A Night in Cloudsea
A set of automatic doors, their plastic frames grey and matte with the abuse of time, watched Tiffany approach. She was walking straight at them, not travelling particularly quickly but obviously intending to make use of their entryway and presenting a textbook example of automatic door approach. Nothing could have been clearer than her desire to have the doors open for her to pass through and so, naturally, they juddered their way open only when she’d had to come to a complete stop in front of them.
More out of mild exasperation than any genuine hurry Tiffany turned sideways to squeeze through the slowly opening doorway as soon as the aperture would allow. Her trailing suitcase on its erratic and mischievous caster wheels turned its widest side forward to slow her down again.
“Not wasting a second there, I see.” Rachel observed. Tiffany could hear the smirk without seeing her face.
“I just don’t understand why these things can never be set up properly. All it takes is for them to open earlier or faster. Either one is fine. What’s the point of having them automated if you have to stop in front of them anyway?” Tiffany complained, as she had done many times before.
“Least these ones don’t have a button to operate.” Goaded Rachel from behind.
“Don’t get me started.” Tiffany moaned, turning to give her colleague an exasperated look. Just as predicted, Rachel was wearing a puckish smirk across her face which only grew upon seeing Tiffany’s hypothetical annoyance. “I mean, ‘Here, this door will open for you to stop you having to use your arms. But you have to use your arms to push this button instead, and then you have to stand still and wait for it to slowly grind its way open’. Who thought that was helping?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel shrugged. “Maybe someone who was concerned about the differently-abled being able to operate doors easily?” she goaded.
“Yeah, and that’s fair enough, but why design them so that you can’t get through them any other way? It’s ridiculous.” Tiffany persisted, not willing to let the door makers off so lightly.
Rachel cackled. The degree to which her colleague’s life was affected by automated door design and manufacture never ceased to amuse her.
Finding no supportive voice in her campaign for dual-use doors, Tiffany turned to look where she was going again and dragged her bag over to the hotel reception desk. A broad, faux-pine surface at approximately shoulder-height extended across the width of the foyer in front of them, the reception desk was laden with plastic paper holders, touch-screen monitors of unclear purposes, a bell, some discarded pens, and a couple of charity collection tins. It was somehow off-putting to see the ‘Boat Tours of the Coast’ leaflet partially obscured by a ‘Save our Dangerously Overstretched Lifeboat Association’ collection pot, but it made Tiffany more grateful that she was here for business and not leisure.
Tiffany rang the bell as she reached the alarmingly tall desk, leaning into it with her collar bones because nothing else was particularly feasible at that height. From behind her she heard Rachel burst into laughter.
“What the hell is that?” she managed. “Why have they built a wall around reception?”
Tiffany gave a broad shrug without turning around, holding both arms out wide in a crude ‘W’ shape.
“Please tell me you have forms to fill out. That would be priceless.” Rachel begged, still chuckling.
As Tiffany tried to work out why that would elicit such joy, a door at one of the desk-enclosed space opened to reveal absolutely nothing. It then closed again, and the suggestion of soft footsteps tapped along the reception area. Tiffany risked a puzzled look back at Rachel, who appeared equally unsure of the situation but was enjoying it far more. Reasoning that someone must have started to attend the bell and then remembered they had something else to do first, Tiffany decided to wait in her collar-bone lean for a while longer. This gave her a perfect view of the receptionist’s head, as it rose silently and steadily upwards from behind the desk.
“Agh!” Tiffany exclaimed, jerking backwards and stumbling on her loosely-fitted driving pumps. Rachel found this deeply entertaining.
“Are you OK, madam?” the receptionist asked, her voice as sharp and thin as a stiletto blade, and just about as welcoming. Her head was still getting higher, revealing a set of small shoulders.
“I- yes, sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to rise up like that.” Tiffany explained, regaining her balance and composure.
“Well you did ring the bell…” the receptionist reminded, sounding mildly aggrieved.
“Yes but… never mind. My colleague and I would like to check in, please. Tiffany Weathers and Rachel Strongborn.”
“Certainly madam. My name is Sue and it’s my pleasure to be checking you in today. On behalf of Affordalux hotels I would like to welcome you both to the Cloudsea Affordalux, and wish you a pleasant stay for however long you intend to remain here.” Sue said, not once making eye contact with anything except her computer monitor, and sounding about as sincere as the ‘This bar contains 2 servings’ statement on the chocolate bar Tiffany had eaten earlier. “Do either of you know how it works here at Affordalux, or is this the first time staying with us?”
“Uhhh… I’ve never been at an Affordalux before.” Tiffany answered, starting to get worried about why staying there might require instructions on ‘how it works’.
“Me either.” Rachel confirmed.
“OK great.” Sue said, making them believe it was anything but. “Here at Affordalux we help to keep the cost of your stay low and the disruption to your stay minimised by removing unnecessary hassles. There will be no maid knocking on your door to swap the towels or bedding, no cart of fresh sheets blocking the corridors, and no room service trollies rattling noisily past your room here at Affordalux, because we leave the power and decision making in your, yes your, hands.” Sue continued to recite to her computer. If ‘passionless performance’ had a spirit animal, it would have been Sue in that exact moment. Tiffany wore her best attempt at polite interest with an awkward smile, and Rachel gaped with an open-mouthed grin. “Every morning it’s your choice whether you want fresh towels, fresh sheets, or a cleaned lavatory. If you are happy with your room as is then you can simply walk away knowing that it will not be disturbed by man or beast in your absence. If instead you think your towel is too heavily soiled for even a second’s further drying, then you may deposit it in the laundry bins just outside reception, and claim a new towel from the vending machines nearby. A nominal fee is required to access your towel, in order to prevent abuse of the system. Receipts are not available for this service. The same goes for sheets, and loo brushes can also be claimed from the machine if you feel that you have devastated your lavatory beyond reasonable continued usage.”
Tiffany’s polite smile had fallen away to shocked disgust. This was the best that their employer had been able to secure for them; a do-it-yourself budget hotel experience. Barely stifled laughter from Rachel wasn’t helping.
“Could you both please fill in these forms so that I can assign you your keys?” Sue asked, producing two pieces of A4 paper from somewhere behind the desk and placing them on its broad surface.
“Yesssss.” Rachel celebrated as she saw Tiffany lifting her arms up to neck height to grab the form.
As Tiffany pulled a pen towards herself she felt it jerk to a halt suddenly. It was secured to the desk by a hitherto unseen chain. Rolling her eyes, she looked for the next pen and saw that it too was chained into place. In fact, every pen across the surface of the desk was attached a tiny series of metal links as a deterrent against theft.
“Do you have an unchained pen, please? It’s incredibly awkward for me to write at this height.” Tiffany asked the receptionist, with strained chortles from Rachel in her ear.
“All the pens I have are on the desk, madam.” Sue answered irritably.
“Do you have one to hand, Rachel?”
“They’re all in the recesses of my bag, sorry.” Rachel answered, clearly not sorry at all.
Tiffany groaned and accepted her fate. Standing on her tiptoes she could just about read the form clearly, and with arms unnaturally high for writing she awkwardly scribbled her details onto paper. Every time she started a new line the pen pulled taut on its chain and forced her to stretch a little further, until eventually her body was stretched very nearly as far as her patience. Eventually though, with thighs burning, collarbones aching from the pressure of being pushed into the desk, and shoulders cramping, Tiffany finished and pushed the paper back to Sue.
“Oh, here’s a pen.” Rachel said, producing a biro from her pocket with an evil grin.
For the sake of professionalism Tiffany said nothing, but her face was a thunderstorm drifting towards a rotten fishing vessel. The cackling fisherman didn’t seem to mind.
“Now, I can see that you have booked one of our Affordalux Economy Maximiser room, which means that you can expect a sleek, streamlined experience without unnecessary frills adding to your bill.” Sue said, resuming her rehearsed script once she’d received Rachel’s form. “Kettle? Not required. Hairdryer? A luxury. Soaps? Who needs expensive hotel soap when their own works just fine? There’s an electric heater if you’re cold, a window if you’re hot, and low-usage cistern to keep those water costs down. Your room is number 110, with a stunning view over the delivery entrance. Just follow this corridor behind you to the right, and you’ll see your room on the left.”
Sue slid a piece of card across the desk.
“That has your two key cards in it. Enjoy your stay.” She finished, with a plastic smile.
“Thanks.” Tiffany accepted.
“One sec.” Rachel interjected. “What was our other room number? 110 and…”
“Other room?” Sue queried.
“Yeah… one for her and one for me.”
“No, you’re both booked in together for a twin room.” The receptionist clarified.
“…” Rachel said, perfectly clearly.
“…” Tiffany echoed.
“The booking is for two people, Tiffany Weathers and Rachel Strongborn, for a twin Affordalux Economy Maximiser.”
“But… there… is there another room that we-” Tiffany started.
“I’m afraid we’re fully booked.” Sue told her, before too much hope could be worked up. “So if that will be all, I’ll be on my way. Enjoy your room, ladies.”
“Wait, but we don’t want to share a room!” Tiffany protested, but Sue’s head had already disappeared into the depths from whence it had risen. “Come back a minute!” Quiet footsteps once again danced around the reception area. The door was opened by forces unseen.
“Don’t just walk away from us!” Rachel commanded. The door closed. There was only silence.
“For goodness sake.” Tiffany cursed. “Who booked this for us? Was it Gerald?”
“Yeah I think so. He normally goes through the company approved travel agent though.”
“So they both missed the fact that they’d ordered a twin room for some reason?”
“I guess so. Or maybe it was deliberate because they’re thick. All we can really say with confidence is that it was a team effort to screw up this badly. So what are we going to do? I don’t know where any other hotels are, but we can search about online and give one a call or something.” Suggested Rachel, for once trying to solve a problem rather than laugh at it.
“Could do, but I don’t really trust finance to honour the expenses claim for something we book ourselves. It might be done correctly or something, which Strugcorp apparently doesn’t hold any truck with. We just have to share the room, I suppose, and then give Gerald hell when we’re back in the office. At least it’s a twin and not a double, so we have separate beds. It won’t be the end of the world.”
“You’re aware that I scream in my sleep and suffer with night slaps, right?” Asked Rachel.
“I… no, I wasn’t.” Tiffany revealed with a heavy pit forming in her stomach. “What are night slaps?”
“They’re when I sleepwalk out of bed, slap someone in the next bed, and then get back into my own bed without knowing a thing has happened.” Rachel explained, adding a wholly unnecessary and tremendously exuberant slap mime into the mix. If it was representative, then Tiffany worried that her whole face might be rent asunder.
“That sounds… implausible.” She assessed suspiciously.
“I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself unless we can get another room.”
Tiffany groaned. Even for a work trip with Strugcorp, this was looking bleak. She hated their policy of booking the cheapest hotel rooms on the market, and then forcing the employees to pay for it and claim the money back via the cumbersome and unhelpful expenses process. She hated Gerald for being unable to correctly check a booking and she hated the travel agent for thinking that work colleagues would ever want to share a twin room. A part of her wanted to hate Rachel pre-emptively for a slapping which might arrive in the night, but Tiffany held that one off until it was strictly necessary.
“Come on. We’ll get into the one room we have and then try to sort things out.”
“Yeah, fine.” Rachel agreed, grabbing the key cards from the desk. “110 was to the right, she said?”
