Biting Down

It's nice to visit with friends. Even ones that can't leave.

Note: This story is part of an anthology about the 9 Hotel. Murder, mayhem, monsters, and mistakes. A place where assassins, thieves, lunatics, and lost souls wander the halls. Some never leave.

This is what growing up in the 9 was like for a little girl named Althea.

Visit the 9. Where everyone gets what they need.

I’m 5 6 pick up sticks and I’m in the room with the teeth.

I’m on the tenth floor. Maybe. I was.

I got off on the tenth floor and waved goodbye to Mr. Valentine, but things change. Some rooms don’t stay where you put them. They’re like barn cats, Mr. Malick says. They prowl around the Nine like wolves at the door. 

Wolves like to hunt.

Some of the rooms don’t want to hurt you.

Some do.

You can’t tell which rooms are hungry. Which ones are like a Venus flytrap. 

Mr. Pinch showed me one in a book one time. Seemed almost tender as he explained how the plant eats bugs. Even though it doesn’t need to. Even though it could survive on sunlight and water and dirt, it wants blood and death and pain. 

I like that. I would like a Venus Flytrap, but Mr. Pinch says no pets.

Not after what happened to my goldfish. 

Maybe the Venus Flytrap learned how to hunt from the rooms. They trick you into coming in. They promise candy and toys and games and hugs. Love. Happiness. Peace. Money. 

Then the room won’t let you out. Doors won’t open. Windows stay stuck shut, even when you try to break the glass. Phones only sort of work. You can’t call out, in those rooms.

But sometimes the phone rings anyway.

The Nine has all sorts of people, Mr. Malick says.

I bet it gets real boring in those rooms. Even if they have books and snacks and TV. 

Sometimes I leave paper and pencils when I visit the rooms. In case anyone needs an activity. 

I hate being bored.

But you don’t get to be bored too, long in those rooms. 

After a while - different times for different people, different rooms - the trapped people become doodles.

You know doodles, right? I draw them sometimes for Mr. Malick and Mr. Valentine. 

I did one for Mr. Bishop and he said I was a wee silly little cunt and no Picasso at that, but he hung it up behind the bar with a push pin anyway.

Mr. Pinch says it’s stupid to draw doodles for Mr. Valentine. He says since Mr. Valentine can’t see the way most people do, it’s a waste of time. 

Only I don’t care because I didn’t want Mr. Valentine to feel left out, and he told me he could see them just fine, so Mr. Pinch can just zip it.

Mr. Pinch is a bully sometimes, I think.

A doodle is a drawing. Only it’s not supposed to be good. Mr. Malick told me all about them one day.

I was trying to draw a picture of some luggage. I couldn’t get the maggots right. I got real upset and told Mr. Malick I wasn’t going to draw anymore on account of being so bad at it. 

Mr. Malick said a doodle is an outline. Or a sketch. A skeleton of a living picture. The essence of a picture.

Mr. Valentine says ‘essence’ is a two dollar word.

A doodle is like a stick figure. It doesn’t have to be good or pretty to be right. It has a job and it does it. You can tell what it’s supposed to be a picture, but it’s not a real drawing.

A doodle is just an idea. A memory. A ghost of what you’re thinking but not a real thought. 

The people in the rooms are like that. Doodles of people.

They aren’t dead. But they aren’t people anymore either.

They’re something else. Something less.

Not all the rooms have people. A lot of them are empty. Or have things that aren’t people, never were people, are the opposite of people.

Bad things happen when they get out.

I see them when I visit the rooms, sometimes. These used to be people. These former people. Past people. Ghosts without going through the whole dying thing.

They’re stuck in loops, for the most part. Doing the exact same thing over and over and over send Miss Althea right over. Sometimes they’re cooking or eating or watching TV or just walking around. Sometimes they’re fighting or screaming or dying or rolling around together. 

Then sometimes real bad things happen.

These people can’t stop. Half the time they can’t see me. Even when they do, they don’t stop. 

Over and over and over and over. For forever.

The ones that can’t see you won’t stop no matter what you do. You can stand in their way and and holler and throw things and put sharp objects in their paths and they’ll shove you aside and keep right on walking like they’re rude guests. 

They’re not moving but they’re always in a rush. Flush crush hush gush.

It’s funny.

I visit them sometimes. These stuck people. I talk to them. Bring them stuff if they ask. A book. A pen. Scissors. A knife with a curved blade. A grenade.

