hotelfen | 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐗

𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐗

I. A-A-AY, I'M ON VACATION
if you don't like your life, then you should go and change it ♫♪

Welcome to Hotel Fen!

All guests are given the current week’s list of special activities by the cheerful blonde receptionist upon check in. There’s also a small stack of them on the reception desk should you lose yours, or if you would like a second copy.

Your itinerary reads:

MONDAY — TOO ZEN TO GIVE A DAMN
The two conference rooms in the third floor have been transformed to accommodate several massage chairs with masseuses. The two seminar rooms have also been cleaned up, and all the chairs have been settled on one side to make room for several yoga mats, spread out and waiting for people to use them. The instructors are two pretty blondes, tall and lithe like supermodels, and they're in one of those impressive acrobatic poses when you enter.

TUESDAY — HIKE MORE, WORRY LESS
There are several beautiful trails around the hotel for people to hike and explore. Some are marked as longer than others, but there are plenty of guides around with maps to hand you or actually accompany you on the hikes. They’re also happy to suggest which trail is best for you based on your level of experience.

WEDNESDAY — I WAS MERMAID FOR THIS
The pool area on the first floor is bustling with activity today. There are extra towels for everyone, there’s music pumping through the speakers, and there are a few tables set up with snacks. And while pools aren’t just for kids, there are some juice boxes and animal crackers for those who are so inclined.

THURSDAY — INTO THE UNKNOWN (BUT SAFELY)
Nestled in the small hill behind the hotel is a cave that you can rent equipment to explore. The tour guides will assure you that there’s no real way to get lost in the caves; all the paths are marked and will lead you toward the exit. So why not explore? You never know how deep they go or what you’ll find in them.

FRIDAY — A BALANCED DIET IS CHOCOLATE IN BOTH HANDS
The restaurant is holding special demonstrations throughout the day, and after the demonstration there are free samples to help yourselves to. Ever wondered how to make truffles? The dessert chef will be more than happy to take you through the experience.

II. I CAN TOUCH THE COLORS AROUND ME
this beautiful life, i think it'd be nice with you ♫♪

Noticed the hotel's theme yet? One Saturday night it's going to be shoved into your face in full force, because it's time for the summer blót, a feast for the Norse god of war, Odin. There's going to a bonfire and face paint and singing and dancing, and of course, free-flowing booze and lots of good food. You can come in costume too, if you want to bring out the Viking in you!

III. ARE YOU, ARE YOU, COMING TO THE TREE?
stranger things have happened here ♫♪

It's a great morning to go hiking! Or night, if that's your thing. And everything's just peachy... until you try to leave the perimeter of the hotel compound, because then you'll inexplicably find yourself on the trail leading right back to the entrance.

The phenomenon is usually accompanied by the sighting of an old, blackened tree — but once you turn and walk away from it, it disappears. The tree also never seems to be quite in the same place. What gives?

IV. THE HAPPIEST SOUND OF THEM ALL (NETWORK)
ring ring, why don't you give me a call? ♫♪

There is no cell reception in the vicinity of the hotel. At all. No matter what you do or try, nada. And while each of the rooms have vintage telephones, they can only call other rooms, the front desk and the restaurant.

The business center next to the gym on the first floor has several computers for guests to use. They seem like they're connecting to the internet well enough, if not just a little slow, but you will never actually receive emails from anyone from the outside world other than emails designed to look like spam. Hmm, did your emails out actually reach their destination?

Don't worry, though, you're supposed to be on vacation! So why not chat up your new friends instead, or leave them messages at the front desk?

V. I'M COUNTIN' ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR... (BONUS)
this is my longest elevator ride ♫♪

Okay, we're just really here to plug the song, which was composed for our book's soundtrack. ☝️

But yes, you're stuck in the hotel's vintage elevator. Good luck!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tuesday

Upon arriving the day before, John and his partner split up to explore. Or rather, she went to go see what there was, and he went off to examine everything that was of interest to him. If there were drawers in common areas, they were opened and looked in, and then closed gently once more. Doors that were hidden or roped away were mentally tagged and considered as something to check out later, and the areas that he really had no business being in - the pool area and restaurant - were peeked in on but not bothered with.

