Hiro's Hardship (A Welcome To The Madhouse Prequel)

Hiro's Hardship (A Welcome to the Madhouse Prequel): Chapter Six

Chapter Six

The shining, white elevator doors opened and beautiful, sparkly, colourfully-dressed people poured out. The women were fantastically made up, with black, powdered faces and white painted lips. Their hair, writhing in glowing carmines, corals, tangerines, and roses, spiraled upwards towards the ceiling of the elevator, their coifs interlaced with shimmering, multi-coloured snakes and glittering stars. Many of the women had long, curling, silvery lashes that almost reached up to their sculpted, silvery eyebrows. Their irises glowed with the same intense colour as their hair and they winked their long eyelashes at Hiro and Jude, seductively, as they seemed to effortlessly glide passed, wearing almost nothing on their black bodies.

Astonishingly, the men decanting from the elevator were more colourful than the ladies, as if their role in life was to out-compete their feminine counterparts. Their bared torsos were brighter in hue and intensity than the women's hair, their skin being either silver, gold, copper, or bronze. Their eyes and hair were mostly cooler colours, greens, blues and purples, and the capes and trunks they wore actually glowed and shimmered with rainbow luminescence. Thick metal bands, studded in brilliant hued spikes, wrapped their wrists. They wore golden, braided sandals and huge, silver chains about their waists. Thick, enameled torcs of wondrous hues wrapped around their upper arms and they wore huge pounded metal pendants, of various shapes, on their chests. They followed the women out of the elevator, laughing and jesting and swirling their glittering capes.

Hiro's mouth dropped open and his eyes gaped wide. He wondered where these people were from. Were they from Plaisir? Were they Ambassadors from a planet he was not familiar with?

They looked like fun.

Hiro bit his lip and frowned. Perhaps he had been a bit hasty in his decision to insist on new accommodations on the ground. These newcomers to the hotel lobby were as dazzling and flamboyant as the circus clowns on one of his VR vids. He turned around to watch them move off through the crowd.

"Who are those people?" Hiro asked Dielle.

She looked at them and shook her head.

"I do not know," she said, as she ushered the two boys on to the elevator. "The entertainment, perhaps?"

Gareth and Mo stopped anyone else from trying to board their elevator car.

"Please wait for the next one," Gareth said. "You won't regret it."

On cue, Hiro screeched as irritatingly as he could. People rapidly backed away, looking horrified or shocked, accidentally stomping on the toes of those waiting behind them. No one insisted on getting on with them.

"That is quite an annoying screech you have there," Jude remarked calmly to Hiro.

"Thank you," Hiro said. "I have been perfecting it over the years. I find it is extremely useful in driving away unwanted adults."

"I can see how effective it is," Jude said, a serious expression on his young face. "I must work on my shriek. Mine is not nearly as abrasive as yours."

"Feel free to copy mine, Jude," Hiro offered, genially. "I do not mind sharing at all. I have done extensive research and I find this sound the most repulsive."

"You won't get any argument from me," Gareth commented dryly, his fist on his hip as he peered down at his charge.

"So that is what you have been doing!" Dielle said, frowning at Hiro. "You have been purposely trying to drive me crazy all of these years!"

"Not you, Dielle!" Hiro said, his eyes suddenly wide and innocent. "I was not referring to you, at all! I would never want to drive you away!"

"Who else were you referring to then?" she asked, her arms crossed and her mouth crooked to one side of her face.