“Yep.” Tiffany confirmed, striding away along the corridor. A unique combination of aromas greeted them as they walked deeper into the body of the Affordalux, unifying the least appealing aspects of cleaning supplies, old carpets, and peeling wallpaper.
“There won’t be any Wi-Fi here, will there?” Rachel asked, already fearing that she knew the answer.
“I really doubt it.” Tiffany answered. “They don’t want us to have fresh towels or fresh bedding, there’s no breakfast included with our rooms, and they want us to clean our own shared toilet. Wi-Fi is a whole different world of ‘barely adequate service’ away from this.”
“Fair.” Rachel agreed.
“I mean at this rate” Tiffany started, reaching the door of room 110 “I’ll be surprised if they’ve even graced us with the luxury of a carpet. Can I have a key, please?”
“Here.” Rachel said, handing over one of the two plastic cards contained in the cardboard. “Where does it go?”
“Well… I erm…” Tiffany stammered, examining the door and reaching the conclusion that her card couldn’t easily go anywhere. As far as she could tell there was a handle with no keyhole, and otherwise nothing else on the door. “I can’t see anywhere for it. There’s normally a slot or something isn’t there?”
“Usually, yeah.” Agreed Rachel. She cast her eyes across the door and then started scanning around the frame. “I don’t see anything either.”
“Are there instructions on the card holder?” Tiffany asked, clutching at straws which would certainly be a purchasable extra for her room.
“Um… yes. Looks like we…” Rachel started, but then her jaw dropped and she simply stared.
“What does it say?” Tiffany had time to ask, before Rachel collapsed on herself with laugher. “What? What are we meant to do?” Tiffany asked again with mounting worry.
“It… it… we…” Rachel tried, but the quaking laughter in her body denied her the ability to speak. “Just… look…” she managed, holding the card up to Tiffany for her inspection.
Taking a look at the card, Tiffany saw that step one was a perfectly normal instruction to remove the card from its holder. Step two was to hold the door handle securely, and step three was to…
“Oh gods! They expect us to just jimmy the door open with the card?!”
Rachel’s cackles found a renewed vigour.
“’Take card, insert it firmly between door and frame at the level of the latch, and hook latch open’ it says. Their idea of a key is to make us repeatedly break into our own room! The cheap goons won’t even pay for locks!” Tiffany fumed with wide eyes, as if staring at the instructions could make them change into something more reasonable. Rachel fell to her knees. “Well I’m glad you’re finding it funny. Anyone could just do this and get into our room. I swear to God if there’s not a lock on the other side of this door…”
Following the instructions despite how angry they made her, Tiffany worked her key card into the gap between the door and the frame. Feeling around for the latch she wiggled the card up and down, feeling it bend unnervingly as the poor alignment between door and frame made itself apparent. With a gentle tap she heard and felt contact with the latch.
“This is not what I had in mind for this trip.” She mumbled to herself. Rachel looked up briefly, and then scrunched her eyes closed with laughter again.
“Come on… come on...” Tiffany pleaded with the door, appealing to the reason and helpfulness of a piece of wood. The card stuck and jammed this way and that, fighting her attempts to manoeuvre it at every turn and threatening to snap in a devastating ping of weak plastic. “Whoever thought this was a good idea was an idiot.” She seethed, before gradually concluding that no-one at all would have thought this idea to be good, they just went ahead and did it anyway.
Suddenly Tiffany felt the resistance of the card give way and it slid back behind the latch.
“Ooh!” she said excitedly. “OK, now it should just…” With more force than she’d normally like to put on a piece of thin plastic, Tiffany pulled at the card and felt the latch start to slide inwards. “I think we’re in, Rach.” She said to her cackling colleague, who was just starting to calm down on the floor.
A gentle click heralded the final release of the latch, and under Tiffany’s consistent pressure the door swung outwards.
“That was ridiculous.” She said, shaking her head. “Get up, Rachel and get into this room quickly. I’m not going through that nonsense more than I have to.”
Slowly, with a series of aftershock giggles, Rachel regained her feet.
“Nice one!” she congratulated sincerely. “You did a good job with that; bet you’ve got a past of burglary behind you, right?”
“If this is what working at Strugcorp is like, then I might turn to that as a backup career.”
Rachel grinned and dragged her case into the room. Happy that there was someone securely across the threshold, Tiffany grabbed her own case and followed Rachel inside, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Where’s the light switch?” Rachel asked. The room was almost pitch black from what Tiffany hoped to be thick blackout blinds, rather than the simple absence of a window.
Tiffany slapped about at the wall for the tell-tale plastic shape of a light switch, and heard Rachel doing the same.
“Ah!” Rachel exclaimed, shortly before a combined plastic click and electrical crackle. Faint yellow light started to seep out of what was hopefully a stained light fitting, rather than a drastically malfunctioning smoke detector.
It didn’t take long for Tiffany to wish there was no light anymore. She saw Rachel standing in what she would usually have assumed to be a decommissioned prison cell, except for the fact that the Human Rights Act would have rendered such a cell to be illegal at the best of times. A deep shadow was cast across her head from a long, languishing strip of peeled wallpaper, so Tiffany couldn’t immediately see whether Rachel was laughing or crying, but she assumed the latter should be true. Where the peeled wallpaper, which Tiffany realised to be heavily textured with something rather like wood-shavings, had previously been was a section of bare plaster that oozed with wet wallpaper paste.
“This is grim.” Tiffany assessed with a grimace.
“That’s one word for it.” Rachel said. “Have you seen the radiator?”
Tiffany looked to the far wall and saw the offending heating item. Where white had once been was now a range of smouldering colours from pale brown to bubbled black, extending not only across the body of the radiator itself but also a significant distance along the wall as well. The carpet below was dusted with ash from the conflagration of something, on which Tiffany felt uncomfortable speculating.
“We’re definitely going to burn to death if we turn that on. It’s a guarantee.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. We should switch it on just before we leave.” Rachel determined.
“It would probably be doing the world and the hotel a favour, but I’m going to stick with my general anti-arson position for now.” Tiffany placated. “I’m also taking the bed farthest from the fire risk.”
“So I’ll have better access to it and you’ll have plausibly deniability?”
“What? No. But I can see the problem with my plan. I’m not changing it, but I can see the problem.”
“Fair enough.” Rachel accepted. “Enjoy your pillow, then.”
Tiffany looked across at the beds and saw that where a pillow would normally have been placed, the Affordalux had instead provided just the case. From the lines and folds across it Tiffany suspected that the maid had made a decent effort at fluffing it regardless.
“Oh…” Tiffany muttered. In reality the pillow was only as disappointing as the rest of the bed; the mattress springs were visible even through the duvet, providing a double-whammy of dread for under-back protrusions and how thin the duvet truly was, and with one of the feet missing from the base of the bed it was currently settled at an ambitious angle for sleep. Rachel’s bed seemed to have fared better on the structural integrity front, but being so close to the arsonist radiator it remained a marginally less appealing prospect.
“I just… I am so mad at Gerald for doing this to us. Are we really worth that little to Strugcorp?”
“Looks that way. Still, we're here now...” Rachel said with a sigh. “Best have a crap in the bath I guess.”
Tiffany chuckled half-heartedly.
“I’m not joking, Tiff.” Clarified Rachel, having not received the shocked reaction she was after.
“Wha- No! You can't do that!” Tiffany protested, abandoning her attempt at amusement under the acute awareness that she too would have to use the bath. Baths weren’t famed for their flushing capabilities.
“I can, and I think I will.” Rachel defied.
“Don't. You. Dare.”
“She who dares wins.” She riposted confusingly.
“Wins what? A crap in the ba-”
“A crap in the bath!” She declared triumphantly.
“That's disgusting. Why do you even want to do that?”
“Because it would adequately summarise my feelings on this room, and it seems like it would fit in with the rest of the décor fairly well.” Rachel informed her. “I doubt we’ll get very far at the front desk, Gerald won’t be in the office at this time of day, and I don’t have the number for the travel agent to complain directly. This is the only way to show that I am unhappy with our room that really gets to the heart of the matter unambiguously.”
“We'll get thrown out and fined, Rachel. At least give me a chance to look for another hotel.” Pleaded Tiffany.
“Look, you can try to find a last minute room at nine pm if you want, but one way or another, there is going to be crap in that bath before we leave.”
Tiffany sighed and sat on the foot of her bed, having to engage her thighs to stop herself sliding down the bed-slope and onto the floor. Having to spend the night away for work was depressing enough, but spending that night sharing a decaying room with a colleague dead-set on defecating in the bathtub was a new world of upsetting. Her gaze fell to the floor.
“For Christ’s sake! There really isn’t a carpet in here!” she wailed. Rachel sniggered.
“Great. Well, I’m going to check out the goods in the bathroom and settle on a technique for fouling the tub.”
Immediately upon turning the handle down it fell away from the door and clattered into the bare floorboards. The distinct sound of a screw rolling around on untreated wood and then falling into the generous gap between boards, taking Tiffany's hopes down with it, rang out to the room.
"Brilliant." Rachel said, sounding genuinely happy but restraining her laughter for the time being. "This is exactly the kind of encouragement I need to maintain my convictions."
“Please Rachel. Just at least wait until I’ve showered and finished up in the bathroom tomorrow morning before you… do whatever it is you’re determined to do in there.” Tiffany pleaded.
Rachel tipped her head to one side, bit her lip, and made a show of pondering the request.
“Well… I’m pretty angry about the room right now and I don’t really like the idea of calming down to the point that I feel unable to soil a bath, but since you’ve asked me so nicely I’ll hold back for today.”
“Thank you. You’re a dream roommate.”
“I try.” Rachel said with a wink. “I am going to switch the radiator on before we go though. That’s my price.”
“Fine. It might cover up the other smells for a while.”
Red lights glared at Tiffany through the windscreen. She’d had her fill of driving several times over on the journey to Cloudsea, but there was no restaurant at the hotel so they were forced to travel out again to get something to eat. After a quick search online they’d determined that the town centre had a decent density of places to get dinner, and so they’d left the room as locked as it could get and piled back into the car.
“Yep, one room for tonight.” Rachel said into her phone. It was the third hotel they’d tried on the journey but it wasn’t expected to be the charm. Optimism had been ground out of both of them by the sight of their twin room at the Affordalux. “Yes, one person for a single room.” Rachel gave Tiffany a hopeless look as she waited for a response.
Green light blasted into the car like a fireman’s hose of illumination and they were away again. It seemed that Cloudsea town centre had been attacked by an arch-demon of terrible power, who had wrought their awful wrath on the town by forging a one-way system of nightmarish proportions. Severely disoriented within a couple of minutes, Tiffany was fairly sure that they’d been spiralling repeatedly in and out for at least the last quarter of an hour.
“No? Right. Thanks.” Rachel said, hanging up. “They’re full as well. I think we’re stuck as we are.”
“Well, we’ll have to make do. You were joking about the night slaps, right?” Tiffany asked nervously. “I mean, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about an affliction like that if you weren’t, but I also need to know how much face protection I’ll need to put on before I go to sleep.”
“Honestly, Tiff, it depends on how angry I am when I go to bed. I’ve had no reports of nocturnal slapping yet, but it’s not to say that the eventuality is impossible given our current circumstances.” Rachel explained.
“Great. Well, I appreciate your candour and would encourage you to focus on everything you like about me before you go to sleep.”
Rachel chuckled.
