Sooo...who's still alive? I'm kinda confused. Not about the story, the story's excellent, but about the whole mass murder thing. Also, Teller, do we try to guess who the murderer is?

Day 12

“We’re falling,” says Katy, lamely. There is a sharp whistle of air as the spaceship falls ever faster through space. The rooms are vertical. The floors and ceilings are now walls. But oddly, the other rooms have flipped. The CBer-eating-kitchen is right side up, as well as everyone's rooms, the menacing-looking door (that houses the hooded-figure orchestra) and the library. The latter of which is now has German history books and only German history books.

The clocks have adjusted quickly to the change and are now contentedly ticking on what was once a ceiling. The German history books have not, and are flapping around like confused butterflies. The numbers of rabbist have been greatly reduced, and they are all avoiding Silvery, who is very smug with herself for some reason.

The CBers are hungry. Very much so. The Teller announced that morning (according to the clocks, but everyone knows that clocks do not keep proper time at all. If you really want accurate time, get an artichoke. They will never fail you.) that the food was running low and all they had that wasn’t in the CBer-eating-kitchen was freeze-dried hedgehogs and jellyfish. And of course, who wants to eat that? The Teller also said that the finest dishes, fit for kings--creamy soup, piping hot bread straight from the oven, juicy meat, fluffy white cakes--all lie beyond the CBer-eating-kitchen. And, of course, they would rather eat freeze-dried hedgehogs than go there.

Spyro, as hungry as ever, wonders if perhaps it would be safe to go in there. He licks his chops. Just then, a rabbit dashes right by him, and now, that rabbit is history. Very good history, according to Silvery.

The speeding spaceship hits something, and sends all the CBers flying. It also bangs open the door of the CBer-eating-kitchen. Baefire, Will, Silvery, and some German history books slide into it as the spaceship tips to one side. They land in a heap. “Ummph!” says the history book. “Ich bin ein Buch*!”

Bae is rather surprised. He didn’t know books could talk, if even in German. “Ist das Essen*?” says the book, looking at a table, piled in wrapped presents. Like a birthday party. It then flaps over to the refrigerator (the exact same one that ate Volcano) and lands on top of it. “Essen! Fur du*!” Will grabs the book and looks up the translation. “It says that there’s food in here! For you!”

Silvery creeps over to it, carefully. It shows no sign of being anything but ordinary. She motioned the others over. Just then the doors bang open again, and Booksy, and Shadowdancer are thrown in. And the refrigerator door opens. Confetti comes flooding out, onto the first person in its path, Baefire. He is swallowed up, and then the confetti is sucked back into the refrigerator, along with Bae. Booksy tries to open the door, but can’t. Bae is gone, sharing the same fate with Volcano. Will, Silvery, Shadowdancer, and Booksy go back to the control room, to warn the others.

Somebody is skeptical. “Really? Confetti?” Booksy nods wisely. “And we couldn’t do a thing! l feel so bad!”

But out there, there is someone who is quite glad about it. And who wouldn’t stop until everyone, every CBer, rabbit, German history book, radium clock, hooded-figure orchestra, agents from a vague-yet-menacing government agency, and the spaceship’s one and only cloaked figure are dead. As a doornail.

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

R.I.P. Baefire. Rest in confetti and refrigerator. And if you see Volcano, tell her that The Teller of Tales says hello.

*”l am a book!” “Is that food?” “Food! For you!”

TARDISrider, maybe?

Katydid? maybe...

@Dragonrider: l do not pick who dies. It is random. 

Day 13

It’s getting uncomfortably hot in the spaceship, as they are falling. Feather looks out the window and realizes that the spaceship is on fire. Dim grey light creeps into the room. “We’re falling into an atmosphere. And burning up.” The clocks blink out of existence for a second, surprised. The Teller shrugs. “The rocket boosters were damaged by the asteroid belt. We’re not getting anyway from the planet’s gravity field anytime soon. On the bright side, we might not burn up before we reach the ground, but l don’t know what planet this is, so that might not be a good thing.”

