ghost and hotel
2020-08-10
ghost
We were in a new office space, and I had my own nice private office. But I kept forgetting where it was. I would walk right past it and then be among the common seating area, and would get flustered.
Eventually, I found it and tried to commit it to memory. Said out loud the location (first hallway, last door on the right).
I was kind of setting up my office when LB came in. I showed her a sign I had stolen from the breakroom. It was huge and garish and obnoxious. A wide, low folded fan of cardboard meant to sit on a breakroom table and take up nearly the whole damn thing. Black, with bold yellow scary lettering, enforcing some asinine office policy.
I told her there were half a dozen signs like this in here, which is too many. And I hate signs anyway. Nobody reads them, and they donāt accomplish anything.
She, a graphic designer who believes in the power of print and signs, was offended.
Later, I was leaving the building when I spotted Big Joe down the hallway, coming up some steps, coming toward me. I definitely did not want to talk to Big Joe, and started trying to think of a way I could avoid him.
Luckily, the woman next to me dropped her phone. I caught it and handed it back to her and turned to face her. Struck up a conversation and avoided Big Joe entirely.
Then I was at some kind of waystation in a rural area. A rest stop perhaps. There were some young people there that I might have known but not really, and we were all chatting familiarly. In fact the whole thing had the air of an extended family reunion.
It was already winding down, and as the last few people left, I was saying goodbye and thank you to the caretaker of the waystation, a small, stout old woman. Short, wiry, white hair. Overalls. That kind of chin-jutted-out toothless set of the mouth.
She said to come around anytime and help her make some lavender beer. When I inquired, she showed me around to the back of the waystation where there was a large yard teeming with life. Huge billowing towering beds of plants. She pointed out all the ingredients, while cautioning to be careful of the ghost. Heās such a pest.
Sure enough, an empty-necked, floating bowtie came a-floating by as we were talking, and I jumped up to grab it, and managed to grab a hold of it in my hand. It wiggled and warped in my hand, and then these little specks that looked like flies came shooting out of it at me, peppering me in the face and neck and shoulders.
The little old woman screamed, āGhost rats!ā and ran away, and I started to crumple under the ghostly assault.
tags: #ghost
hotel
I lived at this hotel. Kind of an old rickety thing, but desperately clinging on to its last threads of dignity and class. There was a doorman who served as a security guard and bouncer.
Coming down the rickety outdoor stairs, I dropped a whole boxful of small belongings and trinkets and they fell through the steps down into the earthen underside where derelicts and unfortunates lived. And I had to go down under the earth to try to get them all back.
I slowly fell on to hard times, and out of the good graces of the hotel, and eventually lost my welcome there. I had to sneak or bluff my way in a couple times to get my things and wrap up loose ends.
The doorman eventually confronted me, saying he saw enter the hotel earlier when I wasnāt supposed to.
I made it back up to my room one more time, and there were a couple of us there, and then these big muscly brutes busted in and started pinning us down and beating us.
Commentary:
Both of these were nightmares, scary and uncomfortable enough to wake me up.