“Sure thing. It’ll help if you keep picking up the bills and handle the expenses claims.”
“Yep. Yep.” Tiffany said, attempting to discern what the sign posting around her really meant. If she was reading it correctly then both right and left turns were prohibited, but she was at a T-junction with no way to go straight ahead.
“Any ideas of where to go here?” she asked Rachel.
“Hm… just go right. I don’t see traffic coming either way, and that’ll take us closer to those lights.” She said, pointing towards illegible neon illuminations visible past a row of rooftops.
“Sounds good enough.” Tiffany said, turning blindly and hoping for the best.
After a slalom of parked cars and traffic calming measures, but thankfully no on-coming traffic, Tiffany managed to navigate her way into the car park of an industrial estate boasting an array of brightly sign-posted restaurants. It took an overly complicated and elaborate series of rock-paper-scissors matches to reach a conclusion, but Tiffany and Rachel settled on ‘Le Poivre Noir’ to get their meal.
“Do you remember what the company policy is on drinks with dinner?” Rachel asked as they picked their way around puddles in the car park.
“I think it’s just that you can have one drink with your meal. There’s nothing to specify what that should be if I recall.”
“So… I could probably get rather a large drink with my meal, as long as it’s just the one?”
“I mean, yeah probably. I can always just get a receipt without a breakdown of costs on it, as as long as you don’t get a bottle of champagne or something…” Tiffany said, allowing Rachel to fill in the blanks.
“Winner. I reckon you could order one as well right? One drink each and all that. Finance won’t know that you were driving so they won’t question it.”
“You’re determined to milk this for everything it’s worth, aren’t you?” Tiffany observed as they reached the restaurant doors. When Tiffany’s hand was almost touching the glass it started to jerkily slide its way open automatically. “God damn it.”
“Ha! This was the right choice already.”
Inside, a concierge showed the pair of them to a table underneath the staircase and dropped a pair of menus in front of them.
“Well this is… secluded.” Tiffany said, looking about their encased and candle-lit surroundings.
“If anyone at the office could see this trip they’d think we were a couple.” Rachel agreed. “There might be a decent harassment claim in it for us if we could let that happen though.”
“I’m good for fraud at the moment, thanks.” Declined Tiffany as she looked down at her menu. “You fancy a starter?”
“The company’s paying, Tiff. I might have six starters.”
“I think there’s a per person expense limit on meals for that reason.” Tiffany reminded her.
“Nuts. Fine, but still yes on the one starter.” Rachel accepted, perusing the wine list. “Shall we get a bottle each? Seems like the most for our money.”
“For Strugcorp’s money, you mean?”
“Yeah that one. But seeing as you’re driving we may as well get two bottles of what I want, right?”
“I can still have one glass.” Tiffany protested. “Are you getting red or white?”
“White.”
“OK. Red would also have been fine. I don’t know why I asked, really.”
“Great. Well I think I’ll be getting two bottles of Chateau Derriere. It sounds delightful.” Rachel said, closing the menu.
“Chateau Derriere? That means…”
“That means a sweet white with fruity notes.” Rachel finished for her quickly.
“That’s as may be, but Chateau Derriere means Arse Castle! That doesn’t sound delightful at all.”
“Well it’s the one I want and you’re only having one glass.”
“I’m not having a glass of Arse Castle!” Tiffany decreed through gritted teeth.
“Oh come on. Don’t just be put off by the name. Affordalux would imply something both affordable and deluxe, but clearly it’s neither of those things. Chateau Derriere is probably just named after the vineyard or something.” Argued Rachel, determined to get her choice of wines.
“Oh for… fine. We’ll try the Arse Castle. But only get one bottle for now until we’ve determined how much it tastes like a fortified arse.”
“Suits me.” Rachel smiled. “I mean, I either get the wine I want, or I get something to keep me angry enough for my engagement with the bathtub in the morning so it’s pretty much a win-win from where I’m sitting.”
Tiffany tried to be annoyed and righteous about that point again, but Rachel’s wry smile and excitement about exacting childish vengeance on Affordalux was too much and she cracked a smile.
“Ha! You want me to do it! I knew it.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think the idea of crapping in the bath is more appealing than the reality of finding it.” Tiffany elaborated.
“Um, are you ready to order drinks, ladies?”
Tiffany froze with wide eyes and clenched fists. However long the waiter had been there, it was not a dignified situation.
“Oh!” Tiffany started, feigning surprise. “Yes, please. Can we have…erm… two bottles of ar- erm, Chateau Derriere?”
“Certainly madam.” The waiter said, holding a brave attempt at a polite smile. Without making notes he walked away quickly.
“Oh God.” Tiffany said, dropping her head into her hands. “Why do you put me in these positions?”
Rachel was far too busily engaged with silent heaving chuckles to respond.
“And I panic ordered two of the arse castles!”
Rachel added a happy thumbs up to her otherwise incapacitated state.
Tiffany busied herself by reading the menu and tried to push all the embarrassment away with thoughts of croutons, pasta, and unnecessarily high numbers of pizza base variants. Maybe the waiter would assume it had all been a joke, or would have picked up on the fact that it was Rachel to have the fascination with bath soiling, not her. In her heart of hearts she knew that her prospects weren’t good, and resigned herself to the inevitability of the evening ahead.
Three decadent courses later, at least one of which was consumed more out of stubbornness than either hunger or desire, Tiffany found herself back in the car park. In her hand was an alarming dinner receipt to claim back from the company, and to her side was a Rachel who was two bottles of arse castle in, but didn't seem to be any different.
"Where to now?" Rachel asked, checking the time on her phone.
"The hotel." Tiffany told her matter-of-inarguable-factly. "It's late and we have to be in TremorTech at nine."
"It's not that late. I can't go to bed this early."
"I'm afraid I can, and I am the only one sober enough to drive."
"Tch, I'd be fine to. We only had two bottles between us and it was with dinner. Barely felt it." Rachel dismissed.
"Even so, I am driving back to the hotel now. Come on."
"Nah, I'm going to find a bar or something. Might be something on the TV, or at least someone to keep me company. I'll catch up with you in the morning."
Tiffany wanted to argue, but ultimately Rachel was a grown adult and had a reputation for being brave enough to go out solo. Tiffany was barely brave enough to go out in company, but didn't want to hold that against her colleague.
"OK fine. What time for breakfast, half 7?"
"Sure. I'll see you then. Good night!"
"Night Rach. Stay safe."
"Good advice."
Tiffany gave a withering look, and then left for the car.
A sound not dissimilar to an ambulance siren being amplified through a child's toy megaphone wailed into the twin room. Tiffany's heart erupted into terrified activity, attempting to pound its way out of her chest and make its own good escape from the room without the other dead weight. Instinctive animal panic struck her brain and spread like a crackling spider's web through her neurons, screaming at her to run or fight or otherwise make the situation more difficult for the wailing predator in the room.
With every shriek there was a low growl, something like an enraged purr. Tiffany didn’t know of any predators in the mainland UK that were capable of making two vocalisations at the same time, nor any that could use a card to jimmy open a hotel door, but her primal brain was deeply concerned all the same. She tried to ignore it while opening her eyes and searching for the more banal explanation of the noises. An aggressive lightshow was coming from the small bedside table between her bed and Rachel’s, and every time it unleashed its low growl it travelled slightly across the table’s surface.
“Ugh. Rachel. Rachel! Your phone.” Grunted Tiffany. Her legs felt strangely numb and tangled and she couldn’t work out why.
There was no reaction from Rachel.
“Rachel! Alarm!” Tiffany tried again. She was also a long way from her pillow, and the duvet felt awfully bunched up around her.
There was still nothing from the other bed. With a groan Tiffany lurched out of bed, only to find that she was already on the floor. Like a damn bursting, the memory of her extremely sloped sleeping arrangement came back to her, and she understood she was basically kneeling in a pile of bedding rather than lying comfortably down. Tiffany drew in breath for a deep, passive-aggressive sigh, but it brought to her nose the sudden scent of something burning. Immediately the fog of sleep dissipated and a whole new, far more conscious panic took over as Tiffany searched for the fire. She couldn’t see any smoke, but she couldn’t see much of anything on account of how dark it was in the room. At least there wasn’t any illumination from a flame either, she comforted herself.
Lunging across the room with half-numb legs Tiffany slapped at the light switch and bathed the room, or more accurately moistened the room, in yellow light to aid the search. She scanned around determinedly as Rachel started to groan and stir, apparently more affronted by dim illumination than the screams of hell still emanating from her phone. It raised a lot of questions over how she managed to get up for work every day.
With no sign of smoke or smouldering Tiffany was able to relax a little, but that relaxation soon disappeared when she saw a tiny red light on the radiator beaming proudly outwards. It was smug and self-satisfied, boasting that someone had finally switched it on against all good health and safety practices, and belched the aromas of roasting dust into the air. Fuming almost as much as the heater itself, Tiffany stomped over and switched it off with another disconcerting electrical crackle.
“Uuung.” Rachel complained, rolling over and silencing her phone alarm. “Why are the lights on? Are you getting up?”
“The lights are on because you set off an air raid siren and tried to burn the room down!” Tiffany raged. “Why on earth would you turn the radiator on?”
“I mean… because I was cold probably. Look, nothing’s on fire or anything so can I go back to sleep, please?”
“Your alarm just went off.”
“Yeah, my first one. It’s only six am. I’ve got three more alarms before I need to be up.”
“You- why?! Why did you make me wake up to that nightmare of noise and burning so early?” Tiffany demanded.
“I like to know I’ve got a bit longer in bed. Just part of my process. Could you turn the light off please?”
“You’re really something, Rach.” Tiffany grumbled, switching off the light with an electrical crackle that implied it might never be turning back on again.
Thoroughly awake thanks to the various forms of panic to which she had been subjected in a short space of time, Tiffany didn’t think she could face getting back in her sloped bed. With the promise of further alarms to come there was little reward awaiting in that steep, cotton gradient. The only option was to start getting ready for the day and whatever horror their meeting with TremorTech would bring.
A short period of bag-rummaging later, which wasn’t conducted with too much concern for how loud she was being, Tiffany pulled at the hole where the bathroom door handle used to be and entered. Thankfully Rachel hadn’t left any surprises, strange noises or fire risks to be found, but there was a disconcerting amount of water already sitting in the bathtub. A steady drip from the shower head periodically rippled the surface, filling it over a several day period with icy cold water. Between the comparatively trustworthy source and the reasonable clarity of the water, Tiffany wasn’t quite discouraged from using the shower. It certainly wouldn’t be a long or luxurious affair, though.
Accepting her fate, Tiffany leaned over the static pool and pulled the silver handle which operated the shower, quickly jerking herself backwards and away from any sudden liquid onslaughts. It transpired that her fears were unwarranted, since all the handle had brought forth was the quiet impression of groaning, coming from deep within the walls. Standing perfectly still and staring anxiously at the shower head, Tiffany waited for any indication that she was going to be able to wash this morning and listened to the ghostly emanations. It sounded almost like a frog burping in a sewer, echoing wetly through the bathroom and providing an acoustic map of the plumbing, but crucially not pouring any water into the bath. Tiffany started suddenly as a loud shuddering shook the bathroom. The shower head was visibly shaking, presumably with the effort of trying to force water out, and Tiffany instinctively took a step back from the bathtub. Fearful visions of the shower head flying off with the sudden hydraulic pressure and threatening to shatter her skull filled Tiffany’s mind. Shower based manslaughter was exactly the kind of thing she expected from Affordalux.
