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Mafia '83

  
  

Page: (1)234

 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
12:15 / 19.06.06
Prologue
“Doc…Bashful…ohfuckohfuck…Happy…D…D…Dopey.”
Steve gritted his teeth and pulled himself one inch closer to the radio. He could actually feel his intestinal tract touching the rough wooden floor.
“…..Sneezy…”
He had to keep conscious. He had to get to the radio. If he could call someone, anyone, maybe they could get him, patch him up, put his guts back inside his body where they belonged… Just remember the names…
“Gruh…Grumpy.”
Almost there… Suddenly Steve felt the Killer’s foot fall on his hand, heel grinding his knucklebones into the floorboards. The Killer knelt down, his hot fetid breath on the back of Steve’s neck. He asked one question:
“Sleepy?”
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
12:26 / 19.06.06

The Sandcreek Hotel was built in 1902 by Jacob Bisley (previously Jakob Biskup) in Kiowa County, Colorado. The Sandcreek was initially a rest-cure home for hysterical women and nuns that swore. In 1932 lack of funds lead to it being turned into a flophouse for runaway debtors. It had a brief flurry of semi-respectability in the fifties, but when Bisley’s grand-daughter Hannah took it over in the sixties she made it into a hippy commune, an experiment that broke up with unique savagery after every single acid trip anyone had was a bad one.
Through all it’s incarnations the hotel had, in fact, had a history of strange accidents, some of which can be chalked up to the hasty, poor construction and dodgy wiring.
Now it’s open again.

Jonathan Biskup
Hannah’s son Jonathan Biskup (having changed his name back out of respect) has refurbished the building while still trying to preserve as many original features as he could afford. Now it’s the end of the season and the hotel is preparing to close for the winter. Most of the guests and almost all of the staff have left, leaving only a skeleton crew and those who have not yet checked out.
Monday was supposed to be the last day. And then the storm hit.

Now the hotel is totally inaccessible by any roads. Help’s supposed to be on it’s way but not only are the local services severely underfunded but the locals themselves still nurse an entirely irrational fear about this old place.
It’s Tuesday. All the guests are gathered in the front hall by Jonathan. He looks terrible, pale and sweating, a palpable aura of panic surrounds him. He wipes his face with his hand and begins.
“The Concierge… Steve’s dead. He’s in the communications room, with… someone cut him open with a knife. They smashed the radio too.”
He lets that sink in.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on but… yesterday there was a call out on the radio, a police call, just before the storm hit. They’d found a burnt out car on the road up here. There were three bodies in it. They were unidentifiable, charcoal, but they’d had suitcases. I didn’t say anything because…
Look all I know is everyone who was supposed to check in has checked in. And now Steve’s dead and there’s fucking bodies on the road… Three of us aren’t who we claim to be. Three of us are Killers. Nobody knows when the police can get to us. If we’re all going to survive up here, we need to make sure we’re … safe. That may take some… sacrifices. We can’t give in to panic, but we need to defend ourselves.”
And with that he slumps onto the leather sofa in the centre of the room and puts his face in his hands.
Outside the wind howls and the snow just keeps getting thicker.
 
 
gridley
13:47 / 19.06.06


Vince Gridley sits down at the grand piano in the front hall and nervously plinks a few keys. Damn, but it's out of tune. Thank god, the piano they have him playing in the lounge is in better shape or the past couple weeks would have been a total bust. The tips had been decent and more than once he'd found that a young lady had jotted her room number down on a cocktail napkin and stuck that into the jar.

The trick, he always says, is being able to look at your audience and know... JUST KNOW WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY... what the right song to play next is. "Come Sail Away" for the guy at the front table, "Muskrat Love" for his date; "Moon River" for the old creep starring at them from the bar.

Vince looks at the people around him. Some of the staff he knows ok. He can tell they miss the old piano player (who took off for Mexico with one of the maids), but they've been warming to him. And most of the remaining guests have caught his act at least once.

But try as he might, Vince has no idea what's going on inside their heads. His left hand hovers over middle c, waiting for his brain to know what they want, to know what they've done, to know what to play... anything... but nothing comes.

"So," he says, standing up, "Who else needs a drink?"
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
14:05 / 19.06.06



Elijah knew he could use a drink. Sure he was only 16, but hadn't his parents shipped him to this place to give him some life experience while they were touring the world?

Experience, that seemed to be what he was destined to get with some knife weilding lunatic running around. One psycho would have been bad enough, but three? That seemed crazy.