The next day, however, John felt the need to be outside and explore outdoors. He mostly ignored the tour guides, and went out to explore. He noted the stables, small though they were, and appreciated the fjord horses, having only ever seen the breed once or twice, during trade meets. Sturdy, burly, and built to withstand the cold. He moved on shortly after, and went exploring further down the trail.

The trails seemed well-tread, and while he could appreciate the need for most to stay on the beaten path, he wasn't the type. Never had been. John was the sort to wander in and guide himself out of the woods, to see if anything interesting was beyond the trails and roads. When he started getting deeper into the woods, his heightened senses started picking up out of second nature necessity. He caught sight every deer trail that was beaten up into the woods, and considered going up and looking at just what might be at the end of one. Actually, after some deliberation, and half a dozen deer trails passed, John went up one, and followed it to a small stream, had a little pause near it to relax and take in the new surroundings. After a while, he went back down to the main trail.

So if you see a cowboy wandering in the trees, flag him down! Or maybe he just got back onto the main trail to see what else there is to see.

Elevator!!

Marston had a cigarette between his lips, unlit yet as he pressed the button to the main floor from the fifth, and had himself a stand at the center back of the elevator. He hadn't even registered that the elevator was any kind of old until it lurched and he looked up at the gate with a scowl. "Hydraulics must be actin' up," he said, his voice a natural, sandy rasp with a slight country drawl. He's calm about things. There's no need for him to get worked up. Things will get going, or he'll climb out the top. No big deal.

Edited (Establos? Ah! Mis Establos!) 2021-09-18 22:44 (UTC)

Hannah had decided to take the weird suggestion of looking for Chewie outside, in part because she's already searched the hotel a few times over with no signs of Chewie. Maybe he is outside, somewhere. She'll take anything she can find at this point.

A noise off the side of the main trail makes her stop suddenly, squinting into the trees as she tries to pinpoint the source of the noise. Finally she sees a man ambling his way back town to the trail.

"What's off that way?" A little curious, a little suspicious - her usual.

"Not a whole lot," John said, nimble and light on his feet as he tread down a hill, hopping back down the embankment and onto the trail. "A stream, more trees, couple deer, and a skunk about a quarter mile off." He turned to her with a fluid shrug. "I'm sure there's more, but I don't wanna go too deep without my compass."

He looked like the type who played in the woods a lot, or someone who spent a lot of time in bars of not-so-great standing. A long group of scars marred the right side of his face, barely hidden by thick black scruff. But he was amiable enough, if not terribly smiley.

"And I wouldn't suggest doin' it yourself. These woods feel damn weird. Whole place does."

That gets a laugh out of her. "You think?" Weird is probably an understatement. The whole place is practically inexplicable.

She studies him a moment - she's seen plenty of rough looking people in her time chasing jobs across the galaxy so she's not immediately put off but also knows better than to trust most people. But he's almost certainly more trustworthy than anyone working for the hotel.

"Nothing that looked like somebody real big had been through there?" She's not sure how to really describe Chewie to someone who might never have seen a Wookie before. "Bigger than you."

"No tracks to suggest it," John said with a shake of his head. "N'none down them other trails, either, if you came from that direction." He motioned down the path he'd come from.

Wary was a part of his existence, having grown up rough, raised by cons and criminals who made it abundantly clear that nobody could be trusted to do anything but for themselves. But he never felt that a reasonable amount of friendliness was a burden.

He tilted his head back towards the woods, then back to the woman, "What's your friend's name? I could keep an ear out, track you down if I find 'em."

He held out his hand. "John Marston."

Well, there goes that idea. Not that she really thought Chewie would be out wandering in the woods but if he's not inside the hotel that she's found and he's not here - then where is he? He wouldn't leave Hannah unless he had to. Especially in a place like this.