Shielding herself with a stack of towels Tiffany continued her vigil over the showerhead and waited for the prophesised arrival of water. A second judder of the pipework vibrated the showerhead, this time with a convulsive spit into the bath puddle. Groaning still surrounded her, coming from every wall of the bathroom, and echoed upwards from the sink’s plughole, leaving Tiffany to worry what might start rising upwards into the basin. A third shower-quake spewed forth a larger spit of water, and then a fourth in rapid succession followed suit. The time was close. Heart pounding yet again Tiffany watched as the crescendo of her bathroom orchestra, a final climactic groan, erupted through the shower and a weak but continuous stream of water started to flow, pattering into the bath puddle like drizzle. She kept a close eye on it for a minute, making sure that it didn’t hold any more surprises and, once assured of its consistency, risked putting a hand under the stream.
A few adjustments of the temperature control later, none of which really seemed to correlate exactly with the temperature change she measured, Tiffany accepted that the shower flow was as good as it was going to get. Reluctantly she splashed in, the cold pool at the bottom of the bathtub taking her breath away momentarily. She looked down at the drainhole and saw that it was billowing air upwards in a series of wide, flat bubbles, rather than draining water downwards as was the traditional expectation. Every job this shower was supposed to do seemed to be out-foxing it. Trying not to think about what that fell drain-wind might be carrying she stood there, ankle deep in cold shower-water, and looked over the soaked shell of a bathroom, realising too late that the shower curtain was doing a marvellous job of directing water onto the floor, rather than protecting it. Hurried snatching motions brought the curtain back into line, but the shimmering floor was a beacon of defeat. All she wanted was for the day to be over.
Thirty minutes later, fully dressed and recovering from the various ordeals to which the bathroom had subjected her, Tiffany re-emerged into the bedroom and found that the lights had been switched back on. Rachel was sitting on her bed, idly flipping through her phone with one hand and clutching in the other one…
“What’s that?” Tiffany demanded.
“It’s a scythe!” Answered Rachel proudly, looking up with a beaming smile.
“Where on earth did you get that from?”
“Found it.”
“Where? In an 18th century farmstead?”
“I'm pretty sure it was a modern day farmstead, actually.” She replied, eyes directed upwards as she tried to recall the details. “I really want to reap something. Do you think that lamps are susceptible to reaping?” Her gaze was fixed hungrily on the brass-style lamp sitting innocently on her bedside table.
“Do not reap the lamp, and yes, respectively.” Tiffany told her. “We’ve already vandalised the door-handle, nearly burned the room down, probably woken up everyone in a three door radius, and soaked the bathroom. I don’t want a bill for reaped lamps as well.”
“Suit yourself.” Rachel said, accepting the denial alarmingly easily. “We’ll find something else to give a good harvesting.”
“How about grain on the farm you stole it from?”
“I doubt they really needed it, Tiff. Agriculture has long since been mechanised in this country, and this was just leaning up an old barn. It’s starting to rust, look.” She said, pointing towards some orange-brown colouring where the blade was joined to the handle.
“Well it’s your funeral, I’m not getting involved. I assume you had a good night.”
“Yeah it was a giggle. Didn’t stay at the bar for very long; pretty boring in there. So I went for a wander, found myself on some farmland outside the town, and got this thing.” Rachel explained. “Takes a bit of practice to get a good swing on it, but I was reaping like a pro on the walk home. Keep left signs are just the right sort of soft-but-firm material for a good hack.”
Tiffany buried her head in her hands. It was just a relief that Rachel hadn’t been wearing her StrugCorp lanyard at the time, otherwise they’d be in real trouble with HR.
“Anyway, are you completely done in the bathroom now?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Cool.”
“It’s pretty soaked though. The shower curtain was outside the bath and I didn’t realise for quite a while, sorry.” Tiffany confessed guiltily as Rachel grabbed her bag and walked towards the bathroom door. “There’s a big puddle round the loo and the bathmat is saturated.”
“Sounds like my kind of bathroom.” Rachel said cryptically. “Water temperature alright?”
“If you like tepid showers, sure.”
Rachel smiled.
“Well, I guess I'll just slather myself in deep heat and crap myself in the bath then!”
The door slammed closed before Tiffany could protest, and she heard the lock engage immediately.
“Whatever happens happens.” Tiffany told herself quietly. “It was clean when I left it. All I need to know, is that it was clean when I left it.”
At close to seven thirty Rachel re-emerged, and directed a wry smile at Tiffany. She gently but obviously closed the door behind herself.
“All done!” she said with proud mischief in her eyes.
“You didn’t… did you?” Tiffany asked nervously. There was no way she’d be able to hold the question back.
“You’re welcome to check if you like.” Rachel challenged evasively.
“No way.”
“OK.” Accepted Rachel, as she gathered all of her things together. “Breakfast?”
“Definitely.” Tiffany answered, her stomach grumbling sympathetically and with unnerving similarity to the sounds of the plumbing.
“I just hope you don’t need the loo quickly before we check out.” Rachel goaded.
Tiffany walked straight past her and out of the door.
Breakfast proved to be uneventful, if not exactly pleasant, after the comparatively easy task of paying distinctly over-the-odds for a low quality buffet. The cereal was as close to stale as Tiffany would dare to eat, the cooked breakfast was a strange combination of both burned and undercooked, and the toast was soggy. If she didn’t know better, and Tiffany was fairly sure that she knew nothing at all when it came to Affordalux’s business model, then she would have sworn that everything on offer at the breakfast buffet from fruit, to cereal, to yoghurt, to bacon, and to toast, had been prepared in the same microwave at the same time. It wasn’t enough to stop Rachel from going back for three helpings, but all that Tiffany managed to stomach was a bowl of what someone had optimistically named ‘Swiss muesli’, in a stunning feat of hotel-based international libel.
While Rachel finished off her final plate of rigid scrambled eggs, Tiffany sipped at a cup of English breakfast tea. All she could really taste was the bag.
“You did get your slides finished in the end, right?” She asked, reasoning that it was high time they started thinking about why there actually there.
“Mostly.” Rachel said through a mouthful of crunchy egg.
“What do you mean mostly? You told me they were done.”
“Nah, I said I had all the details in there.” Rachel corrected. “It’s a bit of a jumble, but we’ll be able to blag through it.”
Hot rage and cold dread slammed together inside Tiffany’s stomach, resulting in a lukewarm puddle of disappointment.
“A jumble? How much of a jumble?”
“Screenshots of product specs collected together across a few slides.”
Tiffany’s head fell into her hands yet again.
“For Christ’s sake Rach. We’re presenting in a couple of hours! I’ve got to go and sort it out. I’ll be in the room.” She said, her chair scraping noisily against the floor as she stood up. “This is not what we needed.”
Rachel shrugged.
“It’s what we’ve got. Hang on, I’m coming too. We need to leave right now.”
“Oh for… fine. But the slides have got to be done in the car on the way.”
“I can’t look at a laptop in a car. Makes me feel ill.” Rachel warned.
“I can’t very well do it while driving either.” Tiffany countered.
“So just let me drive then. You fix my slides and I’ll get us there. It’ll be fine.”
It was not fine. While Tiffany had been emotionally prepared for the train-wreck of a presentation pack that Rachel had left for her, she had not been ready for the adrenaline rush of her colleague’s driving style. ‘SLOW’ a road sign ordered with misguided optimism as Rachel tore past it, tyres squealing in the morning dew as they rounded a blind bend.
“Take it easy!” Tiffany shouted yet again. It was just white noise to Rachel. “It’s hard enough to rearrange this nonsense as it is, without the screen flying away every two seconds.”
“Oh stop complaining. It’s not that bad.” Rachel dismissed, bouncing over a speed bump with a giggle. “That was a good one.”
“It was the exact opposite.” Argued Tiffany. “What’s slide five even supposed to be about?”
“What’s on it?”
“A picture of a barrel, some wheat, and a datasheet.”
“Oh, that’s a comparison of SG-113 to competitor products.” Explained the reckless driver, to the soundtrack of brambles scraping along the paintwork. “The barrel and the wheat represent how well Simenica’s and Nattus’ products perform by comparison to ours.”
“That’s basically just name-calling and slander.” Complained Tiffany.
“They’re asking for it by flooding the market with their crap.”
“Their crap is affordable.”
“My crap’s in the Affordalux.” Rachel smirked. “It’s like poetry!”
“Ugh… none of that in TremorTech’s offices, OK?”
“I’ll crap where I like, we’ve been through that.” Rachel declared. “It’s up to them to make me like the toilet more than the sink.”
Tiffany didn’t respond. Getting the slides sorted was more important than wrangling her colleague’s bowel habits.
With nearly five minutes to spare, Tiffany and Rachel landed in the TremorTech car park.
“I told you that was a verge!”
“Anything’s a road if you’re brave enough and it’s someone else’s suspension.” Rachel imparted wisely. “No-one saw us anyway.”
“What about the tyre tracks?”
“Could have been anyone. As long as we circle around enough to get the mud off our tyres we’re golden.”
Three circuits of the car park later, they pulled into a bay. As soon as they had stopped, Tiffany leapt out of the car with her laptop bag and slammed the door shut.
“I swear to God, Rachel. If you keep acting like this in there…”
“Relax Tiff. I’ve got this. My game face is on point.” She said with a broad grin. There was no time to debate the point, and it wouldn’t be helpful to stand around arguing outside TremorTech’s offices. Shaking her head, Tiffany walked towards the entrance with Rachel in tow.
“Good morning. Welcome to TremorTech.” A young man at the reception desk in an intimidatingly well-pressed shirt greeted. Tiffany was fairly sure she’d be at risk of cutting herself on the creases.
Tiffany brought her customer-facing smile up to the fore and opened her mouth to speak, but Rachel beat her to it.
“Hi there. Rachel Strongborn and Tiffany Weathers from StrugCorp here to see Douglas Fir.” She said with a beaming smile. “We’re here for the product evaluation of SG-113 at nine thirty, and I believe that Douglas said we’ll be in the ‘Titan’ Conference Room, if that helps?”
Tiffany stared at Rachel with a confused frown. She got a quick wink in response.
“It does, thank you.” The receptionist replied. “Do you have photo-IDs and your visitor registration forms?”
“Here.” Rachel said, producing her own ID card and two completed forms from her bag. Tiffany had totally forgotten about them. “Could we have your badge, Tiff?”
“Yeah… sure…” Tiffany said, snapping to attention and searching her laptop bag pockets. “Here.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll get these scanned and then book you in. Please, take a seat.” The receptionist said, pointing towards a set of short, red sofas.
“Thanks Daniel.” Rachel said, turning to head over to the sofas.
“Do you know him?” Tiffany asked quietly as they sat.
“I read his name tag.” Rachel said, as if it were obvious. “You’ve got to be on the ball with these things, Tiff.”
“You’re actually not talking about soiling yourself and you’re prepared. What’s going on?”
“This is my job.” Rachel answered. If Tiffany had been able to believe it, she’d have said there was genuine offence on her colleague’s face. “I know I have a joke outside of work but this is customer-facing stuff. I take it seriously.”
Tiffany stared silently at her for a moment, taking in the expression and looking for a restrained smirk.
“That’s about the only thing you’ve taken seriously.” She finally said.
