Day 22

It smells like lavender. It smells like lavender. It all smells like lavender. With a bit of grey and dust mixed in.

Everything is and always will be lavender.

Spyro’s and Shifting’s donut party has been going on hours...Days even. They haven’t eaten all the donuts up. Yet. Silvery is glowering at the cobra, from under a lavender-grey table.

The cobra, oddly, has turned a shade of pale purple….Or lavender.

It feels fake. Everything does. The lavender especially. Not real. Dead. The German history books aren’t flapping around like they used to. They just sit on a shelf...Dead. Every surface has a coating of dust, thick, grimy dust. Lavender dust. Somebody is staring forlornly at a bunch of lavender. What could’ve ever happened to the hotel overnight?

Lavender happened.

And something else. Something that she can’t quite classify.  Like something’s missing, gone. Leaving just this...Horribly smelly lavender. Her mind is fuzzy, like that time when you ate too many plastic mice. Like that. You can’t quite remember….Something.  That lavender sure smells.

“Due to the exact nature of lavender.” Elaborates Shifting, “It is most unfortunate that in its exact nature, it is not suitable for cupcakes.”

She glances at Spyro, who is asleep. “Hello? Do you follow? l’m giving a very important lecture here, you really should pay attention-”

The floor caves in. Both of them are dumped into a pile of plastic mice.

“Ah!” Shifting gasps. “My beautiful strawberry coffee-”

Spyro coughs, waking up with a mouthful of plastic mice. He then swallows them all. “Where are we? Some sort of plastic mice storedge?”

“l don’t know!” Snaps Shifting. “l just want to get...Back there….”

She slows, confused with her own words.

Where is there? And why is it any good? It’s just lavender. Horrible lavender. The place where they have fallen looks like the inside of a ship's cabin. Old wood paneling, a ship’s wheel, plank flooring, pictures of lighthouses and of course plastic mice. The hole which they fell through has sealed up leaving only a faint feeling of regret and bemusement.

“So…..How do we get out?” Asks Spyro, thinking of burning it up. Fire solves most everything.

“Throw plastic mice at the walls!” Shifting demonstrated by scooping up a handful of mice and pelting the wall with them.

“Die wood paneling!”

The wood paneling snarls and annoyed, disappears into a pen.

“Aha! l told you! l have single-handedly defeat the mighty wood paneling.”

Spyro thinks Shifting is going crazy. “Just burn it up.” He mutters. “And besides, there’s a wall behind it. “

He sighs. “Life was bad up there, why not stay down here?”

“Well, for one-”

The wood paneling has come back. And this time with backup-a frying pan, non-stick of course.

Shifting pales, because there’s something about ghosts and frying pans that you, not me, should know.

“What?” Frowns Spyro, “What’s so bad about a frying pan?”

“You see,” Whispers Shifting, glancing at the frying pan, “Sir William XXI-”

“Who was he?”

“-Was a brave ghost-”

“Was he brave when he was alive?”

“You think that ghosts can’t disappear, or die or be destroyed. Except for the case of the frying pan-Which can-”

Shifting ducks behind Spyro.

“Eek! It’s coming for me!”

“But what is it going to do to you?”

Spyro’s question was soon answered as the frying pan streaks around him and charges Shifting.

“Huh?” Spro frowns. The frying pan and Shifting are gone, only to leave a smell of lavender.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

R.I.P. Shifting Sands. Whatever that frying pan did to you.

Notcies:

~There are only three to four installments of this story left.

~Those installments are going to be pretty late because they're going to be a lot longer. Like really, really late.

~Hurry up and place your guess as to who the murder is!

~ Did anyone notice that 90% of people have just sort of disappered in the story? Werid.

~No, no, you can't have those donuts. They're mine, you hear? All mine. Don't you dare try to eat them.

Teller! Please don't let this die!

l'm sorry......l'm just lazy......l'll get you something by Sunday....

Day 23

Somebody sighs and leans her head on the table. She glances at her two comrades, a large, grey and silver mushroom standing upright on the table, and a dusty, old, light bulb, with a spiderweb pattern of fractures on its surface.

“We’re going to have to do an experiment.” She announces to them. The light bulb rocks slightly side-to-side, the mushroom is silent.

“Not, of course a proper experiment, the ones with old men in togas and long grey beards and funny Greek names who gather around a telescope staring at the sky, then once in a hundred years one of them will yell “Eureka!” because they have solved all the world’s mysteries, not that sort.”

She pauses for effect and to see if her comrades will comment on this. They don’t. “It will involve some very…...Odd tasks.” She looks to the light bulb. “Also some of great bravery.” Here she directs her gaze to the mushroom. “Any questions?”

None were asked.

“Alright.” Somebody picks up the mushroom. “l know that this will be very hard for you.”

The mushroom is stoney silent.

“You need to go to the kitchen. To the large iron pot full of boiling cream of mushroom soup.”

The mushroom winces silently but does not refuse.

“Ad this is your purpose.” She then whispers something to it, marches off to the kitchen, then comes back without the mushroom.

Now for the light bulb.

Perhaps you had noticed this at your stay at the Hotel, or perhaps you died before you could, life is in fact rather short, especially when you drown in pudding or get stabbed by a violin, that there is fire and ovens and refrigerators and pretty good WiFi, but there are never ever any light bulbs, or even light bulb sockets. There are, however light switches, that will turn on a light, but not a light bulb.

And before we go forward, we must go back, to the history of this light bulb and why there are no places for light bulbs in the Hotel.  

It was, what one might call the golden ages of things, everything was working, the rocket boosters (finally) the botany research lab, the food was actually good, (there was a broom closet that did not have brooms, but lemons) and most of all, none of the Hotel guests got murdered. The Hotel was more than just a dusty maze of things, a strange malfunctioning machine that could give you the unexpected at every turn, a cabinet of curiosities, dangerous curiosities that is. It was a place of dreams. Dreams of light. Dreams of the unknown. Thus we come to the light bulb.

They resided all over the place, strings of bare, large, thick-glassed light bulbs, always hanging from the ceiling. They tangled around the chandler in the main room, they would poke into the guest’s rooms as if they had a life of their own, curling along guardrails and unguarded rails, to swoop down the stairs the hang perilly over a pot of cream of mushroom soup. That really would annoy the cook, whom time after time would go complain to The Teller, who was, however far too busy with important things, like cleaning the air filters and feeding the goldfish, she couldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as a dangerous electrical fire-hazard hanging over the soup.

“Go eat some non-existent crackers.” She told the cook one day, leaning against the table with the tank of goldfish.

“Then l’ll take it into my own hands!” Huffs the cook, marching off to the kitchen.

The cook takes a chainsaw and then proceeds to start cutting the wires that held the light bulbs in the kitchen, like an explorer with a machete, chopping away vines in the jungle.

The light bulbs fall with a sickening crash, glass shards flying all over the place.

And into one of the pots of cream of mushroom soup that was to be served that night.

On the surface, everything goes well after that. The cook hides the shattered light bulbs under the bed, and the soup is served to you-guessed-who, you know, that one person.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To be conutied whenever l find the time to.