The Haunting of Hill Hotel (Inanimate TF) (Patreon)

The tires of the convertible screeched against the asphalt as it raced through the desert, whipping up the dust that had drifted onto the road and flinging it in its wake like confetti. 

In the driver’s seat, Jacklyn tightened her grip on the wheel, grit her teeth, and pressed the accelerator even harder, earning a roar from the engine and a laugh from herself as the wind slapped her skin and snatched at her hair, threatening to rip her baseball cap from her head. Sucking in a deep breath of the stuff–hot, dry, kinda acidic–she threw back her head and released a rapturous scream. Her heart felt as if it were beating in time with the engine. 

Beside her, Penny shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pinching the arms of her glasses to keep the wind from ripping them from her face. “Can you please slow down? You’re not even wearing a seat belt!” 

“Aw, relax,” said Jacklyn. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! It’s not like there are any other cars for us to hit.” 

“That’s exactly why I’m concerned! If we break down out here–eyes on the road!–if we break down out here, who’s going to rescue us, Jackie?” 

Jacklyn mumbled something inaudible, but she raised her foot from the accelerator all the same. The roar of the engine dwindled to a purr, and the wind stopped slapping their faces in favor of gently caressing them instead. 

“Thank you,” said Penny, primly.

“Hey, what gives?!” came a harsh voice from the backseat. “What are we slowly down for? We were supposed to be in Vegas six hours ago! If anything, we should be speeding UP!” Frowning, Kitty leaned forward, her long blonde hair swinging in the wind. “Do you think I want to be out in this awful sun any longer?” 

Penny snorted. “What, are you worried about overdoing your tan?” Kitty’s skin gleamed bronze, just on the edge of slipping into a tacky orange.

“Oh, like you’re one to talk, Miss Pasty. It’s okay, Jacklyn, don’t speed up–we wouldn’t want Freckles to miss out on the chance for some vitamin D.” 

In the seat to her right, Clair sat up, looking suddenly concerned. “Is everyone wearing their sunscreen?” she asked. 

Three pairs of eyes rolled simultaneously. “Yeeees, Clair.” 

“I don’t want to sound like a worrywart or anything, but the sun is really very bright out today, and we have been exposed for a long time, and I don’t want any of us getting–” 

“Yeeees, Clair.” 

“Really, I have some in my purse, if any of you need to borrow some.” She looked around, pleadingly, but no one took her up on her offer. 

“Urgh, I’ve lost my train of thought,” said Kitty, rubbing her temples. “What was I talking about? Oh, that’s right. Speed up! Speed UP! At this rate, the sun’s going to set before we get anywhere near Vegas.” 

“There are plenty of motels along the road,” said Penny, unfolding the map. “We don’t need to worry about getting caught out at night.” 

“A motel?” Kitty’s screech hurt their ears. “You want us to stay in some shitty, seedy, sloppy, cheap motel?! That’s probably run by a serial-killing super-rapist?” 

“A s-super-rapist?” said Clair, crossing herself.

“You’re being ridiculous,” said Penny. “Only 14% of motels are run by rapists. The odds are well in our favor.” 

Clair looked like she might faint. Only a timely sniff of some smelling salts saved her. 

“Besides…” Penny gave Kitty an arch look. “I’m surprised you’re worried. The way you dress, I’d assume you’d appreciate the attention.” She pushed her glasses up with a sniff.

Kitty all but threw herself at her. “What the fuck does that mean, you snotty little nerd?! What the fuck does that mean?!” 

“D-don’t fight! Don’t fight, please!” cried Clair, trying to pry Kitty’s hands from Penny’s neck. “Please!” 

“Hey!” cried Jacklyn, as Penny’s elbow caught her arm, knocking the wheel in turn and threatening to send the entire car swerving off the road. “Watch it!” 

“Take it back, you fucking nerd!” 

“You take it, slut! You’ve got the experience!” 

“Guys, knock it off, seriously! You’re going to knock us off the road!” 

“Please, please, don’t fight! Jesus hates it when we fight!” 

With a groan and a yawn, the fifth and final member of their party sat up, smacking her lips and rubbing her eyes blearily. Ignoring the fighting, she leaned forward and squinted at the road ahead, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Hey,” said Dolly, “is that, like, a turtle or something?” 

As one, the four other members of the group stopped struggling and turned their eyes back to the road. “Don’t be silly,” said Penny, pushing her glasses up. “It’s clearly a torTOOOOOISE–!” 

Everyone screamed as Jacklyn swerved the car to avoid it, sending them just far enough off the road for their front right wheel to catch a rock and pop with a tremendous pop. Gritting her teeth, Jacklyn forced them back onto the road, and the five of them sat in silence, all staring ahead and sweating a little as the car rolled on as ever, if a little slower and bumpier. 

“So,” said Jacklyn, after a moment. “How far is the next motel?” 

* 

“You know,” said Kitty, as the convertible trundled onward through the dark, its flat tire slapping the ground with every sad revolution, “I never took you for an animal lover, Jacklyn.” 

“Fuck you, Kitty,” said Jacklyn, without looking back. “What was I supposed to do, just hit it?” 

“I think I speak for all of us when I say I would gladly sacrifice one fucking tortoise to be out of this stinking car by now, so, yes, yes, Jacklyn, yes you should have hit the fucking tortoise.” She rubbed her temples with a groan of frustration. “What the fuck was a tortoise doing in the middle of the desert anyway? I thought they were water animals!”

“No, that’s turtles,” said Penny, somewhat defeatedly. 

Sitting back, Kitty pushed a sleeping Dolly off her shoulder with a groan of frustration. “And how much farther is that fucking motel? I thought you said there were lots of them.” 

Penny sighed. “I was assuming we’d be moving at move than ten miles an hour,” she said. “Nonetheless, we should be coming up on it within another half an hour or so.” 

“Half an hour?!”

“H-half an hour?” said Clair, snapping her eyes from left to right. “B-but the sun is already setting. If we’re out in the dark…” She bit her lip and looked around fearfully. “What about coyotes?” 

“Yeah,” said Kitty, “what about the coyotes? What are we gonna do if Jackie swerves to avoid a coyote and drives us into a rock?” 

“Fuck you, Kitty.” 

The car rumbled onward for another half a mile, each bump of the wheel bouncing them in their seats and leaving them to fall back to earth a little more annoyed than before (or panicked, in Clair’s case). 

A particularly large bump popped Dolly out of her nap. Blearily, she looked around, squinting at the distance. “Hey, what if we stayed at that place?” 

“What place?” asked Jacklyn. Four heads turned to follow Dolly’s gaze and found their jaws dropping: ahead, a dirt road split from the asphalt and trailed off into the desert, where it zigzagged up the side of a small mountain and came to a stop at the door of a great, gothic-looking mansion. 

Thunder shattered the glass of the sky. 

Kitty scowled. “Come on, Freckles, what are you waiting for? Open the map and tell us what the hell that place is.” 

“I already have the map open,” said Penny, scowling. “And it’s not on there.” 

“What the fuck does that mean? Is it new?” 

They all turned to study the building again. It didn’t look new. In fact, it couldn’t have looked older. It had the building equivalent of wrinkles, gray hair, and that weird cabbage-y smell old people have. 