Rachel shrugged.
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
“Besides, I’ve still got my scythe in the car. If it goes badly I’ll just get my reap on and have fun that way.” Rachel winked.
Tiffany believed her.
More out of mild exasperation than any genuine hurry Tiffany turned sideways to squeeze through the slowly opening doorway as soon as the aperture would allow. Her trailing suitcase on its erratic and mischievous caster wheels turned its widest side forward to slow her down again.
“Not wasting a second there, I see.” Rachel observed. Tiffany could hear the smirk without seeing her face.
“I just don’t understand why these things can never be set up properly. All it takes is for them to open earlier or faster. Either one is fine. What’s the point of having them automated if you have to stop in front of them anyway?” Tiffany complained, as she had done many times before.
“Least these ones don’t have a button to operate.” Goaded Rachel from behind.
“Don’t get me started.” Tiffany moaned, turning to give her colleague an exasperated look. Just as predicted, Rachel was wearing a puckish smirk across her face which only grew upon seeing Tiffany’s hypothetical annoyance. “I mean, ‘Here, this door will open for you to stop you having to use your arms. But you have to use your arms to push this button instead, and then you have to stand still and wait for it to slowly grind its way open’. Who thought that was helping?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel shrugged. “Maybe someone who was concerned about the differently-abled being able to operate doors easily?” she goaded.
“Yeah, and that’s fair enough, but why design them so that you can’t get through them any other way? It’s ridiculous.” Tiffany persisted, not willing to let the door makers off so lightly.
Rachel cackled. The degree to which her colleague’s life was affected by automated door design and manufacture never ceased to amuse her.
Finding no supportive voice in her campaign for dual-use doors, Tiffany turned to look where she was going again and dragged her bag over to the hotel reception desk. A broad, faux-pine surface at approximately shoulder-height extended across the width of the foyer in front of them, the reception desk was laden with plastic paper holders, touch-screen monitors of unclear purposes, a bell, some discarded pens, and a couple of charity collection tins. It was somehow off-putting to see the ‘Boat Tours of the Coast’ leaflet partially obscured by a ‘Save our Dangerously Overstretched Lifeboat Association’ collection pot, but it made Tiffany more grateful that she was here for business and not leisure.
Tiffany rang the bell as she reached the alarmingly tall desk, leaning into it with her collar bones because nothing else was particularly feasible at that height. From behind her she heard Rachel burst into laughter.
“What the hell is that?” she managed. “Why have they built a wall around reception?”
Tiffany gave a broad shrug without turning around, holding both arms out wide in a crude ‘W’ shape.
“Please tell me you have forms to fill out. That would be priceless.” Rachel begged, still chuckling.
As Tiffany tried to work out why that would elicit such joy, a door at one of the desk-enclosed space opened to reveal absolutely nothing. It then closed again, and the suggestion of soft footsteps tapped along the reception area. Tiffany risked a puzzled look back at Rachel, who appeared equally unsure of the situation but was enjoying it far more. Reasoning that someone must have started to attend the bell and then remembered they had something else to do first, Tiffany decided to wait in her collar-bone lean for a while longer. This gave her a perfect view of the receptionist’s head, as it rose silently and steadily upwards from behind the desk.
“Agh!” Tiffany exclaimed, jerking backwards and stumbling on her loosely-fitted driving pumps. Rachel found this deeply entertaining.
“Are you OK, madam?” the receptionist asked, her voice as sharp and thin as a stiletto blade, and just about as welcoming. Her head was still getting higher, revealing a set of small shoulders.
“I- yes, sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to rise up like that.” Tiffany explained, regaining her balance and composure.
“Well you did ring the bell…” the receptionist reminded, sounding mildly aggrieved.
“Yes but… never mind. My colleague and I would like to check in, please. Tiffany Weathers and Rachel Strongborn.”
“Certainly madam. My name is Sue and it’s my pleasure to be checking you in today. On behalf of Affordalux hotels I would like to welcome you both to the Cloudsea Affordalux, and wish you a pleasant stay for however long you intend to remain here.” Sue said, not once making eye contact with anything except her computer monitor, and sounding about as sincere as the ‘This bar contains 2 servings’ statement on the chocolate bar Tiffany had eaten earlier. “Do either of you know how it works here at Affordalux, or is this the first time staying with us?”
“Uhhh… I’ve never been at an Affordalux before.” Tiffany answered, starting to get worried about why staying there might require instructions on ‘how it works’.
“Me either.” Rachel confirmed.
“OK great.” Sue said, making them believe it was anything but. “Here at Affordalux we help to keep the cost of your stay low and the disruption to your stay minimised by removing unnecessary hassles. There will be no maid knocking on your door to swap the towels or bedding, no cart of fresh sheets blocking the corridors, and no room service trollies rattling noisily past your room here at Affordalux, because we leave the power and decision making in your, yes your, hands.” Sue continued to recite to her computer. If ‘passionless performance’ had a spirit animal, it would have been Sue in that exact moment. Tiffany wore her best attempt at polite interest with an awkward smile, and Rachel gaped with an open-mouthed grin. “Every morning it’s your choice whether you want fresh towels, fresh sheets, or a cleaned lavatory. If you are happy with your room as is then you can simply walk away knowing that it will not be disturbed by man or beast in your absence. If instead you think your towel is too heavily soiled for even a second’s further drying, then you may deposit it in the laundry bins just outside reception, and claim a new towel from the vending machines nearby. A nominal fee is required to access your towel, in order to prevent abuse of the system. Receipts are not available for this service. The same goes for sheets, and loo brushes can also be claimed from the machine if you feel that you have devastated your lavatory beyond reasonable continued usage.”
Tiffany’s polite smile had fallen away to shocked disgust. This was the best that their employer had been able to secure for them; a do-it-yourself budget hotel experience. Barely stifled laughter from Rachel wasn’t helping.
“Could you both please fill in these forms so that I can assign you your keys?” Sue asked, producing two pieces of A4 paper from somewhere behind the desk and placing them on its broad surface.
“Yesssss.” Rachel celebrated as she saw Tiffany lifting her arms up to neck height to grab the form.
As Tiffany pulled a pen towards herself she felt it jerk to a halt suddenly. It was secured to the desk by a hitherto unseen chain. Rolling her eyes, she looked for the next pen and saw that it too was chained into place. In fact, every pen across the surface of the desk was attached a tiny series of metal links as a deterrent against theft.
“Do you have an unchained pen, please? It’s incredibly awkward for me to write at this height.” Tiffany asked the receptionist, with strained chortles from Rachel in her ear.
“All the pens I have are on the desk, madam.” Sue answered irritably.
“Do you have one to hand, Rachel?”
“They’re all in the recesses of my bag, sorry.” Rachel answered, clearly not sorry at all.
Tiffany groaned and accepted her fate. Standing on her tiptoes she could just about read the form clearly, and with arms unnaturally high for writing she awkwardly scribbled her details onto paper. Every time she started a new line the pen pulled taut on its chain and forced her to stretch a little further, until eventually her body was stretched very nearly as far as her patience. Eventually though, with thighs burning, collarbones aching from the pressure of being pushed into the desk, and shoulders cramping, Tiffany finished and pushed the paper back to Sue.
“Oh, here’s a pen.” Rachel said, producing a biro from her pocket with an evil grin.
For the sake of professionalism Tiffany said nothing, but her face was a thunderstorm drifting towards a rotten fishing vessel. The cackling fisherman didn’t seem to mind.
“Now, I can see that you have booked one of our Affordalux Economy Maximiser room, which means that you can expect a sleek, streamlined experience without unnecessary frills adding to your bill.” Sue said, resuming her rehearsed script once she’d received Rachel’s form. “Kettle? Not required. Hairdryer? A luxury. Soaps? Who needs expensive hotel soap when their own works just fine? There’s an electric heater if you’re cold, a window if you’re hot, and low-usage cistern to keep those water costs down. Your room is number 110, with a stunning view over the delivery entrance. Just follow this corridor behind you to the right, and you’ll see your room on the left.”
Sue slid a piece of card across the desk.
“That has your two key cards in it. Enjoy your stay.” She finished, with a plastic smile.
“Thanks.” Tiffany accepted.
“One sec.” Rachel interjected. “What was our other room number? 110 and…”
“Other room?” Sue queried.
“Yeah… one for her and one for me.”
“No, you’re both booked in together for a twin room.” The receptionist clarified.
“…” Rachel said, perfectly clearly.
“…” Tiffany echoed.
“The booking is for two people, Tiffany Weathers and Rachel Strongborn, for a twin Affordalux Economy Maximiser.”
“But… there… is there another room that we-” Tiffany started.
“I’m afraid we’re fully booked.” Sue told her, before too much hope could be worked up. “So if that will be all, I’ll be on my way. Enjoy your room, ladies.”
“Wait, but we don’t want to share a room!” Tiffany protested, but Sue’s head had already disappeared into the depths from whence it had risen. “Come back a minute!” Quiet footsteps once again danced around the reception area. The door was opened by forces unseen.
“Don’t just walk away from us!” Rachel commanded. The door closed. There was only silence.
“For goodness sake.” Tiffany cursed. “Who booked this for us? Was it Gerald?”
“Yeah I think so. He normally goes through the company approved travel agent though.”
“So they both missed the fact that they’d ordered a twin room for some reason?”
“I guess so. Or maybe it was deliberate because they’re thick. All we can really say with confidence is that it was a team effort to screw up this badly. So what are we going to do? I don’t know where any other hotels are, but we can search about online and give one a call or something.” Suggested Rachel, for once trying to solve a problem rather than laugh at it.
“Could do, but I don’t really trust finance to honour the expenses claim for something we book ourselves. It might be done correctly or something, which Strugcorp apparently doesn’t hold any truck with. We just have to share the room, I suppose, and then give Gerald hell when we’re back in the office. At least it’s a twin and not a double, so we have separate beds. It won’t be the end of the world.”
“You’re aware that I scream in my sleep and suffer with night slaps, right?” Asked Rachel.
“I… no, I wasn’t.” Tiffany revealed with a heavy pit forming in her stomach. “What are night slaps?”
“They’re when I sleepwalk out of bed, slap someone in the next bed, and then get back into my own bed without knowing a thing has happened.” Rachel explained, adding a wholly unnecessary and tremendously exuberant slap mime into the mix. If it was representative, then Tiffany worried that her whole face might be rent asunder.
“That sounds… implausible.” She assessed suspiciously.
“I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself unless we can get another room.”
Tiffany groaned. Even for a work trip with Strugcorp, this was looking bleak. She hated their policy of booking the cheapest hotel rooms on the market, and then forcing the employees to pay for it and claim the money back via the cumbersome and unhelpful expenses process. She hated Gerald for being unable to correctly check a booking and she hated the travel agent for thinking that work colleagues would ever want to share a twin room. A part of her wanted to hate Rachel pre-emptively for a slapping which might arrive in the night, but Tiffany held that one off until it was strictly necessary.
“Come on. We’ll get into the one room we have and then try to sort things out.”
“Yeah, fine.” Rachel agreed, grabbing the key cards from the desk. “110 was to the right, she said?”
“Yep.” Tiffany confirmed, striding away along the corridor. A unique combination of aromas greeted them as they walked deeper into the body of the Affordalux, unifying the least appealing aspects of cleaning supplies, old carpets, and peeling wallpaper.