Not everyone likes doodles.

I gave Mr. Balthazar a doodle one time. But it made him look sad and angry like a hurricane or a monsoon.

Mr. Malick uses that word when the sky is ugly and grey like cement and it rains so hard you can barely think. 

There’s noises in my head and noises outside my head and sometimes there’s too much of both.

You can drown in a monsoon, Mr. Malick said.

Anyway, that was Mr. Balthazar’s face when I gave him the picture. Like a monsoon, except there’s an oil fire going on under it so there’s smoke and rain and everything is burning all at once.

Mr. Balthazar stood there and stared at the doodle like he wanted to set it on fire with his mind or maybe eat it. Then he looked at me for a long time before walking away. 

I don’t give him doodles anymore.

Sometimes the people in the rooms scream and cry and beg me for help. As they brush their teeth or turn the pages of a book or cut hunks out of their own hair or load a gun, they ask me to get someone get help get me out of here I want to go home. 

People at the Nine ask me for help a lot. I’m good at helping.

I tell them the truth, because lying is bad. Don’t lie, Miss Althea. Mr. Pinch says it like a song. Don’t lie, Miss Althea. Don’t lie. Die. Cry. Goodbye. 

I don’t tell lies. Mr. Pinch doesn’t believe me though.

I tell the doodle people the truth. That they can’t get out. That they’re going to be there forever on top of forever. They’ve probably already been there for a billion years. I tell them time works different here. 

I tell them not to worry because their families are probably already dead, or were never even real. So there’s no one even to worry about them or miss them.

Maybe their family was never even real. Maybe their family, friends, all the people they ever met in their whole lives, they were all just a dream the doodle person made up because they were so lonely.

Sometimes people don’t like the truth.

I try to make them feel better. I tell them it’s okay to be here. I like it here. There are spiders to play with and ghosts to talk to and if you lie on the floor on the seventh with your ear pressed up against it, you can hear someone talking and yelling in a place that doesn’t exist. 

I tell them the Nine is tough but fair. I tell them they’ll get used to it. You can get used to almost anything, Mr. Malick says. 

The doodle people fade and fade until they’re worse than ghosts less than ghosts posts hosts most. Some of them have been here so long they look like a faded old photo of a photo of a photo of a photo. All smears of shapes and blurry edges and washed out colors.

I found an old photo in my room. Stuck in the back of the bedside table drawer. I had to wiggle it out so it didn’t fall apart. The photo was black and white and blurry and faded, like the person in it had gotten up to go to the bathroom just as the camera flashed. 

Sometimes it’s hard to sit still.

I’ve looked at that picture a lot. I don’t know why. It’s a mystery history blistery. I like mysteries. They’re like secret puzzles. 

I think the person in the picture is a lady. I’m not sure. She could be an alien a princess a queen a killer a murderer a movie star a thief a fire-starter. 

People can be lots of different things. Sometimes all at once.

Most of the doodle people, the used to be's, the never weres, the always gones, they’re nice enough. Nicer than the regular guests, for the most part.

Lonely people are either real mean or real nice.  

A lot of them are sad, at least for a while. A few are angry. Like they want to hurt me because I’m not trapped like them. I can go anywhere I want in the whole wide Nine, practically.

Except for the places I’m not allowed to go.

The person in the room with the teeth has been there a long, long time.

I can’t tell if the person is a man, a woman, or another option. They’re thin as Mr. Pinch’s patience and have long stringy hair falling down past their chin. They like to wear dirty old rags for clothes, I guess. Stained with blood and piss and and yellowing where it’s not all grey and blotchy. 

Their face isn’t like a regular face. There are all types of different faces, but this one looks like someone tried to make a face out of clay. They’re grey and pale looking. Like they got washed to much and all the colors have run and faded.

The room with the teeth is cold and sharp and precise. Like a stiletto knife I once saw Mr. Malick pull from a woman’s forehead, slick with blood like rubies or Mademoiselle’s eyes when she gets mad. 

There are teeth everywhere. The ceiling is a swirling spiral of different shades of yellow to white to black to green to grey. If you look down the floor is tiled with millions and millions and millions of teeth. If you stomp they make sad breaking noises under your feet even if they don’t look different.,

The walls are teeth, ridged and and bumpy and my fingers itch to touch them. 

Don’t touch the walls. They can be sharp.

All those teeth belonged to people. Or things that used to be people.