"Pour me some of that whiskey, piano man,"

Elijah knew that if he was carefull he could live through this, and maybe if he was lucky on top of that he would finally get to see some boob.
 
 
Ticker
14:37 / 19.06.06
Xander Keening felt his stomach lurch at the description of the bodies in the car. The lingering greasy smell of bacon from breakfast caused him to suddenly gag. The acidic tang of sick filled his mouth and he looked down at his hands swallowing rapidly.

The scarred flesh and twisted fingers of his left hand contrasted sharply with the perfection of the right. He wished he hadn't packed up his watercolors earlier so he could lose himself in the swirls of paint. He had come to the Sandcreek Hotel to paint the landscape so very different from the run down mill town he grew up in.

He'd scraped up enough selling his art to to the old ladies that doted on him to come and lose himself in the silence. Every day for the last week his eyes had followed the line of the mountains. Yet his brush still moved with a mind of its own.

Instead of serene vistas of snow and trees the images were the same ghoulish figures skulking down fog clogged streets he had painted in Innsmouth. When he switched to the japanese brush and ink the lines flowed with the grace of an ancient calligrapher's, but the scenes of horror remained. A single stroke gave birth not to the majestic pine outside of his room's window, but to a rivulet of blood draining into the gutter.

Now Death was in the hotel escaped from the borders of the paintings and XK knew it would come for him. With the maimed limbs of his left side he knew he could not defend himself from attackers who killed the able bodied Concierge.

While he accepted his impending doom two thoughts gave him comfort. At least he would not die where he was born and he had been right not to adopt that ginger kitten. He could not have endured his last thought to be of the poor thing waiting for him to come home.

  
 
LykeX
15:18 / 19.06.06
"Bloody frickin' typical."

Luke Xavier was nursing a gin & tonic while cursing his situation.

"First they send me off to some godforsaken hotel in the middle of nowhere to "relax" for a week. Then they say I can't have an internet connection while I'm here. Then the damn snow blocks all the roads and now they tell me that killers are roaming the hotel hallways, slaughtering people."

He took a swig of his drink, and shook his head ponderously.

"I told them. I said, "you can't take away my connection. I have to log on regularly. If I fail to check my email something terrible will happen."
And now look. I bloody well told them, didn't I? I told them, but did they listen? No, they well all, "you're a workaholic, Luke."
"It's all in your mind, Luke."
"Take your damn PILLS, Luke!"
"DON'T LISTEN TO THE VOICES, LUKE!"

WELL, WHAT DO YOU SAY NOW!?"

Luke sat down again, ignoring the stares from the other guests.

"Fucking Sheeple."
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
15:27 / 19.06.06
Maybe I should specify that this story is set in 1983, when the Internet was used largely by Universities to communicate amongst each other. Unless Lyke X is a time traveller, in which case I'll shut up...
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
15:57 / 19.06.06
Michaela Stern plonked herself down on one of the heavy chairs - plush, but surprisingly uncomfortable - at the side of the room with a resigned sigh. The lobby was getting colder, and one of the corridor lights had failed, leaving the whole first floor wing on that side a dim tunnel. A couple of the guests were knocking back shots over at the lounge bar, the manager had been drawn into some heavy conversation, some phone geek had just stopped talking to himself and everyone else was staring into space.

"Fucking great, Mike", she said quietly to herself, "just fucking great."
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
16:03 / 19.06.06
Jeremy Stoate walked into the lobby, dragging his case behind him. Imposing place, this. It had been a fourteen hour drive, and the radio reception had gone completely about ninety miles away, leaving him to drive with only the sound of his own thoughts and the static providing a soundtrack for the falling snow.

Now he couldn't even leave. He'd dragged his case down here for nothing.

Even now he wasn't quite sure why he came. It had been the letter, really. The damn letter. The letter from Mary telling him to meet her here. Once upon a time he'd have been overjoyed to receive such a letter, but now it filled him with conflicting emotions.

It can't have been from Mary, he told himself, trying to quell his rising anticipation. Mary's dead. You know that.

Sometimes he felt like a character in that video game. What was it called again?

Oh yes. Pac-Man.
 
 
Orange
16:29 / 19.06.06
Clementine Williams flounced into the lobby and unceremoniously collapsed into an armchair. Normally she would have put more care into her entrance, but she was concentrating on maintaining her composure. No one else had to know that she had spent most of the last couple of hours crying in her room, and she certainly didn't want to smear the makeup that she'd just applied so carefully. Clementine knew that if her daddy was aware of the situation here, he would have gotten her out already, storm or no storm, and with that thought she could feel the tears threatening to return.

