The Old Hotel On Thirtieth

I. And Then

“When are you going to get rid of that damn spoon?”

Jack looked up, relatively uninterested in what the other man had to say. He shrugged a thin eyebrow and returned his attention to his fingers, where he fuddled with a small, sliver spoon.

The utensil was uninteresting, though well worn; the only area of interest being the hole in the handle through which a chain had been threaded. The chain attached to his belt.

“When are you jus’ gonna fuck off, huh?” Jack’s mumbled reply just made Dixon snort.

“Whatever, man. I don’t give a rat’s ass. Just don’t oh-dee in my building, ya little shit. save that crap for the alleys outside. Then you’d at least be with your own, rotten kind.” Dixon turned toward the door of the small, two-room apartment, kicking a wet rag as he did so.

“Fuck you.”

Dixon ignored the comment. “Look, I’m givin’ you a break, pal. Have your dues to me by the end a’ th’ week, an’ you can stay here. Normally, I demand rent on the first of every month, but…” he trailed off for a brief moment, taking the time to do a mock-survey of the small living space, “Given the circumstances, I think you should be glad that I’m giving you board at all. You’re what—fifteen? Sixteen, at the most?” Dixon snorted again. “I’ll have you know that I’m risking my own neck here, kid. I’m not exactly on the judge’s grade-A student list, here, and if word gets out that I’m giving shelter to a—”

“Why don’t you just back the fuck off, huh?” Jack stood up, hunching over slightly as he glared at his relatively new landlord. Dark shadows under his eyes highlighted his lack of sleep.

Dixon almost made a comment, but just shrugged and trudged out the door, closing it with a gentle slam.

“That went… well.” A tall, lean, short-haired man was leaning against the wall in the hallway, the first to greet Dixon since he left Jack’s apartment.

“You’re telling me.” Dixon headed down the stairs. “Fourteen goddamn years I’ve owned this building. I’ve seen more shit go down in here than most people realize.” His tired New York accent almost echoed in the tight space of the stairwell. “You ‘n me, Sam, we’ve seen it all—haven’t we?”

Sam followed him down, ducking his head a little to avoid hitting it on the low ceiling. “Certainly have, Dick.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his well-worn kakis. “So who’s the new tenant?”

Dixon waved his hands through the air, a sign of resignation. “I don’t know. Some angst ridden run-away with an appetite for cocaine. He’ll probably kill himself up there—and who’s gonna blame who then, huh?” He ran a wrinkled hand through his thin, grey hair.

The stairs stopped their descent, and deposited to two in a dirty linoleum-floored lobby, where decades of dirt had built up around the edges of the walls and in between the tiles. There was an entry-desk at the far end, next to the wide, beaten up door that was better suited to the old hotel the place used to be than the slum building it had disintegrated into.

“Jezus Christ, look at this place.” Dixon sighed tiredly and disgustedly as he walked across the small expanse, and took up his seat behind the entry desk. “You know, this used to be a hotel, once.”

“I remember it.” Sam said. “I was there when the fire tore through the third floor—remember that?”

“Yeah. Whatta nightmare. That’s why they ended up selling the place to begin with.”

“Yep.” Sam took a seat in the lobby, resting his foot upon the low magazine table, and lacing his long fingers around his knee. He sighed. “Funny how the past gets more glamorous as the present only seems to decay.”

“There you go again, getting all depressed on me.” Dixon threw a pen at him from behind the counter. “I’ve got enough to worry about without your philosophical melancholy. Why don’t you get a damn job and be useful for once?”

Sam scoffed indignantly. “I work for you!”

Rain pounded down in the streets, sliding off of the macadam and into the storm drains. The obscene noise that resulted only reminded Jack of the cruel inevitability of the world. There was no harmony, no interaction in the noise—it was just pure noise, discord, dissonance for the sheer sake of dissonance. No purpose. No reason.

Tonight was the night the world would end, just like it always did. Tonight, the sun would set, the stars would come out, and the moon would rise. Lights from the city’s sprawling metropolis would flicker on and off, fluorescent signs would come to life, and—completely unknowingly—everyone would die. Again. And then, after many fleeting hours, the city’s lights would dim down, the fluorescent signs would lose a bit of their life, and the rays of a reborn sun would peek over the horizon. Light would again spill itself into the streets of Dis, and the cycle would repeat itself. Demons would become human, sin would become paper, and fluorescent signs would be silenced, for awhile.

