That Crappy Hotel Room

I hit the outskirts of town at 2am and drove to the fringe motor park. I was ten hours behind time.  It was foolhardy going into town at that time of the night to find a good hotel. Now I was faced with the hard choice of putting up with some dingy lodgings around the boisterous park. I asked Fidelis, a fellow I saw lying on one of the many wooden benches, about finding accommodation for the night. He was excited to help and took me to five different hotels around the park before we settled for the one that looked the least shabby. The lobby was full of yelling football fans sprawled all over the place. The noise created by the three wall TVs seemed to drown the roaring fans . The four arthritic ceiling fans were spinning dubiously, threatening to fall on the fans at any moment. I walked with Fidelis to the front desk at the lobby. The receptionist, a young man, told us it was 2100 for the night. I told him I didn’t like the noise from the lobby and if he could find a room far from it. He said yes and asked me to follow him. Fidelis tagged along. The receptionist took us to a room far from the lobby, at the exit of the hotel. The generated noise from the lobby sounded distant. The receptionist pushed the door and it fell back with no resistance. Obviously it hadn’t been locked. A whiff of fecal matter hit my nostrils. I immediately told the receptionist and asked him if he wasn’t perceiving it. He glibly told me it was not from the room. That it was from a gutter behind the hotel and across the road. I found that incredulous. Anyway, I had no other choice. It was already 2.54am. All the same I checked to make sure that the amenities in the room worked. I checked the lights, the air conditioning, the shower, the towel and the tv. The towel looked used and dirty but I knew I wasn’t going to use it anyway. The carpet raised some dust as I walked around the room but that was no problem because it was beneath me. By now Fidelis was showing signs of impatience. He had been with me for over 30 minutes and maybe worried that he may not be well compensated. I assured him that he would go home happy that night. I noticed two gloomy drinking glasses on the bedside stool and made a mental note not to touch them until I check out. There were in-room hotel religious tracts, advertising fliers and all kinds of literature on the table and the bedside stool. The bedspreads looked white but I wasn’t sure if it had been changed since the last guest left the room. We all walked back to the lobby for me to pay and get my receipt. I tipped Fidelis generously and he gleefully disappeared into the night.

Back in the room I checked the lock on the door and it seemed secure enough. I dropped my bag on the table, unpacked and brought out some disinfecting wipes to wipe the table surface and other grimy surfaces in the room and bathroom. I decided to take a bath, slipping into my bathroom slippers and stepping into the grimy bathroom. After my bath and rubbing myself dry with my own towel I made to sit on the bed  but hesitated on a  hunch. I took a closer look at the bedsheets again. There were red stains on different parts of it. I stood still looking even more closely. I saw several dark spots scattered all over the sheet.  They looked as if they were deliberately done by a permanent marker. I immediately suspected that the room was infested with bedbugs. So I decided to confirm my suspicions by raising the mattress. I saw live bedbugs on the wooden bed frames,  the seams of the mattress and the boards of the bed. I saw more between the seams of the chair and tables and at the junction where the walls in the room met the ceiling.

It was now 4.30am and I knew there was no way  I would sleep in that crappy hotel room. I packed my bag and walked out to spend the rest of the night with the noisy crowd at the hotel lobby.

© MSA