Raindrops dappled the bonnet of the car. “Shit,” said Kitty. “Now it’s raining as well. Fuck, Jacklyn can you put the hood up?” 

“Not without stopping and getting out,” said Jacklyn. 

“Shit. Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not drowning to death in the middle of a desert when there’s a perfectly good shelter right off the road. Who’s with me?” 

Penny raised her hand. After a second, Clair raised hers too. Dolly had fallen back to sleep, so Kitty grabbed it and raised it for her. “Jacklyn.” 

“Fine, fine, I hear you.” With a sigh, she swung the wheel and set them trundling up the dirt path towards the mansion. 

Half an hour of tense waiting for the rain to start later, the convertible rolled to a stop outside the door of the mansion. The building loomed atop the hill like a great black dragon atop its nest, the eyes of its windows leering left and right in search of someone to incinerate.

“Hill Hotel,” read the sign beside the door. 

“Oh shit, it’s actually a hotel,” said Jacklyn. “That’s a stroke of look.” 

“What do you know?” said Kitty, patting Clair on the back. “Looks like you don’t have to worry about the rapists after all.” 

“Yay,” said Clair, trembling.

Jacklyn, meanwhile, approached the front doors and, finding it locked, rapped the giant dark wood with her knuckles a few times. The five of them (or four, really, since Dolly was still slumped on Kitty’s shoulder) heard footsteps from the other side. 

“You know, this place is pretty spooky,” said Jacklyn, looking back with a grin. “It’d be pretty funny if, like, the door opened up and it was, like, Dracula, on the other side, wouldn’t it?” 

“Hah hah,” said Penny.

“Hah hah,” said Kitty.

“No,” said Clair, shaking her head emphatically. “No, that wouldn’t be funny at all.” 

Dolly snored on. 

As they waited, the footsteps grew louder and louder. Finally, the lock clicked. The door swung open, just a little. 

And who should poke his head out but fucking Dracula himself. 

Thunder cracked, drowning out the group’s screams. 

“Stay back! Stay away!” cried Clair, thrusting her crucifix at him. “Stay awaaay!” 

The man in the doorway, who on closer inspection was a lot less like Dracula and a lot more like a starving watchmaker, stared at them in concern. “This is my home,” he said, sounding hurt. “I live here.” 

Jacklyn took a second to calm herself down and forced Clair’s crucifix down for good measure. “Sorry about that,” she said, “we’re all kinda on edge. This is a hotel, right?” 

“It is,” said ‘Dracula’, sounding suspicious. “I am the Concierge.” 

“Do you have any rooms?” 

“We do,” said the Concierge, squinting at them. 

“...Can we have some of those rooms?” 

The Concierge frowned. He seemed about to say no, but a second later the heavens decided they’d had enough of holding onto all that heavy water and dropped it in a deluge of British proportions. “Oh, very well,” he said. “I suppose we can find rooms for you all. But some of you will have to share a bed.” 

The five of them eyed each other, mentally ran through the combinations, and winced at the results. 

“That’s fine,” said Jacklyn, despairing. 

“If you’ll follow me then,” said ‘Dracula’, beckoning them inside.

*

The Hotel foyer was a cavernous mouth, a great maw with a tongue of red carpet and potted plants for teeth. At the end, where they might have expected to find the throat, stood a quaint receptionist’s desk and a wall of hooks, mostly empty. The Concierge slipped behind it and handed them the guest book. “Your keys,” he said, once they’d written in their names. “I’m afraid your rooms are on the thirteenth floor. You may wish to take the elevator.” 

Up on floor thirteen, they came to an abrupt halt, unsure how to proceed. “Okay, how do we decide who’s with who?” said Jacklyn, holding up the three keys the Concierge had given them. 

Penny and Kitty shared a fiery glance. “Well, I’m definitely not staying with–” 

“Never mind, I’ll decide,” said Jacklyn with a scowl. “Penny, you’re with me. Kitty, you can bunk with Clair.” She tossed the second key to her. “And Dolly…” 

Dolly had fallen asleep against the wall. Jacklyn tucked the key into her cleavage. “Okay, looks like we’re all good. See you all in the morning, I guess.” 

*

The sound of a door slamming somewhere in the distance startled Dolly out of her slumber. Snapping upright, she looked around and frowned at the dark corridor before her. Where was she now? Hadn’t they been driving? Where was everyone? What time was it? Midnight?! Jeez, how long had she been out for?

The coldness in her cleavage finally drew her attention downward, and she reached in and pulled out a small key with a tag. ‘69,’ it read. She stepped back and looked around and found Room 69 beside her. “Oh,” she said. “I guess we’re at the hotel now. Cool.” 

Dolly was pretty used to things like this happening to her. Opening the door, she slipped inside and stumbled over to the bed, where she collapsed with a sigh of relief. It felt good to finally rest her head against something soft, instead of Kitty’s shoulder.

She might have fallen asleep right there, if not for the heat in her sex. Sitting up, she rubbed herself with a frown. She’d been waiting for some privacy all evening–that was the main reason she’d fallen asleep in the first place. What was she supposed to do now though? She couldn’t just get off in a strange place without something to help her. 

Her eyes settled on the TV at the end of the room, and her mouth slowly curled into a grin. Of course! There was bound to be at least one channel of naked men or whatever. She searched for the remote, and, finding it under the pillow, snapped the TV on. 

A wall of static greeted her, and no matter how many times she flicked, it didn’t improve. Urgh, they must not have paid for cable or something.

Outside, the storm raged on.

Frowning, she sat back, feeling more frustrated than ever. What was she supposed to do now? She hadn’t even brought Mr. Buzzy. She rubbed her brain cells together for a few minutes and finally achieved a brief spark of thought. “Room service!” If she was in a hotel, they were bound to have room service, right? It was a little late at night, but they’d probably still serve her if she asked nicely enough. And hotels stocked, like, porn films and stuff, didn’t they? 

She found the phone on the bedside cabinet, accompanied by a leaflet with some relevant numbers. Room service was near the top.

Shifting the phone onto her lap, she lay back on the bed and started punching in numbers. 

*

In her own room, Kitty picked up her pillow and covered her ears with a groan. It had taken forever to get Clair into bed and calm enough that she could actually sleep and now, as luck would have it, the idiot was suffering from nightmares! She kept tossing and turning in her sleep, and Kitty couldn’t stand it.

“Vampires… vampires… going to suck my virginity!”

Finally, Kitty threw her pillow aside and herself to her feet. She would have rather slept with that idiot nerd than with little Miss Sunday School here. At least that prig probably didn’t talk in her sleep. 

Changing out of her pajamas, she grabbed their key and made her way out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her–the last thing she wanted was for Clair to wake up and demand to know why she was being left alone in the Hotel Transylvania. 

Leaving their room alone, she marched through the corridors of the hotel, wondering just how many were occupied. The Concierge had made it sound like all of them were, but he hadn’t had much difficulty finding three empty ones in a row, had he?

