The Not-Particularly-Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn

Yawning, Paul pushed open the door of the common room, blinking at the sole light that had been left on over the kitchen area. It cast dim illumination onto the four people huddled in the far corner between a bookshelf and the wall, engaged in yet another game of Bridge.

"Aren't you going to bed?" Paul asked.

"No," Conor suggested.

"It's 4am in the morning."

"Yep. Still early. Two clubs."

"Two spades."

"Pass."

"...Uh, Jjaks?"

Shane nudged Jjaks, who woke with a start from where he had been dozing off.

"Your turn."

Jjaks rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. "Sorry. Uh... what's-"

"Two clubs," Perry provided.

"Oh, okay..."

Paul let them be and went on to the bathroom.

The sole toothbrush still lay untouched. It's one of those things in life: the people who generally don't mind sharing toothbrushes tend to be the same people who generally don't care about oral hygiene.

Back from the bathroom, Paul paused as he passed the card-playing group, Jjaks still on the verge of sleep but remarkably holding on to a sufficient level of consciousness to play.

There was something soothing about the almost-rhythmic toss out of cards onto the growing pile in the centre, the occasional declaration – two pair, straight flush, full house – delivered in a quiet tone so as not to break the sanctity of the night.

He could stay a little longer.

Paul sat quietly down on the carpet a respectful distance away from the other four, somewhere in the shadowed region that separated the dimly-lit corner from the rest of the room, and watched them play, tucked away behind the bookshelf by his side. Now and then one or other of them would cast brief glances his way; but they did not seem to mind his presence.

"You're Paul, right?" Shane asked him in the space between games, after a half-asleep Jjaks had won the last round and Conor was shuffling the cards for dealing.

"Yes."

"Want to join us?"

"No, it's all right."

"Ok."

The rough swish of card against card as Conor dealt, some relief at how they would not need to change the game in order to accommodate another player. It was too late – or too early – in the day for that. No place for change, just the unceasing, comforting rhythm of game after game in a time outside of time.

The hands of the wall clock lay hidden in shadow, its barely-discernible ticking the only sign that time was passing.

A dealt card flew too strong and flipped over. Perry reached out to get it and returned it facedown to the rest of his pile.

Paul rested his head against the bookshelf and gazed out into the darkness; the sink running lengthwise across his view someway away, the small table and chair beyond that, then the shut door. He didn't really want to return to his bed now, to leave this small oasis of warmth and re-enter the cold loneliness of the corridor and the unchanging inactivity of sleep. Perhaps the others thought the same. It felt safer here, more reassuring, the first time since his arrival that he could see, somehow, how this could be home.

"How many aces do you have?"
"Mm?"
"C'mon, Jjaks, we know you're more awake than that-"
"Are you sure you shuffled these cards?"

He could stay here forever; caught up in the calm surreal of this otherworldly islet five decades and several worlds away from his own, in the presence of strangers whose faces and voices were at once both so familiar and so alien to him; in the gentle lull of approaching sleep, the imperceptible hum of the air-conditioning underlying the steady yet meaningless march of time.

One second after another and the scene did not change: the four sitting snug in their corner beneath the amber glow of the single lamp, him watching from the side.

Paul closed his eyes and let the moment surround him with a curious peacefulness. He belonged here. He was safe here. Everything would, eventually, be all right; and even if it did not, he would always have this moment still.

And soon he drifted off to sleep, and did not wake when the four finished their last game and decided finally to turn in for what was left of the night; did not wake when Perry asked if they should wake him, and when they decided against it; when Conor opened the common room door and let some of the corridor's light in, placing the pack of cards on the nearby bookshelf as he left, the others following after to their respective rooms; Shane clicking off the last light as he went out, letting the soft darkness envelop the room as he shut the door quietly behind him.

And hours later the lights came on to mark the morning at 7am, courtesy of Jack, who could be over-zealous when it came to things like waking up early; and people in the various rooms woke up as he came in uninvited to turn on the lights, and yelled at Jack and requested more sleep and the lights off, please, while others adjourned to the bathrooms to wash up or to the cafeteria for breakfast, still others finding such behaviour far too accepting of their lot in this prison and refusing to comply until hunger forced them to.

And so the moment was gone when Paul woke up and stood up, the magic of the previous night shattered by noise and activity and the continued parody of attempt at normal life.

#

The sign greeted them after breakfast that morning, painted large in untidy red letters across the fourth floor's stairwell door: 'Keanu sucks. Kill yourselves.'

Having finished breakfast earlier than the others, Eddie was the first to see it; the others found him standing in the stairwell, staring at the door.

Jack walked up, touched the still-wet letters, brought his fingers close for inspection.

"It's written in blood," he said.