But her father was miles away on some important trip, and he thought that at sixteen, she was grown up enough to go on a little trip of her own as a treat. Granted, this killer business was more than her daddy had ever bargained for for his little girl, but Clementine was determined to be strong like he had taught her. Crying wasn't going to help anything. With a sniff, she straightened up in the chair, pushed her hair away from her face, and scanned the room for a friendly face.
 
 
Feverfew
18:21 / 19.06.06
David "Feverfew" Thompson sits, listening to the Piano Man. Then, he gets up, and walks to the nearest window, and looks out over the ever-thickening snow. He sees, in the distance, and thinks to himself ruefully, "These woods are lovely, dark and deep"...

He crosses the room back to his chair. He looks out over the others in the room, and reflects on the words his grandfather, Johnathan, had left him with recently before David had set out on this trip. He'd said, quite simply for Grandpa, "Remember, boy. You can't trust anyone in this life except yourself. And especially not the police."

Grandpa Feverfew had always had issues with the cops.

Then, his thoughts were dragged back to the present, and he meditated on what had actually brought him here; the 'employee' bus, but, deeper than that, the need for work. His father had told him that a 16-year-old should be finding his way in the world, even if it was only a holiday job at that big grand hotel in the mountains. Of course, when he'd arrived yesterday, he'd found the position was already filled. So he was stuck, with the little money he had, until the next bus out - but now, there wasn't going to be a bus out, not for a while.

Now, Feverfew is stuck here, and with a psychopath on the loose and Poor Dead Steve in the communications room. And all for that paltry hourly wage he wasn't even going to get. Sitting back in his chair with his glass of water, Feverfew thinks that he truly may have "miles to go before I sleep"...
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
18:34 / 19.06.06
Elijah through back the last of the whiskey he had snagged from behind the bar and pulled off his walkman headphones, still humming "Red Red Wine" and wandered to the hotel lobby, where most of the now trapped residents were milling about.

Scoping the room he spotted too few members of the opposite sex for his taste. His luck with women had been non-existant up until this point, and unless the odds were in his favor he didnt think he had much of a chance scoring while avoiding the killers.

"Heya toots, my names Elijah, but you can call me Cory" he rehearsed under his breath, popping his collar as he walked into the spacious room.
 
 
gridley
19:15 / 19.06.06
The more whiskey Vince tosses back, the easier the tunes come to him. Soon he's slamming them out, blissfuly blind to the movement of others around him. Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," Carole King's "Smackwater Jack," Lead Belly's "Duncan and Brady."

It isn't until halfway through that old Vicki Lawrence chestnut "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" though that he realizes he's singing songs mostly about murder.

Trying to jolt himself out of that mindset, he rips into a shmaltzed up version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart," a number he used to kill with back when he worked as the accompanist to a drag act named Helen Back.

As he's finishing, he spots a girl who looks like she's been crying. He can always tell when they've been crying. He takes a drag of his cigarette, and walks over to check on her.

"Hi," he says to Clementine. "I'm Vince. You doing ok? Anthing you'd like to talk about?"
 
 
LykeX
22:25 / 19.06.06
God dammit. 9 minutes and my cover is blown. Umm... I mean... must be those damn pills making me confused again. Can't even remember what year it is.

*Goes to the bathroom and flushes pill bottle*

Ahh, much better.
Naturally, what I meant was, I can't be away from the computers at the department. The nitwits that use them daily have probably blown up half the building by now. I have to be there to keep things in order or everything will go wrong. Extreme weather conditions. Psychotic killers. Maybe it's already too late.

In which case, another drink won't hurt.

"Bartender!"
 
 
Baz Auckland
22:53 / 19.06.06
Captain Barry Auckland sits in his room with only a bottle of bourbon for company...

"Colorado... shit; I'm still only in Colorado... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce...

I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter."

Barry grabs the bottle, downs it in one gulp, flails around a bit to The Doors, and then hits the floor. His last conscious thought is a prayer that tonight the nightmares don't return...
 
 
Ticker
14:07 / 20.06.06
XK rises slowly from his chair using his cane to steady himself. He knows it will take a while to navigate back to his room and even longer to pull the paper and paints out from the suitcases. Watching the piano player console the young woman, XK imagines painting the icy blue light from the window falling across Vince's face and the beautiful but stoic expression on Clementine's.


