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A Good Night's Sleep

     |       R O O M    T H I R T Y    F I V E         |

Seek, a Hotel resident that happened to be a pile of goo with an eye, was resting in his usual place under the floorboards. That was typical. He always felt as if he had a lot of work to do.

"WEEEEEEEEEEEEEeEeeEeeeeeeeeee...."

Seek's eye popped open, irritated by the strange sound. Seek sat up, seeping through the floorboards so that his upper half was above and visible. "What—?" He managed to duck as a cloud of smoke stampeded through the room, turning out the lights. "WEEEEE—" the cloud was apprehended by a gooey hand holding up a stop sign from one of the windows.

"Rush, what are you doing here?" Seek asked, begrudgingly standing, forming into a better, more human-like form, and tramping over broken glass to scold the cloud. It turned around, with its ghostly face smiling intensely and eyes blinking innocently. It was Rush, a younger, somewhat immature entity who could travel at impossible speeds. "I'm doing a big race and I'm winning," he said, before his face collapsed into a pouty one. "You don't want me to lose, would you?"

Seek shrugged. "Supposedly not. But once you finish, no more races today. Also, who are you meant to be racing with?"

Rush shook his face. "No one. I'm beating my high score."

And so Rush continued on his way, and Seek went back to resting. He'd barely fully sunk through the floor when a green light flashed through the room, and it blew out the already broken lights.

"Ambush!" Seek cried as the entity circled back for another round, "Stop this at once!"

"Just running laps like I got told," said the entity as she skidded to a stop, causing little rips to appear in the rug she was running on, "Halt told me to."

Seek rolled his eye. Ambush, like Rush, was another hyper-running-messy and young entity, but she was slightly more well-behaved than her speedy counterpart, Rush.

Halt was supposed to be watching them, but she was probably doing her own thing and didn't want Ambush and Rush to bother her. "Tell Halt that running laps isn't... available... right now," Seek huffed, looking around the room to try and find Ambush a new activity, "And while you do that, go and count all the windows and doors in the Hotel. Start with this room so you don't have to come back."

"Okay!" Exclaimed Ambush, excited at the prospect of something new to do, and flew off.

"Now for a good night's rest." Seek said to himself, trudging back to his sleeping place. He settled in a pile of goo and closed his eye. Despite no lighting, thunderstorms or noise, he felt irritated. Something was moving around silently, but Seek couldn't quite tell it was. Then came a voice peeping from a nearby closet. 

"Timothy?" asked the voice in a soft whisper, "Where are yooooou..."

Seek, becoming quite frustrated by this, sat up abruptly and looked at a closet in the room which was ajar. "WHO THE GOOP IS TIMOTHY?!" The closet jumped a little in surprise, and the doors flew open, revealing a ghost-like face inside. "The new family pet."

"We aren't a..." Seek sighed, thoroughly bothered, "All right, first things first. What does your 'pet ' look like?"

Seek stomped his way around the room, checking under drawers, in drawers, around—

He'd only gotten to his third set of drawers when one popped open and a black spider pounced on his face. Seek thrashed around, screaming. "HELLLLLLLLLLLP!!"

The spider landed neatly in front of the closet and a hand picked it up gently, scooping it off the floor. "Gee, thanks Seek!" And the doors shut, signalling the entity had moved to a different closet. Jack was a fellow entity who could only move and communicate by doors or closets. That being said, Jack was the most forgetful of the entities.

Seek felt as if he was losing his patience. Again he sank into the floor, and again he was interrupted. What now? Was it that strange entity he'd seen recently that teleported? Figure, who usually holed up in his library? Or maybe it was the Eyes, coming to...

"Psst."

Oh dear. He should've known. Rush and Ambush had blown the lights, and Jack with his pet 'Timothy' had shown up before he had a chance to fix them. Seek looked around and sat back up for the fourth time. He couldn't see much, but Screech, an entity who liked dark rooms, was definitely there.

Seek heard another 'psst', and looking around again, he shrugged. Then in came Rush and Ambush from the door behind him, almost running Seek over. "WHY ARE YOU TWO STILL HERE?!" Seek cried, moments away from slamming his head into the floor. Ambush and Rush stopped. "Ambush forgot a window," said Rush, "She has to count again and I finally got Screech to race with me!"

Screech appeared in front of Seek. "Hello!"

Seek slammed his hands on the wall. "LEAVE, please—"

Jack teleported back into the closet and opened the doors. "I lost Timothy again."

Seek started screaming his head off. "AAAAAAaAAaaa—"

___________+__________

And now, a short message from the Guiding Light.

And that is the end of this story. Come back soon for more tales of the Hotel...