"Whose?" Paul asked.

Griffin looked fascinated.

The others cast uneasy glances around, as though expecting to find a bloody corpse lying about, but they saw nothing.

"...We should wipe it off," Alex said, and moved forward, deciding that with all those boxes of random stuff in the common room, there had to be a rag in there somewhere.

Eddie took a shallow breath. "It's not even our fault," he said, the words tumbling out in quiet anger. "It's not like we had a choice-"

"That's how discrimination works," Alex said. He placed a hand on Eddie's shoulder and gave a gentle push forwards. "Come on. Let's clean that up before other people see-"

"Wait," Jack said, his gaze drawn to a faded trail of blood-like red spots and streaks on the ground leading to the down-heading stairs.

He broke away from the others and made his way down the steps, following the trail to where it ended in front of the third floor's door. He knocked and waited.

Paul approached cautiously from behind, pausing several steps above the landing, Griffin following behind him.

The door opened. Someone popped his head out and grinned crookedly. "You. Finally." The door flung open. "Take him off us, please." He pointed at the corridor, where a bleeding and screaming Keanu-spawn was being kicked for the lulz.

Jack gave a start.

"-Hey," the third floor door-opener continued. "Before you say anything else, he started it, okay?" He looked back. "Am I right, Harker?"

"HE WAS AN EVIL CREATURE FROM HELL!" yelled the Keanu-spawn in a weird accent that was almost, but not quite, exactly unlike British.

Jack blinked.

One of the kickers snorted. "Just because someone is a vampire doesn't mean you drive a wooden stake-"

"Chopstick," the second kicker corrected.

"Chopstick," the first affirmed. "-through their heart the moment you see fangs." Kick. "Some of them were nice people!" Kick.

"Did you write that message on our door?" Jack asked.

"Sure," Door Opener said. "Our friend James apparently has some eternal deep-seated grudge against the acting of Mr. Reeves, and we figured that, you know, someone's death would be a great excuse for him to get away with suggesting suicide to the lot of you. Okay, guys, fun's over. Hand him to 'em."

They roughly dumped Jonathan Harker at the doorway, where he promptly collapsed at Jack's feet, his nose and leg dribbling blood into the carpet. Jack backed away a step.

"His nose wasn't giving out enough blood to paint with so we slashed his leg with a knife," said Door-Opener by way of explanation. "Get him out of here."

"He didn't deserve-" Jack started.

"He killed a total of three vampires from the moment he arrived here," First Kicker said. "He deserves more than a good kicking. Be glad we're sparing his life." He left for one of the rooms for a nice cup of tea.

"Some life," Second Kicker – James – muttered. "Is he even really human?" He walked up to Jack and stared at him. "Are any of you human? Or just... strange, badly-acted parodies of-"

Jack lunged at his neck. Both of them fell to the ground, Jack shouting random obscenities, James rebutting them with bad jokes revolving largely around trees and cardboard and Keanu Reeves, grinning as his friends pried Jack off him.

Paul ran up and grabbed Jack by the shoulders, pulling him back-

"Jack, ignore them, let's go, let's go-"

Jack grudgingly backed off, hands still in fists.

"Hey, Keanu-spawn! Don't forget to take him!" James said from the floor, pointing at Jonathan.

Paul hoped that Jack was sufficiently placated, and let go of him to half-drag the semi-conscious Jonathan out the doorway and into the stairwell. Griffin watched the proceedings with a mild interest, then wandered forward to help with Jonathan.

Jack kicked at the closed door. "F*** them," he muttered in a choked voice.

He glared at Jonathan as they dragged him up the stairs. "What was that all about, huh?" he demanded. "Staking vampires? Didn't you read the notice that said to go to the fourth floor?"

"Says the one who tried to ice pick his way out of this place," David said calmly.

"I didn't ask for your opinion," Jack said through gritted teeth.

"Don't worry, Jack. It's free. Because I like you."

Alex was wiping off the last of the blood on the door when they arrived and deposited Jonathan on the floor.

"I see you found the source of the blood," Alex observed.

A random non-Keanu-spawn kid suddenly came hurtling angrily out of the lift, ran up to them and delivered a sharp kick to Jonathan's side.

"THAT'S FOR EDWARD!" he yelled, and then some of his friends pulled him back into the lift before anyone else had time to react.

"...You deserve that," Jack told Jonathan, then went into the corridor.

#

Tommy and Jesse cheerfully picked through the box of DVDs, pulling out one after another the ones marked with a small strip of red tape near the top, calling out titles.

"Providence, Feeling Minnesota..."

"Speed... Permanent Record..."

"Babes in Toyland..." Tommy paused and stared at the dodgy-looking marker-labelled DVD-R. "Is this porn?"