'The Passion of Lovers is for death...' the lyrics run through his mind as he watches them. Sighing he shakes the grim thoughts away and takes an awkward step forward leaning heavily on his cane.
 
 
■
21:13 / 20.06.06
He'd spent almost an hour staring at the piano guy and he still wouldn't play "Moon River". He gave up and glanced around the room. None of the other staff were left, as far as he could tellm and that left him minding the bar, dealing with bodies by the radio and cleaning up the suppurating women in the bathtubs. Yeah, apart from knowing how to shuffle his feet on the nylon carpet to buld up enough charge to zap the videogames in the lobby (he loved Q*Bert), things weren't going right for Shiney McShine the half-Jacarilla-half-Weegie bottle-washer recently turned barkeep.
Sure, he should feel comforable, what with the management refusing to buy that Calumet baking powder with its stereotypical Indian logo, and the way they had insisted they rip out the carpets that were SO 17th-century Cheyenne, but he still wished they had been able to contact the Buckfastleigh monks to get the next shipment in so he could sneak it up to his room (this place wouldn't let him touch it in public for another four years! Baws tae that).
Anyway, the way he saw it, he was almost glad some family had bought it on the way up, as he was sick of moppets trying to stare at him as if he was spiritual. All there was to do was to lay low until this all blew over.
And avoid unexpected axes in big empty rooms.
 
 
Orange
04:07 / 21.06.06
Smiling shyly at the piano player as he approached, Clementine drew her knees together and tucked her feet under the chair.

"Yes," she said, too quickly. "That is, no, I'm all right," she amended, dipping her head. But Vince continued to look at her expectantly, and after a pause, she lowered her voice and confided, "The truth is, I'm scared. I don't know who to trust. You've been here for a while, you must know some of these people well enough to be able to tell if they're who they say they are . . ."
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
04:28 / 21.06.06
The Boy Who Loved Dwight Evans (AKA Jake) sat uneasily in the farthest corner of the farthest corner booth in the farthest corner of the bar, listening to a static-filled broadcast of the Red Sox game. He tugged at his shaggy hair nervously when Boggs struck out, leaving Evans as the only possible saviour of this game.

Jake hasn't missed a Dwight Evans at-bat since his late father introduced him to the Red Sox in 1974, when he was six. Since his father, Jake, Sr., was killed in a gruesome, unexplained incident in 1987 (don't think about it boy), Jake has looked up to Dwight Evans as he never looked up to his father. Not the flashiest player on the team, but the most indispensable. Jake can't imagine the world without Dwight Evans playing right field in Fenway Park. He's not sure that the world could even exist without Dwight Evans playing right field in Fenway Park. He's had to deal with so many changes since (don't THINK about it BOY) his father left (was killed) that he can't even wrap his head around it. Not even a little.
 
 
Baz Auckland
05:35 / 21.06.06
Waking from another nightmare of being knee-deep in blood and guts..and strange men in striped sweaters...Barry dresses and heads down to the hotel bar...

Ordering a shot of bourbon, he stares into the shotglass....

"None of them know what it's like out there. None of them know what it's like to watch Charlie kill your friends. Or to have people spit at you and call you 'babykiller'... I mean, he was hardly a baby! He was at least 4 years old! That's what he gets for sneaking up on a marine and squirting him with a water pistol..."

...Damn civilian life...

Shuddering, he downs the shot and quickly orders another...
 
 
rising and revolving
12:54 / 21.06.06
Peter Edwards, known to his metal bretheren as Krung : The Destroyer, sat in his room smoking a hand rolled cigarette. Hand rolled with blackest darkness. Yeah. Quiet Riot rocked for Mental Health through the headphones of his walkman, sending shivers through his denim clad form.

Krungs thoughts turned to death and destruction. At the tender age of 16, he'd seen some pretty intense things. Some dark things. Like once, he saw a cat that had been hit by a car. Well, nearly. Jim-Bob (Macron, the Terrible) had filled him in on the details, and it was almost like being there. So that was pretty evil, just for starters. This may be Krungs first time out on his own, but damned if he wasn't ready to handle it - to the max!

Pete wandered downstairs, entirely oblivious to the fuss. After all, it's hard to hear the concierge calling an announcement of death over Cum on Feel the Noize. ..
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
17:27 / 21.06.06
The snow curls in and settles on the hearth as the main doors swing open for T. C. Poker, insurance salesman, who steps through and begins to kick the snow from his boots.