"I call him Chewie." She thinks for a second about describing him and then decides not to. So far she's only seen people who are human or at least appear to look human. How would she even begin to describe a Wookie in that kind of setting?

She shakes John's hand. "Solo. Hannah Solo. I appreciate any help. Chewie and I have been friends a long time. It's not like him to just up and disappear."

"Chewy. Like the texture. Got it." John was the type to remember by association, but it sometimes manifested in a bizarre way, such as homophones. "And good to meet you Miss Solo." As he gave her a firm, but comfortable handshake with a cool, calloused, working-man's hand, he committed it all to memory.

Chewy, Solo, two names that would definitely stick in mind. "I'd call you Miss Duo, given your friend, but I got this weird feeling you'd slap me." His tone was amused, but his expression didn't read much more but solidly stoic.

He wanted to make sure he was on the right path, mentally, so he asked, "Was he with you when you showed up here? My partner and me, we got on a bus and got here together."

Not like the texture but like Chewbacca is probably not particularly helpful on that front so she doesn't correct him. He's right about the slap though, and she gives him a cheeky grin and shrug.

No one has called her Miss anything in years (possibly ever?) so count her as amused too. She even looks a little smug (though that's also just how her face usually looks).

"It's Captain Solo, actually. We came in on my ship - of course, that's missing from the hanger now too." And she knows how that might sounds so she's quick to add: "He would never take the Falcon without me knowing and he'd never leave me behind."

Speaking of partners. "Your partner still here?"

"My apologies, captain," John corrected, and mulled it over. Ship, not plane, even if it was in a hangar. Like a dirigible? Knowing this place, that was just as possible as anything else. Or a starship, maybe, like in Star Trek.

He nodded to the question. "She's around here somewhere, we split up to canvas, and talk after, get a feel for the place. Maybe yours is just explorin' too. I'll let my gal know you're missin' someone taller'n me, though, just in case she's seen someone. What's he look like?"

"When my ship shows up, I'll give you a tour." And then she'll probably never shut up about it again.

She laughs at his question. It should be a simple answer, but she already knows it won't be. She's gotten herself into a position where she has to explain what a Wookiee is to someone who has probably never seen a Wookiee. Where to even start with that?

"You ever met somebody who wasn't human?" Hannah's never had to ask that before. Even (especially?) on the most backwater of planets, there's far more than just humans. But not here, at the hotel. That should have been her first clue that something wasn't right. "Mirialans? Twi'leks? Anything like that?"

The question broke his stoic expression with a smirk and a chuckle. Starship it was. "Captain, I have met a bunch of somebodies who ain't human. Never heard of them kinds you just said, but you ain't gonna startle me with the concept of aliens, or whatever else you could figure might confuse me."

It was tough decision, after meeting a person or two in the hotel, whether or not he should just out and say he wasn't exactly human, himself. Some places, it was just fine, others it was dangerous to deadly.

John decided to stay quiet about it for the moment.

Well that's a relief. "Good, 'cause if you hadn't seen anybody else before, you'd think I was making him up."

She waves a hand above her head, gesturing towards Chewie's height. "About 2.3 meters tall, lean but looks like he could tear someone apart, which I have seen him do." Better to not upset him. "He's a Wookiee. Hair all over. Long hair. He's brown. He doesn't speak anything you'd understand but he'd understand you."

John immediately thought 'bigfoot' but he figured that would mean nothing to Hannah. He nodded however, completely unfazed by the idea that a bigfoot was hanging out with a space captain. "I'll keep an eye out for the guy. Seems like he'd be hard to miss." He got another lopsided smile, and reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, flipping it open to show a photo of Sadie. "If you see her around, that's my partner, she'll keep an eye out, too."

He tucked his wallet back into his pocket. "Tell me about your ship. I don't really come from a place that has flying ships. Airplanes, yeah, but that's different."

John's own cigarette rested behind his ear, his head tilted back against the wall of the elevator and eyes closed. He didn't give two shites who came in and off the elevator. Not that the ride was particularly soothing. It acted as a half-decent distraction at the thoughts rumbling in his mind at least.

