’s a theory that would make some sort of sense. But this…”
I shook my head in disbelief that my night could actually get any more complicated. Whatever I had stumbled into in Room 138 was…hard to explain.
First, I have to apologize for not taking pictures, because it really is hard to put into words the vibe the place gave off. But I’ll take a stab at it nonetheless.
As I entered the room, I could hear music thumping from the other side of the wall, making a wave of regret wash over me, because, let’s face it: something like that is what you should expect when booking a cheap-ass hotel–no, wait, this was no ‘hotel’–a cheap-ass motel. So while this was unpleasant development, it was not unique to Room 138.
The mysterious small patch or two of missing carpet, though? Pretty sure that wasn’t a standard amenity. And of course, the eerily flickering lamp probably wasn’t complimentary with every reservation made there.
These uneasy revelations were interlaced with more common realizations such as, “What’s that smell? Oh, that’s just cheap motel smell.” And “Wow, that table isn’t even big enough for my laptop. How am I supposed to compose a blog post in this sad-af place?” Or how about: “That is one short microwave…it’s like, normal width, but…only 3 inches of clearance for your food. That is bizarre.”
The main revelation, though, was “I know I grew up poor, but, dang. Even then a man has got to have some standards. I can’t–I just can’t do this. What have I gotten myself into?!? Dammit, you just had to be cheap, didn’t you?”
However, not everything was revealed so easily. In fact, the part of all of this that raised the most questions was the spatter. The red spatter. It was on and near the depressingly cheap stove top, and there was also a nice little smattering on the bathroom sink.
But…it definitely wasn’t blood. Like I said, I probably would have been much more comfortable if it had been an actual murder scene. At least that’s something I could quantify; something I could at least have a chance at wrapping my mind around.
This? This had no readily available explanation.
My best guess is that a murder had indeed taken place in that room. But the victim was a…mannequin? This substance appeared to be melted wax, and, uh, I guess that’s what would spurt out if you slashed up a mannequin. Maybe? Right?
Aww, ----- man, I told you already, I have no clue what had gone down in that place. Even if it was something more mundane like, say, a Satanic ritual, I sure as shit wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
The front desk attendant had given this Boss Man a way out of this ----- mess, and this Boss Man was going to take him up on it–even if it meant I would be back to roaming the streets.
I popped back into the lobby, and he immediately recognized that knowing look on my face. The face that told him that I knew he was right about suggesting I would be better off sleeping on the streets than taking that room.
“Yeah…you were definitely right. I think I’m going to have to pass on Room 138…”
“You needn’t say another word, Boss Man.” And he proceeded to tell me the laborious process I would need to endure to get my refund, and then wished me a good night.
Much later, when I was trying to get my refund, I learned from Hotwire that they were indeed able to confirm with the hotel that they didn’t have any rooms for me when I showed up.
Who, pray tell, was able to provide them with such critical information? And I quote–“[they] called the hotel and spoke with a Queen G…”
With a name like that, all I can say is: you gotta be ----- kidding me…
“A 4-star hotel for only $300? For a handicap accessible junior suite? Screw it–I ain’t in no mood to gamble again!”
*proceeds to pound the Book Now button a few too many times*
It was 9:33 pm by this point, and I was more than ready to be done with all the completely uncessary excitement for the night. I had early-stage COVID, for funk’s sake–I JUST WANTED TO GET SOME REST!
Fortunately, this luxurious DoubleTree Hotel was a mere 3 minute drive down the road from my current location of the Extended Stay Room 138 debacle. At this point, I would normally use the phrase, “So I hopped in my car and sped there straightaway,” except for the fact that I was already in my car. You know, on account of being turned away from the inn like Mary and Joseph.
As I putted down the road towards what would be my Final Destination, a rather dark thought crossed my mind: this must be how people inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth all the time, where a series of routine events go sideways and then something terrible happens in the midst of it all, and BOOM–that person just disappears and no one can ever figure out what happened to that devoted mother of 3, etc.
(An example of this would be, say, a woman running out of sanitary pads late at night, and has to make a midnight run to the store. But her car breaks down on the way, and she gets lost in the woods trying to get help. And then she slips on some mud into a ravine where she gets critically injured, and then a thunderstorm the next day causes a mudslide and covers up any trace of her…something like that…)
Shaking my head of such notions, I parked and went inside to the pleasant surprise of actually having a room waiting for me!
After packing my stuff up to my room and settling in, I almost collapsed in exhaustion. But not one to be defeated by my circumstances, I resolved that at the very least I would make the surprisingly mentally-exhausting-under-normal-circumstances editorial decision of what I would write about for that week’s blog post. At least that would be some progress towards achieving the singular goal of my COVID-cation.
But I earned a little mindless me-time, too, so I penciled the blog stuff into my schedule in between a little YouTube stand-up comedy session and a hot shower. Then–then!–then I could finally get that good night’s rest that I had been so stupidly chasing all evening…
It was right before I got in the shower. That’s when I felt it: a sharp pain in or around my testicular region. Or was that in my inner thigh?
Am I going to die here? Is this how it all ends for me? And good god! Nobody knows where I am. I literally have had four–FOUR!–different places booked for this evening. The investigators are never going to find my body. At least not until it’s been rotting for a couple of days…
Nah, I’m sure that pain was nothing…take a shower and get some sleep, Boss Man. I’m sure it’ll be fine…
Content created on: 30 September/2 October 2022 (Fri/Mon)
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