Curious, she approached the nearest door and wrapped her hand around the knob, giving it a quick shake just to see what happened. To her surprise, it turned, and the door swung open. Kitty stared, her eyes wide in surprise, as the room beyond came into view. The lights were off, and those of the corridor were dull, so she couldn’t see much, but what she did see was enough to leave her shaking on the spot. 

Figures filled the room: tall, humanoid figures standing shoulder to shoulder with nary a foot between them. None moved; she could hear no sound, whether of shifting or breathing. It wasn’t like looking into a cramped elevator whose occupants had died on their feet and remained there, frozen by rigor mortis. 

For a second, she stood frozen herself, caught in a state of internal conflict. Half of her wanted to flee as fast as possible. The other wanted to find out the truth before she collapsed. 

The second part of her won out. Hands trembling, she reached for the light switch. 

A single snap was enough to dispel all her fears. The light revealed not the gaunt doppelgangers she’d expected, but an empty room filled with life-sized puppets. Frowning, she poked her head in and looked around, one eyebrow raised quizzically. This must be some sort of storeroom, not a guest room. No wonder it had been unlocked. 

Her curiosity satisfied. She flicked off the light and closed the door. The only question, of course, was what a hotel would so need many puppets for. Were they going to put on a show or something?

Nerves still jangling, she left the room behind her and made her way to the elevator, wondering if the hotel had an all-night bar or something else she could use to calm herself. She really hoped it did. 

Inside, she thumbed the button for the first floor and stood back. The doors closed, and the elevator started to decline. Surprisingly fast. Really, worryingly fast, actually. Squealing, she threw herself at the wall and grabbed the safety bar for support as the elevator dropped faster and faster and faster, the acceleration lifting her feet from the floor so that only her grip on the bar kept her from hitting the ceiling and–

Just as suddenly, it stopped, and the doors opened with a charmingly little ding. Kitty dropped and hit the floor with an oof. “Oooh…” She sat up and rubbed her head with a groan. “What just happened? Did the cables snap?” 

She stood and rubbed her head, looking around her with a frown. Where was she now? On the one of the basement floors? 

The view through the elevator door didn’t look like a basement, however. In fact, it looked more like…

Biting her lip, Kitty stepped out of the elevator and into the theater, leaning on the rearmost row of seats to keep herself from toppling over. The stands flowed all the way down to a grand, if somewhat smaller than normal, screen, which hung ready and blank and promising. Looking back, she found the projectionist’s booth positioned not far above her.

“What the fuck is this?” she asked, feeling a bead of sweat on her brow. Hotels didn’t normally have movie theaters in the basement, did they? 

She didn’t know the answer to that question, but her nerves were already so taut they were about ready to snap, and she didn’t intend to stick around and deal with anything else freaky. Swallowing, she hurried back to the elevator, hoping she could get it to move or, failing that, at least call someone to help her. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t give her the chance. No sooner had she gotten within two feet than the doors slammed shut with guillotine swiftness, almost taking off her outstretched hand, and she heard the sound of the elevator rising, fast, away from her. “Fuck, no! Fuck!” 

She backed away, gritting her teeth and swearing. Had someone else called it? 

As she struggled to decide what to do next, she heard the distinctive click-click-click of a film projector start turning and looked up to see light flowing from the booth. Instinctively, she followed it to the screen, which displayed a gigantic 3… 2… 1–

Kitty blinked as she realized what she was looking at. Finally, a laugh escaped her lips. She strode down the aisle, a big grin on her face. Maybe she’d found a good way to spend the night after all…

Flesh filled the screen, entangled and writhing and knotted. Men’s and women’s, their limbs coiled and genitals meshed, their bodies arching and thrusting and pumping and twisting, screams of orgasmic pleasure escaping from their lips. 

Despite herself, Kitty found herself blushing. She’d seen plenty of porn before–hell, she had plenty of experience herself–but she’d never quite had it blasted in her face like this. What kind of freaky theater was this? Was she even supposed to be down here? 

Absently, she pulled the button to call the elevator. When it failed to light up, she sighed in defeat. Well, if she was stuck down here, she might as well enjoy herself. Taking a deep breath, she hopped into the back row, wiggled her ass into a seat, and spread her legs, her short shorts protesting as the denim was pulled taut. Arms on the rests, she stared ahead, a big grin on her face. The only thing she was missing was a bucket of popcorn.

It didn’t take long for her to start getting into things. As a seemingly endless troupe of actors debauched themselves before her, Kitty found her heart racing, her breath quickening, her skin started to run slick with sweat. Jeez, she thought, fanning herself, is it just me or is it hot in here? 

Biting her lip, she flicked a glance back at the elevator and the projectionist’s booth, wondering just how private this place was. Could she get away with having a little fun with herself? Or was she just giving Dracula his own private show? In the end, having just watched a man plunge the fattest cock she’d ever seen into the tightest, moistest vagina, she decided she didn’t even care anymore. What was he going to do, admit he’d been spying on her? 

Unzipping her shorts just a little (just a little), she slipped a hand inside them and found–swiftly, she was well practiced–the button she was looking for. A quick press sufficed to give her a nice jolt, but what she really wanted demanded a slightly more forceful approach. Retrieving her hand, she extended two fingers, wiggled her thumb, and sent her men back into the burning house to see if they could save the cat~. 

A spasm passed through her. Oh yeah, they’d found that naughty little kitty~. She closed her eyes and teased herself even harder, enjoying the sound of thrusting from the screen. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. That’s the–

The sounds of sex cut off just as she was about to cum. “Noo…” whined Kitty. “Come on, what the fuck? What’s–” She opened her eyes. Her voice cut off. 

The film continued to play, though the clues were subtler. The actors, male and female alike, had ceased to pump and thrust and jerk, though their chests continued to rise and fall with their breath, and their sweat continued to run down their skin, tracing sculpted thighs to fall and splatter on the floor of the set, where a specially-prepared mat had been placed to absorb such fluids. In the background, a shadow moved as a cameraman shifted position to get a better shot. 

Every pair of eyes on the screen stared at her, demanding. Kitty screamed. 

Leaping from her seat, she threw herself at the elevator door and banged against it, hard, as the men and women on the screen pushed themselves out of the second dimension and flowed, disturbingly fluid, through the air towards her, their limbs oozing through the room like wet paint across a canvas. Slick and cloying, they pawed at her, digging luminous nails into her clothes and tugging her, tugging her back, back, back…

“Come on, open up! Open up!” Kitty screamed and pounded even harder. 

One of the actors caught her ankle, and Kitty squealed as she lost her foot and dropped to the floor with an ‘oof’. Sensing weakness, the pornstars pounced her immediately, grasping her legs and tugging her towards the aisle between the stands. “No! No! Let go of me!” She kicked and thrashed, but they refused to release her. 

Bouncing down the stairs, her generous rear failing to fully absorb the impact, Kitty squealed with each sharp impact to her tailbone. The screen grew enormous up ahead, its landscape of flesh filling her eyes like the ocean. A scream escaped her throat as the arms of the pornstars hauled her off the floor and held her an instant dangling upside down, during which time they tore away her clothes like the peel of a banana. As they slipped to the floor, she hung there and squealed one final time, sweat dripping from her skin, before the actors drew them inside them and she vanished in a flash of steam, like a comet into a star.