“There won’t be any Wi-Fi here, will there?” Rachel asked, already fearing that she knew the answer.
“I really doubt it.” Tiffany answered. “They don’t want us to have fresh towels or fresh bedding, there’s no breakfast included with our rooms, and they want us to clean our own shared toilet. Wi-Fi is a whole different world of ‘barely adequate service’ away from this.”
“Fair.” Rachel agreed.
“I mean at this rate” Tiffany started, reaching the door of room 110 “I’ll be surprised if they’ve even graced us with the luxury of a carpet. Can I have a key, please?”
“Here.” Rachel said, handing over one of the two plastic cards contained in the cardboard. “Where does it go?”
“Well… I erm…” Tiffany stammered, examining the door and reaching the conclusion that her card couldn’t easily go anywhere. As far as she could tell there was a handle with no keyhole, and otherwise nothing else on the door. “I can’t see anywhere for it. There’s normally a slot or something isn’t there?”
“Usually, yeah.” Agreed Rachel. She cast her eyes across the door and then started scanning around the frame. “I don’t see anything either.”
“Are there instructions on the card holder?” Tiffany asked, clutching at straws which would certainly be a purchasable extra for her room.
“Um… yes. Looks like we…” Rachel started, but then her jaw dropped and she simply stared.
“What does it say?” Tiffany had time to ask, before Rachel collapsed on herself with laugher. “What? What are we meant to do?” Tiffany asked again with mounting worry.
“It… it… we…” Rachel tried, but the quaking laughter in her body denied her the ability to speak. “Just… look…” she managed, holding the card up to Tiffany for her inspection.
Taking a look at the card, Tiffany saw that step one was a perfectly normal instruction to remove the card from its holder. Step two was to hold the door handle securely, and step three was to…
“Oh gods! They expect us to just jimmy the door open with the card?!”
Rachel’s cackles found a renewed vigour.
“’Take card, insert it firmly between door and frame at the level of the latch, and hook latch open’ it says. Their idea of a key is to make us repeatedly break into our own room! The cheap goons won’t even pay for locks!” Tiffany fumed with wide eyes, as if staring at the instructions could make them change into something more reasonable. Rachel fell to her knees. “Well I’m glad you’re finding it funny. Anyone could just do this and get into our room. I swear to God if there’s not a lock on the other side of this door…”
Following the instructions despite how angry they made her, Tiffany worked her key card into the gap between the door and the frame. Feeling around for the latch she wiggled the card up and down, feeling it bend unnervingly as the poor alignment between door and frame made itself apparent. With a gentle tap she heard and felt contact with the latch.
“This is not what I had in mind for this trip.” She mumbled to herself. Rachel looked up briefly, and then scrunched her eyes closed with laughter again.
“Come on… come on...” Tiffany pleaded with the door, appealing to the reason and helpfulness of a piece of wood. The card stuck and jammed this way and that, fighting her attempts to manoeuvre it at every turn and threatening to snap in a devastating ping of weak plastic. “Whoever thought this was a good idea was an idiot.” She seethed, before gradually concluding that no-one at all would have thought this idea to be good, they just went ahead and did it anyway.
Suddenly Tiffany felt the resistance of the card give way and it slid back behind the latch.
“Ooh!” she said excitedly. “OK, now it should just…” With more force than she’d normally like to put on a piece of thin plastic, Tiffany pulled at the card and felt the latch start to slide inwards. “I think we’re in, Rach.” She said to her cackling colleague, who was just starting to calm down on the floor.
A gentle click heralded the final release of the latch, and under Tiffany’s consistent pressure the door swung outwards.
“That was ridiculous.” She said, shaking her head. “Get up, Rachel and get into this room quickly. I’m not going through that nonsense more than I have to.”
Slowly, with a series of aftershock giggles, Rachel regained her feet.
“Nice one!” she congratulated sincerely. “You did a good job with that; bet you’ve got a past of burglary behind you, right?”
“If this is what working at Strugcorp is like, then I might turn to that as a backup career.”
Rachel grinned and dragged her case into the room. Happy that there was someone securely across the threshold, Tiffany grabbed her own case and followed Rachel inside, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Where’s the light switch?” Rachel asked. The room was almost pitch black from what Tiffany hoped to be thick blackout blinds, rather than the simple absence of a window.
Tiffany slapped about at the wall for the tell-tale plastic shape of a light switch, and heard Rachel doing the same.
“Ah!” Rachel exclaimed, shortly before a combined plastic click and electrical crackle. Faint yellow light started to seep out of what was hopefully a stained light fitting, rather than a drastically malfunctioning smoke detector.
It didn’t take long for Tiffany to wish there was no light anymore. She saw Rachel standing in what she would usually have assumed to be a decommissioned prison cell, except for the fact that the Human Rights Act would have rendered such a cell to be illegal at the best of times. A deep shadow was cast across her head from a long, languishing strip of peeled wallpaper, so Tiffany couldn’t immediately see whether Rachel was laughing or crying, but she assumed the latter should be true. Where the peeled wallpaper, which Tiffany realised to be heavily textured with something rather like wood-shavings, had previously been was a section of bare plaster that oozed with wet wallpaper paste.
“This is grim.” Tiffany assessed with a grimace.
“That’s one word for it.” Rachel said. “Have you seen the radiator?”
Tiffany looked to the far wall and saw the offending heating item. Where white had once been was now a range of smouldering colours from pale brown to bubbled black, extending not only across the body of the radiator itself but also a significant distance along the wall as well. The carpet below was dusted with ash from the conflagration of something, on which Tiffany felt uncomfortable speculating.
“We’re definitely going to burn to death if we turn that on. It’s a guarantee.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. We should switch it on just before we leave.” Rachel determined.
“It would probably be doing the world and the hotel a favour, but I’m going to stick with my general anti-arson position for now.” Tiffany placated. “I’m also taking the bed farthest from the fire risk.”
“So I’ll have better access to it and you’ll have plausibly deniability?”
“What? No. But I can see the problem with my plan. I’m not changing it, but I can see the problem.”
“Fair enough.” Rachel accepted. “Enjoy your pillow, then.”
Tiffany looked across at the beds and saw that where a pillow would normally have been placed, the Affordalux had instead provided just the case. From the lines and folds across it Tiffany suspected that the maid had made a decent effort at fluffing it regardless.
“Oh…” Tiffany muttered. In reality the pillow was only as disappointing as the rest of the bed; the mattress springs were visible even through the duvet, providing a double-whammy of dread for under-back protrusions and how thin the duvet truly was, and with one of the feet missing from the base of the bed it was currently settled at an ambitious angle for sleep. Rachel’s bed seemed to have fared better on the structural integrity front, but being so close to the arsonist radiator it remained a marginally less appealing prospect.
“I just… I am so mad at Gerald for doing this to us. Are we really worth that little to Strugcorp?”
“Looks that way. Still, we're here now...” Rachel said with a sigh. “Best have a crap in the bath I guess.”
Tiffany chuckled half-heartedly.
“I’m not joking, Tiff.” Clarified Rachel, having not received the shocked reaction she was after.
“Wha- No! You can't do that!” Tiffany protested, abandoning her attempt at amusement under the acute awareness that she too would have to use the bath. Baths weren’t famed for their flushing capabilities.
“I can, and I think I will.” Rachel defied.
“Don't. You. Dare.”
“She who dares wins.” She riposted confusingly.
“Wins what? A crap in the ba-”
“A crap in the bath!” She declared triumphantly.
“That's disgusting. Why do you even want to do that?”
“Because it would adequately summarise my feelings on this room, and it seems like it would fit in with the rest of the décor fairly well.” Rachel informed her. “I doubt we’ll get very far at the front desk, Gerald won’t be in the office at this time of day, and I don’t have the number for the travel agent to complain directly. This is the only way to show that I am unhappy with our room that really gets to the heart of the matter unambiguously.”
“We'll get thrown out and fined, Rachel. At least give me a chance to look for another hotel.” Pleaded Tiffany.
“Look, you can try to find a last minute room at nine pm if you want, but one way or another, there is going to be crap in that bath before we leave.”
Tiffany sighed and sat on the foot of her bed, having to engage her thighs to stop herself sliding down the bed-slope and onto the floor. Having to spend the night away for work was depressing enough, but spending that night sharing a decaying room with a colleague dead-set on defecating in the bathtub was a new world of upsetting. Her gaze fell to the floor.
“For Christ’s sake! There really isn’t a carpet in here!” she wailed. Rachel sniggered.
“Great. Well, I’m going to check out the goods in the bathroom and settle on a technique for fouling the tub.”
Immediately upon turning the handle down it fell away from the door and clattered into the bare floorboards. The distinct sound of a screw rolling around on untreated wood and then falling into the generous gap between boards, taking Tiffany's hopes down with it, rang out to the room.
"Brilliant." Rachel said, sounding genuinely happy but restraining her laughter for the time being. "This is exactly the kind of encouragement I need to maintain my convictions."
“Please Rachel. Just at least wait until I’ve showered and finished up in the bathroom tomorrow morning before you… do whatever it is you’re determined to do in there.” Tiffany pleaded.
Rachel tipped her head to one side, bit her lip, and made a show of pondering the request.
“Well… I’m pretty angry about the room right now and I don’t really like the idea of calming down to the point that I feel unable to soil a bath, but since you’ve asked me so nicely I’ll hold back for today.”
“Thank you. You’re a dream roommate.”
“I try.” Rachel said with a wink. “I am going to switch the radiator on before we go though. That’s my price.”
“Fine. It might cover up the other smells for a while.”
Red lights glared at Tiffany through the windscreen. She’d had her fill of driving several times over on the journey to Cloudsea, but there was no restaurant at the hotel so they were forced to travel out again to get something to eat. After a quick search online they’d determined that the town centre had a decent density of places to get dinner, and so they’d left the room as locked as it could get and piled back into the car.
“Yep, one room for tonight.” Rachel said into her phone. It was the third hotel they’d tried on the journey but it wasn’t expected to be the charm. Optimism had been ground out of both of them by the sight of their twin room at the Affordalux. “Yes, one person for a single room.” Rachel gave Tiffany a hopeless look as she waited for a response.
Green light blasted into the car like a fireman’s hose of illumination and they were away again. It seemed that Cloudsea town centre had been attacked by an arch-demon of terrible power, who had wrought their awful wrath on the town by forging a one-way system of nightmarish proportions. Severely disoriented within a couple of minutes, Tiffany was fairly sure that they’d been spiralling repeatedly in and out for at least the last quarter of an hour.
“No? Right. Thanks.” Rachel said, hanging up. “They’re full as well. I think we’re stuck as we are.”
“Well, we’ll have to make do. You were joking about the night slaps, right?” Tiffany asked nervously. “I mean, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about an affliction like that if you weren’t, but I also need to know how much face protection I’ll need to put on before I go to sleep.”
“Honestly, Tiff, it depends on how angry I am when I go to bed. I’ve had no reports of nocturnal slapping yet, but it’s not to say that the eventuality is impossible given our current circumstances.” Rachel explained.
“Great. Well, I appreciate your candour and would encourage you to focus on everything you like about me before you go to sleep.”
Rachel chuckled.
“Sure thing. It’ll help if you keep picking up the bills and handle the expenses claims.”
“Yep. Yep.” Tiffany said, attempting to discern what the sign posting around her really meant. If she was reading it correctly then both right and left turns were prohibited, but she was at a T-junction with no way to go straight ahead.
