David Z. Morris

L'Hotel

 

The first two cab drivers refused to take me to Attica. When the first one drove away abruptly, I was too shocked to do anything but stare after him, speechless. When the second one refused, I managed to croak: “Why?”

 

“Dangerous,” he replied. “Too dangerous.”

 

I was perplexed. The resort had looked lovely online. Athens itself was renowned for its safety, even in the depths of the crisis. Perhaps things were different outside of the city – Attica was something of a suburb.

 

A third driver finally said yes. Both he and his car were a bit rough around the edges. His mop of hair bobbed drearily over the bleached-grey dash of his Ford Taurus when I showed him the address.

 

The winding roads leading away from the city were lined with bleak testaments to Greece’s harrowing decade. Multi-story car dealerships stood empty, their great windows smashed. Anarchist graffiti covered nearly every concrete barrier along the highway.

 

The French and German banks had engineered an escape from their own mania, perversely calling it a ‘bailout’ for the Greeks. This was what was left, when the pensions and public works were gone. As we threaded a small detour, and I spied a DVD rental shop, its aging plastic sign cracked, a gnarled pair of bare feet resting on a dusty countertop.

 

When we arrived at the hotel, I was somewhat reassured. A security guard checked my name against a list before raising the long gate. The main building of the resort was palatial, fronted by huge windows, with a series of bungalows trailing down a slope towards the water. The lobby had a certain modernist timelessness. My room was clean, with a balcony opening onto an expansive view of the cabins, pool, and glistening bay below.

 

I was exhausted from the long flight. The shower, inexplicably, had only a half-door, as well as a steel railing that evoked a hospital. Afterwards, I lay on the bed to review my notes for the conference.

 

The thought of my presentation gave me a slight trill of anticipation. My theories – the details of which would be incomprehensible to a nonspecialist – would push forward discussion of our position as a global society. My minor posting at the rural branch of a midwestern university had given me little standing to promote them. The Greeks were not the only victims of the crisis.

 

They, at least, had this sun, which filtered through the floor-to-ceiling window and quickly lulled me to sleep. I dreamed of large, indistinct figures moving resolutely down shadowy hallways.

 

When I awoke, the light was lower. I felt my stomach rumble.

 

There were three restaurants spread across the resort, but I headed to the one next to the lobby. As I walked, I noticed a series of dark stains on the carpet and walls.

 

I was further perturbed when I reached the restaurant, which I now saw was a crowded, noisy buffet. I asked the host about the other restaurants, and received vague, halting directions towards one near the pool.

 

The pool was on a lower level, and I found myself waiting for the elevator next to a staff member – a young man with dark hair and a thick but neatly-trimmed beard. The elevator was of a tiny, primitive kind common in Greece – barely large enough for two people, with an accordion door that slapped shut haphazardly after we squeezed inside. I never used one of the things without imagining it slipping its moorings as I boarded and violently lopping off my arm or my head.

 

I smiled broadly at the young man, barely a foot away. “A bit crowded, yes?” To my surprise, he did not chuckle, did not even offer a polite smile of acknowledgment. Instead, he stared at me intently, his eyes slightly widened. We stood in awkward silence as we descended. When the door opened again, he disappeared into the darkness in a rush.

 

The Greeks of Attica, I sadly thought, had lost even their famous warmth.

 

I navigated through a few low hallways. When I exited the building, I heard a vague trill of voices, and moved towards it. The bungalows were linked by sloping footpaths and broad, curving stairways, forming a kind of maze. Along many of the paths were shadowed bushes and flowerbeds, and I noticed several cats slinking through them.

 

Two of them – a black and white kitten, and a full-grown grey – positioned themselves in my path and peered up at me, meowing. They had much different faces than American cats – higher and narrower, with deeply angled eyes that showed a profound, even ominous intelligence. I’m quite fond of cats, and leaned over to scratch their ears – but strangely, they ducked out from beneath my fingers, only to meow and stare even more insistently. Their faces were dourly serious behind yellow eyes.

 

I laughed to myself at the oddity of the creatures, then continued towards the pool. I soon found it, flanked by a bar and a dozen or so tables – apparently the restaurant. But the tables were fully occupied, and a man stood before the tables, speaking jovial French. My French is scanty, but I deciphered some vague references to the delicious meal they were anticipating. The crowd laughed gently. Pulsing nightclub music washed out into the night behind him, though noone was dancing.

 

Though my stomach snarled in protest, this was not a scene I was willing to barge into. I turned back the way I had come – but also remembered the third restaurant. I briefly searched a map posted along one of the exterior stairwells, but it seemed barely to correspond to any of the buildings, paths, or landmarks I could see. There was certainly no sign of another restaurant.

 

I retraced my steps and attempted to explain my frustrating situation to the front desk clerk. I asked about the third restaurant. “I’m sorry, sir,” she informed me with a strange coldness, “But that service is available only to our all-inclusive guests.”