Flesh washed over Kitty’s head, and for an instant she floated in the depths of the film, sinking deeper and deeper with the second. Something grabbed her breast. Something else grabbed her ass. Something hard and sticky nuzzled her dripping sex. She screamed again, though something of the terror was gone, replaced by a tiny, creeping pleasure which grew stronger with every second.

The screen rippled like the skin of a lake and was still.

***

Just as Dolly was about to lie back and fall asleep, assuming it had all been for nothing, she heard a knocking at the door and snapped awake, blinking rapidly. 

The knock repeated. “Room service,” came a familiar voice. 

“C-coming!” cried Dolly, leaping to her feet and hurrying to unlock the door. She found herself looking up at the Concierge, who frowned and handed her a VHS tape wrapped in a white cloth. 

“I would pretend I have no idea what you ordered, but that would be lying. Good night.” He closed the door with a frown, and she heard the sound of him stamping back down the corridor and muttering something about modern women. 

Dolly didn’t care about that though. Why should she? She had her porn! She couldn’t believe the hotel had actually brought her some. Maybe the place wasn’t that bad after all! Giggling, she hurried over to the TV, where she stripped off the cloth and examined the VHS box with a frown. “PussyCats?” It wasn’t anything she’d ever heard of, but then she didn’t exactly have a habit of ordering porn from hotels, so maybe she wasn’t the target audience. Popping open the case, she slipped the tape into the player, threw off her clothes and tossed herself straight into bed, wishing she had Mr. Horsey to help. She guessed she’d have to settle for her fingers this time.

As soon as she hit play, the video snapped straight to the good stuff, without even wasting time on foreplay. Dolly stared, entranced, as men and women filled the screen, their naked, nubile bodies oiled for her entertainment. Biting her lip, she danced her fingers down her thigh to her pussy, thinking all the time how good it would be to finally get some relief after a long day of, well, sleeping mostly. 

Slipping her fingers into the drooling cavern of her cunt, she jerked in surprise at how strong the feeling was. How pent-up was she exactly? Sucking in a calming breath, she drew back her hand and delved even deeper, catching her clit with her thumb as she worked to maximize the pleasure. 

Meanwhile, she studied the screen, eyes roaming from one gorgeous body to another. She paid most of her attention to the sculpted abs of the men, and their long, virile cocks, but she couldn’t help appreciate the women as well: there were some really hot ones. 

One in particular brought her to a halt mid-finger. Blinking, she fumbled for the remote and rewound a little, squinting as she watched. “There, the blonde in the back…!” A laugh escaped her lips. “Hey, that girl looks just like Kitty!” 

She considered running next door and tell her what she’d found, but she doubted Kitty would appreciate it. Instead, she rewound the scene, turning up the volume and replayed it again, laughing as the fake-Kitty on the screen took a cock up the ass and squealed in pleasure. “Hey, she sounds just like her too!” 

Footsteps scrapped against the corridor’s carpet.

*

Jacklyn woke to the sound of her stomach groaning. Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes and fumbled for the bedside lamp. Beside her, Penny rolled over with a groan, mumbling something incoherent. “Sorry,” whispered Jacklyn. 

Sliding out of bed, she knelt and reached under it, searching for the trunk containing her belongings. As she rummaged inside, her expression became more and more frustrated. Where were they? Where–? Don’t tell her she’d run out already. She thrust the bag aside with a cry of despair.

“I’m trying to sleep here,” said Penny, voice dark. 

“Sorry,” replied Jacklyn, slumping back onto her butt. How could she be out of snacks already? It had only been a couple of days. 

Ever since she’d been young, Jacklyn had had an enormous appetite. It was the main reason she’d gotten into sports: her parents, despairing the idea of gaining weight–had pushed her to do anything that might prevent it, even the stuff they might otherwise have kept their beloved daughter from, like football. And it had worked–she’d never gained a pound of fat. On the contrary, she’d grown tall and slender, her muscles wiry and taut. She could punch through solid wood, and she was hot as fuck to boot. 

Her appetite had never gone away though, despite her best attempts to hide it. Especially the sugar cravings. She shivered. Fuck. 

Biting her lip, she looked around. Where could she get something to eat at this hour of night? Would Penny had something in her pack? No, she doubted Penny ate anything more filling than nutrition paste, like a fucking astronaut. Could she call for room service? Maybe, but it was pretty late at night and besides, if she woke Penny up, she’d get no end of grief from her. There was nothing worse than the wrath of a nerd. 

Sighing, she stood and made to get dressed. Maybe she could find something down in the foyer? It was a long shot, but what else could she do? Maybe the walk would take her mind off the hunger, at least.

Slipping into her crop top and her short shorts, she grabbed the key and made her way out into the corridor, sneakers smacking against the carpet as she headed for the elevator. 

*

In her own room, Dolly lay back with a sigh of satisfaction. “Oh yeah…” she said, flicking off the TV. Who knew sloppy hotel masturbation could feel so good? 

Breathing hard, she lay back and rested her head against the pillow, closed her eyes, and tried to sink into the comfy depths of sleep. Now her urges had been sated, there was nothing to stop her from getting a nice good–

Her stomach rumbled

Looking down, Dolly frowned. Oh, that was right! She hadn’t had anything to eat since, like, lunch. Maybe she could get something from room service? They’d seemed pretty happy to bring her, like, porn. A little snack shouldn’t be out of the question. 

Even as she picked up the phone and started tapping away at the numbers, she was already running through the options in her head. Oooh, what should she ask for? Ice cream? A cake? Oooh, how about a nice big sundae? She’d love to eat one of those. 

“Room service,” said a tired voice on the other end of the line.

*

The elevator doors opened with a soft schunk, revealing the drab metal walls and her own frightened reflection. 

For a second or two, Jacklyn hovered on the threshold, feeling suddenly out of place. Maybe this had been a mistake… Maybe she should take some control of her life and resist her cravings, or something. Honestly, what was she doing, searching for a midnight snack at this hour? (Actually, was there any other hour you could search for a midnight snack?)

Just as she was about to turn and leave, her stomach rumbled again, and a fresh wave of weakness passed through her limbs. On the other hand… She bit her lip. If I try to go back to bed now, I’ll end up fainting in the corridor. I guess I’ve got no choice but to continue…

She took another step into the elevator and frowned as a sudden sense of doom afflicted her. On the other hand, maybe she’d be better off taking the stairs. The exercise would make up for her snack–that’s what her parents had always told her.

Turning, she left the elevator behind. Its doors closed like the curtains of a stage. 

Grasping the banister, Jacklyn raised a well-toned leg and carefully placed it on the next stair down, feeling as wobbly as a toddler as she did. What the hell was wrong with her tonight? Was her blood sugar really so low? Pausing to stabilize herself, she took another careful step, and then another, her sneakers slapping against the luxurious red carpet, her palm squeaking against the dark wood of the rail. She had a terrible vision of herself slipping and sliding all the way down the stairs to her doom. 