Then, the elevator shifted and came to a halt. An overly dramatic sigh escaped him before he opened both eyes to look at the bloke he shared the elevator with.

"Know a thing or two about elevators, mate? Do us a favor then. Get it going again. We both have better things to do than sit around waiting on somethin' to get movin' again."

"I know they go up, they go down, and these sorts run on hydraulics that are in the basement of a place, and there's an escape hatch up there." He pointed directly to it. "If I knew how to get it goin' again, I'd already been doin' somethin'. But..."

He turned to look at the impatient British man, just giving him a once over to see what kind of person he was, before he stepped away from the back wall to look through the gate and up the shaft. They'd stopped about three feet away from the next floor down, so it wouldn't be much of a jump, and it'd just take a little bit of manhandling to get the gate and elevator doors open.

"You scared of gettin' decapitated or losin' a limb?" He asked as he started fiddling with the latch on the gate. Always a pleasant thing to ask when he's busy working to force the elevator open, but it would help to gauge just how nervous the pissy man was over little things like an outside chance of death or mutilation.

John raised an eyebrow as he looked upwards. Ah, bloody fantastic. Climbing. And him without his hiking boots.

He really didn't own a pair of those.

"Trust me, mate. Dying twice takes the edge of the whole experience off." John casually gave a one shoulder shrug. No, it was where the destination after the dying was that had him on edge. Hell wasn't on his top vacation spots. "I just don't like being inconvenienced is all."

"Just the twice?" John joked, then gave up on the latch, before grabbing the elevator with one hand, then the gate in the other, trying to push them apart. "Just makin' sure you wasn't the nervous sort." Such as it was, the man didn't seem to be.

And the gate wasn't going anywhere with any normal pressure put to it. "Pardon me," he said, getting into a more solid stance before attempting even harder to get the thing open. As he did, the grip he had on the bar of the gate started to bend the iron, and the grip on the elevator itself made the metal groan under the pressure and when he stood back up, there was an imprint of his hand there.

"Yet another weird piece of a puzzle at Hotel Bizarro. Sorry, friend, ain't much left to do, unless you want to crawl out the hatch." He sure as hell didn't, which was why he lit his cigarette with a zippo and leaned back against the wall once more.

"John Marston," he offered up his name. Might as well, since they looked like they weren't going anywhere for a bit.

"Only the twice so far." John gave a snort. Oh, he was sure fate has a few more twists and turns in it for him. He was already damned, so, what was one more screwball thrown at him in the way of death? "You need to do a bit more than stopping a bloody elevator to get me knickers knotted."

He crossed his ankles and watched the other man scout the small elevator out. He wouldn't be standing in the way or making a fuss. He glanced at the aforementioned hatch and shook his head. He wasn't the crawling sort. At least not for something like that.

"John Constantine." He offered. "John and John. Suppose we could go off and start our own little rock band. Tour a bit. Make some money."

Except his band was shite and he didn't pretend otherwise.

"Makes three, other one's got a giant albino wolf. He can be drums." John took a long drag of his cigarette. "I only died the once actually. All the playin' dead and legally deads don't count for much. But I ain't arguin', I'm lookin' pretty good for my age."

He looked at the mess he made of the door and sighed, shaking his head. Well, at least it was fun to try. He tilted his head towards the damage he caused the elevator. He figured that'd come out of his bank account eventually.

"Sounds like a damn joke. two Johns get stuck in an elevator."

There was an unceremonious snort that came from him at the comment of the albino wolf. Right. Just what he'd need, a big giant animal on the drums. Although it would certainly bring in the crowds. Not that he's really up and ready to go into another round with a band. Magic is more of a love than music.

"How was it comin' back to life for you, mate? Tingly?"

He smirked. "At least we haven't walked into a pub yet."

"Kinda nauseating. Then again, I got hypnotized, and I woke up dead. I was also really, really hungry." He remembered that night particularly well, for it being so far in his past. "But I hear that last part's normal for my particular variation of dead." The un- variety.

