Tronnor One-Shots

The Peach Key Hotel

Each letter in Connor's family name held a fortune of its own. The F, R, N, T were letters of rich lineage, all made possible by three A's--two in Franta, one standing for Alexej, Connor's great, great grandfather and beholder of the grandest Czech empire ever to be forgotten. Under the glamour of that everlasting wealth he set for his family, all of Alexej's achievements were buried, leaving descendants with immense riches yet no recollection of their own history.

"A few generations ago, we were aristocrats from the Czech Republic," was all Connor's father could give of said history when his son, at five years old, asked how they could have possibly gotten the most massive, whimsical hotel of Swedish nowhere under their ownership. "When they died, we got all their money, which is a lot."

"A lot?"

"Yeah, bud. A lot, a lot."

Connor knew that a lot, a lot was quite the bounty, but he still didn't understand why that meant he had to migrate from his comfy homestate of Minnesota, all the way to Sweden. As he boarded the airplane, he still didn't get it. Watching play-toy villages give way to gossamer clouds then vice versa, he tried to, but he still couldn't comprehend it all. But then, as he recalls so vividly now, as soon as he stepped through the ten foot doors of that hotel--nearly dropping his stuffed rabbit at the sight of that utter palace--he stopped caring if he knew why he was there.

It was an immediate home for Connor's imagination and all his curiosities. Instantly, he ran off to survey as much of the house as his parents allowed. The main halls, the front lawn, the first floor of rooms and the suite he shared with his brothers. By the third day however, he had seen everything he could so, naturally, he strayed into a room he was not supposed to be in.

The first discovery little Connor ever made was located at the mouth of a very discreet rat burrow; a peach, gnawed almost professionally, was leaned against the damaged wall with a brass key somehow lodged in a groove. It was a disgusting and outlandish find, but it thrilled him so that he nearly threw the fruit in his father's face to show him. Not only did Connor find the missing key to the pantry and solve the rat problem, but he is also credited with the institute's perplexing name The Peach Key Hotel, a tribute to what happened after his father laughed, ruffled his hair and told him he should never stop exploring. That one suggestion, it would be both thanked and faulted for years of Connor doing just what his father said. 

At age six he had looked behind each  of the one thousand room doors. At eight he had studied guests from behind every pillar and potted plant, and by ten he had found the most impossibly creative places to hide when the tutor came around. Once in his teens, his parents and the guests alike assumed he would lose that curiosity--trade it for nonchalance like how most teenagers barter their childhood--yet he only became more daring.

He picked locks to closets with lost keys, had a knack for finding doors in walls and a habit of venturing into eerie crawlspaces. His parents tried to set up friendships with the guests' children--to make him seem like a normal kid, essentially--but those yellow-bellied offspring of moguls would only follow him so far into his expeditions, before being stopped in fear of reprimandation or danger. In turn, Connor had a habit of leaving them behind.

He had an obsession, and that turned out to be a lonely thing. But he couldn't be minded, as he was given purpose with filling his grandma's old chest with trickets and treasures, found by flashlight in the dusky basement and dusty attic. Pleasured unequivocally from finding old spaces and hidden doors and secrets only buildings that old could keep, not even the creepiest of feels could hold him back from his hunger for exploration. He was fearless, as even the most foreign corners of The Peach Key was his home.

Even now, at seventeen years old, his back straight against one of the dining hall's silk chairs, his knee bounced up and down. Up and down, vibrating, crinkling his dress pants and his mother's forehead alike. He stopped only briefly to applaud his father, finishing a commemoratory toast--"To twelve, amazing years of being host to so many. Thank you all--" but more than paying attention, he was thinking of all the rooms and crannies he resolved to investigate. He sat there--visualizing, hypothesizing, chafing to go scout--with a fake smile on his face to prove that he, the bizarre and excitable son of the hotelier, could be as genteel as no-one suspects.