Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

15

Thirty-five miles seemed a long distance to travel in one go and Foston made, perhaps, the first good decision since the moment Clara met him. He suggested finding a hotel. It seemed strange (what didn't, of late?) to be searching for a hotel in a ridiculously long corridor but, as the strip lights above their heads began to dim, impersonating a night-time where little bulbs (LED'S, she assumed) began lighting up, giving the impression of stars coming into view, she suddenly found herself incredibly tired.

Apart from using the machine on the Kapakapururu planet, she hadn't really slept and now she really, really wanted to. They passed several dozen doors in the sides of the corridor, some adjacent to each other, others yards apart, before finding a door that had a neon sign above it that read 'HOT L' in big, sweeping letters.

Inside, Clara couldn't quite believe what she saw. It was a hotel. Yes, she thought, she'd seen hotels before, but never one inside a corridor. Inside a building that had other businesses inside, but this was a corridor! A very long, very strange corridor. Seeing a hotel, with plush carpeting, a bar area, restaurant area and a curving, sweeping grand staircase leading upwards, behind a nondescript door in the corridor almost blew her mind.

"It's an actual hotel! Look, it's even got a bell on the reception desk." She stepped up to the desk and pressed the bell. "But it was just a door outside. A normal, wooden door hiding all ... this."

"You should see behind some of the other doors. Some doors lead to entire worlds, others to little, teeny-tiny houses. Like I said, infinite universe. Anything is possible. Especially here where the only thing that mattered, matters, I should probably say, was, is, the author's imagination." A tall, stuffy looking man came out of an attached room and waited for Foston to stop talking. Clara understood that feeling. "Ah. Hello. Two single rooms, please, with en-suites."

"Very good, sir. Cash or card?" The man passed a piece of card across the desk for Foston to write their details upon, handing a fountain pen to him, also.

"You don't accept elaborate hand displays?" The receptionist shook his head and tried to look as if the fact they didn't accept elaborate hand displays as currency was one of the most regrettable things in history. "Pity. Card, then. Do you accept Inter-Reality Express?"

The receptionist looked at the offered card, wobbled, and looked as if he were about to faint. Then he smiled at Foston, taking back the filled in registration card.

"That will be acceptable, Sir." The man dipped his hand behind the desk and it emerged holding two keys with large fobs attached. "Room six-oh-seven and room six-oh-nine. They're through rooms, Sir, for your convenience. Compulsory breakfast is at eight and room service is available throughout the night."

"Thank you most kindly." Foston passed a key to Clara and held up a hand to hide his next whispered words. The hand was on the wrong side of his face, but that didn't stop him. "Inter-Reality Express, an emergency card for just such an occasion. It has a low-level, telepathic acceptance field embedded in it. When you just happen to be somewhere you don't have the right change for,"

He winked and headed towards the curving staircase.

After the third flight of stairs, Clara still didn't understand how all this could be behind that one door. The two doors, either side out in the corridor, were no more than a few feet apart. This huge, multi-level hotel couldn't possibly fit between them, but here it was. The entire idea of the place baffled her and she wondered whether this 'author' had an incredible imagination, or just a good drug dealer.

"You know, you're going to have to find way to explain this 'The Corridor' thing in the simplest terms possible. I don't think I'm capable of grasping it." She leaned against the handrail as she realised the two yoga classes she had taken had not improved her fitness.

"I don't think I could if I tried." Foston didn't appear out of breath and that was another thing she added to the growing list of things that annoyed her about him.

"Alright. Then explain why you suddenly changed tenses. From 'was' to 'is'?" She started climbing again, thankful that she no longer wore the flip-flop.

"Well, clearly the author has revisited the concept. Again. They might even finish this time. I doubt it, though." He stopped to admire a painting on the wall. Clara never understood modern art, the big blotch of blue paint on a red background meant nothing to her, but Foston seemed to appreciate it.

"So, does that mean we're characters in this 'author's' story? Do I even exist?"

"I'm not saying that."

"But, you're implying it."

"No, you're inferring it. Look, it's best not to try and normalise it. It'll only give you a headache and lead to existential ennui. I've been there. It's not pretty." Clara's head did, in fact, hurt. A pressing pain just above her nose, like she'd spent too long with her forehead screwed up in concentration.

"But, if this 'author' created all this and it exists, we know it exists, we're existing inside it, right now, does that make this 'author' god?" That thought made the pain in her head flash sharply. She rubbed her forehead and Foston looked at her, concerned.

"Aren't all authors gods to the worlds they create?" He put a hand on her shoulder, expressing concern. She hadn't expected empathy from the man, lemur. He hadn't shown any until now. "It's best to not overthink it. You feel real, don't you? I know I feel real. Whether any of this is real or not is, quite frankly, well above my pay grade."

"It's just, I'm having flashbacks to my university days and the tutor forcing me to think about what an author was thinking when they wrote certain passages." She stopped again, sitting on a step. The stairs appeared to be spinning. Or pirouetting. Either didn't feel quite right. "I always used to think that the author wrote the passages because they thought it sounded good and, no, apparently everything was a bloody metaphor for repressed sexualities and bumpy puberties, or something. I failed the course, obviously."

"You know what I think? I think we should just get to our rooms, order up a nice plate of sandwiches and a hot cup of tea and just get on with finding you a way home. How's that sound?" He patted her on her indestructible hair. "Only another two flights to go."

"Two? But our rooms are on the sixth floor, aren't they?" The thought of a nice, hot cup of tea sounded perfect right about now.

"Oh, no. The number five is considered bad luck in The Corridor. They never have a fifth floor. Rubbish superstition, but there you go." Offering her a hand, Foston helped her to stand.

The headache seemed to ease a little as she stopped trying to make any kind of sense of everything around her. It was a defence mechanism perfected by long years of trying to work out just why her mother hated her so much. If she didn't even try to understand it, she thought, it might just go away. It never did. Her mother, for whatever twisted reason, continued to hate her. Only now, Clara reciprocated the feelings.

Likewise, she decided if The Corridor and the possibility of being a character in a story didn't make sense, she would just ignore the hurricane of questions running through her head and make the best of it. The best of it being a sandwich, a cup of tea and a good night's sleep.

After several stops and starts along the way (she really needed to do some exercise when she got home. If home was actually a real thing, that is (She had to stop thinking like that!)) they finally reached the floor upon which their rooms were situated.

Foston had shook her hand, for some reason, leaving her outside the door while he wandered off into the distance to find his own room's door. The hotel, like The Corridor, had it's own ideas about distances and what should, and shouldn't, fit into the realms of possibility. Placing the key in the lock, she turned it and gingerly pushed the door open, not knowing quite what to expect on the inside.

The room was quite pleasant, actually, although, she thought the seventeen foot tall reproduction of Michelangelo's David was a bit much.