Only for one person at a time.* This was the one simple rule of the Stonebark Hotel. But there were five people inside it at the moment, all at the same time. They were gathered in the lobby clutching their bags and suitcases, some tagged in cursive distant names, some untagged akin to runaways, some containing the hidden glare of an old canine bark.
“Пълен абсурд!“ exclaimed a dark-browed man with a twisted ferocious mustache sparkled with ginger.
“Pardon, what was that you were saying?” the remaining four quizzed but their eyes only, though it was audible enough.
The man, who was a historian, cleared his gloomy aura with an energetic wave. It dispersed in the still air above their heads and as it did he smiled.
“Let me deliver that in a more readable fashion – Pulen absurd!” he repeated and the other four guests semi-nodded, set more at ease by the appearance and usage of the English alphabet this time round.
“It is brutally absurd, yes, but we are all desperate and be damned Stonebark’s rules! I am not leaving….and, well neither is anyone else…of you.” No one had demanded they leave the hotel, but the golden-haired huntsman who had just spoken had cashed in his insurance. Just in case.
“But if there’s only one bed, then what?” he continued.
“Абсурд бе! Триетажен хотел с две крила…What I mean to stress is that what you are implying is impossible and highly improbable.”
The huntsman frowned and beckoned the other three to include themselves into the conversation.
“Well viewed from both exterior and interior, If say there is only one bed, therefore only one room, located within one floor, containing one door that logically should lead to the mentioned room and bed, then shouldn’t we at least entertain the possibility of us having to share that one bedroom?” It was a small woman counting the many variables on the long and knobby fingers of her left hand while the ones on her right twisted an unruly lock of curly grey hair.
Some quick calculations were made.
“I’m not sharing any beds, or rooms, or doors, or floors. I demand my own privacy as I’m sure you do yours as well.” The man was thin and lanky and in a possession of a great number of wrinkles set around thunderstorm eyes glaring from a bony face, shaped by an elongated skull. His matter of fact tone was somewhat frowned upon.
“I will just have to second that opinion, though not as harshly. I would like privacy and the full size of a bed just for myself and Mulberry here.” The small woman who spoke next shook gently her handbag which was now loudly snoring.
The five exchanged a cacophony of arguments each out bidding the next with the value of a self-owned, or bought for the night room. Each fought for the importance of having the utmost privacy and ownership of an individual bed. Fast enough they were out of breath and the bidding had reached astronomical proportions of the impossible.
“Arguments aside, friends, what if we arrive to a discovery that the room is indeed only one? If each of us takes up the exact same size portion of the bed, we’d equal in space and use the room to its full permitted potential and therefore the bed in its full capacity, no?” The grey-haired woman urged them with hopeful wide eyes.
“But is the bed big or small? Because if it is on the tiny side we’d have to slice and dice to fit each individual body shape and that’s just not good enough for me personally.” The huntsman propped himself on his rifle. (Yes, he has a rifle, he’s a huntsman after all.)
The old woman set down her Mulberry containing bag and began sketching a quick asymmetrical illustration of a bed with five stick figures on it, but because she used her fountain pen on one of the disposable hotel handkerchiefs it ended up resembling a melting pond with hybrid frog characters.
“Well, it gives a sort of an idea…”
“I’d vote big – много голямо, просторно и udobno leglo!” The dark-browed man stretched in anticipation, completely dismissing the puzzled but still-semi accepting in half-understanding stares of his lobby buddies.
“Me as well – big! Huge even,” erupted into laughter the huntsman. (the rifle, remember?)
“Well I don’t want to offset the vote so, I say big!” the woman’s grey curls bobbled.
“I’ll gamble on a large one as well,” the thunderstorm eyes of the tall man showed some yellow lightning.
“Mulberry and I will much appreciate a good night’s rest – a spectacular, large bedroom bed it is!” the woman’s handbag barked excitedly, fully awake.