If you put a tooth under your pillow, the tooth fairy leaves you a present. Some money. Some candy. Once a coloring book with smiling dogs. 

This person is not the tooth fairy.

I like it here, in this room with teeth. It’s cool and quiet. I like the texture. It feels nice under my hand.

I sit at a table made from the teeth of people that are alive and dead while the person skitters around. 

Sometimes I tell them stories about the Nine. About Mr. Malick and Mr. Valentine and the guests and the boiler room and the secret passages and the sad people who scream at night and the creature in the dumbwaiter.

Sometimes we play checkers. We use the teeth. Do you want to be black or yellow.

Right now I’m lying on my back on the floor. I can feel all the ridges and bumps against my back. If I move it’s almost like someone is holding me. At least I think.

I’m lying with my hands behind my head, feeling molars dig into my shoulders and studying the teeth in the ceiling. Wheeling and dealing and reeling. More than a feeling. 

The doodle person is using teeth to build a catapult. Like in old times with knights and kings and witches.

They’ve been building it since before I found them. I think they’ll be building it after I’m dead and my teeth are in the ceiling.

The person says they’ll use the catapult to finally get out of here. Finally escape this nightmare dimension this hellhole this pulsing thrumming pain pulse like a cavity in your brain. 

Says they’re going to go clean through the ceiling and up up up and away. 

They tell me that they’ll finally be free.

The doodle person is being stupid. I don’t say that though. 

People don’t like it when you tell them they’re being stupid, even if it’s true. 

Guests really don’t like it, even if you’re telling them it’s stupid to walk around alone at night.

Adults don’t listen sometimes.

You don’t just leave the Nine. You leave when the Nine decides. If the Nine decides. Some people get to stay here forever. Permanent resident. Like me. 

Some get to go somewhere else. Outside the walls of the Nine. Where it’s bright and loud and fast and there are too many people and the sky is forever and you’re just a dot in space and there’s no one around you in every direction.

I don’t think it’s real out there, anyway. Lots of things you see aren’t real. I see things that are real.

 The catapult plan is stupid, anyway. For one, we’re not even on the top floor of the Nine. If you were on the top floor you’d go through the roof and maybe out over the side of the Nine, with all the screaming burning people and the clickety clackety bugs and the desert that goes on until the end of the world.

If they use the catapult, the person will end up going through the floor of another guest. 

Mr. Malick and Mr. Pinch wouldn’t like that.

Even if we were on the tippy top floor, they might not be able to leave. No matter how hard they try. It’s up to the Nine. The Nine makes the rules. And you have to follow the rules. 

It’s not about what you want. It’s about what the Nine wants. 

If she wants you to stay, you’re going to stay. 

‘But you can come and go as you please,’ says the person in their kind, rusty voice. Sawdust and shadows and sadness. 

I sit up and open my lunchbox. I have cheese and crackers today. It’s neat. You get this little package and you peel off the plastic on top. One side has these salty crackers and the other side is this fake yellow cheese like an egg yolk. There’s a little red stick in the package. You use the stick to scoop the cheese and smear it on the crackers and then eat them.

They’re really good. I always bring an extra for the person.

They always seem hungry.

Why can you go wherever you want? asks the doodle person. Buzzing around here and there in this hornet’s nest of bone and decay.

If I was a hornet, I’d have a big stinger. I’d sting people over and over until they got all puffed up like a balloon animal. 

Pop. 

‘The Nine lets me,’ I say.

Why? they ask. 

I listen, I tell them. I listen to the Nine. I know what she wants. I hear her, feel her, see her. In the dead people that walk and the living people filled with acid and absinthe and arsenic. I do what she says and she keeps me safe.

Most people don’t listen. Or they think they know best. 

A lot of people are stupid.

The person asks if this is hell. If this is punishment for a life less ordinary, for sins and sacrifices, betrayals and breakthroughs. 

I hand them their cheese and crackers. Their fingernails are all jagged and sharp edges.

I don’t think this is hell, I tell them. Hell is for bad people. There are bad people at the Nine. Lots of them. The men in the room with the screaming. The ladies with the scars under their eyes and metal teeth. Whatever lives in the room down the hall. 

Hell is a bad place for bad people, I explain. You’re never happy and everything hurts all the time and bugs and worms and rats and bats eat you alive and you can’t die even though you want to because you’re already dead. 

Do you want a juice box?

The person puts the straw in for me because that part is extra hard. 

