Nurse the Hate: Welcome To Hell

It was supposed to be a good hotel.  Despite the newish carpeting and new logo slapped on the front of the building, it still boasted paper thin walls and hallways that acted as loudspeakers.  The power must have gone out at some point during the night.  The digital clock flashed “12:00” with urgency, sparking the room with red light every two seconds.  What time was it?  The sound of retching was so close he feared that someone was barfing on his bed.  It must be the room next door.  The adjoining door between the rooms provided the same sound buffer as a beaded curtain. 

In between the deep barfing came a conversation from someone else in the room.  The voice sounded middle aged, but the lingo was an odd gumbo of street references that sounded as if they had been culled from NBA player’s social media posts from 2006.  He was on his phone.  “Yo Mikey G be trippin’ yo!  You see how he be frontin’?”  Meanwhile a deep guttural “Bleahhhhh!!!!” followed by liquid hitting liquid came from their bathroom.   The man talking into the phone ignored the barfing.  “You going to Tokyo?  Today?  Bro!”

The man on the phone hung up his call and switched over to playing music.  He called out to his hungover companion.  “No talking during this!”  The sound of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” came shrilly from a phone speaker.  The man from the phone call began to sing, but didn’t know the words and couldn’t stay on pitch.  This resulted in a scat singing style accompaniment to what might well be the worst rock song in the world.  “Jussss a smah tah gaaahhh…  Nevah mumba meeba da wahhhh”  He struggled over to look at his watch on the nightstand.  It was 9:07 am.   “Dohn stah… Believin…”

He considered alerting the guests next door that he was still trying to sleep and perhaps they could be more empathetic to others.  The best tactic that came to mind was banging on the wall and screaming “Shut the fuck up you stupid hillbilly!  You fucking piece of shit!  There are other people in this hotel but you, you goddamn assholes!”.  That did seem a bit confrontational and likely would not result in the two to three additional hours of sleep he was hoping to secure, so he stared at the ceiling and stewed.  “Dohn stah… Believin… Maba donna moby a loooo”  It was perhaps the longest three minutes of his life.

When the song mercifully ended he thought “what did this asshole put next on his dream playlist?  It’s got to be terrible.”.  He laughed out loud when the familiar “boom boom… bam” of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” warbled out of the phone.  The man next door was excited now.  “Dude!  Dude!  This is my jam!”.  He thought about what kind of SUV the guest next door drove here and calculated the likelihood of a Calvin sticker peeing on the side window or maybe an arm flexing gun rights sticker with American flags festooned on it.  By the elevator there was a fire hose and axe behind a glass cabinet.  He could calmly walk down the hall, break open the glass, grab the axe and attack the people in the next room.  There wasn’t a jury in the land that would convict him. “We will!  We will!  Rock you!”  Fuck this.

He showered as quickly as he could, tossed his meager possessions in his bag and wheeled out of the room.  He took the elevator down to the lobby with two shivering kids dripping water on the floor, the kids already taking advantage of the bleak indoor pool by the unused out of date workout facility.   One of the kids sneezed with an open mouth.  He needed a coffee, maybe a breakfast to try and right the ship.  The hotel had a restaurant, the opaque named “Seasons” that appeared to offer legitimate meals.  The hostess indicated he could sit anywhere he pleased in the bland surroundings.  She dismissively gave him a menu and walked away.  He sat by himself without another soul wandering into the room.  Five minutes became ten.  Nothing moved.  There was no sound.  It struck him that perhaps he had died.  As it wasn’t a paradise, he had gone to hell.  It was as he had always suspected.  Hell was like a three star hotel in the Midwest.  Eternity would be a long time.