The Holiday

The Holiday

It started with, as do many things, with a holiday. To be more specific, a holiday to Hawaii. Let’s start from the beginning… It all began on a tranquil Thursday. At the time I was a middle-aged man in my early 40s. After a long day at the office, I came home and settled into the latest football match. Something was wrong… That much was obvious, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. Was it the fact that my 5-year-old son was beheading his sister’s dolls? Or the cry of “Oh, no my chicken is burnt!” from my wife in the next room? No, these were all normal daily occurrences. Then it struck me. It was the weariness in my bones and the sight of what looked like the beginnings of a bald patch on my head! I sat bolt-upright examining my face in a mirror. Yes, some definite wrinkles were starting to sneak in through the door of old age. No! I was too young to grow old ( the irony of that statement was not lost on me)! My head began to race with sickening thoughts. Yes, it was just a slight weariness, but I had read stories about people who hadn’t heeded dull pains similar to mine and had ended up losing their legs. Or the bald patch! That was a much more imminent problem. I had seen some of the men in the office. One day they were displaying a thick mop of glossy hair, the next you knew they would look more egg than human. Did I mention that I was a tad paranoid? After pondering over the matter for a few moments I decided on a sensible course of action. I would take a holiday! There were so many places these days that boasted about how they could make you feel ‘thirty years younger. I ran, no I waddled (yet more proof) into the kitchen in which a wall of smoke had descended that would make any self-respecting fireman weep. Our smoke alarm had committed suicide many years ago when my wife had just started cooking (for some reason I don’t think that it was a coincidence). I cried to her “I’m going on a holiday!”. “That’s nice dear” she replied, still trying to control the disaster that looked more like Chernobyl than a chicken. “To Hawaii!” I shouted. “That’s nice dear”. “For a week!” I shouted trying for one last time. “Ok dear, just remember to bring some milk on your way back” She replied in blissful ignorance. Well, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.  After packing some essentials and arranging for a vegetarian cook to come I was off. It was only when I was halfway to Hawaii that she called. “Did you remember the milk?”.

When I landed, I was greeted by air so dense you could almost taste it. So this was a holiday felt! I had done some research and booked myself into a hotel called The Wiep in a place called Itsesu. Anxious to explore my temporary home, I set off to my hotel to unpack. Upon arrival, I was shocked by what I saw, the hotel reception alone could house my whole family. I hurriedly checked in and ran to my room. Yes! I ran! It seemed that the hotel was already working its magic. However, to my dismay when I arrived there was already someone in my room. He was almost sixty years old with short white hair and a face that was almost colourless too. His skin was white, his lips vague shadows. Even his tongue was no more than grey. And yet against this blank background, he wore circular wire spectacles with dark red lenses. The effect was startling. And for him, the entire world would be the colour of blood. He had long fingers, the nails beautifully manicured. He was dressed in a dark suit buttoned up to his neck. And his eyes... How does one begin to describe his eyes? They were eyes that had seen too much, been through too much, they’d seen nations rise and fall. They were the sort of eyes that you could stare into all day and never get bored with all the stories that they had to tell. If there was such a thing as a vampire it would look very much like him. The man himself seemed to have an aura of age as if this sixty or odd so years old was truly 600 or 6000. I shook off the feeling and, rather disgruntledly, inquired angrily as to what he was doing in my room. “ What are you doing in my room?” He retorted in a maddeningly polite manner. I knew that if I stayed for another second I'd do something I’d regret. I turned, shoes drilling a hole in the ground and my stare a hole in the bottomless pits that were his eyes.

 I went down to the reception and angrily interrogated the receptionist as to why there was another person in my room. He replied that I had not specified as to whether I wanted a single room and by the hotel’s policy they could put another person in my room if the others were taken. I got out the paper print of my booking. Then I got out my magnifying glass. And there it was, in the smallest of small prints. It read like a death sentence. ‘If all other places are taken and a booking is less than a week old with no requests for singular rooms have been put forth, then by hotel policy we have the power to place more than one person/s in the hotel room. Apologies for any inconveniences caused.’ I properly looked at the receptionist for the first time, with a look that would have made a crocodile cry for his mother and I was again shocked by the face that greeted me, much like the creepy old man who was residing in my room. He was in his early twenties, with a skin so white it would have even looked abnormal on a ghost. His face sagged so much that it looked like someone had replaced it with a plastic bag - a white one of course. He replied to my piercing stare with a polite smile that displayed all of his shark-like teeth. I fought back the urge to punch those shark-like teeth to China and, once again, rotated in a half revolution and made for my room. Yes, my room, it was mine and I was not going to give it up to some old person. I have to admit I felt a twinge of guilt in advance to my throwing out of the old man but I banished it with a vision of lounging in a pool sipping a 3-year-old bottle of Chardonnay that I had been keeping for a special occasion. But, when I stormed upstairs to throw him out of the window, he wasn’t there! I looked out of the window half hoping that he’d already done the deed. However, it was not to be. I clocked him lounging by the pool drinking...My Chardonnay! On my way downstairs, after picking up a knife from the kitchen, I noticed that all but some of the people had the same deathly-pale complexion as the receptionist. I was thoroughly spooked. As I walked I noticed that all the pain from my weary bones had gone, the bald patch replaced, and that all the white hairs that had begun to creep in were MIA. The thought pleased me as I went outside to, at the least, do some lasting damage to the old crook who had stolen my champagne. I sprinted the last few steps to the door and, brandishing the knife, went to face the old crook. However, when I tried to scream and swear at the ancient fiend I found that my voice had suddenly become squeaky and the knife had become heavy in my hands. Suddenly, I saw my reflection in the pool and I did a double-take if I had been stabbed by the knife in my hands. For the face that greeted me was not mine. It was me, but not as I had known myself for a long time. Acne and stubble greeted me like a long-lost uncle and my hair was long and dirty the easy I had kept it when I was a teenager...Wait! When I was a teenager! The pieces of the puzzle that had begun that fateful day, when I had noticed the weariness in my bones, were slowly starting to come together. The holiday had done its job too well.

“Police are still looking for the forty-eight-year-old man who has not been seen for a month. He was reported to have gone out to get some milk’ according to his wife but ever since then, it seems that he has vanished the face of the earth. He was first reported missing when his wife wanted to make some cereal but discovered that she had run out of milk,” A news reporter babbled on, oblivious to her surroundings. So oblivious was she that she didn’t notice the eighteen-year-old boy who was trying to gain her attention. However, if she had, then she would have realized that he almost perfectly matched the pictures that were being circulated of a missing forty-eight-year-old man. Almost. The only difference was his pale, ghostlike complexion.