There was a sizzling noise, a whispering noise, noise that made dog’s ears prickle, that slipped in through the space between window and wall and time. It was a noise coming between the grey haired woman’s teeth.
“If the bed is big would that automatically mean the room is also big? Or would it compensate and trade bed size for room size? And what about the door – will it follow a pattern of big, small, big? Also, also the corridor and then the floor itself…or does it start out to in – floor, corridor, door, room, bed, therefore big, small, big, small, big?”
“Valid questions and observation,” the tall man tapped his inverted chin with an elongated nail.
“I have no problem with either sequence as long as the bed is big,” the huntsman said, the three other visitors nodding.
“Why not have an individual bed each? A floor and a door and a room for everyone present.”
The words belonged to a newcomer, come from somewhere deep inside the layout of the Stonebark Hotel. His mannerisms were foreign and his face was four parts of happy, angry, sad and indifferent. He watched the visitors through deep grey eyes, a hand tucked inside his gold lined robes. A chain of equally rich gold hung loose like a thin mandala from his greyish wrist. It emanated a low hum as he moved inside the center of the lobby where the five stood.
“Who are you? Кой е този мъж?” asked the mustached man.
“The proprietor of the hotel obviously, come to settle our predicament,” stated the huntsman cheerfully while clutching his rifle close.
“Looks more like a lobby boy to me, a piccolo. Isn’t that correct, bell boy?” said the tall man.
“I say he’s a guest here just like us. Which unfortunately would make six and therefore splitting the bed might become more mathematically correct and yet more difficult in practice.” Mulberry barked in agreement from deep within the brown leather bag.
“Didn’t any of you hear what he asked?” the grey curls bobbled up and down with their own gravity. “Sir, whoever you are, what did you mean by what you said?”
The new man showed them his happy-sad face.
“I am a guest here, but I also own this hotel. I am the lobby boy, the receptionist, the cook, the cleaner. I am the Stonebark itself. The rule always applies – only for one person at a time. However you five are here, came through those doors one by one as Destiny perhaps allowed it, but there was and is only one bed on one floor, behind one door, in one room as the hotel’s last guest experienced it too.”
His face was angry and his hair a wild thing on his head, black and white and grey and red.
“Now I cannot abide by my one simple rule even though it is sacred and ancient and a part of me. Despite that you are guests and I generously offer you a bed each.”
“And if we were to refuse?” asked the huntsman.
“We should leave,” stated the thunderstorms in the lanky man’s eyes.
“You cannot,” simply answered the robed stranger. “If you have spent an eon arguing about who gets what piece of bedding be it large or small placed in an ever expanding or constantly shrinking space on a floor which both exists and doesn’t behind a door which may or may not unlock, why do tell are you excited to probe the idea of leaving my hotel?”
“I shan’t want to stay in a place where I am not invited and thought off. Any hotel should have at least three rooms or four beds.” The old woman and the old dog cemented their opinion with a pout and a growl.
“She speaks it fair, my good sir. We came in, but if the situation is as such, we wouldn’t want to be a bother and break the rules.” The tall man closed his eyes in agreement.
“Тъй и тъй сте казали, ако решите и аз тръгвам. That is, I agree as well,” the mustache on the man’s face twitched.
“I’m not exactly a stickler for rules, but your hotel has a most ridiculous one that begs to be broken,” the golden huntsman smiled with a golden tooth.
“There is a sense in what you all say, but if we were to leave, where would we go?” the grey-hared woman pointed at the front door with a long and bony finger decorated in rings with various colored stones. The stranger became sad.
“Out there you will find Nothing. You will see Nothing, hear Nothing, feel Nothing. It will consume you then abandon you to sleep on its doorstep which will remain forever locked and chained. Nothing would be glad to obtain you before you become empty and have nothing more to fill it with. You will never be able to find your way back to the Stonebark.”
“We are prisoners then?!” roared the huntsman visibly startled.
“Trapped with each of both decisions we can make,” grimly announced the tall man, his wrinkles deepening to moon craters.