This was the unreal city, the damned city. This—truly—must be Hell.

“I think there’s something wrong with me…?” Jack lay flat on his back, his feet stretching into the street, the rest of him solidly on the broken and cracked sidewalk. The sky was a bleak, oppressive crimson to his perception; filled with dark smoke and black haze which seemed to cloud his very mind.

The raindrops hurt like hell.

“No, there’s something wrong with you.”

Jack rolled his head to the side, spotting polished leather and shiny black cotton. As he followed the tailored pants, they gave way to a white button-down shit, also tailored to perfect fit, and finally to a suit jacket that had been tossed over a shoulder, held in place by a gloved hand.

“There’s something wrong with me?”

“No, with you.” The clothes repeated themselves, obviously annoyed. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“What…?” Jack winced as he started to cough, phlegm from his lungs spattering onto the sidewalk.

“Have a cigarette.” A gloved hand dropped a cigarette into his mouth, and lit a match for him. The flame burned upside-down, allowing the chemicals in the tube to catch fire easily.

Jack breathed silently, puffing, removing the cigarette every few puffs to breath fresh air. He was still lying on his back.

“Do you understand?”

He looked back at the clothes. “There’s something wrong with me.” He said, more confidently than before.

“No.” A shoe kicked the side of his head. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“There’s something wrong with you.” The jacket repeated.

“There’s something wrong with you.” The shirt repeated.

“There’s something wrong with you.” The pants repeated.

Jack closed his eyes, blinking the smoke out of them. It did little to relieve the burn.

Suddenly he stood up, and looked at the city in the distance—Dis, the fluorescent city that smiled at him in all of its sin. “There’s something wrong with you.” He whispered.

“Yes.” The faceless clothes smiled at him.

And then the world caught fire as the tip of a cigarette was lit.

\\---///

Jack crouched in the corner of a room full of people. Black lights and strobe lights went off in every direction, providing visual punctuation for the deafening music that silenced the crowd. Everyone was moving, flowing, divided as a single entity in a mass-less, shapeless pool of flesh.

Jack was huddled with another person, about his same age. He had the lighter and the stuff. Jack had the spoon and the tools. They had already paid the guy. The guy had already left.

The guy had left them with something new. He said the first dose was free, just like all the other deals they had made together. They’d try the new stuff after they shoot up this stuff first.

So much stuff.

\\---///

The storm had just begun. His mother told him to come inside from the rain, lest he catch a cold. He needed to have his boots on if he was going to play in the rain.

Jack didn’t whine. He obeyed his mother, like a good six-year-old does.

\\---///

There was a tornado warning for their area. The storm was in full swing by now, but the darkest was yet to come.

His father told him to get in the car before he had to drag him back inside. The empty bottles were commas to his requests, and the broken glass in Jack’s side was the carriage return. The raindrops around him were probably quotation marks.

Jack cursed his father and, in his fury, he tripped on Mother’s headstone, cursing again as he did so.

Graveyards were so cluttered these days.

\\---///

Jack stared at the wall of the apartment, which was no leaking thanks to the faulty plumbing in the run-down, godforsaken slum.

He had nothing to eat. But he didn’t need to eat.

All he needed was love; that was what Mother always said.

He gripped the spoon in his hand, and prepared for one last triumphant ride. All the love in the world was in his little spoon. That was all he needed.

…Right?

The fire was everywhere now, flames creeping along the ceiling of the room, down the wallpaper, up the furniture, spiraling around the room in a firestorm of chaos. All the moisture outside couldn’t quell the fire in here.

And then the firemen came to rescue the ten year old who was crouched underneath the bed. His face was black, his arms and hands were burnt, his clothes were burnt, and the room was now burnt in his mind.

\\---///

Dixon winced as the kid kicked him in the ribs.