At last, with much effort, she reached the landing of the staircase and came to a stop, leaning on the walls for support. Well, she’d make it halfway down to the next floor. Only 11.5 more sets of stairs to go…

As she placed her foot on the next step, she frowned, looking around curiously. Was it just her, or could she hear something clicking? It sounded a little like clockwork, but it was distinctly louder and more complex than any clock she’d ever heard. She paused for a second, head cocked, just listening to the sound of it. Where was it even coming from? It sounded like it was beneath her. 

Finally, she just shrugged. Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t doing anything to sate her cravings. The only way she was doing that was by heading downstairs. 

She took another step, and with a resounding click, the stairs gave way beneath her. Jacklyn screamed as she shot downward the ridiculous slide they’d become, wailing louder with every second. Even the carpet had become smooth! 

Screaming, she slipped down and around and down and around, shooting past one floor after another as the twisting slide slingshotted her down, down, down towards the foyer. She counted the numbers as they raced past: 5… 4… 3… 2… 

She thought it would stop at the first floor (it had to, didn’t it?), but instead it carried her on, on, down past floor 1 and on into the dark depths of the basement, which swallowed her up like an enormous mouth, harsh metal replacing the carpet of the slide.

Ahead appeared a thin speck of light at the end of the tunnel. She screamed as she shot through it and out and just like that she was falling, falling, falling towards–

With a clang, she landed assfirst in a gigantic bowl, like something out of a giant’s kitchen. Sitting up, she groaned and rubbed her buttcheeks. What the hell had happened? Where the fuck was she? 

Heart pounding, she forced herself to her feet and spun around. The walls of the bowl rose around her like the caldera of a volcano, impossibly high–she couldn’t see anything beyond them. 

“What the fuck? Let me out of here!” Stepping back, she charged the edge of the bowl, scrabbling to pull herself up and out of it, but the wall was too steep and too slippery–even when she managed to get her fingers around the rim, she couldn’t hold them there for more than an instant. With a gasp, she let go, allowing herself to slide, grunting, back down into the center of the bowl. 

Rubbing her arms, she groaned. Urgh, she was still too weak to do anything! She needed something to eat! 

Just as she thought her situation might be hopeless, she heard the groan of a great engine and raised her head to see something moving over the bowl. It looked a lot like a giant pipe… the kind you’d use to dump ingredients into an industrial vat. 

Her heart, which had until this point been racing, stopped beating. “F-fuck!” With a groan of horror, she turned and flung herself at the wall against, scrambling desperately to pull herself up and out. 

Above her, the pipe grunted and shook and vomited out an ocean’s worth of cream. Jacklyn could only scream as it crashed into the bowl, splattering her back and rising with such speed that barely a second passed before she found herself sucked down by it. Releasing the rim, she dropped, and her vision went white as the smooth cream washed over her face.

For a second or two, she floated undercream, too stunned by what was happening to react properly. Then a desperate tension in her lungs told her she needed air fast and with a silent scream, she scrambled to break the surface, kicking desperately. She broke it with a violent gasp, struggling to fill her lungs with air. She felt like it had been a year since she’d last taken a breath. 

Once she’d regained a little strength, she looked around, trying to understand her situation. Cream filled the bowl almost to the rim, and a bead of hope flashed inside her as she realized she could simply swim over and climb out. Taking another deep breath, she frontcrawled towards the edge, cream slopping around her arms.

Halfway towards it, she heard another groaning of machinery and looked up to see the giant pipe moving, while a vast whisk moved in to replace it. She gaped, her eyes wide in horror, and swam even faster, desperate to reach the edge before the mixer reached the bowl.

She made it, if only barely. A second later, the mixer crashed into the cream, splattering it everywhere, and started, slowly at first but picking up speed swiftly, to turn, to turn so fast the whirr threatened to deafen her. 

Shit. Shit. Shit! No! Not now, I’m so close! Gripping the rim of the bowl, Jacklyn kicked even harder, struggling to force herself up out of the cream and out of the bowl entirely. With every passing second, however, the mixer picked up speed, and the cream started to turn faster and faster, until it became a white whirlpool, slick and fast. 

To her horror, Jacklyn found her legs rising as her body was caught in the whirlpool’s spin, her lower half lifted and her body pulled taut as a rubber band as she clung desperately to edge, gritting her teeth and straining her fingers in a desperate, desperate attempt to avoid being pulled free.

It was futile, of course. The speed of the whisk continued to grow, and so did the speed of the cream in turn, until it became impossible to fight it. Jacklyn screwed up her eyes and moaned. The pain in her fingers was unbearable; her chest burned, and so did her muscles, but no matter how much she wanted to resist, she just couldn’t–

–hold on.

Jacklyn’s fingers finally gave, and with a scream she shot away from the edge of the bowl and towards the whirling blades at the center. Where they caught her flesh, she came apart like a snowman put through a combine harvester: her body melted on impact and, caught by the whisk, was promptly churned into oblivion, splattered into a thousand thick white globs, barely distinct from the rich cream around her.

The effect on her mind was just as extreme. She screamed inside even as it smashed her, reducing her thoughts to a milieu of pleasure as shapeless as her body. 

By the time the whisk stopped, little remained of her save the faintest impression of a face and breasts, floating pleasured and perky atop the cream.

***

Dolly had almost fallen asleep again when she heard another soft knock at her door. “Room service,” said a familiar and very exhausted sounding voice. “Your snack.” They made the word sound detestable. 

Not that Dolly noticed in the slightest. Leaping out of bed with a squeal of delight, she rushed towards the door and wrenched it open, revealing the gaunt figure of the Concierge, and in his hands: 

Dolly’s jaw dropped; her eyes went wide. In the Concierge’s hands was the largest, sweetest-looking ice cream sundae she’d ever seen. The glass was like a vase, and the ice cream–the ice cream was practically a mountain! A swirling mountain threaded with veins of chocolate and strawberry sauce and with an enormous wafer to top the whole thing off. She’d never seen anything so delicious! 

“Thanks!” she said, slamming the door in the Concierge’s face. She heard him grunt in disgust as she made her way back to bed, snatched up the spoon, and started shoveling ice cream into her waiting face. The instant a drop of the stuff touched her tongue, she screwed up her eyes and squealed in delight, her entire body shaking with the joy of the taste. She couldn’t believe how good it tasted. 

Sitting back, she looked down at her treat and smiled in delight. Now that she looked a little closer, she couldn’t help but notice something funny about her treat: with its spherical base, the two clumps of ice cream resting atop it, and the one last ball of the stuff resting atop them, it looked a lot like a big, chubby snowwoman. Giggling, Dolly dug a spoon into a breast and scooped it into her mouth with a silent laugh. She wondered if they’d made it that way on purpose.

***

Penny rolled back and forth and side to side in bed, crossing her legs and biting her lip and screwing up her eyes as she fought to resist the growing pain in her bladder. 

Finally, rolling to the side, she flicked a glance at the alarm clock and groaned in despair. Midnight? Still. Urgh. There was no way she was going to be able to last until the morning. 

Sitting up, she frowned to see Jacklyn no longer lying beside her. Where had she gone? For a midnight run or something? That sounded like her, but who did something like that while staying at a strange hotel? 