"It's blowing a gale out there," he utters to nobody in particular, before polishing his glasses and sliding them back onto his face.
"Hello? Is this place open for business? It's just my chevy got bogged down in all this weather and I could use some gas."

Upon spying the staff, T. C. crosses to the reception desk and begins the now familiar process of checking in to yet another cheap hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere. This blizzard had better stop, or there was no way he was going to make his Friday appointment.

"Say," he calls to the receptionist after signing in. "You got a telephone? It's just I got to call New Hampshire tonight."
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
17:48 / 21.06.06
Jonathan strides into the hallway, his sleeves rolled up, his arms thick with some kind of grease.

"Vince, cut the piano, willya? Thanks. Listen, there's something wrong with the boiler. It's holding on for now but if it dies it's going to get real fucking cold real fucking fast in here.
Anyway, we're at about the middle of the day here, so if we could decide who we think is most suspicious before the night falls (Friday) we can interrogate the bastard. C'mon, you've got to have some idea..."
He darts his eyes around, scrutinising each face carefully, then rolls his eyes and strides off again.
 
 
Feverfew
19:22 / 21.06.06
Feverfew sits, broods over Biskup's announcement, and realises that iced water will get very boring, very quickly. He remembers another piece of advice old Grandfather Feverfew, back in Little Catlipoca, taught him; "Nothing makes people happier than having food around." Since no-one else is making a move and everyone looks hungry, Feverfew jnr. assesses the situation. This is not a normal day, he thinks; and if we're all suspects of psychopathy (maybe that's what I'll call my band) then we may as well not be hungry suspects.

There's only peanuts and bar snacks around, so Feverfew gets up, puts on the best "I'm an employee, trust me" face a 16-year old can muster, and heads for the hotel kitchen. As it turns out, he needn't have worried; Mack, the chef, is still slumped in the corner with a bottle of gin, and has been crying ever since Steve's untimely death; he loved Steve like a son. Now he's no use to anyone; he may as well not be here, Feverfew thinks unkindly.

He isn't even awake to protest, and most of the other employees have left, so no-one minds a 16-year old hunting for food. Besides, Feverfew always feels better when he's doing something than sitting around doing nothing.

So, he hunts around the massive, but untidy, hotel kitchen, rooting out trays and food as he finds it. Not a pretty sight, in the end; half of the food is of the "frozen solid" variety. But, still, there's bread, and lots of random cuts of meat left over from a party a day or so ago, so Feverfew gets to work, humming as he goes.

Half an hour later, and he proudly exits the kitchen with two trays of sandwiches. Putting them down on a central table and beckoning people to help themselves, he wanders over to Johnathan Biskup, who is leaning on a booth, chewing his nails fairly nonchalantly having given his announcement, and whispers "Bet you wish you'd employed me now, huh?"

Mr Biskup looks unimpressed.

Nevertheless, Feverfew takes a paper plate and a few sandwhiches, and gets another cup of iced water, and sits back down in the chair he's rapidly learning to call home. Who's suspect? Who looks innocent? Who can tell which is more reliable? Feverfew continues to ruminate, and to look at the snow falling...
 
 
Joy Division Oven Gloves
02:02 / 22.06.06


Ricky sat by the dresser in his room holding his face in his hands. The headaches were getting worse; the Advil wasn't even touching them and they were getting more frequent. If he and Charlie hadn't been supposed to perform that night he wouldn't have been able to get out of bed. But Charlie had persuaded him the show was the important thing and they'd gone downstairs just in time to hear the manager recounting the awful events of the day.

It'd been too much for Ricky. Steve had been the only one who'd been kind to him since he'd arrived at the hotel to work as a bell boy last month and had even encouraged the manager to let him and Charlie do a little routine for the guests during the evening meal. Ricky had been real shy about performing in public for the first time but Steve had been so supportive. Such a gentle man, Ricky couldn't think why anyone would want to hurt him.

Of course Charlie hadn't liked him. But then Charlie was always jealous when it came to Ricky and didn't like him spending time with other people.

He glanced nervously over at Charlie sitting on the dresser across the room.
"I.... I guess we should go and see what's happening downstairs? M..m..maybe we could get some idea what's going on? "





"No, you pathetic piece of shit, I want to stay here and listen to you whine some more about your bestest ever friend Steve. Of course we should go downstairs! Just keep your idiot mouth shut and let me do the talking."