 

So I returned to the buffet, defeated. I found the scene as nerve-wracking as I’d feared, crowds jostling to grasp hunks of bread and scoop roasted pork from steam trays. I finally managed to find a table on the outside veranda, and observed my fellow guests as I ate.

 

The vast majority were old, even elderly. They sat in groups of six or eight, chattering in French or German or rough, cockney English. A great many were portly, as if they belonged to an entire race of humanoid melting candles. Again, mind-numbing pop suffused the scene, dancefloor remixes of recent hits and smoothed-over covers of outdated fluff. I risked a sip of the wine I’d fetched from a tap along the buffet, and winced – it was thin as water, yet somehow redolent of poisonous metal.

 

“We have offered them a fine arrangement, Christine. Certainly they could never repay their debts in mere currency.” The string of English, spoken in a firm masculine baritone, hung clear and decisive against the backdrop of a hundred other noises. I looked here and there, trying to be subtle, but could not find the speaker. No more fragments followed.

 

The staff moved through it all furtively, collecting empty plates and fielding brusque demands for specially-made cocktails. Twice, I noticed a server flinch when a piece of silverware dropped to the ground with a sharp clang.

 

As I ate, I also searched in vain for other conference attendees. I saw noone I recognized, or who even vaguely seemed like they might be a colleague. Instead, I noticed a scattering of younger guests, mostly couples. Many were visibly dour, scrolling their phones and ignoring one another – disgruntled, it seemed, at being suckered into overpaying to share a declining resort with its decrepit clientele.

 

Finally, after perhaps one trip too many to the buffet, I returned to my room. I used a minor meditative technique to defuse my frustration at the strangely underwhelming lodgings, and fell into a fitful sleep.

 

*

 

I woke with a few traces of nighttime dread still echoing in my brain, and decided to spend the morning at the pool. I went to the front desk to pick up a beach towel, as I’d been instructed. Instead, the tightly smiling clerk handed me a credit-card sized placard labeled “towel card.”

 

“Please take it to the spa on the first sub-floor,” the young woman explained. “There, you will turn the card in for a towel. After your swim, please return the towel to the spa, and they will give you back the card. Then you must return the card to the front desk to avoid a 10 Euro charge for the towel.”

 

All of this came out in a practiced stream. I pride myself on my generosity and forbearance towards service staff, but my annoyance surged out in an incredulous laugh. “That seems a bit overcomplicated, no?”

 

The clerk’s professional demeanor instantly cracked, replaced by a kind of heartbroken despair. She leaned just slightly forward, and whispered, pleading: “Be grateful, sir. Be grateful despite it all.”

 

I met her eyes for a long second, and saw in them a deep abyss of terror. This was not simply the frustration of a potential philosopher or painter or biologist forced instead to cater to whining foreigners for her bread. It was something much more immediate and dire.

 

I backed away and turned, too unnerved to further object to my errand. I once again risked the tiny elevator to descent into the shadowy bowels of the lower floors. There, I navigated low corridors as I searched for the spa. I passed unmarked doors scattered between the numbered hotel rooms. Grim-faced housekeepers retrieved linens from both marked and unmarked rooms. More strange stains could be seen on the hallway carpets, on the walls, large circles of dark moisture, as if something were leaking from beneath.

 

It might have been ten minutes or forty before I finally found the spa and traded my precious card for a luxurious, deep-blue towel, gently but firmly refusing the desk clerk’s suggestion of an expensive massage.

 

I was outside then, finally in the sunlight. I marveled at my own near-panic, triggered merely by a stray glance and confusing architecture. I ignored the strange-eyed cats as they again gathered to mewl at me insistently.

 

The pool was beautiful and expansive, drenched in the pure crystalline sun of a cloudless sky. Older guests were splayed out on beach chairs, doing Sudoku puzzles and reading gossip rags in a variety of languages. But again, pulsating, hard-edged dance music washed over it all, and I sensed a strange suspicion from the older guests.

 

I anxiously continued past the pool, clutching my strangely precious towel, but found more disappointment along the shoreline. There was no beach after all – only a long, low seawall punctuated by metal staircases descending into the chilly-looking water. And here, too, the inane music penetrated, emerging from speakers shaped like rocks.

 

Worse, at certain points, different musics overlapped insidiously, bits of Stevie Wonder clashing jarringly with a faster dancefloor rhythm. Robotic women’s voices also periodically came over the loudspeakers, inviting patrons to an array of fitness classes and cheerless ‘dance contests’ unfolding at the pool’s edges.

 

I returned to the pool and hunched into a lounge chair, hoping to prepare for my presentation. But my mounting frustration at the hotel clouded my thoughts. Did this resort’s customers choose it because they wished to be infantilized? Controlled? Constantly told how much fun they were having?

 

The confusing, winding geography. The incessant noise. The pointless bureaucracy. The class distinctions, bluntly enforced. This hotel, surely, symbolized a possible dark future for Europe. For the world.