"Yet bein' the operative," Marston said with a smirk over a drag of his cigarette. "That's where I was headed. Well, the restaurant bar. Same difference." He looked up at Constantine again with that smirk still in place. "N'how about you? How was comin' back them two times?"

Hypnotized and woke up hungry. That made one eyebrow raise and his gaze grow weary. Plenty of things he could think of that would match that bill. A bunch of those thing he'd rather not think about as well. Not unless it becomes a problem. John would rather it not become a problem. He's a bit over helping people with their messes.

"And just what sort of variety of dead is that?" John figured he wouldn't get a straight answer regardless. Not many people are willing to share their state of being once magic got involved. "The alcohol here is only decent. Then again, considering where I was had barely any? I'll take decent."

At the question, John reached behind his ear and pulled the cigarette forward. He hadn't lit it just yet. Instead he stared at it absentmindedly. It was only fair enough given he asked personal questions. Who would of thought this would be the Elevator Sharing Caring Hour?

"First time I woke up in the bloody ocean. Had to climb out of the beach and make my way back to the village." He frowned. "Freezing cold. Had to find my own body again too."

He paused. "Second time? I woke up here in one of the rooms. Much nicer, but, still not a fan of the whole death process."

John snorted and answered a simple, "The un- variety. I don't feed on most folk, so unless you're a mafia boss or a really well disguised deer, I'm pretty sure you're safe." He shook his head and waved his hand before him to clear the air, clearly not that worried about being truthful. Most folks didn't believe him, anyway. "Booze here's fine, ain't exactly doin' much for me." He hadn't met a booze that could get him drunk yet, but the week was young.

He listened and wrinkled his nose at the deaths. "Don't figure either of those would settle well with anyone. Especially havin' to find your own body. Now I'm glad I never lost mine." A weird thing to be glad for, but he wasn't going to take the trouble of letting the thought do much more than spend a second in his head.

"As far as the second goes, I can think of a lot of worse places to wake up dead. Not nearly as many as weird as here, though. This place has a feelin' to it. Can't put my finger on it, though."

"Feeding takes out the zombie option. Reanimated dead seems a bit watered down... guessing you have either some sharp claws, or, some very nasty fangs." John peered closely at Martson then. If the bloke was a vampire, but had no interest in feeding on people? Well, good on him. He wasn't looking forward to crafting an archaic stake with some runes on it anyways.

He shrugged. "Had to find my body to get my trenchcoat back. Folks there buried me in it, but, ah, I wasn't about to walk around with out it. Most people would think the bit a bout me finding my own body would be strange."

His head tilted back to eye the way the elevator was decorated. Wolf heads, viking, just like the rest of the building.

"Somethin' other than the rest of us might be living here."

John wrinkled his nose, letting out a quiet 'eugh' to the accurate feeling that Constantine had gotten and expressed, then responded, "It does seem to feel that way," John took a hard pull off his cigarette, focused on one wolf in particular, for no real reason. "And fangs, for the record. What's the kind with claws? I've met all sorts of clawed types, none undead." Mainly the werewolves, but that was another thing entirely.

"Far as your tryin' to find the body goes, I really ain't in the ballpark of havin' a normal existence. I'm open to pretty much any possibility. Sometimes the world don't play by its own rules, especially when it comes to death. The moment you don't die when you're supposed to, all bets are off."

It was a little odd, he realized, for him to have met another person so blithe about the paranormal, but after meeting the man with the direwolf, John didn't expect much by way of normal around this place. There were folks with technology he hadn't seen before, more sci-fi than real to him. He'd felt the energy of the place, but couldn't place just why it was setting him off. Why not another man named John who talked about dying and the supernatural? Seemed perfectly reasonable for the place.

"And what's it you do, exactly, that you're dyin' a couple times, and know about all this shit?"

Edited (adding a couple words here and there.) 2021-09-29 15:52 (UTC)

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Tuesday

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elevator.

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( warnings: death )

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