Said Charlie.
 
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
02:26 / 22.06.06
Steve Tuckerson made a minute adjustment to his Deering High School letter jacket. He fiddled with the gold pins affixed to the large, white letter 'D' on the left breast- one pin each for football, basketball, and baseball. Finally he got them arranged to his satisfaction- every little bit helped, and the jacket might be a stupid set of colors (purple with white leather sleeves) but it was what the whole thing represented which mattered. It said that Steven B. Tuckerson, aged 16, was the star player in every major sport available to play at his high school- QB on the football team since his freshman year, point guard on the basketball team, shortstop and sometime starting pitcher for baseball. He was, in short, a god.

Which was all well and good but it still hadn't gotten him laid. He had been dating his girlfriend, Sally, for six months now, and she was being irritatingly pure about the whole thing. Yeah, sure, it was great that he was dating the hottest girl in the school, but what it came down to was that the guys were still giving him shit in the locker room about how he couldn't get her to put out for him. Last weekend was their six month anniversary, the start of a week-long vacation, and he had driven her out to this remote, idyllic little hotel for a long anniversary weekend and, hopefully, some screamin' hot sex. He had spent hundreds of dollars on the room, even worn a goddamn suit and tie to dinner with her.

The sex had not materialized. The weekend was about to get longer.

He looked around from his seat in the lobby. Where the hell was she? He hadn't seen her in hours, not since the announcement that there were three vicious killers loose in the hotel. He almost hoped one of those psychopaths would try him. He was captain of the goddamn football team- he could kick their ass for sure. And hey, maybe apprehending a murderer might be the missing x-factor in his relationship with Sally. And if it wasn't... he scanned the room again. There were a lot of fine-looking girls hanging around, and a long stay ahead of him. One way or another, he'd make it worth his while.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
08:00 / 22.06.06
Mike shivered, but just from the cold. The sandwich was disgusting, but it looked like it was the best anyone was going to get for a while. No chance of anyone fixing the lights any time soon, either. And this shit with the boiler; how cold did it get up here, anyway? Huh, at least with the hotel nearly empty there should be plenty of sheets to go round, ha ha.

Some of these guys didn't make a lot of sense, now. Come to think of it, most of them seemed to have a real big screw loose. Maybe it was just the situation bringing it out. She wasn't sure she bought this "psycho killers" story. Big bunch of kids, the manager, the barman, coupla entertainers. Mass murder was hardly in the remit of the employees of a decrepit backwoods hotel, now, was it? Huh. Which left only a handful of "probables", even if you did buy into this crap.

"Right, Mike, keep it nice and easy. No harm in talking."

She dumped the remains of the sandwich on the arm of the chair and walked over to the kid in the corner.

"Hey, Jake; you wanna tell me what you're doing here?"
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
13:32 / 22.06.06
It seemed odd to Elijah Cory Anderson that there were so many young people in the hotel. He supposed that there could very well be a lot of parents who thought their kids needed some 'character building' so shipped them off to this place.

'I know I never got the best grades" he thought, 'but they never accepted that I was good at anything, even when I got dads car to run again after I burned out the clutch...'

He sat in the overstuffed armchair eating the sandwich, hoping it wasn't poisoned. 'What I need,' he realized 'is some way to defend myself against these killers,' With that he walked to the fireplace and grabbed a large poker.

"Hey boss! How much of the furniture in this place is made of wood?"
 
 
gridley
15:00 / 22.06.06
Vince settles back in his chair, tossing back his sixth (seventh? eighth?) drink.

"Well, Clementine, it's like this", he says. "I really can't believe any of the staff would do something like this. I've talked to most of them and they seem like good people. A little dull maybe, but that just makes me trust them more."

Vince glances around the room and lowers his voice, "There is one exception though... that bellhop with the ventriloquist dummy. Those things are creepy enough as is, but a couple times I've heard him talking to it. And it didn't sound like they were practicing the act if you catch my drift."

He sees Clementine shiver and wishes he had a jacket to lend her. The fire's dying and Vince wonders if there's any more wood to throw in. The hotel was meant to be shutting down and supplies are likely to be low. He grabs a quilt from one of the chairs and tosses it to Clementine.

"Keep yourself warm," he says as he notices a figure in the distance. "See that heavy metal kid over there. I also get a weird vibe off of him. Call it a prejudice, but you hear weird stories about their sort and it can't all be made up, right?