No one gave him any answer, so he shrugged and added it to the pile. Jesse picked it up to look at. The DVD-R just continued to look dodgy, and then he put it back because Tommy was still dumping DVDs there:

"Constantine... Something's Gotta Give... Youngblood..."

Jesse continued assisting in the digging out. "Life Under Water... Hardball..."

Several DVDs later, Tommy arrived at a really cool DVD boxset.

"The Ultimate Matr- Hey, this looks cool!"

Jesse peeked over at the boxset in question. "Whoa," he said. "Can we watch that?"

Shane jogged over and got down on one knee to grab the thing. "You're not watching anyt-" He broke off, entranced by the shiny of the Ultimate Matrix Collection. "This does look cool," he admitted.

Tommy grinned and continued in the task.

Shane opened the box set, glanced through its contents, and a while later gave a furtive look around. "Uh, anyone know where Neo is?"

"He's next door," Chris Townsend offered. "At that computer again. Why?"

"Do you think he'll stay there?"

Chris shrugged. "He was in there the whole of yesterday."

"I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney," Tommy read out.

Shane looked back at him. "You did what?"

"That's the title of-" Tommy paused, noticing the lack of red tape. "Oh, it's not one of ours. Guess we're done then." He chucked it back into the box. "What do I- Whoa! New Star Wars movies!

"Do you want to watch that or do you want to watch this?" Shane asked, holding up the Ultimate Matrix Collection.

"Star Wars can wait," Tommy decided, flipping the box lid shut. He pointed at the collapsing stack of Keanu DVDs. "What do I do with those?"

"Just leave them there."

Freshly woken up at the unearthly hour of 11am, Conor stumbled in half-awake with his hair sticking up to see some leather-clad person rolling down the stairs on the TV screen and various people situated around the sofa area totally engrossed in the scene.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Movie," someone said helpfully.

Jack passed him the popcorn.

#

It took them several seconds after the movie ended and the credits started rolling to realise that Neo was standing just behind them, arms folded and not looking very happy.

Conor surreptitiously fumbled for the remote control and turned the TV off.

Guilty faces tried to look less guilty.

Neo unfolded his arms and walked towards the TV, all eyes following him as he went by. He paused by the pile of DVDs, then crouched down and started going through them, scanning synopses for names as he glanced back to the captive audience sitting at the sofa.

Babes in Toyland'? he wondered. Is this porn?

He put that aside; it did not appear to involve a guilty party. His selection made, Neo got back up with the DVDs cradled in one arm and walked past the others and out the door.

The door shut with a low thud. They looked at it. They looked at each other.

Silence.

"...That was an awesome movie," Tommy finally said.

And the tension broke with a chorus of 'YEAH!'s and "Is there a sequel?"

Then they fell silent again as Neo returned, picked up the Ultimate Matrix Collection, and took it back to his room.

#

Conor saw that the sixth floor had a neatly handwritten FAQ ('Where am I? What is this place? Why does everyone look like me but weirder?') pasted on the door leading to its corridor. He thought about stealing it and sticking it on theirs, then realised that the torn paper and newer-looking tape on one corner suggested that the folks on the sixth floor had had that exact same idea.

#

Conor wrote an FAQ and stuck it on the door.

Moments later it was gone and relocated neatly on the door to the forty-second floor.

#

Eddie Kasalivich frowned at the insides of the little blue cube he had just taken apart. It looked alien in make; more importantly, it looked like it had probably been a really really bad idea for Jack to have pressed the red button.

#

Jesse whacked at the door with his fists. "DR. MERCER!"

Next to him, Tommy stood cradling his bloody arm, the newly attained crate of rum at his feet and triumph shining through his tears of pain.

#

People made fun of his accent. Jonathan Harker trudged sadly off out of the fourth floor in search of other British people, and to his joy chanced upon the British Holdout Group.

They too made fun of his accent. Depressed, he returned to the fourth floor to be emo.

#

Unhappy at the theft, Conor wrote another FAQ and made it Keanu-spawn specific this time.

This too was stolen and pasted on the eighteenth floor, where it proceeded to create much confusion, angst and identity crises in those characters horrified to learn that in this isolated bubble of hyperspace, they had supposedly been played by an actor whom they claimed to constantly mistake for a tree.

---

The door clicked softly open. He stood there for a moment in the doorway, watching his sleeping prey, fingering the blade in his hands. A small smile, then he stepped forward.

Jonathan was in the upper bunk, completely given over to sleep. One small slice would do it; straight across the jugular just like that...

Eyes open wild in choking death, unable to make a sound; David Allen Griffin calmly holding down an arm that yearned to flail as spurting blood spotted pale skin. It is an interesting experience, killing yourself.

