Rumored Nights

The sign flashed HOTEL. Well, actually it flashed HOEL; the T in the sign didn’t have a neon glow to it anymore. HOEL was accurate though. This play did seem like a hole; a hell hole maybe. It was terrifying and depressing.

“Okay guys…this is our only hope.” Louis informed us as all six of us stood in front of the run down “HOEL”, looking up at the sign in terror. This was sure to be one interesting night if they had an available room. Though, the thought of this place actually having no vacancies made me shutter and think of what kind of person would be staying here. Desperate ones, maybe? Like us?

We had gone to every hotel we had come upon on our journey. They were all either full or too expensive. And those were the factors that caused us to be driven to the outskirts of town. It was probably the scariest place I’d ever set foot in.

“Yeah…so we’d better hope they have a room…” Zayn sighed, hugging himself because it was rather chilly outside. Also, we all could have had the chills from just the sight of this place. Words could probably not describe the smell that came from the allies and the rabies-infected cats that meowed and hissed as they rolled out of decaying garbage cans. This was not the place I wanted to sleep in. I didn’t even think I would be able to fall asleep in this place.

We all seemed to drift closer together as we took in our frightening surroundings. I took a deep breath and the stale air smelt of cigarettes and garbage. It made me feel sick to my stomach that I had to refrain from gagging.

“Well, we’re not going to get a room by standing out here. Let’s go in and see.” Niall suggested, secretly dreading the insides of the wretched building, as were the rest of us.

“He’s right. We should go in there now. Who wants to go first?” Louis asked, hesitantly.

“Uh, you can dude…” Harry offered Louis.

“Nah, you can go if you want, Hazza, I insist…” Louis refused to be the first to venture into the scary looking place.

“Ugh! Will you all just stop being babies?! I’ll go first!” Liam said, getting a little annoyed with their fear of this place. It was just a gross hotel…

Liam opened the rickety door which screeched as we all walked through it. It occurred to me that it was probably the little bell that would acknowledge our arrival. Even if it was, the employee’s didn’t notice our presence.

The so called ‘lobby’ of this place looked like a waiting room for a doctor’s office, but it was dirty and smoky. If it were a waiting room for a doctor’s office, I sure would not go to that doctor.

An all TV blared some local news station and we all walked to the front desk, which was occupied with no people there to help us. Just a bunch of garbage lined along the counter.

“Where’s the receptionist?” I asked, trying not to touch anything. This whole place just wreaked of hepatitis C or B or some kind of disease that I had never planned on getting in my life…

“I don’t know,” Louis looked around the place with fear still lined across his cute face.

“Maybe we should ring the bell…” Zayn suggested as he pointed at the silver bell on the desk. He stared it down, like he was having some kind of staring contest with it. And I think Louis noticed it as well.

“Go ahead; try it…” Louis shrugged. It was the only thing we really could do about it.

DING.

The bell rang after Zayn touched it and we waited for someone to respond. We had no such luck.

Zayn looked at the bell, sadly, holding his urge to touch it a bunch more times; so the annoying sound would ring and ring and ring. Louis could see Zayn’s need to play with the bell again.

“Go ahead, Zayn. Ring it again. Maybe they didn’t hear us…”

“Good thinking,” Zayn agreed with Louis even though he’d been dying to ding the bell once more. His wish came true. He got to make it ring once more. And when no one responded, once again Zayn kept tapping the little silver button that made it ring. He was uncontrollable and nobody could stop him. He was laughing like a maniac and enjoying the fun he was having while doing it. He practically looked insane if you didn’t know us.

“Whadda ya whant??!” A raspy voice with a thick Brooklyn accent hollered from a secluded area we were not aware of.

“Uh…” Louis answered, looking around to find the voice’s owner. “We…were hoping to rent a room?” Louis called out, not sure of where he should have called out to.

“How many?” The voice asked, starting to sound annoyed and I knew we could run before it came out of hiding…but we were too late.

A short, pudgy woman in curlers and a nightgown came out of nowhere and stared us down. Or…should I say up? Niall and I looked at each other and then at Harry. We were kind of scared. Louis still couldn’t find where the voice was coming from until Zayn tapped him and pointed him in the direction of the voice.

“AH!” Louis screamed. We all opened our eyes widely, afraid that Louis may have offended her. “Uh…uh…” He stumbled. He was startled to find what he saw. An evil looking old woman waiting impatiently for his response. “Six. There’s six of us.” Louis tried to pull himself together.

“Fine…smoking or non-smoking, pretty boy?” She asked, placing a hand on her hip, looking directly at Louis. The rest of us held in our laughter as Louis tried to recover from her comment.

“Uh…” He started.

“Does it really matter?” Niall asked, looking around. His nose crinkled at the smell of the place. “This whole place smells like smoke…” He said and we all cringed because we were afraid his comment would have also offended the woman. But it didn’t even seem to phase her one bit.

“Then non-smoking it is.” She said, grabbing a key off the wall and walking back around the desk.

“Cool,” Louis smiled, trying to be friendly to her.