“What? I haven’t done anything to you!” he sobbed, clutching his side as he lay on the sidewalk. Rain fell so hard that it bounced off the concrete and into his eyes, mixing with the blood that had pooled in the cracks, and falling into the storm drains.

The other kids around him laughed as he struggled. There must have been four or five of them.

“Shuddup, ya little third-grader. Gimme your money and get outta here.” The kid who had kicked him leaned his foot on Dixon’s ear. “An’ don’t tell nobody, ‘less you want summore a’ this.”

No one heard what he whispered in a chant to himself.

\\---///

The old hotel was going up for action again. Dixon rubbed his side absently as he stepped inside the lobby—smaller than what he remembered—and gazed around at the emptiness. There was only one person, and he stood behind the entry desk.

“I take it then that you’re the only one who wants this dump?”

Dixon looked at him curiously, but moved closer to get a better look at him.

The man sighed and handed over a few forms. “Sign here, then. It basically says that you agree to pay fifty bucks for this shit hole. We have to sell it for something, you understand.”

Dixon nodded.

“Well, it’s yours, then. Here’s the deeds. Any other paperwork you can pick up at our office—fifth and main, you know where that is?—and if that’s all, then I’m outta here.”

The door swung shut, leaving the lobby in a rather unique darkness. “…thanks…” Dixon whispered.

As he crept up the stairs, he noticed that the fire damage had never been repaired.

“Help me, Sam.”

\\---///

“I heard that you were the one who bought that old hotel on Thirtieth.” The man next to him leaned on the bar, gazing at him carefully.

Dixon nodded. “Yeah.” He said. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot.” The bully’s face said, kicking him in the ribs again.

The man turned away and walked to the other side of the bar, apparently uninterested in the topic of conversation.

Dixon sighed sorrowfully. “Help me, Sam.”

\\---///

Sam surveyed the extent of the fire damage, walking around the debris that was never cleared up and the scorched rooms and halls.

“Well, it seems that most of the third floor is wasted,” he reported to Dixon, “The wet wall is really the only thing of value which survived, so the rest is as good as gone.” He kicked a piece of charred plaster. “And of course, insurance won’t cover any of it, since it happened more than a decade ago.”

Dixon nodded silently. “Figures,” he said. “We don’t have the money to repair it, either.”

“Nope.”

“I guess that there’s nothing we can do, then.” Dixon slumped his shoulders and started for the cramped stairwell.

Sam looked around, shoving his hands in his pockets as he followed him. “I guess you’re right.”

\\---///

“Hey, Dick.” Sam tapped Dixon on the shoulder repeatedly. “Don’t you think it’s time you woke up?”

Dixon awoke, lifting his head from the entry desk that he’d wasted his life behind. “What?”

Sam shook his head. “Nothing, really. Look, it might sound weird, but that new tenant—”

“The kid?” Dixon asked grumpily.

“Yeah.” Sam cracked his knuckles nervously. “He hasn’t come down in over a week.”

Dixon rubbed his side absently. “So?” he asked, pretending not to care.

“…Not even to eat.”

Dixon sighed, and slumped his shoulders. “So you’re saying that we should go check on him?”

“I think we should.”

The walk up the stairs was uncomfortable; the feeling of dread held a tight grasp on Dixon’s chest. It suffocated him, burned him, stung him, just like the fiery inferno had all those years ago.

“Hey, kid, you in there?” he banged his fist against the door, and no one answered.

“Kid?” He did it again, and again, no one answered. “I’m coming in, you little shit. Better not have skipped on me without paying your rent.”

The frame of the door splintered as it flew open, the door whacking against the wall as it arced around.

“Oh god…” Dixon stared down at the body of Jack, eyes wide and staring, gaping, sightless holes in the dead apartment. “Shit. Shit! Shit!” Dixon gripped his grey hair, walking around in circles. “Shit!” he cursed again, panic stricken.

“Sam, you gotta help me! What the fuck do I—” The dread in his chest finally seized him fully, clenching around his heart and lungs. He choked on the air, gasping, shocked as to what was finally happening. He fell to the floor, trying one more time to force out his friend’s name; one last cry for help.

Sam just stood above him dispassionately, hands in his pockets, frowning as Dixon was consumed by his fire.