Ho+el

0.3

Michael

Interlude 1

The home was empty when I arrived, which was surprising to me, the job had entailed that the mother was very sick, terminal brain cancer the paper had said. She wasn't what I was here for, I was here for her daughter.

Nora Felder, blonde, pretty, young.

"Keep it in your pants, Mikey," Donna had told me as she handed me the paperwork, which I smiled at, I had let it out of my pants more than once for Donna and had never once heard a complaint. I opened the file, flipping through the basic information, where she had attended school, where she worked, where she lived, and stopped at the photo I.D. Of her.

Why was anyone hiring a private investigator to go after her? She was younger than I thought, I wouldn't have put her a day over sixteen, but her paperwork clearly read that she was seventeen-- almost eighteen-- years old.

"WANT HER ALIVE. ASAP."

Was written on the back of the photo, yet there was no signature or indication of who actually wanted the girl, and yet, I could feel a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I arrived at her house early, there was still fog in the grass line, and when I attempted to knock on her door, the door gave way easily, swinging early as if it wasn't closed at all.

"Nora? Nora Felder?" I called, stepping through the doorway and looking around.

The house was small and dark, every light inside was switched off, I made my way through the first room which apparently was the kitchen. On the counter was a small wrapped sandwich with a note attached, I grabbed at the note, flipping it over in my hand so that I could read it.

"Going out, won't be home till late, don't wait up, I made you a turkey sandwich. -Love, Nora."

I placed the note back on the counter and couldn't help the hint of a smile on my face, the girl was also thoughtful. Again, my mind wondered to who exactly wanted her and what for, but it wasn't my job, nor place to ask such things.

I made my way through to the next room and decided that things were not right in anyway.

This must have been the living room, have been being the key words here as most of the furniture was overturned and tossed aside, the TV was on, but the provider was off, making the screen cast a blue hazy light around the room. There was a couch opposite of it, but long claw like marks had been made down the main cushion, the stuffing of the couch was slowly popping out of it like someone's innards leaking through a nasty cut.

I found myself feeling almost sick with nerves, what the hell happened here?

I moved into the next room and wished I hadn't at all.

This must've been Nora's room. Her bed was destroyed to say the least, what used to be little more than a mattress and a headboard was now in pieces, lying destroyed all around the room, ontop of it was her clothes, or what was left of them, ripped into shreds and draped across the room as if a tornado with claws had rolled through the room.

Again I found myself wondering, what the hell had happened here? And more importantly, where was the girl and her sick mother?

+

Nora

Isabelle led me to a side room behind the gold painted desk, which surprisingly was not decorated in maroon and gold, but was sickly white. Flourescent bulbs made the room so white it almost seemed green. There was a single cot against the far wall and a thin sheet was on it, making it appear almost like a hospital bed.

"This is where you'll spend your twenty-four hours," Isabelle said simply, busying herself with rifling through a cabinet, she turned quickly, a pile of clothes in her hands, "These should be your size and if they aren't," she looked me up and down, "tough luck."

She shoved the clothes into my hands and then went back to rifling through the cabinets again.

"Am I going to die?" I asked, part of me knew that I didn't actually want the answer to that question.

"It depends really," Isabelle replied, not seeming to be bothered by my question, "if you are fully human, yes, you will indeed die, and since you have yet to check in-- or can't, I suppose-- you will be stuck in limbo."

"Stuck in limbo?" I asked, slowly sitting on the bed, the pain in my spine was beginning to radiate again to my legs. Another symptom of withering.

"Yes, you see, humans have this misguided conception of death, they believe that life is either Heaven or Hell," Isabelle stopped digging and turned to face me, "but that is not the case. This is where you come when you die, we are what happens so that you can move on to the other side or be reincarnated, it really depends on the person."

"So, the afterworld is really a hotel?"

"Now you're starting to understand, except, we're not the afterworld, we're the void in between, when you check in here, you get your own personalized Heaven or Hell. It is personalized based on his," she gestured upwards to what I was guessing Jareth's room, "judgement. Jareth is the head honcho around here, and you humans give him lots of names, Satan, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, but in reality he is what stands between you and damnation or paradise."

"So, he's really God?" I asked, raising my eyebrow.

"I guess," she sounded exhausted explaining it to me.

"That still doesn't explain stuck in limbo," I said, determined to get as many answers out of her as possible.

"Stuck in limbo is what most humans perceive as ghosts. If you wait too long, you wither and you become a shell of what you were meant to be, a ghost, you can never move on and you can never move back, you're stuck in the human realm as something dead, something that can't even really exist."

I shuddered, the Paranormal Activity lifestyle was not for me.

"You mentioned a Soul Shatter, what is that?" I asked, leaning forward.

"I do believe that's enough questions, you need to rest, you stand a better chance of battling withering if you have your strength," Isabelle said simply as she shut the cabinet and took a step towards me, I noticed she had a bottle in her hand and it reminded me of the brownish bottles that antibiotics came in.

"Take a little bit of this," she said, opening the bottle and holding it out to me.

I took the bottle and sniffed slightly, it smelled sweet, like cinnamon.

I drank without protest, letting the sweetly bitter liquid fill me. I was almost instantly tired after that, the room darkening before I even realized what was happen.

"What will happen to me if I survive withering?" It was like hearing my own voice through water.

"We'll discuss that if you survive, Miss Felder, now please, rest."

As she shut the door behind her and my mind raced a thousand different ways I found sleep, or rather, sleep found me and tucked me away into its gentle darkness.