“Yeah, real tubular…” She said and her ‘tubular’ came out sound like ‘tubula’. We all traded scared and freaked out glances. What was it going to be like staying at this place tonight…?

“Um, yeah…” Louis, again, tried to be friendly…

“Come on…I’ll show ya you guy’s room…” She shuffled her slippered feet in the direction of the rooms.



“Heah we ah cutie patooties…” She winked at Zayn and handed Louis the key to the room.

“Um, thank you ma’am…” Louis clutched onto the key.

“No problem. Everything should be in there. If ya’s need anything else, I’ll be right down the stairs, but if that’s it then ya’s can just check out when ya ready to leave in the morning…” She informed us and we all nodded politely, not too sure what to think of the gross hallway we were standing in and what horrible things lurked behind the puke green door.

“Sounds good,” Zayn told her as he nodded, trying to make the best of our horrible situation.

“Bye boys…” She said with a wink, totally excluding me as she walked away. But before she left she stopped and tapped Harry in his cute little butt. Harry’s eyes opened wider than I’d ever seen them open before. His head snapped back to his butt and then to the woman who winked at him.

“Yowza!” She responded to Harry’s astonished face. Harry just stared at her, blankly. Who did this woman think she was? Whoever she was, she gave all of us but Harry a good laugh.

As she shuffled out of sight we all burst into laughter. Niall was laughing so hard he fell to the floor. Zayn and Liam had to hold onto each other so they wouldn’t fall over. Louis’ eyes were watering because he was laughing so hard. I held my stomach; it hurt from laughing so hard. Harry just stood there, frozen, his eyes and mouth opened as wide as they could go.

“Did you like that, Harry??” Niall asked in his laughter.

Harry’s response was a blink.

“HAH! AHHHH!” Louis laughed, trying to calm down. He wiped his watery eyes and slid the key into its keyhole.

“Did that just happen?” Harry asked as he blinked once more.

“Yeah…it did…” Niall shook his head which still continued to smile at Harry’s sad experience.

“Okay guys…here we are!!” Louis was trying to get us excited for our dreaded hotel, or HOEL, visit.

We all closed our eyes as if shuddering the place as Louis slowly opened the door and opened his eyes.

“TADA!!!” He sang as we all looked curiously into our room for the night.

All six of us crammed into one room and set our eyes on…not too much.

“This is…nice?” Zayn asked, but really meaning to make us feel better. The unsure tone in his voice only made me want to get out of this crazy HOEL room quicker than ever.

“Sure…it’s…beautiful…” Louis nodded, trying to agree with Zayn, but it just wasn’t working. There was nothing beautiful or nice about this room.

I looked around the ‘beautiful and nice’ room. It was sort of spacious for a place like this, but not much. The walls were painted an ugly off white/yellowish color. I tried not to focus on them. There was a dresser in the corner with a TV from the 1970’s (I bet) sitting on top of it. There was one bathroom, an extremely small one at that. Yeah…that was really going to go over well with SIX people.

I also noticed that there were only two queen sized beds sitting in the ugly HOEL room. That meant we were going to have to share.

Harry, still traumatized, fell face first into the mattress and laid there, his feet hanging off the bed and his arms spread out. I heard him cough once, as he took in a big heaping of dust as he landed there.

“They’re comfy…” His voice was muffled by the bed’s blankets.

We set all of our things we had brought in down and decided to check out the room a little more. As if you could. Zayn had other plans though…

“YAY HOTEL BEDS!!!” He exclaimed, throwing off his shoes and jumping onto the bed Harry was lying in. Zayn kept jumping on the beds like a little kid, waving his arms in the air and nearly stepping on Harry every time he came back down from the air.

“Zayn…get your nasty feet off the beds!” Liam joked, but he was a little serious too; I could tell.

“Yeah and away from my face, please…” Harry said, waving his hand in front of his face as if to tell Zayn that his feet smelled and he also was a little serious too.

“Geez! You guys are no fun!” Zayn shook his head, jumping up and doing a weird movement in the air this time.

“Wow, Zayn, that takes talent…” Niall laughed, shaking his head at our Zayn. “I bet I can do it better.” He smirked and Zayn was up for the challenge.

Niall and Zayn jumped from bed to bed doing different little tricks as they jumped, trying to outdo each other.

“Oh, nice. Let me show you how it’s done!” Harry laughed, getting over his run in with the lady and hopping up on the bed to jump with Zayn and Niall.

“Bah-Ring-It!” Zayn challenged as he stuck his tongue out at Harry.

“Oh, I will BRING IT!” Harry promised.

“You guys call THAT jumping?!” Louis laughed as he unfolded his arms and leaped on the beds too, doing some sort of special jump.

“Let’s go jump,” I suggest to Liam, taking his hand. He looked like he was going to be stubborn, but he gave in. Now all six of us were jumping on the beds. I knew this couldn’t be good.

It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Then it’s hilarious.

Zayn thought he’d out jump everyone. He squatted down and shot into the air. The ceiling wasn’t too far from the bed…do you see where this is going…?

THUNK!!

I heard a loud noise above me and then looked over and saw Zayn falling to the ground as he rolled off the bed.