Tossing the question out of her mind, she made her way to the room’s ensuite bathroom and struggled to get the door open. The handle jerked in her hands as if fighting to stay shut, and only after several sharp tugs did she finally manage to get it open. Inside, she flicked on the light, but it fizzled and burst with a sharp pop as well. Frowning, Penny massaged her temples. Perfect. This is just my night.

The spectral shadow of the toilet was one that would surely haunt her nightmares. Growing up, she hadn’t exactly had the best experience with toilets–she’d spent way too many times with her head in one back in middle school, and even now the sight of that porcelain seat gave her an instinctive chill.

Since the pressure in her bladder was impossible to ignore, she fumbled for the toilet and found it without some struggling. Wrenching up the lid, she pulled down her bottoms and planted herself on the seat with a plap of flesh against porcelain. It felt cold against her ass, but she supposed it was better than the warmth of peeing the bed.

As she emptied her bladder, she heard a gurgling beneath her, as if something were moving through the pipes far below.

*

In her own room, Dolly swallowed the last spoonful of ice cream and collapsed with a sigh. De-licious, she thought, licking the last few drops off her lips. It had definitely been worth calling for room service again. 

Her eyelid fluttered. She released a yawn. Now that her belly was fully, it was probably time for her to catch some sleep though, wasn’t it? Rubbing her eyes, she lay back, letting her head sink deep into the pillow. She couldn’t wait until she woke up tomorrow. She and her friends were going to have so much fun…

She’d barely closed her eyes when her stomach rumbled again, and she felt a terrible, if very familiar pressure in her gut. Snapping upright, she bit her lip and swallowed. Uh oh. Now she remembered why she didn’t normally eat at night–for some reason, her stomach really didn’t like it. 

As the pain in her belly grew stronger and stronger, she leapt out of bed and hopped from one foot to another, desperately hoping that movement would make the tension pass and she’d be free to return to sleep without anything awkward happening. It didn’t, of course, and she wasn’t. 

Finally, flushed red and sweating, she hurried for the room’s ensuite bathroom, almost bumping into the door in the dark.

*

In the room next door, Penny finished her business with a sigh of relief and mopped herself off with a couple of squares of TP. As she went to stand, however, she felt a strange feeling in her butt, almost as if it were being vacuumed. Frowning, she looked down: between her legs, the water spiraled and sank, vanishing into the depths of the pipe and taking her TP with it. She scowled–had she flushed the toilet by accident? Was it automatic? What exactly was happening here? Urgh, she really wished it had given her chance to put the lid down first. There was nothing worse than the airborne bacteria released by an ill-timed flush! 

She tried to stand, so that she could close it, but to her surprise her butt refused to leave the seat. What the hell? She wasn’t frozen–in fact, she had no difficulty moving the rest of her body as she kicked her legs and scrabbled for something to grab onto–it was just that her butt refused to leave the seat, no matter hard she pulled it. The feeling of suction was incredible now–was she really suckered in place? That was impossible…! …Wasn’t it? 

Heart beating a little faster now, she squirmed harder and harder, fighting to tear her butt free of the toilet. But despite her best efforts, she just couldn’t do it. Her butt was stuck in place as if glued, and with every second, the pressure keeping it there grew a little stronger. The suction of the toilet was audible now, and it made her want to scream in terror. 

“What the fuck?! What the fuck?! Jacklyn! Jacklyn, where are you?! Help me!” Drenched in sweat, she scrabbled for something to grab so she could pull herself out: the sink, the door handle, the shower curtains, anything. 

Just as she got a hold of the sink, the suction increased again. The sound had become a tremendous roar now, and to her horror, Penny found herself sinking, sinking into the toilet. “Jacklyn! Jacklyn!”

She screamed as her ass passed through the seat with a plop, leaving her thighs squished between it. A second later, she dropped another foot, pulling her in up to her knees and practically folding her in half. She screamed again, thrashing madly now. Her stomach was stuck against her legs, and she could feel her ass being squeezed as the tight pipe below it struggled to suck it up.

Her heart thudded. Her brow shone slick with sweat. She inhaled and exhaled, and all that emerged from her lips was a wild, disbelieving laugh. She heard tall tales of this happening to people on airplanes, but she’d known, intuitively, that there was just no way it was possible. The pressure differential was nowhere near strong enough to suck someone through a toilet! It was impossible!

She dropped another half a foot with a scream. “Jacklyn! Help me! Someone! Anyone!” She could barely breathe now, her body had been folded so tight. The pressure on her butt was unbearable, and it just wouldn’t stop growing. 

Whimpering, she sank another foot. Only her hands and her feet were sticking out of the bowl now, fingers twitching, feet trembling. Eyes full of tears, she stared up through the window of the seat, desperately pleading for someone to come and save her. Someone…! 

A second later, the toilet gave one last intense suck, and Penny slipped down the pipe with a final, drawn out scream.

The toilet gurgled one last time and was silent.

*

It took Dolly almost a full minute of fumbling in the dark to finally found the door handle for the bathroom. Finally, she wrenched it open, threw herself inside and spent another minute or two searching for the light cord. When she finally found it, the sudden change in the light level scorched her eyes, and she had to spend another minute blinking to adjust them.  

When her vision finally cleared, she found herself staring at a toilet like none she’d ever seen before. 

It looked a little like a marble statue of a woman. Not obviously–she was pretty observant, or she probably wouldn’t have noticed at all–but the shape was definitely there: the tank resembled a pair of legs, and the base of the bowl resembled a bent torso, complete with two lumps like a pair of modest boobs. The bowl itself almost looked like a head, its mouth stretched wide open, and she was certain she could make out a pair of little eyes, wide in fright, etched into the seat. It was kinda creepy. 

On the other hand, she was pretty sleepy. So it was probably just her imagination, right? When she saw this thing in the morning, she was certain it would look no different to any other normal toilet. 

A gurgling from her gut reminded her what she’d come here for in the first place. Dropping her skirt and her panties, she dropped her butt to the bowl with a smack and emptied her bowels with a sigh of relief. 

Huh, she thought, as she reached for the TP. What’s that sound? It almost sounds like someone screaming.

*

Clair woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat. Sitting up in bed, she gulped for air, struggling to calm her racing heart. She’d been having the most awful dream. In the nightmare, she’d been chased around the halls of the hotel by the most horrible specter imaginable: a horde of (whisper it, lest you invoke them) nondenominationals. She shuddered at the thought. Even now, it made her want to faint. 

A few minutes of deep breathing and a quick squirt of seltzer sufficed to calm her aching nerves, and soon she was preparing to lie back and returned to the fluffy white clouds of slumberland. Just as she rested her head on the pillow, however, she noticed something strange. That was odd. Where was Kitty? She wasn’t beside her in the bed anymore. 

Claire’s heart started to race against as a second terrible thought occurred to her. What if… what if Kitty had snuck out to have… to have pre-marital hanky-panky with some strange man in another room? The thought was almost to make Clair faint. She gripped her stuffed Jesus and crossed herself, hoping it was merely her imagination, but the evidence was impossible to deny: if Kitty wasn’t in her bed, where else could she have gone?