 

“Good lord, why are you at the pool?” I looked up sharply, instinctive shame washing through me even before I recognized one of the conference’s main organizers, standing over me in a white suit, brilliant in the sun. “We’ve been searching the place for you – don’t you know your panel started twenty minutes ago?”

 

I had lost track of time – or perhaps time had left me. I ran uphill behind the man in the white suit, nearly tripping as the cats rushed at my feet. “No time to dress, you’ll have to present like that,” he huffed dourly over his shoulder. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken a risk on you.” The elevator shuddered closed, and I was mortified to see I was dripping wet, splashing salty pool-water all over my benefactor’s fine attire. He stared at me, silent and wide-eyed, through the elevator’s long descent.

 

The conference was being held in a single long room. Dozens of great scholars sat along a table in the shape of an ovoid ring, lit from above by harsh flourescent bulbs. There were no visible walls, only an impenetrable darkness on all sides.

 

At the far end of the room, a speaker finished his remarks, but as I entered the room – wearing only a bathing suit and a towel, gripping notes smudged with saltwater – all eyes turned to me. I recognized many of the faces, but with a shock, also saw that they were the faces of the aging, melted tourists. The youthful visages that graced so many book-jackets were now swaddled in liver-spotted flesh.

 

“Just in time,” came a voice. “It is your turn to contribute to the discourse.” I recognized the voice – the  same one that had floated so mysteriously through the chatter of last night’s buffet. A banker’s voice.

 

“I’m sorry for my appearance,” I stammered, “I, I simply lost track of time . . .” There was no reply, no effort to reprimand or assuage. The lectern simply waited at the head of the table, silent and empty.

 

I determined to make the best of it, straightening my back and arranging the thick blue towel across my shoulders like a cloak. Perhaps I looked a fool, but I would let my words speak for themselves. I would have no other chance.

 

My notes were a disaster, blue tears streaming through sentences already dissected one too many times. Yet despite it all, I found myself speaking smoothly, confidently – laying out the consequences and implications of the global financial collapse in terms none had ever quite used before. Language itself, I  argued, had been captured by finance – and with it, the spirit of poetry and humanity itself. The collapse of all systems into process-fodder, into raw materials for machines, had rendered humans mere objects.

 

“We have ripped the voice out of the body,” I declared, nearing my climax. “The word is no longer a factor in the conjunction of talking affective bodies, but a connector of signifying functions transcoded by the economy.”

There was a sudden gush of laughter from the scholars – abrasive, derisive, hateful laughter.

 

“Berardi,” one voice yelled. Then another and another - “Berardi.” “Berardi.” “It is Berardi.”

 

I recognized the name, and fought against a horrifying realization. A figure arose from far down the great table, prodded by men sitting to either side. He was slim, unlike the others, though white-haired, and dressed in a fashionable black suit. He was pushed towards me, slapped on the back and poked with pens, his body language reluctant, even embarrassed. He did not meet my eyes as he drew closer, but finally held out a small orange volume.

 

I recognized the book. Of course I did. Berardi held it out almost shyly, pointing to a single paragraph on an early page.

 

The word is no longer a factor in the conjunction of talking affective bodies, it read, but a connector of signifying functions transcoded by the economy.

 

I stumbled back in abject horror. “I have never . . . I do not know this book.” I turned from Berardi, towards the assembled eminences. “I have never read this man’s work!” I was shouting now, desperate. “You must believe me!”

 

Strong hands seized me from behind. “We believe you,” came that voice again. “We have all been where you are.”

 

I then saw that formless shapes had seized Berardi as well – and I noted the resignation around his eyes. “I knew this day must come,” he sighed.

 

Our hands were tied, and a section of the table was lifted out of place so we could be pushed to the interior of the long oval. A section of the floor began to open with a machinic grinding. Steam escaped from the parting metal lips, obscuring for a moment the body strapped to the rising platform.

 

The shape did not struggle or plead or make noise. As the mist receded, I recognized the face – the bearded young staffer from the elevator. He was awake, but stared directly at the ceiling. For a moment, I thought he was dead – but then his eyes twitched and found me.

 

“Be grateful,” the young man said, gazing into my eyes. “Be grateful despite it all.”

 

Then a disembodied hand plunged a golden fountain pen deep into his neck.

 

As the Greek’s blood gushed out, I was pushed forward, Berardi beside me. “I have fought long and hard,” he grunted, with a rough Italian accent. “You, perhaps less so.”

 

And then we were both drenched in the crimson flow, our heads held firmly, sputtering, retching. I roared, spat, struggled, hissed – but it did no good. The blood touched first my lips, then my tongue, and soon I was drinking it as if it were what I had sought all along. I felt it moving through my body, that fresh life, enriching me, expanding me, as the groans of the young boy became a kind of music.

 

 

 

David Z. Morris lives in New York City, where by day he’s a journalist covering technology for BREAKER magazine. His weird fiction, fantasy, and horror tales have previously appeared in Word Riot, Metaphorosis, The Opiate, and Steampunk Magazine.