Spyro is munching on freeze-dried jellyfish, he’s the only one who seems to like them. Silvery doesn't seem hungry at all. Shadowdancer and Brookeira are sleeping. Booksy disappeared in that menacing-looking door and hasn’t come back. Yet. Everyone else is off doing, whatever it is that they do. The control room is almost empty now, as the hotel plummets to an uncertain future. There are a few dim lights, but you can’t really see anything clearly. Someone slips up beside Feather and whispers in her ear. “l wouldn’t!” she says. The person growls something, but Feather doesn’t hear it, because the spaceship suddenly hits something. With a splash.

*******

“What is, it, Jim?”

“l dunno. A bomb?” Jim the cowboy dismounts from his horse to look closer at this….thing. It looks like a building almost, but made of metal. And all dented up. The other cowboy, Morris, comes up beside him. “Maybe it’s an alien spacecraft.”

“Is there anyone inside?” He wades through the shallow water to it. “ ‘Ere’s a door, hmm.” He pries it open. Smoke filters out. “ ‘Ello? Anyone in there?” Somebody pokes her head out. “Where are we? And who are you?”

“Jim and Morris, cowboys at yer service, missy,” says Jim. Somebody sighs. The Teller, hearing voices comes over to the door. The cowboys look surprised. “Why l didn’t know you were ‘round here abouts,” says Morris to The Teller.

“You know them?”

“Well l didn’t know you would be here,” says The Teller. “Why don’t you come aboard, and bring your horses as well. It’s a bit smoky, but it’ll clear up.”

********

Coughing, Will picks himself off the ground. “Where are we?” He hears a clanging sound, like the one when the hotel turned into a spaceship. He walks over to a door, then trips over TARDISrider. “Umph.”  There is a whirring sound, and some German history books come flying along, clearing the smoke. They find themselves in what looks kind of like the spaceship, but there are windows lining the walls, and outside of them, is the ocean. TARDISrider looks up, and finds that the signs on the rooms have changed. They read as follows.

Room 1

TARDISrider

Lemony Snicket

Room 2

S̶o̶m̶e̶b̶o̶d̶y̶

S̶i̶l̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶I̶n̶k̶

Agents from a vague-yet-menacing government agency.

Room 3

Brookeira

Jim & Morris

Shadowdancer

Room 4

Booksy Owly

Teleporting, highly radioactive, Radium Clocks.

Ghost of Clock (To keep all those Radium Clocks in line.)

Room 5

Dalek-Rabbits

Shifting

Will

Room 6

Feather

Katydid

Spyro

CBer-Eating-Refrigerator

“Who’re Jim and Morris?”

“Me.”

TARDISrider spins around to see a man leading a black-and-white stallion down the hall, The Teller following. “Sorry ‘bout the er, crash, but look on the bright side. We landed in the ocean and now are a submarine!”

“Really?” asks Somebody, looking out one of the many glass windows. “Where exactly, then?” The Teller pulls a map of Africa out of a cloak pocket. “Hm…..The Sahara Desert, l think. Or maybe the Gobi Desert, not sure. Anyways, Morris, Room 3 is yours.” The two dash off, presumably to fix the damaged engines, to the bemusement

of everyone else.

“Okay…..” says Katydid. “Whoever they are.” Morris’s black-and-white stallion is still there and attempts to eat a German history book. And then a rabbit. And then gallops off to the control room.

****

Booksy carefully opens the door of Room 5, having been running away from Jim’s bay mare, who happens to have a problem with owls in general. She finds the Ghost of Clock lecturing the Radium clocks, who are all hanging on one wall. “......And this is why you don’t travel in time….” The ghost of Clock doesn’t even look Booksy’s way as she enters. The Radium clocks light up the room with an eerie glow. And the Geiger counter that just happens to be in that room is going crazy. She sighs and wonders way she didn’t get roomed with someone calmer, say a CBer-eating-Refrigerator, or even some Dalek-Rabbits.