A gasp escaped Clair’s lips. What if… what if Kitty hadn’t left the room of her own free will? What if…? What if that awful, vampire-looking Concierge actually was the super-rapist they’d discussed back in the car? Or worse: a Catholic? What if he tried to convert her? 

Heart pounding, Clair rushed for the door. Kitty might be a shameless slattern, but Clair certainly couldn’t stand by and let her immortal soul be tainted. 

Her first port of call was Jacklyn’s room. If Clair was going to confront that dastardly Concierge, she needed backup, and what better place to find it than in their group’s star athlete? 

To her surprise, Jacklyn’s door swung straight open, without resistance. Clair stumbled inside and blinked to find the bed empty of either Jacklyn or Penny. 

Sweat dripping from her brow, she stumbled back. W-where were they? Where had all her friends gone? 

Without recourse, she rushed to the room on the other side of her own and rapped hard against the door until, to her extreme relief, she heard the click of the light snapping on on the other side. A second later, it swung open, revealing a bedraggled, sleepy-looking Dolly. “What’s tha matter?” she slurred. 

“Everyone else had been–Is that ice cream on your pajamas?” asked Clair, looking at the stain on Dolly’s top. 

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I ordered a sundae from room service. It tasted so good.” 

“They have room service here?” Clair shook her head. “Wait, I have something important to say! Everyone else has gone missing!” 

“Oh no!” said Dolly, sounding like she didn’t understand the implications. “Have you tried looking in their rooms?” 

“Of course I’ve tried looking in their rooms! That was the first place I looked! The problem is they’re not there.” 

“Oh.” Dolly pursed her lip in thought. “Okay. Now what then?” 

“We’ve got to find them!” 

“Oh, right. …How do we do that?” 

Grabbing Dolly by the hand, Clair dragged her out of her room, spun her around, and pushed her down the corridor. “We’re going to go from floor to floor in search of them! And we if we don’t find them, we’re going to burn this awful hotel to the ground!” 

“Okay!” said Dolly, who’d always suppressed a secret desire to burn things. 

“Let’s goooo!” cried Clair, pushing her down the corridor. “Onwaaaard!” 

In the darkness behind them, something skulked. Skulkily. 

*

The hotel’s lobby lay unlit, its candles and lamps extinguished, and with it all sense of comfort it could have provided. The darkness lurked in every crevasse and corner, threatening to sneak out and caress their ankles with its claws.

“Where are they?” asked Clair, snapping her head from left to right in a desperate attempt to find them. “They can’t have just vanished into thin air.” 

Dolly’s stomach gurgled. She patted it and sighed. “Maybe they went out for a nice midnight walk?” 

Thunder cracked, rattling the windows in their frames. Rain pounded against the glass with only slightly less force than bullets. 

“Possibly,” said Clair, giving Dolly some side-eye. 

Leaving the stairs behind, the two of them approached the reception desk, expecting to find the Concierge behind it. Instead, it was as empty as the rest of the lobby. 

Clair rang the bell, hoping it would summon him, but it had no more effect than making her more nervous. “Where do you think he is?” she asked.

“Maybe he went to bed?” said Dolly, with a shrug. 

“Now? Didn’t you say he’d been bringing your videos and stuff? Why would he finally go to bed now? It’s not like anyone’s replaced him.” 

Dolly frowned. “Maybe he’s just hiding?” 

Clair snorted. Then again, maybe there was something to the idea. Maybe the Concierge was around, and they just had to find him…

After some thought, she slipped behind the reception desk and grabbed the door to the backroom behind. To her surprise, the knob turned in her hand. She poked her head through the gap and took a look into the room beyond. And screamed, jerking back wildly. 

“What? What is it?” asked Dolly, catching her before she could trip. Poking her own head through the door, she gave a ‘huh’ of recollection. “So it’s one of those things, huh?” 

Screwing up her eyes, Clair fought to calm herself. Her heart felt like it was about to explode, but with much effort, she was able to regain her courage and poke her head back into the next room, where the Concierge’s skeleton lay in its uniform, stripped of flesh, its jaw lolling open. It, and everything else in the room, was coated in dust. It looked like it had been lying there for decades. 

Stepping inside, Clair hugged herself, shivering. How could the Concierge be dead, when he’d been serving Dolly all night…? Unless…? 

She screamed again, a little louder this time. But the pitch was off, so the judges only awarded it an 8/10. 

“He’s a g-g-g-g–” She fainted. Fortunately, her smelling salts were still in her pocket, and it didn’t take long for Dolly to revive her. “He’s a ghooooost! A ghost! A GHOST! A golem! I mean, a ghooost!” She fainted again. 

A few shakes of the smelling salts later, and she’d recovered a percent of her composure. “What do we do now?” she cried, shaking Dolly by the shoulders. 

Dolly yawned. “We could always leave,” she said, pointing at the door. 

“G-g-good idea,” said Clair, nodding erratically. “M-maybe we can fetch help?” 

They actually managed to open the door before remembering they were in the middle of the desert. Not to mention the worst storm Nevada had ever seen. There was only one person who could help them, and he hadn’t been seen since that whole incident with the cross. They slammed the door shut.

“Oh, it’s hopeless!” cried Clair, dropping to the floor in despair. “The Concierge’s ghost is going to eat us alive!” 

“That’s not good,” said Dolly. “What’s the army of puppets for though?” 

“Excuse me?” 

Dolly pointed at the stairs. “Them,” she said, pointing at the army of killer puppets gathering on the stairs. 

Clair screamed again. This time, she got a 9 out of 10. 

With a clacking of wooden joints, the army of puppets rushed them. With no other recourse, Clair and Dolly threw themselves out the front door into the storm, which lashed at their faces and whipped at their pajamas and generally left them very wet and cold. Squeezing Dolly’s hand, Clair dragged her in a loop around the building, the horde of evil puppets clacking along behind them like a group of fans desperate for their favorite celebrity’s autograph. 

Clair’s feet crashed into the wet mud of the desert as she and Dolly raced around the perimeter of the building in search of a back entrance and, failing to find one, came all the way back to the entrance. Fortunately, the puppets hadn’t had the tactical sense to leave a guard, and so they were able to easily slip back inside and bar the door behind them. 

You know what they say about puppets, after all. They’re real dummies. laugh track

“What do we do now?!” cried Clair. “We’re trapped!” 

Dolly scratched her chin in thought. “What if we burned the whole building down?” 

“How would that help?” 

“It’s kinda cold.” 

The door thudded as something struck it. Puppets appeared in the windows, clawing at the glass with their hard wooden paws. Clair didn’t know how long it would take for them to realize they could simply break it, but she doubted it would be long. “We’ve got to run!” 

She grabbed Dolly’s hand and made to imitate a banana, but she made it no more than two steps before she slammed straight into the spirit of the Concierge. Exactly how you could slam into a ghost was a good question, but in this case they managed it. Tumbling back, they landed on their butts and looked up, quivering, as the tall, gaunt-faced specter loomed over them. “And where exactly do you two think you’re going?” 

With a crash, the windows exploded in a shower of glass, and a puppet’s hand, clacking and wooden, slipped through the breach. From its fingertips came five strings, and Dolly screamed as they slammed into her head and her limbs. “No! No, not again! Not again!” Her squeal rose even higher.