"And now that I think about it... it seems a bit odd that that insurance salesman just popped up so late into the storm. I took a look out the window a few hours ago and the roads looked completely unpassable. So where the hell did he come from?"

Now it's Vince's turn to shiver. But he knows there's no quilt that's going to help that.
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
15:15 / 22.06.06
"I'm going to have to extend voting until Sunday because of how GODDAMN SLOW you all are. If you haven't nominated by then consider yourself for the chop. Uh, I mean, interrogation. And how do I know what all the furniture is made of, what am I, the King of wood?"
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
17:26 / 22.06.06
Jake looked blandly at Michaela. He had no idea what she was saying, and there was no way in hell he was taking off his headphones with Dwight Evans at bat. Jake will never miss an Evans at-bat. Not since his father (stop THINKING about it boy) went away. He holds up one finger: "Wait a sec."

Minutes pass as the count runs to 3-2. Michaela looks decidedly uncomfortable as Jake's eyes glaze over listening to the tinny broadcast.

And then it's all over. Evans skies one to deep right, only to have it deftly plucked from the air by the right fielder just as it would have cleared the fence and won the game for the Sox. Dwight Evans was robbed of a home run, and it seems like just Jake's luck. He takes off the headphones and looks up at Michaela, focussing on her for the first time. Thankfully, she doesn't remind him even a bit of his mother (that bitch).

"Hello. Sorry to make you wait, but there was a Red Sox game on. Dwight Evans is my hero. What were you saying?"
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
18:23 / 22.06.06
T. C. Poker relaxes in the lounge with a bourbon and ice, glancing around at the other guests.

"Well folks," he says, adjusting his glasses with his middle finger. "I suppose somebody has to be first. I don't really know any of you, and don't really want to get involved, but since I'm going to miss that Friday appointment now anyhow, I may as well stay for the duration.

Killers? Sheesh, I guess I'd have to vote for Ricky (Joy Division), and then only because Charlie kinda creeps me out."
Then he turns apologetically to Ricky, making sure to avoid Charlie's wooden stare. "I'm sorry, chap," he says.
 
 
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21:45 / 22.06.06
"Please, the magic word is please," thought Shiney. He'd managed to zip around from the bar to the reception and back using the Big Trak he'd been given that nice writer's family last year. the insurance salesman had got his goat. In he waltzes after the place got cut off and then he proceeds to drink the diminishing bourbon supplies. He might have let it go at any other time that at no point had he been tipped or THANKED for his service, but he knew his composure had been so shot by this new arrival's demeanour that he knew he would never get to the next level on the new Kangaroo machine.
To top it all, he still hadn't heard the calming strains of Moon River. Something small wing "ping" in his brain. "TC Poker, you're a big fat asswipe!" he shouts. Then becomes immobile as he realises he has just doomed this game to an 18 rating by the standards of profanity at the time. He's just turned a creepy flick into a no-holds barred slasher. Consarn it to bill.
 
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
02:10 / 23.06.06
Steve pauses from eyeing the chick getting talked up by the piano man- she's hot!- and considers who to nominate. His attention rests on this stoned-looking heavy metal dork wandering around. Steve knows the type, at the bottom of the school, nerds and losers all with their stupid black clothes, ugly girlfriends, and only vague familiarity with the concept of bathing. Besides, some of the music they listen to is totally whack- all about murders and death and war and stuff. Plus, the kid probably plays Dungeons and freaking Dragons. What a loser! If anybody's going to be driven to the brink of insanity and go on a killing spree, it's a skinny dude in a greasy Black Sabbath t-shirt.

"Yeah. It's definitely that metal dweeb," says Steve to nobody in particular. "Krung? What kind of a name is that?"

Job done, he scans the room again. Where the hell is Sally? Whatever. Plenty of fish in this hotel, and all the time in the world to catch them. With his good looks and charms there's no way he's coming up empty.
 
 
Baz Auckland
02:42 / 23.06.06
Capt. Barry stares into the mirror behind the bar and tries to dispel the memories of Da Nang... Time for another drink...

"I like you, Shiney. I always liked you. You were always the best of them. Best goddamned bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine. Or Portland, Oregon, for that matter. How about a beer?"

He hated sending men to their death, but sometimes it just had to be done...

"Alright. I say it's Luke Xavier (LyleX) that killed that sonofabitch."
 
  

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