Hotel Scenes from the Velvet Paw of Asquith Novels

Chapter 4

From The Purging Of Ruen, Chapter 26

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In which Oscar returns to Hotel d"Ruen to find it's in a much worse state than he left it, and that the dining room is still out of bounds because of said state.

When he trotted up the hotel steps, more guests absconded, their sobs bordering on hyperventilation. The stench that followed hit him like something very large, very fast and made entirely of steel. He staggered backwards, with the Dervy catching him before he sprawled across the ground a second time.

Bracing against her, he swallowed some phlegm that decided it would prefer staying in the car.

"I don't think this is going to be as easy as I'd imagined," he said.

"It never ith."

Wiping his mouth, he fought back up the steps and pushed at doors. With a snarl of anticipation, he entered. The Dervy, morbidly fascinated, followed.

Inside, they stopped, stared and gagged.

The foyer smelt like greasy cheese mixed with sweetened sick, and they cringed when chunks of plaster fell from its ceiling as frantic patrons gathered luggage upstairs. Wallpaper peeled and congealed in thick, soggy lumps, looking like a sneeze from something even larger than the steel thing mentioned previously. Pot plants were nothing more than singed sticks in withered soil, and furnishings looked as though they'd been gone over with a blow torch and an assortment of blunted cutlery. Remnants of tattered cordon hung from the ceiling like streamers designed to celebrate despair, while other bits were glued across walls like besieged toilet paper.

Picking their way across a floor that could only be described as flammable, they edged toward the dining room. With his scarf positioned as it had been the previous evening, Oscar made his way with a disgusted curiosity, while the Dervy followed in chokes of sheer disbelief. Peering through its doorway, he saw it had fared even worse than the foyer, which left him realising how badly the sign had been misspelt after all. With muffled obscenities, he pushed what was left of the door. It fell from what remained of hinge and splattered to the floor, before sinking.

Oscar tried saying something, but gagged instead.

Lost for words, the Dervy did the same.

Upon its walls, singed wallpaper peeled in curls around crusting lumps of aerosoled manure. The dining table sagged alarmingly, and would have broken altogether had it not been cast in plaster, albeit brown and lumpy. Chairs lay scattered across the room, thrown when diners fled a sick-soaked floor. Paw marks were streaked though oily, sludge splattered tables, and a mound of pooh steamed nearby, presumably deposited while slippery paws grappled with door handles.

The guilt was all too much for the Dervy and she turned to retch, hoiking up a few mouthfuls of sick, which she dribbled onto similar excretions already congealing upon the floor.

"Can I help you?" a voice asked pleasantly.

Both cats turned, with the Dervy pretending she'd been putting something in, rather than letting something out, of her mouth.

Percival S. Minton smiled in a manner unbefitting the state of venue. "Would you like a room?" he asked, wringing his paws as though trying to unscrew the things.

"I beg your pardon?" said Oscar, noticing the dog's paws were covered in excrement, the wringing rendering it into a lather of sorts.

"A room. Would you like one?"

Oscar and the Dervy glanced at each other. But before Oscar could utter some appropriate profanities, the lift on the foyer's far side pinged. From it tumbled several sobbing animals clutching half-packed suitcases. Lunging for the exit, one screamed at another whose suitcase suddenly fell apart to leave it, before grabbing his paw and dragging him from the premises amidst chokes, wails and an inadvertent defecation.