“Тотален absurd!” exclaimed yet again the dark-browed foreign historian as he sat heavily in one of the arm chairs.
“I have rights, we all do! I demand freedom from both situations, for neither I, nor Mulberry will sleep here or out there!”
“But, there isn’t anything out there…and in here we must abide by a rule, but also break it, thus both offending and agreeing with our host. I believe you lied to us, sir. You will never break your precious rule and you just came to us after we’ve been here for a long time arguing. What is the catch?” The grey woman seemed older and wiser. They all waited in the in-between.
“Well caught my dear lady, my first guest. You are all in a sense trapped.” His robes were absent of sound as barefoot he moved to be amongst them standing taller and thinner. The golden chain chimed, the deep hum it created in its back and forth sway filling in the lobby like some Doomsday music. The happy face was back.
“Out there you too are Nothing, but in here you are guests of the infamous Stonebark hotel. Its rule is what keeps it whole, grounded, tame, everlasting. It keeps the universe in order. You have all been invited in your own time and pace but alas you came together in one day so it posed a problem and I waited to see a solution. You argued within your minds and between each other but agreed to share a bed, a room, a door, a floor. Then you agreed to leave when you felt offended and looked down upon. Only my first guest had doubts which grew when I appeared. Only for one person at a time. And you are five. We must always keep the rule, never break it. That is why there shall be five Stonebark hotels, five corridors, five floors, five doors, five room and five beds for each of you. Can you imagine those?”
The robed stranger’s face was not happy. It was triumphant, a tiny smirk, a sparkle in the pools of dark grey that were his ancient eyes.
“I sure can,” the huntsman who was called D. said first.
“Да, it looks easy enough,” the historian who was named R. said second.
“I suppose so,” spoke the tall man who was named E.
“Mulberry shouldn’t have a problem, nor should I,” excitedly said the old woman whose name was A.
“Identical yet somehow different. I can, yes,” admitted the grey-haired lady who answered to M.
The stranger’s gold chain ceased its humming. He put it back in a pocket in his robe.
“Child’s play, imagination, isn’t it? Now you should say your goodbyes for your rooms await you with the softest beds, hidden behind gold doors, on gold carpeted corridors.”
“We are to be alone?” the curly woman exclaimed suddenly.
“Hang on we haven’t agreed to that,” the huntsman protested.
“Сам сами? С кого…with whom will I drink my tea? I don’t want to be alone!” the dark bushy eyebrowed man cried.
“I have Mulberry as my company but he gets lonely with only little old me all day long.” Mulberry barked, yes he would be sad.
“I prefer solitude. However, in this case in such a large hotel to be alone would be a crime,” the thunderstorm eyes had some rain in them, a light drizzle visible.
The lobby was shifting with circular motions, splaying from itself. A kaleidoscopic view began a slow rotation taking apart furnishing and wall and all creating a new chandelier and chairs and lamps and desks and piano splitting them, becoming them five. It constructed new identical staircases that shot up to a single second floor, spanning a single corridor, down which was only one gold-framed door. It would open with ease to invite each of the five guests into a large, spacious room with golden embroidered curtains, a black starry sky window and in its center they would find a huge soft bed that could fit five people easily. It however would fit only one at a time this night and the nights of eternity which were to follow.
The grey haired woman experienced her lobby slide to the right and her sliding with it to an empty hotel.
“I refuse to be alone!” she yelled to the Stonebark watching her through the eyes of the stranger.
“I am afraid there is a rule, dear guests of mine. The hotel after all can fit only one person at a time.”
The five lobbies clicked into place simultaneously. After a while bags were carried upstairs into empty beautiful rooms and a somewhat familiar receptionist winked at each five guests at the same time. The Stonebark Hotel was full but it anticipated new guests shortly.
*The line used as a prompt for this story was taken from the pages of Neil Gaiman’s “Art Matters“.
Weird fiction & the occasional book review 