Did you have kids, I ask the person as they smear a cracker with cheese flavored chemicals.

Do you have parents, they ask back.

Maybe they’re in the same place, I say. Or maybe they weren’t real.

I don’t like it when people ask about my parents. Where’s your mom where’s your dad are you lost what are their names who do you belong to why aren’t you with them don’t they want you don’t they love you what’s wrong with you.

People ask all these questions like you’re supposed to know the answers. Even though Mr. Pinch says it’s rude to ask guests questions like, ‘How much money do you make?’ or 

‘Why do you have a scalp hanging from your purse?’ 

Adults can do whatever they want, mostly. Not the person in the room with the teeth, though.

Life is just a dream, they say. Crumbs at the corner of their blurred mouth and a bent juicebox in their claw like hand. 

I don’t dream, I say. Lights off. Lights on. Nothing in between. People talk about dreaming. Pictures in your head but they aren’t real. Things are real or they’re not. Whether you’re awake or asleep. Awake and asleep are the same as alive and dead are the same and it’s just how you look at it. 

What happens when this room is gone? The person asks. Their voice is softer. It’s been getting softer and weaker the past few times I’ve visited. It happens sometimes. People get tired. 

You said the rooms move.

I don’t know, I say. The rooms are always where I need them to be. Here there everywhere and every which way. Second floor fifth floor fifty millionth floor. The Nine knows where the rooms should go. Where they need to be. 

Sometimes the rooms need to be gone. Just like people.

What’s gone mean? The person sips at their juice box. The straw makes a funny noise when they suck on it.

Before and after, I say. The beginning and the end. The start and the finish.

This is the in between.

I can’t leave with you, the person says. Sad but understanding. Sounds like the look Mr. Malick gives me when I ask him to tuck me in. 

I know, I say. They’ve tried before. The last time the person tried to walk with me through the door they’d seized and twisted and screamed and screamed and screamed like when Mr. Pinch tased that guy who couldn’t remember his manners. The person screamed so loud and so hard that the guests on the ninth floor complained.

Do you think I’ll still be here next time you visit? They ask.

I don’t answer. Focus on sucking down the last few drops of my juice, slurping up sugary syrup while stalling. 

I don’t want to lie, because lying is bad and you get punished for lying. But I don’t think they’ll like the truth.

I don’t dream. But I see stuff. Flashes and visions like slaps across the face. 

I see black blood spread across the teeth on the floor. Spatter on the walls. Thousands of crushed teeth crunching and shattering. Gibbering noises and shredded flesh and quiet tears.

We eat in silence. I take the trash and put it back in my lunchbox. A good guest cleans up after themselves and doesn’t leave a mess. 

I gotta go, I say. I stand up and wipe my hands on my jeans. Mr. Malick is going to show me how to pick a lock. Only I can’t tell Mr. Pinch, because he’d get annoyed and talk in a snooty voice.

You won’t tell, I ask. Even if he comes up here?

The person shakes their head, once. 

I won’t tell.

Outside the room, in the hallway, I touch the door. Stroke it with my fingertips like it’s a cat. Feel the way it’s collapsing in on itself, eating itself, becoming something else. Going somewhere else.

Most people go somewhere else, eventually. 

I walk to the garbage in the hallway and throw out the wrappers and juice boxes. There’s a sense of movement behind me, a shifting. I don’t turn around.

Don’t be like Lot’s wife, you wee cunt, Mr. Bishop says sometimes when he’s in a good mood. Don’t turn around and don’t look back. If you’re looking behind ye, how’s a body to know what’s coming round the bend?

So I don’t turn around. Even when I hear the crunching of teeth and shattering of bones and a high animal noise that could have once been a human voice. Something banging against the side of a door with all their might followed by silence. Sounds of chewing. 

I don’t look back. I walk down the hallway and press the elevator button.

I wait for the elevator to come, for Mr. Valentine to arrive. He’ll smile his big white grin and his eyes don’t work like most people but he sees more than almost anybody in the whole Nine.

He’ll ask me if I had a nice time, and I’ll say yes. I’ll tell him about teeth and juice boxes and catapults. 

I don’t mention parents.

Mr. Valentine will take me down down down in the elevator to Mr. Malick. He’ll give me lessons and make sure I have a nap. He’ll talk to me about Lot’s wife and doodles and art and what happens to people when they go where we can’t follow. 

The next time I come up to this floor, the door will be gone for good.