“Ow…” He moaned.

“Zayn? What did you do?!” Niall asked, out of breath and trying not to laugh at Zayn, who was sprawled out across the floor, moaning in pain.

“Ow…” Was his answer.

“SALIVA!” Harry and Louis exclaimed.

“Are you okay?” Louis finished and everyone couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ow…” He moaned again.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Liam asked as we all stopped jumping and crowded around Zayn’s body.

“Ow…”

“I think that’s a no…” Niall guessed and laughed as we all examined Zayn.

“Zayn. How many fingers am I holding up?” Louis leaned over and tried to help his friend.

“No, what’s Barbie’s sister’s name?” Niall asked in a serious voice.

“Geez, Niall! You have to ask him stuff he KNOWS,” Liam reminded him.

“Oh right,” Niall couldn’t help but smile, reminiscing our time spent in Toys R Us.

“OW…” Zayn moaned once again, louder this time.

“Dude, what did you do?” Louis asked because nobody had really seen what happened; they just heard it.

“Ow…” Zayn answered.

“Zayn, we get it. Ow. You’ve established this. What did you DO to get your boo-boo?” Niall asked like he was talking to a little kid.

“Me. Jump. Boom. Ceiling. Fall. Floor. Ow.” Zayn told us his story…well, sort of.

“Um, complete sentences would have been preferred…but whatever,” Louis smirked.

“Okay, so let me get this straight…” Harry put a hand up to his chin, trying to decode Zayn’s story. “You jumped, something to do with a boom…on the ceiling? You fell on the floor and it hurt?”

“Close enough,” Zayn blinked his eyes as Louis helped him sit up. “I hit my head on the ceiling. Boom was my sound effect.” Zayn was finally able to explain to us what happened.

“Oh…” We all looked at him like he was an idiot.

“How did you manage to hit your head on the ceiling?!” Niall asked, looking from Zayn to the ceiling. “Uh…is it just me or…” Niall began asking and we all looked up to the ceiling. We knew what he was talking about.

“Yeah…yeah, I see it too…” I said.

“Is it really…?” Liam asked, examining the ceiling again.

“Did he…” Louis looked too.

“Dent the ceiling?!” Harry asked, squinting at the ceiling, checking it out where the ceiling sort of caved in a little.

“Nah…he couldn’t of…” I doubted that Zayn could actually dent a ceiling.

“Yeah, but he did!” Niall chuckled.

“Gosh! I told you it hurt!” Zayn yelled, finally standing now as Louis helped him tumble to a chair.

“Oh Zayn, you kill me.” Harry shook his head at klutz-o Zayn.

“Glad I could…OW…amuse you…” Zayn glared as he put ice on his bump.

What was it with them and getting hurt? I think it maybe have been a goal; everyone had to have some kind of self-inflicted pain before the trip was over.

“Are you okay now?” Niall looked at him.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just a little dizzy and I have a headache…” Zayn told everyone his “life threatening” symptoms in a dramatic voice.

“Aww, poor Zayn.” Louis pouted for Zayn in a fake sympathetic voice. I just smiled secretly.

“Shut up…” Zayn demanded and glared at him.

“Here’s some aspirin.” Liam offered as he handed Zayn two and a bottle of water.

“Okay…since we’re done with Zayn’s injury…What’s up? Are we still going clubbing or what?” Louis asked, remembering Harry’s earlier request when it was still daylight out.

“Well, now I don’t know if we can. Saliva doesn’t really seem up to it…” Harry sighed, kind of getting mad at Zayn for hitting his head and being an idiot.

“One, please don’t call me Saliva. That was one time; let’s move on boys. And two, you guys can go. I’ll just chill here and watch some TV…” Zayn said, looking at the TV and then rethinking his words. “Or read…or something. It’s cool.”

“Nah, man. Just because you have no hand-eye or foot-eye coordination doesn’t mean we should leave you. We can go on our way back through here…” Louis comforted Zayn in his own little Louis way that made me smile wide.

“Aw, thanks dude.” Zayn smiled, taking Louis’ comment as a compliment. “But it’s really okay. Go; I’ll be fine. It’ll just be boring if we all sit around here.” Zayn reasoned.

“You sure you want to stay here by yourself…?” Harry asked, not sure if he himself would ever stay here alone.

“Uh…” Zayn bit his lip, rethinking his decision. “Not really, but I’ll be fine. Go! Just go have fun!” He urged.

“I’ll stay here with him.” I offered. I wasn’t really in the mood to go clubbing anymore anyways. I was too tired.

No! She has to come! Liam thought sadly when I agreed to stay with Zayn instead of go clubbing with the rest of them.

“Are you guys sure?” Louis asked.

“Yeah.” We both nodded.

No! Come! Come! Liam screamed in his mind.

“It’s gonna be fuuunnnn…” Louis reminded us with a smile.

“We can go clubbing somewhere else…” I assured them.

“Yeah, in California.” Zayn promised and shooed the guys away.

“Okay. Sounds good to me.” Louis shrugged.

“Let’s go get ready, men!” Niall hollered.