****

TARDISrider grins. “A room all to myself. No crazy roommates whatsoever,” Lemony meows, as if to say that TARDISrider isn’t the only one here. And that he is not pleased with the rooming arrangements.

****

Silvery glares at the sign, her and Somebody’s names crossed off. “What do these agents from a vague-yet-menacing government agency mean?” she mutters. “Crossing my name off and putting theirs’? Humph.” She marches inside, to find to room completely transformed. Everything is black. Even the shade for the light bulb. Somebody is already there. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Go complain to the agents from the vague-yet-menacing government agency,” she replies. “l didn’t do it.”

“Well this is nice,” Silvery grumbles.

****

Jim and Morris aren’t in their room, but their stallion and mare are. The one that tries to eat everything and the one that has a problem with owls in general. (Be glad, Feather and Booksy, that you aren’t in the same room as that mare.) Shadowdancer and Brookeira are sitting on the top bunk of one of the bunk beds. The black and white stallion is trying to eat the other one.

****

“Exterminate,” mutters a Dalek-Rabbit, glaring at Will. “You will be exterminated.”

“Ha” says Shifting. “You really think so? Me of all ghosts?”

The rabbit stares at Shifting, its nose twitching nervously. “EX-PLAIN.”

“You are just a rabbit,” says Will.

“Only one race can survive,” states the Dalek-rabbit.

“Align and Advance!” says another

“Advance and Attack!”

“Attack and Destroy!”

“Destroy and Rejoice!” they all yell in their shrill voices.  “Ha,” Shifting says again. “Weak little rabbits.”

“We are better…..Different than human beings.”

“You’re rabbits.”

“Silence!”

****

“Why is the Refrigerator looking at me like that?” asks Feather, fearfully, huddled in a corner. “It isn’t,” says Katydid, “because it doesn’t have eyes.”

“It’s looking at me,” Feather claims. “And it’s hungry.”

“How do you know?” Katydid asks. “It just ate Bae yesterday.” Feather narrows her eyes. “You weren’t in the room. You should’ve known that, unless you and the Refrigerator are planing something together…..”  Katy looks alarmed. “l had nothing to do with it!”

“Yeah right……”

****

“What is this?” wonders The Teller out loud, picking up a letter addressed in red ink to, The Teller of Tales of the Submarine Le’Faye.

Jim looks up. “Looks to be the likes of a letter, to ya. Open ‘er up.”

“But why red ink?”

“It’s to frighten people,” says Morris. “It makes them think it’s blood.” The Teller carefully opens it and pulls out a sheet of paper, also in red ink.

Dear Teller,

l’m not feeling the best today, so l hope you don’t mind that l’m just going to lie around today and not murder anyone.

Unsincerely,

The Murder of Your Hotel/Spaceship/Submarine Guests.

P.S. l’m keeping all of my eyes on y’all at all times. Don’t think that l’m not watching, ‘cause l am.

P.P.S. This is real blood.

“Er, Morris?” says The Teller. “It’s real blood. l don’t know whose, though.”

“Huh.”

“This is unnerving,” says The Teller. “The murder just can’t take a holiday! It isn’t fair!”

In the shadows, someone is listening. They are holding a pen with red ink. “Can’t take a holiday, huh? So that’s what this imbecile Teller thinks of me. Can’t take a break? And you threw us into an asteroid belt. Humph.”

But someone else is listening too, two someones, really; a terrified Feather, and Morris the cowboy, who is much, much, more than just a cowboy. But he’ll never tell you what that is. So assume for now that he is just a cowboy. Nothing else. You don’t have any proof, anyways, and what matters, anyways?

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

R.I.P. Absolutely No One. Rest in nothing because you aren’t dead. Yet. l bet you realize that this is waaayyyyy longer than anything that l’ve written so far. Clever, clever you.

I'm kind of confused. What is an AE and a CBer? I have three guesses for who is murderer. The Cowboy, The refigerator Itself, and The Teller Of Tales himself.