Summer, 1928
Ian
As it turned out, room 1585 was nowhere near the 1200 hall.
It was hidden in a far off hallway on the first floor, nowhere near the area Ian had been wandering around, and took far longer for him to find than he cared to admit. The labyrinthine nature of the hotel’s many hallways had him walking around confused for tens of minutes, until finally he’d just given up and made himself ask an employee where he could find it.
They’d told him to go down this hall, conveniently labeled with a golden plate that said “1500 HALL”. Shame he hadn’t seen that earlier.
It took a long while to get down to Ian’s part of the hallway, but around the 1560s he’d begun to notice something odd. The pattern of reasonable spacing between rooms that he’d noticed on the walk here seemed to be completely disregarded when designing this hall, all the doors huddled together against the yellow wallpaper of the corridor.
I guess they skimped out on the staff rooms.
It wasn’t all that surprising. When the advertisement said “housing provided”, Ian hadn’t even expected to get a standard living quarters, let alone his own room! Then again, everything about this place was unexpected to him.
The spotless red carpets, the intricately patterned wallpaper, and the chandeliers that seemed to be hung up in any goddamn room they could fit them in. It was all a little overwhelming compared to the dull and dowdy decoration of most of the places he usually found himself in.
Before long, Ian had finally reached the door of room 1585, and he set the clothes pile he’d been carrying around next to it, grabbing the room key from his pocket. As he moved to unlock the door, his eye was brought to the doorknob.
It served as a harsh juxtaposition to the luxurious look of the rest of the hotel, sections of its gold coating long worn away. Now that he noticed it, this whole chunk of the hallway looked to be much older than the rest of the building. The light was a little dimmer, the doors a little more worn, the wallpaper hiding tiny tears in intermittent spots. It was as if they’d completely forgotten about this hall when doing some kind of renovation.
Guess they REALLY skimped out.
“Admiring it?”
The voice made Ian jolt a little, quickly turning as a door nearby creaked open. Standing in the doorway of Room 1583, just to the right of Ian’s room, was a young man, just taller than Ian.
He had short, jagged black hair, pale skin, and was fitted in a uniform that looked identical to the one Dorothy had given him, the coat, the pants, and the hat.
However, there was something that struck Ian odd about his skin. The paleness, it didn’t feel … natural.
“They haven’t fixed up this side of the hotel in years.” He approached Ian, outstretching his hand as he came closer. “Ian, right?”
As he spoke, Ian caught a flash of his mouth. Fangs.
A vampire.
Ian had never seen one before. At least, not that he could remember. More likely than not it was just the fact he’d never participated in Aceton’s nightlife, but the fact he was actually seeing one in person for the first time was … Well, it wasn’t a bad thing per se. Just,
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Different.
Ian met the vampire’s hand with the best handshake he could muster, “Yeah, it’s Ian.”
“Great, I’m Victor. They have me set to be a supervisor of sorts til you’re all worked out here. I’ll be showing you around and training you, things like that.” He peered past Ian, looking at his door, “I see you found your room, so I guess I’ll leave you to get accustomed and all that. Um ... lord what am I forgetting?
“Oh,” Victor snapped his fingers as he appeared to regain his thoughts, “First shift! Right now it is …” He quickly hiked the sleeve of his uniform up slightly, taking a quick glance at his wristwatch, “Fourteen til nine. That should be enough time for you to get changed, freshen up, whatever you like. You’ve got a watch, right?”
It took Ian a moment for the question to even register, he wasn’t used to being conversed with this much. “Oh, um, yeah. I got one.” He pulled the faded pocket watch out of his pocket for a moment, clicking it open for Victor to see.
“Alright then,” Victor began backing up as he spoke, and his speech became a little faster, as if checking his watch had reminded him of something he was meant to do, “Let’s try to meet out here around five til. That work for you?”
“Yeah, totally. Five til works.”
Ian internally cringed slightly as heard himself talk, the same way he’d made a pattern of doing the whole time he’d been in this hotel. It was like the words fell clumsily out of his mouth every time he was made to talk to his soon-to-be coworkers.
I need to work on that.
But Victor didn’t seem to notice the awkwardness in Ian's speech, though. And even if he did, it seemed he didn’t care to show it.
“Great!” Even exiting the conversation, Victor kept up the same energy he’d entered it with. “Well, I’ll see you then.” He opened his door, stepping in and beginning to close it, but stopping for a moment to shoot Ian a smile, “And nice meeting you!”
“You too!” Ian had waited a little too long, so by the time he’d managed to get the start of “too” out Victor’s door had been closed for a good second or two.
Dammit.
Well, for what it was worth, the interaction had gone a lot better than the one with Dorothy earlier.
Not really the highest bar, though.
But Ian shoved it back, forcing himself to not overthink the encounter.
He seems nice. Really nice.
And on top of that, this - seemingly - nice guy would be Ian’s teacher in helping him learn the ropes. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad.
He turned back to his door, fitting his key into the old keyhole. It took a little force to get it to go into the handle of the door, and even more force to make the worn lock release, but eventually a small click sounded from the door, and it began to slowly creak open without a turn of the doorknob.
Huh. Weird.
Ian walked through the door, clothes in hand, and looked around the hotel room.
The walls were covered in patterned wallpaper similar to the many hallways he’d seen outside his room. In fact, it looked to be the exact same wallpaper. Tiny, flower-esque symbols ran across the wall in lines, dark brown against the dull yellow of the paper’s color.
Decorations and sparse furniture were placed around the room at intermittent spots: a small table awkwardly sat in one corner, a long mirror hung up at a seemingly random spot on one of the walls, and a small nightstand with a lamp.
A plain, white bed sat against one of the walls, a fresh set of folded sheets stacked on top of it. Ian set the pile of clothes down on the corner of it, and threw himself back, laying down on the bed with outstretched arms. This brief reprieve seemed to only remind him of how tired he was.
Lord, this bed’s really comfortable.
It reminded him of home. But he supposed this was home now.
I should probably get up.
Even laying down for a moment, the desire to close his eyes and fall asleep was a little too vivid than he was comfortable with, especially during his first day on the job. Lord knows it wouldn’t be a good look for Victor, or whoever else, to find him sleeping through his very first shift.
So he pushed himself back up, grabbing the stack of clothes and putting them on the table as he started to change.
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Ian looked at himself in the mirror again. It didn’t look right, the outfit.
Something about it on him, he couldn’t put his finger on it. It’d looked normal on Victor, Dorothy, and all the other various employees he’d seen walking around the building. But for some reason on him it just looked …
Odd. Not used to seeing myself in such nice clothing, I guess.
A sudden, sharp knock on the door made Ian jump a little, and he reached for his pocket watch to check the time.
8:55 PM.
Jeez, has it really been nine minutes?
Maybe Ian had been laying on the bed for longer than he’d thought.
Ian quickly strode to the door, opening it to see Victor standing there, looking at him expectantly. “Hey, you ready?”
Ian forced a little smile, “Ready as I’ll ever be.” It was gonna be a long night.
Victor didn’t seem to mind, though. “Alright, let’s get to work!”