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The last visitor had left me on. The light bounced off the dimly lit room casting long shadows over the drawn burgundy curtains. I’ve always thought the colour accented the decor of the room.
He had left in a hurry, the last guest. The middle-aged man seemed to have come for a break from his busy life clearly evident from his beer bottles and smoking cigars. I like to see the better in people so whether this was a daily practice or a temporary affair, I would never know.
The man always left me on at night, often waking up in the middle of the night sweating buckets and as pale as a ghost . My guess would be nightmares and I liked that I was his solace, his light at the end of the dark tunnel.
The first time I saw him, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a cardigan with walking boots. He had a peculiar fedora hat as well, all in all clothing suitable for the cold winters of London. He seemed to be a put together lot, with the right stance and proper talk. His change in demeanour over the 3 weeks now has me doubting if the chap really was here on a holiday.
This isn’t the first time I’ve pondered about the life that humans have. All I see is a mere few weeks of their life and I often wonder if this is who they really are when they aren’t paying guests of The Four Inns.
I was brought in by the innkeeper ever since the opening of The Four Inns so I suppose you could call me ancient in that respect. I’ve heard and seen things more than any article in Room 101 except the wooden floor paneling. If it’s hierarchy we’re talking about, I guess the oak drawers would be the newest member in the room.
The very first guest in Room 101 was a newly wedded couple. It was the first time I interacted with humans who weren’t the old dusting lady from downstairs or the shopkeeper from the flea market who only cared about the much bigger commodities like the wooden cupboards and the grandfather clocks.
The couple seemed to be deeply in love although they just couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. They were always on each other, mind you, and kept screaming each other’s names which at the time I was too naive to interpret as the consummation of love. They often fell asleep right after their business leaving my light on. The light reflecting off their faces made them look so young, making my greyed out lampshade and rusty old socket feel a thousand years old.
Room 101 has been my home after the Inn keeper bought me from the flea market. The place often has a musty old smell from the mold and mildew growing behind the king-size wooden bed. The newly wedded couple rarely left the room and even when they did it was just so they could have a walk together which never really lasted for more than a half hour.
The second guest would perhaps be the most interesting human I’ve met so far. She was a young lady in her early twenties, a dancer in my opinion, who in the most blunt words loved to cry. The first day of her stay in the inn, she managed to break four glasses and cracked the bathroom mirror. She seemed out of her mind but at the same time she liked talking to the other inmates of her room, often disregarded as inanimate objects in human language.
The second day we came to know why she was crying all the time and all we could do was empathize with the lady. The lady was a married woman who had just lost her firstborn and husband in a car accident. Why she would come to an inn to cry and talk to us about it still beats me though. She liked playing with my light switch, lying at the edge of the bed, right next to the side-table where I was placed by the Inn keeper’s daughter. She made me feel important and I believe a part of me was glad to help her out in the simplest of ways.
The newest member of the room, the oak drawers had a hard time getting adjusted to the next guests. The next bunch of humans were a family of five; a father, a mother and triplets. The triplets , two boys and one girl, were toddlers and they seemed to be pretty fascinated with the drawers, often crawling into them and hiding in them trying to fool their parents. Their stay was a merry-making experience which eventually got boring and tiresome for me as they were all early birds with no interest in leaving the light on at night.
Room 101 was host to a number of visitors before the surly middle-aged man. Most of them are not worth mentioning. The testy man however I will describe, especially since he was the last guest that I saw. This man’s change in attitude over the three weeks he stayed in the room were remarkably disturbing; often passing out on the floor or barely closing a lid before six in the morning.
The curtains and the fireplace were of the opinion that the man is going through a horrible marriage, maybe with a cheating wife or an extra-marital affair. I stated he was probably just tired of his work life and nagging boss. The wooden panels, the oldest in the room had the most bizarre ideas. He said the man was a crook, planning his next place of crime and type of crime. Apparently the panels had come to this conclusion from the man’s mysterious act of always denying housekeeping and constant substance abuse.
It was exactly two weeks after this man’s stay at the inn that the inn keeper started to notice the man’s odd behaviour after which followed the heated arguments. Never have I ever in the twenty years of my life heard so many cuss words. Just as expected (according to the teapoy) men in uniform (the blue carpet called them ‘police’) showed up at the door for what the Inn keeper later referred to as a raid.
" Dave Henderson, you are under arrest for substance abuse and for the illegal custody of banned drugs.” It’s after the man left that the panels told us how he would hide stashes of cocaine and marijuana under the broken tiles.
Room 101 has been empty for a long time after the man in the fedora hat was arrested. The Inn keeper got into trouble as well or so the rumours spread. I haven’t been dusted in over two months after the man left. My shade has never seen this much dust and the rats have been feasting on my cord for two day straight. My instincts tell me I’m about to lose my light soon. It’s unclear if I’ll ever see anything again. I’ve become dim over the past few days and the thought of my end terrifies me. The idea for being in the darkness for an uncertain time is eating me alive.
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