“Any ideas of where to go here?” she asked Rachel.
“Hm… just go right. I don’t see traffic coming either way, and that’ll take us closer to those lights.” She said, pointing towards illegible neon illuminations visible past a row of rooftops.
“Sounds good enough.” Tiffany said, turning blindly and hoping for the best.
After a slalom of parked cars and traffic calming measures, but thankfully no on-coming traffic, Tiffany managed to navigate her way into the car park of an industrial estate boasting an array of brightly sign-posted restaurants. It took an overly complicated and elaborate series of rock-paper-scissors matches to reach a conclusion, but Tiffany and Rachel settled on ‘Le Poivre Noir’ to get their meal.
“Do you remember what the company policy is on drinks with dinner?” Rachel asked as they picked their way around puddles in the car park.
“I think it’s just that you can have one drink with your meal. There’s nothing to specify what that should be if I recall.”
“So… I could probably get rather a large drink with my meal, as long as it’s just the one?”
“I mean, yeah probably. I can always just get a receipt without a breakdown of costs on it, as as long as you don’t get a bottle of champagne or something…” Tiffany said, allowing Rachel to fill in the blanks.
“Winner. I reckon you could order one as well right? One drink each and all that. Finance won’t know that you were driving so they won’t question it.”
“You’re determined to milk this for everything it’s worth, aren’t you?” Tiffany observed as they reached the restaurant doors. When Tiffany’s hand was almost touching the glass it started to jerkily slide its way open automatically. “God damn it.”
“Ha! This was the right choice already.”
Inside, a concierge showed the pair of them to a table underneath the staircase and dropped a pair of menus in front of them.
“Well this is… secluded.” Tiffany said, looking about their encased and candle-lit surroundings.
“If anyone at the office could see this trip they’d think we were a couple.” Rachel agreed. “There might be a decent harassment claim in it for us if we could let that happen though.”
“I’m good for fraud at the moment, thanks.” Declined Tiffany as she looked down at her menu. “You fancy a starter?”
“The company’s paying, Tiff. I might have six starters.”
“I think there’s a per person expense limit on meals for that reason.” Tiffany reminded her.
“Nuts. Fine, but still yes on the one starter.” Rachel accepted, perusing the wine list. “Shall we get a bottle each? Seems like the most for our money.”
“For Strugcorp’s money, you mean?”
“Yeah that one. But seeing as you’re driving we may as well get two bottles of what I want, right?”
“I can still have one glass.” Tiffany protested. “Are you getting red or white?”
“White.”
“OK. Red would also have been fine. I don’t know why I asked, really.”
“Great. Well I think I’ll be getting two bottles of Chateau Derriere. It sounds delightful.” Rachel said, closing the menu.
“Chateau Derriere? That means…”
“That means a sweet white with fruity notes.” Rachel finished for her quickly.
“That’s as may be, but Chateau Derriere means Arse Castle! That doesn’t sound delightful at all.”
“Well it’s the one I want and you’re only having one glass.”
“I’m not having a glass of Arse Castle!” Tiffany decreed through gritted teeth.
“Oh come on. Don’t just be put off by the name. Affordalux would imply something both affordable and deluxe, but clearly it’s neither of those things. Chateau Derriere is probably just named after the vineyard or something.” Argued Rachel, determined to get her choice of wines.
“Oh for… fine. We’ll try the Arse Castle. But only get one bottle for now until we’ve determined how much it tastes like a fortified arse.”
“Suits me.” Rachel smiled. “I mean, I either get the wine I want, or I get something to keep me angry enough for my engagement with the bathtub in the morning so it’s pretty much a win-win from where I’m sitting.”
Tiffany tried to be annoyed and righteous about that point again, but Rachel’s wry smile and excitement about exacting childish vengeance on Affordalux was too much and she cracked a smile.
“Ha! You want me to do it! I knew it.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think the idea of crapping in the bath is more appealing than the reality of finding it.” Tiffany elaborated.
“Um, are you ready to order drinks, ladies?”
Tiffany froze with wide eyes and clenched fists. However long the waiter had been there, it was not a dignified situation.
“Oh!” Tiffany started, feigning surprise. “Yes, please. Can we have…erm… two bottles of ar- erm, Chateau Derriere?”
“Certainly madam.” The waiter said, holding a brave attempt at a polite smile. Without making notes he walked away quickly.
“Oh God.” Tiffany said, dropping her head into her hands. “Why do you put me in these positions?”
Rachel was far too busily engaged with silent heaving chuckles to respond.
“And I panic ordered two of the arse castles!”
Rachel added a happy thumbs up to her otherwise incapacitated state.
Tiffany busied herself by reading the menu and tried to push all the embarrassment away with thoughts of croutons, pasta, and unnecessarily high numbers of pizza base variants. Maybe the waiter would assume it had all been a joke, or would have picked up on the fact that it was Rachel to have the fascination with bath soiling, not her. In her heart of hearts she knew that her prospects weren’t good, and resigned herself to the inevitability of the evening ahead.
Three decadent courses later, at least one of which was consumed more out of stubbornness than either hunger or desire, Tiffany found herself back in the car park. In her hand was an alarming dinner receipt to claim back from the company, and to her side was a Rachel who was two bottles of arse castle in, but didn't seem to be any different.
"Where to now?" Rachel asked, checking the time on her phone.
"The hotel." Tiffany told her matter-of-inarguable-factly. "It's late and we have to be in TremorTech at nine."
"It's not that late. I can't go to bed this early."
"I'm afraid I can, and I am the only one sober enough to drive."
"Tch, I'd be fine to. We only had two bottles between us and it was with dinner. Barely felt it." Rachel dismissed.
"Even so, I am driving back to the hotel now. Come on."
"Nah, I'm going to find a bar or something. Might be something on the TV, or at least someone to keep me company. I'll catch up with you in the morning."
Tiffany wanted to argue, but ultimately Rachel was a grown adult and had a reputation for being brave enough to go out solo. Tiffany was barely brave enough to go out in company, but didn't want to hold that against her colleague.
"OK fine. What time for breakfast, half 7?"
"Sure. I'll see you then. Good night!"
"Night Rach. Stay safe."
"Good advice."
Tiffany gave a withering look, and then left for the car.
A sound not dissimilar to an ambulance siren being amplified through a child's toy megaphone wailed into the twin room. Tiffany's heart erupted into terrified activity, attempting to pound its way out of her chest and make its own good escape from the room without the other dead weight. Instinctive animal panic struck her brain and spread like a crackling spider's web through her neurons, screaming at her to run or fight or otherwise make the situation more difficult for the wailing predator in the room.
With every shriek there was a low growl, something like an enraged purr. Tiffany didn’t know of any predators in the mainland UK that were capable of making two vocalisations at the same time, nor any that could use a card to jimmy open a hotel door, but her primal brain was deeply concerned all the same. She tried to ignore it while opening her eyes and searching for the more banal explanation of the noises. An aggressive lightshow was coming from the small bedside table between her bed and Rachel’s, and every time it unleashed its low growl it travelled slightly across the table’s surface.
“Ugh. Rachel. Rachel! Your phone.” Grunted Tiffany. Her legs felt strangely numb and tangled and she couldn’t work out why.
There was no reaction from Rachel.
“Rachel! Alarm!” Tiffany tried again. She was also a long way from her pillow, and the duvet felt awfully bunched up around her.
There was still nothing from the other bed. With a groan Tiffany lurched out of bed, only to find that she was already on the floor. Like a damn bursting, the memory of her extremely sloped sleeping arrangement came back to her, and she understood she was basically kneeling in a pile of bedding rather than lying comfortably down. Tiffany drew in breath for a deep, passive-aggressive sigh, but it brought to her nose the sudden scent of something burning. Immediately the fog of sleep dissipated and a whole new, far more conscious panic took over as Tiffany searched for the fire. She couldn’t see any smoke, but she couldn’t see much of anything on account of how dark it was in the room. At least there wasn’t any illumination from a flame either, she comforted herself.
Lunging across the room with half-numb legs Tiffany slapped at the light switch and bathed the room, or more accurately moistened the room, in yellow light to aid the search. She scanned around determinedly as Rachel started to groan and stir, apparently more affronted by dim illumination than the screams of hell still emanating from her phone. It raised a lot of questions over how she managed to get up for work every day.
With no sign of smoke or smouldering Tiffany was able to relax a little, but that relaxation soon disappeared when she saw a tiny red light on the radiator beaming proudly outwards. It was smug and self-satisfied, boasting that someone had finally switched it on against all good health and safety practices, and belched the aromas of roasting dust into the air. Fuming almost as much as the heater itself, Tiffany stomped over and switched it off with another disconcerting electrical crackle.
“Uuung.” Rachel complained, rolling over and silencing her phone alarm. “Why are the lights on? Are you getting up?”
“The lights are on because you set off an air raid siren and tried to burn the room down!” Tiffany raged. “Why on earth would you turn the radiator on?”
“I mean… because I was cold probably. Look, nothing’s on fire or anything so can I go back to sleep, please?”
“Your alarm just went off.”
“Yeah, my first one. It’s only six am. I’ve got three more alarms before I need to be up.”
“You- why?! Why did you make me wake up to that nightmare of noise and burning so early?” Tiffany demanded.
“I like to know I’ve got a bit longer in bed. Just part of my process. Could you turn the light off please?”
“You’re really something, Rach.” Tiffany grumbled, switching off the light with an electrical crackle that implied it might never be turning back on again.
Thoroughly awake thanks to the various forms of panic to which she had been subjected in a short space of time, Tiffany didn’t think she could face getting back in her sloped bed. With the promise of further alarms to come there was little reward awaiting in that steep, cotton gradient. The only option was to start getting ready for the day and whatever horror their meeting with TremorTech would bring.
A short period of bag-rummaging later, which wasn’t conducted with too much concern for how loud she was being, Tiffany pulled at the hole where the bathroom door handle used to be and entered. Thankfully Rachel hadn’t left any surprises, strange noises or fire risks to be found, but there was a disconcerting amount of water already sitting in the bathtub. A steady drip from the shower head periodically rippled the surface, filling it over a several day period with icy cold water. Between the comparatively trustworthy source and the reasonable clarity of the water, Tiffany wasn’t quite discouraged from using the shower. It certainly wouldn’t be a long or luxurious affair, though.
Accepting her fate, Tiffany leaned over the static pool and pulled the silver handle which operated the shower, quickly jerking herself backwards and away from any sudden liquid onslaughts. It transpired that her fears were unwarranted, since all the handle had brought forth was the quiet impression of groaning, coming from deep within the walls. Standing perfectly still and staring anxiously at the shower head, Tiffany waited for any indication that she was going to be able to wash this morning and listened to the ghostly emanations. It sounded almost like a frog burping in a sewer, echoing wetly through the bathroom and providing an acoustic map of the plumbing, but crucially not pouring any water into the bath. Tiffany started suddenly as a loud shuddering shook the bathroom. The shower head was visibly shaking, presumably with the effort of trying to force water out, and Tiffany instinctively took a step back from the bathtub. Fearful visions of the shower head flying off with the sudden hydraulic pressure and threatening to shatter her skull filled Tiffany’s mind. Shower based manslaughter was exactly the kind of thing she expected from Affordalux.