Dragging her back, they forced her to her feet with a snap of the strings. She stood there twitching, face taut with effort, skin pulsing and twitched as the strings burrowed their way through her form. Where they passed, her skin cracked and harsh, turned from soft, pale flesh to the harsh fiberglass flesh of a doll. 

Clair could only sit there and stare, her eyes wide in horror, as the change wove its way from Dolly’s feet up to her face, hardening her luscious legs and delicious thighs and her generous rears and–God help her–turning her enormous boobs into a pair of wooden spheres that threatened to tear her top. Finally, they reached her head, and Dolly’s scream of confusion cut off as her lower jaw fused with her upper, leaving only a small wedge on a hinge to serve as her mouth. A second later, the change brushed over her eyes and left them blank, blank and glassy and devoid of emotion. 

Her hard new skin split to reveal a series of ball joints, and with that Dolly was gone, replaced by an awful puppet in her image. 

Clair buried her face in her hands with a wail of despair.

The Concierge’s surprisingly solid fingers lifted her head to face him. “Now, my dear. Whatever shall I do with you?” He chuckled darkly. “Perhaps a nice strip of condoms for my next set of guests to use?” 

Clair paled. Prostrating herself, she slammed her hands together and fell upon the last resort available to her: reciting the Lord’s prayer. “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.”

The Concierge rolled his eyes. “Come now, let’s have none of that nonsense. We all know He’s not going to save you.” He extended a hand, its fingers long and bony, and reached for her.

Clair screwed up her eyes and pressed her hands together tighter. “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”

The puppets stopped dancing. Outside, the rain seemed to slow. The Concierge hissed and went for her throat.

“And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever.”

The Concierge shrieked in frustration.

“Amen.”

The roar of the storm had stopped. To her surprise, Clair realized she was still alive. Blinking, she opened her eyes and looked around. Golden light poured through the Hotel’s windows. The puppets had all fallen slack, and the Concierge had retreated, burning where the light caught his skin. 

Someone knocked politely at the door. Clair spun, and no sooner had she turned than the doors flew open, revealing a silhouetted figure.

“No!” cried the Concierge, raising his hands to shield himself from the light. “No! It’s impossible! You haven’t visited this world in over two-thousand years!” 

The figure in the light chuckled. “Well then,” he said, in the deep, Southern-accented voice Clair had always imagined him possessing. “I guess I’m a little overdue.” He cracked his knuckles. 

Clair stared, slack-jawed. “J-J-J-J-J–” 

Bending down, he took her hand in her own. “That’s right, Clair. Your faith has called me back to Earth to fight the wolves who hary my flock. Now…” He stood, his chiseled body shining in the golden light like a marble sculpture. “Time to send this foul serpent back to Hell!” And he pulled back his hips and did a pelvic thrust, and a blast of golden light struck the Concierge’s form. 

The specter screamed as he went up in flame. “Curse you!” he cried, writhing and twisting like a worm on the hook. “Foiled agaaaaaain~!” With a puff of smoke, he collapsed into a tiny pile of ash, pathetic. 

Clair threw herself to her feet and wrapped her arms around Jesus’s surprisingly muscular body. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you for saving me!” Fuck, his pecs were like steel.

Jesus chuckled darkly. 

Opening her eyes, Clair looked up. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s so funny?” Something felt wrong here. 

Covering his face, Jesus laughed again. “Oh Clair,” he said, his body wracked with the force of his laughter. “Oh, poor Clair.” 

Clair backed away, her heart pounding harder than it had at any point in the night so far. Jesus shouldn’t laugh like that. There was only one person that laughed like that, and he was–

Hooking his fingers under his chin, Jesus tugged, and his face came away like the mask it was. Revealed was a visage Clair had seen a thousand different times from a thousand different angles and never had the courage to imagine she might one day meet herself. He wore a tan suit that stood in contrast to his skin, and though his lips were curled in a smile of amusement, the eyes above them were bottomless wells of evil.

Clair.

Heart racing, Clair stumbled back. Her legs went weak. She crumpled. Looking up, she moaned in terror. “No! No! It can’t be! Not you! Not you! Anyone but you! Anyone!”

Clair! 

“What’s the matter, Clair?” said the man in the tan suit, approaching her with the thin smile that had always characterized his presidency. “Aren’t you going to thank me for helping you? Go on, you know what to say: ‘Thanks, O–’”  

“Stop it! Stop it!” Raising her arms to shield her face, she scrambled to escape him. “Stay away! Stay aaawwway!”

“Come on now, Clair. Don’t be like that. I know your pastor says I’m the devil, but I think you’ll find I’m a good man at heart. I’ve even brought you a gift. Don’t you want to see it?” With a thin chuckle, the man in the tan suit reached into his jacket and produced a large emerald, glimmering. “Take a look, Clair.”

“No! Noo!” 

Raising the gem high, Obama laughed like a demon. “CHAOS CON–”

“Noooooo!” 

Clair, wake up! Wake up! 

Wake–!

***

“–up!” 

Clair woke to the sound of Kitty’s voice… and the feeling of her hands shaking her less than gently. Snapping upright, she looked around with a gasp of shock. The desert raced past the convertible–the tires were all fine, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. 

Around her sat her friends, her only friends in the whole wide world, alive and well: Jacklyn and Penny, arguing over their speed; Kitty, looking at her in concern; Dolly, snoring intently. 

“Wh-what’s going on?” she asked. Clair’s face snapped from left to right and back again, sweat flying from her cheeks. “Where are we? Where’s the hotel? Where’s the Concierge? …Where’s Obama?” 

Kitty stared at her. “Clair, what the fuck are you talking about? What hotel? We’re in the middle of a desert. We’re not going to find a hotel in the middle of a desert. …Or the president.” 

The implications of her statement took several seconds to sink in. Exhaling hard, Clair buried her face in her hands and wept into her palms. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “It was all a dream. It was all a dream.”

“Jesus, Clair,” said Kitty, giving her a concerned look. “You really need to get out more. All that Sunday School shit has really scrambled your brain.” She laughed. “Well, don’t worry. We’re only a few miles out of Vegas now. A few nights on the Strip, and you’ll be begging us to find you a hot guy to take your virginity.” 

Clair’s face went pale. Her heart stopped beating. “The… the Strip? The Las Vegas Strip? I-I–I thought we were going to Christian Summer Camp together?!” 

Kitty winced. “Er, yeah… Well, you see, about that…” 

Clair started to hyperventilate. “I– I can’t stay here! I gotta get out of this car! Let me out!” 

“Clair! Clair, stop fighting! Shit! Shit, Dolly, help me stop her! Clair!” 

“Guys, what the fuck are you–? Hey, keep your arms to yourself! I’m trying to drive here! Stop it, you’re going to make me lose control!”  

“Clair, stop!” 

“Hey, is that, like, a turtle or something?” 

“Don’t be silly. It’s clearly a torTOOOOOISE–!” 

The car’s wheels screeched as it skidded off the road.

*

High above, on a plateau overlooking the road, a gaunt figure, skin pale, watched events with a thin smile. 

It had all been a dream… But maybe… Maybe it was also real after all?!!1!