💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~mieum › season2 › guests.txt captured on 2023-07-22 at 16:44:00.
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-03-20)
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Guests ^^^^^^ The girls escort us down the hall. Every light in the building is on, but there are no signs of the other guests. The murmur of our footsteps dragging across the level-loop carpet is the only detail in the ringing silence. We stop unexpectedly at a fork in the corridor, then one of the girls kneels down and begins picking at where the wall meets the floor. She finally catches hold of a quarter-sized piece of the moulding and yanks at it like a stubborn zipper until it gives, revealing an impossible darkness. The wall falls around the vacancy like curtains. The other gal squats down beside her friend and begins gathering up the floor away from the gaping void like remnants of cut fabric. Once the hole is about an armspan wide, she carefully tip-toes toward me, clutching my hand just as the wadded up linen-like flooring shifts under her weight. She regains her balance, then interlaces her fingers with mine as she leads me into the dark hole. Suddenly we are wading through hot water in a dusky cistern. The low-celinged room is saturated in a din of churning water and the ecstatic moaning of other guests. The air is thick with anti-sepctic steam and the musk of carnival. We make our way through the maze of bodies and convex columns to a vent in a narrow corner. Water and moonlight flow steadily through as steam rapidly evacuates into the night. The alpine canopy reels behind the steel grate as we approach and I feel a sudden wave of vertigo crash against the inside of my skull. The girls take a seat next to each other on a submerged ledge, reclining into the current of hot water flowing in through the vent. We embrace and everything is skin and steam. It is clear there is no love in it, though; no lust even. It just happens, and the indifference of our dates is distracting. What are we doing wrong? Are we misunderstanding the customs of this Authentic Cultural Experience? They invited us, afterall, what do they expect? The rapturous howling of the other guests begins to mockingly intrude on our cultural exchange, and the glaring distance it reveals between us and our escorts floods over with insecurity and shame. A look of horror appears on my date's face. I brush her left cheek with my palm in attempt to console her. She promptly tears my hand away and gestures toward something behind me. I am not quite sure what I see, but I am frightened. Blades of light cut through the steam out of thin cracks in the ceiling. The light filters through the steam and the confused faces of the other guests are revealed. The sudden exposure makes everyone uneasy. We are beneath the faculty sauna, I realize, and they are furious. The staff are gigantic! Their feet are the size of small cars. You can't make out anything they are saying, but they are shouting incessantly--at us. Their frantic shuffling above creates a dizzying strobe effect in the light coming through the cracks. Everyone starts to panic. I turn desperately to our dates, unsure of what is being said and what is even happening. But they have already fled. I glance desparately out the vent to find the lake meters below. The lights of other resorts in nearby coves glow in the thickening fog. The vertigo returns, and I gag on my stomach as it spills out of my throat. It becomes clear that the staff's barking is a warning: they are preparing to flush us out. All at once, tangerine peels begin gushing through the cracks of the ceiling. Like water. The impossibility of their volume and force horrifies me. They descend upon us like meandering flurries in a snow storm. Hot, damp peelings assault my bare face as I stare dumbfoundedly upward. I sink into the shallow water to avoid being pelted. I watch helplessly as they smother out the last burning embers of carnival. It is unclear what is supposed to happen now. The lake is still there, probably. Reeling somewhere below. Welcoming still more guests. CC-BY-SA-NC 4.0 mieum@rawtext.club