Shielding herself with a stack of towels Tiffany continued her vigil over the showerhead and waited for the prophesised arrival of water. A second judder of the pipework vibrated the showerhead, this time with a convulsive spit into the bath puddle. Groaning still surrounded her, coming from every wall of the bathroom, and echoed upwards from the sink’s plughole, leaving Tiffany to worry what might start rising upwards into the basin. A third shower-quake spewed forth a larger spit of water, and then a fourth in rapid succession followed suit. The time was close. Heart pounding yet again Tiffany watched as the crescendo of her bathroom orchestra, a final climactic groan, erupted through the shower and a weak but continuous stream of water started to flow, pattering into the bath puddle like drizzle. She kept a close eye on it for a minute, making sure that it didn’t hold any more surprises and, once assured of its consistency, risked putting a hand under the stream.
A few adjustments of the temperature control later, none of which really seemed to correlate exactly with the temperature change she measured, Tiffany accepted that the shower flow was as good as it was going to get. Reluctantly she splashed in, the cold pool at the bottom of the bathtub taking her breath away momentarily. She looked down at the drainhole and saw that it was billowing air upwards in a series of wide, flat bubbles, rather than draining water downwards as was the traditional expectation. Every job this shower was supposed to do seemed to be out-foxing it. Trying not to think about what that fell drain-wind might be carrying she stood there, ankle deep in cold shower-water, and looked over the soaked shell of a bathroom, realising too late that the shower curtain was doing a marvellous job of directing water onto the floor, rather than protecting it. Hurried snatching motions brought the curtain back into line, but the shimmering floor was a beacon of defeat. All she wanted was for the day to be over.
Thirty minutes later, fully dressed and recovering from the various ordeals to which the bathroom had subjected her, Tiffany re-emerged into the bedroom and found that the lights had been switched back on. Rachel was sitting on her bed, idly flipping through her phone with one hand and clutching in the other one…
“What’s that?” Tiffany demanded.
“It’s a scythe!” Answered Rachel proudly, looking up with a beaming smile.
“Where on earth did you get that from?”
“Found it.”
“Where? In an 18th century farmstead?”
“I'm pretty sure it was a modern day farmstead, actually.” She replied, eyes directed upwards as she tried to recall the details. “I really want to reap something. Do you think that lamps are susceptible to reaping?” Her gaze was fixed hungrily on the brass-style lamp sitting innocently on her bedside table.
“Do not reap the lamp, and yes, respectively.” Tiffany told her. “We’ve already vandalised the door-handle, nearly burned the room down, probably woken up everyone in a three door radius, and soaked the bathroom. I don’t want a bill for reaped lamps as well.”
“Suit yourself.” Rachel said, accepting the denial alarmingly easily. “We’ll find something else to give a good harvesting.”
“How about grain on the farm you stole it from?”
“I doubt they really needed it, Tiff. Agriculture has long since been mechanised in this country, and this was just leaning up an old barn. It’s starting to rust, look.” She said, pointing towards some orange-brown colouring where the blade was joined to the handle.
“Well it’s your funeral, I’m not getting involved. I assume you had a good night.”
“Yeah it was a giggle. Didn’t stay at the bar for very long; pretty boring in there. So I went for a wander, found myself on some farmland outside the town, and got this thing.” Rachel explained. “Takes a bit of practice to get a good swing on it, but I was reaping like a pro on the walk home. Keep left signs are just the right sort of soft-but-firm material for a good hack.”
Tiffany buried her head in her hands. It was just a relief that Rachel hadn’t been wearing her StrugCorp lanyard at the time, otherwise they’d be in real trouble with HR.
“Anyway, are you completely done in the bathroom now?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Cool.”
“It’s pretty soaked though. The shower curtain was outside the bath and I didn’t realise for quite a while, sorry.” Tiffany confessed guiltily as Rachel grabbed her bag and walked towards the bathroom door. “There’s a big puddle round the loo and the bathmat is saturated.”
“Sounds like my kind of bathroom.” Rachel said cryptically. “Water temperature alright?”
“If you like tepid showers, sure.”
Rachel smiled.
“Well, I guess I'll just slather myself in deep heat and crap myself in the bath then!”
The door slammed closed before Tiffany could protest, and she heard the lock engage immediately.
“Whatever happens happens.” Tiffany told herself quietly. “It was clean when I left it. All I need to know, is that it was clean when I left it.”
At close to seven thirty Rachel re-emerged, and directed a wry smile at Tiffany. She gently but obviously closed the door behind herself.
“All done!” she said with proud mischief in her eyes.
“You didn’t… did you?” Tiffany asked nervously. There was no way she’d be able to hold the question back.
“You’re welcome to check if you like.” Rachel challenged evasively.
“No way.”
“OK.” Accepted Rachel, as she gathered all of her things together. “Breakfast?”
“Definitely.” Tiffany answered, her stomach grumbling sympathetically and with unnerving similarity to the sounds of the plumbing.
“I just hope you don’t need the loo quickly before we check out.” Rachel goaded.
Tiffany walked straight past her and out of the door.
Breakfast proved to be uneventful, if not exactly pleasant, after the comparatively easy task of paying distinctly over-the-odds for a low quality buffet. The cereal was as close to stale as Tiffany would dare to eat, the cooked breakfast was a strange combination of both burned and undercooked, and the toast was soggy. If she didn’t know better, and Tiffany was fairly sure that she knew nothing at all when it came to Affordalux’s business model, then she would have sworn that everything on offer at the breakfast buffet from fruit, to cereal, to yoghurt, to bacon, and to toast, had been prepared in the same microwave at the same time. It wasn’t enough to stop Rachel from going back for three helpings, but all that Tiffany managed to stomach was a bowl of what someone had optimistically named ‘Swiss muesli’, in a stunning feat of hotel-based international libel.
While Rachel finished off her final plate of rigid scrambled eggs, Tiffany sipped at a cup of English breakfast tea. All she could really taste was the bag.
“You did get your slides finished in the end, right?” She asked, reasoning that it was high time they started thinking about why there actually there.
“Mostly.” Rachel said through a mouthful of crunchy egg.
“What do you mean mostly? You told me they were done.”
“Nah, I said I had all the details in there.” Rachel corrected. “It’s a bit of a jumble, but we’ll be able to blag through it.”
Hot rage and cold dread slammed together inside Tiffany’s stomach, resulting in a lukewarm puddle of disappointment.
“A jumble? How much of a jumble?”
“Screenshots of product specs collected together across a few slides.”
Tiffany’s head fell into her hands yet again.
“For Christ’s sake Rach. We’re presenting in a couple of hours! I’ve got to go and sort it out. I’ll be in the room.” She said, her chair scraping noisily against the floor as she stood up. “This is not what we needed.”
Rachel shrugged.
“It’s what we’ve got. Hang on, I’m coming too. We need to leave right now.”
“Oh for… fine. But the slides have got to be done in the car on the way.”
“I can’t look at a laptop in a car. Makes me feel ill.” Rachel warned.
“I can’t very well do it while driving either.” Tiffany countered.
“So just let me drive then. You fix my slides and I’ll get us there. It’ll be fine.”
It was not fine. While Tiffany had been emotionally prepared for the train-wreck of a presentation pack that Rachel had left for her, she had not been ready for the adrenaline rush of her colleague’s driving style. ‘SLOW’ a road sign ordered with misguided optimism as Rachel tore past it, tyres squealing in the morning dew as they rounded a blind bend.
“Take it easy!” Tiffany shouted yet again. It was just white noise to Rachel. “It’s hard enough to rearrange this nonsense as it is, without the screen flying away every two seconds.”
“Oh stop complaining. It’s not that bad.” Rachel dismissed, bouncing over a speed bump with a giggle. “That was a good one.”
“It was the exact opposite.” Argued Tiffany. “What’s slide five even supposed to be about?”
“What’s on it?”
“A picture of a barrel, some wheat, and a datasheet.”
“Oh, that’s a comparison of SG-113 to competitor products.” Explained the reckless driver, to the soundtrack of brambles scraping along the paintwork. “The barrel and the wheat represent how well Simenica’s and Nattus’ products perform by comparison to ours.”
“That’s basically just name-calling and slander.” Complained Tiffany.
“They’re asking for it by flooding the market with their crap.”
“Their crap is affordable.”
“My crap’s in the Affordalux.” Rachel smirked. “It’s like poetry!”
“Ugh… none of that in TremorTech’s offices, OK?”
“I’ll crap where I like, we’ve been through that.” Rachel declared. “It’s up to them to make me like the toilet more than the sink.”
Tiffany didn’t respond. Getting the slides sorted was more important than wrangling her colleague’s bowel habits.
With nearly five minutes to spare, Tiffany and Rachel landed in the TremorTech car park.
“I told you that was a verge!”
“Anything’s a road if you’re brave enough and it’s someone else’s suspension.” Rachel imparted wisely. “No-one saw us anyway.”
“What about the tyre tracks?”
“Could have been anyone. As long as we circle around enough to get the mud off our tyres we’re golden.”
Three circuits of the car park later, they pulled into a bay. As soon as they had stopped, Tiffany leapt out of the car with her laptop bag and slammed the door shut.
“I swear to God, Rachel. If you keep acting like this in there…”
“Relax Tiff. I’ve got this. My game face is on point.” She said with a broad grin. There was no time to debate the point, and it wouldn’t be helpful to stand around arguing outside TremorTech’s offices. Shaking her head, Tiffany walked towards the entrance with Rachel in tow.
“Good morning. Welcome to TremorTech.” A young man at the reception desk in an intimidatingly well-pressed shirt greeted. Tiffany was fairly sure she’d be at risk of cutting herself on the creases.
Tiffany brought her customer-facing smile up to the fore and opened her mouth to speak, but Rachel beat her to it.
“Hi there. Rachel Strongborn and Tiffany Weathers from StrugCorp here to see Douglas Fir.” She said with a beaming smile. “We’re here for the product evaluation of SG-113 at nine thirty, and I believe that Douglas said we’ll be in the ‘Titan’ Conference Room, if that helps?”
Tiffany stared at Rachel with a confused frown. She got a quick wink in response.
“It does, thank you.” The receptionist replied. “Do you have photo-IDs and your visitor registration forms?”
“Here.” Rachel said, producing her own ID card and two completed forms from her bag. Tiffany had totally forgotten about them. “Could we have your badge, Tiff?”
“Yeah… sure…” Tiffany said, snapping to attention and searching her laptop bag pockets. “Here.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll get these scanned and then book you in. Please, take a seat.” The receptionist said, pointing towards a set of short, red sofas.
“Thanks Daniel.” Rachel said, turning to head over to the sofas.
“Do you know him?” Tiffany asked quietly as they sat.
“I read his name tag.” Rachel said, as if it were obvious. “You’ve got to be on the ball with these things, Tiff.”
“You’re actually not talking about soiling yourself and you’re prepared. What’s going on?”
“This is my job.” Rachel answered. If Tiffany had been able to believe it, she’d have said there was genuine offence on her colleague’s face. “I know I have a joke outside of work but this is customer-facing stuff. I take it seriously.”
Tiffany stared silently at her for a moment, taking in the expression and looking for a restrained smirk.
“That’s about the only thing you’ve taken seriously.” She finally said.
Rachel shrugged.
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
“Besides, I’ve still got my scythe in the car. If it goes badly I’ll just get my reap on and have fun that way.” Rachel winked.
Tiffany believed her.