And then a sound from the lower bunk revealed that Eddie Kasalivich was up.

Griffin released Jonathan’s arm and gazed idly down at Eddie.

He chuckled.

"What are you looking at?"

#

The screaming got the others up.

Officer Traven did not look happy.

#

Griffin did not quite like being yelled at, but conceded that Officer Traven was probably justified in doing so. So he didn't say anything and attempted to look happy in the hopes that it would give others the impression that he knew more than he was letting on. Alternatively, it might give them the impression that he was not completely all right in the head, but you've got to take some risks sometimes.

Jjaks came tentatively into the room and stood by the two corpses looking traumatised and nauseated. He saw dead people.

Neo was still fast asleep. Staying awake all night on the computer tends to make one oblivious to the sounds of death.

Meanwhile, Alex sat up in his bed in the dark, groggily wondering what all the commotion was about. Above him, he heard the bed creak and the shuffle of legs freeing themselves from a blanket.

"Are you awake?" Paul asked.

"Yeah." Alex stood up and opened the door a crack, blinking in the sliver of light that shone through. It was hard to make out the exact words of the raised voices, or just how many were speaking. Other doors were opening; a small crowd was growing near the end of the corridor.

Alex heard an overly-loud thump behind him as the barely-awake Paul underestimated the height between the bunk bed ladder and the carpet. They left the room to join the others, Paul limping a little.

"Congratulations," Griffin said, glancing out at the crowd. "You just woke up everyone."

Jack continued yelling at him.

"I did you a favour, Jack," Griffin said calmly. "I thought you didn’t like him. You know you would have done the same, if you had the chance..."

"No!" Jack shouted. "No. That’s where you’re wrong, you don’t-"

"...it's all his fault, remember? He was taken as representative of all of us, got us accused of being badly-acted parod-"

Jack grabbed Griffin and slammed his head against the wall.

Griffin winced. "That hurts."

"What about Eddie, huh?" Jack hollered. "Why him?"

"He didn’t look too happy with me when he saw Harker. It wasn’t one of my neater jobs, I must admit-"

Conor shoved his way into the room, swearing.

"Are we going to go through all this again?" Griffin queried.

Jack punched him in the face.

#

Roughly shoved into the room, hands shooting out to break his fall as he hit ground; the door slammed shut before he had time to get back to his feet and stop it. The super-Superglued bolt shot home on the other side.

"All of you go back to bed," Jack said tiredly, sitting down by the door to do voluntary guard duty. "I'll make sure he doesn't get out."

The time was 1:50 in the morning.

"Are you going to stay here all night, Jack?" Griffin asked through the door.

Stony silence.

"If you’re feeling lonely out there, I’m open to conversation-"

Angry swearing.

"All right, I’ll start. How’s your day been?"

Stony silence.

"Life of the party, aren’t you?"

A pound on the door. "You stay in there and you shut the f*** up!"

"Hey, hey. Calm down, Jack. You don’t need to get all riled up like that. I can’t do anything to you while you’re sitting against the door."

"WHY, huh? Why did you do it? What did they do to you?"

"You know something? I’ve been observing you, Jack. Every single time someone new arrives on this floor you get a little more stressed. I got concerned for you, seeing you like that. So I thought that if I lowered the local population by a little-"

Angry swearing.

"It’s not my fault, you know. Mr. Reeves made me this way."

Indecipherable swearing involving Reeves and a ribcage and a heart and rending out and a spatula.

Griffin chuckled. "I don’t think you know what a spatula is, Jack."

Silence for a while.

"I’m thirsty. May I have some water?"

"No."

"I know you’re not going to let me die of thirst. You’re too nice for that." Pause. "Please. I won’t get out. I’ve got nowhere to go."

Silence.

Eventually the door opened, Griffin standing and getting out of the way to let it. Jack stood in the doorway and held out the cup of water.

"Thank you, Jack." Griffin took the cup from him. "You look tired. Are you going to stay out there all night?"

Jack shut the door and re-bolted it.

"Good night, Jack."

At 2:30 in the morning, Jack got up silently and went off to the common room for a cup of coffee before returning to his post.

At four in the morning, his eyes were shut for longer periods of time then they were open, head resting against the wall and only the occasional subtle twitch suggesting that he was still awake.

"Jack."

He slowly opened his eyes.

Alex sat down next to him. "Go get some rest. I'll take over."

Jack stared sleepily at him.

"Find a bed," Alex suggested. "You don't need to keep sleeping on the floor."

Comprehension finally kicked in, and Jack picked himself off the floor onto unsteady feet.

"Thanks," he remembered to say, and managed to make his way into the room opposite the one with the dead people. It was the only unoccupied room left. People complained about the noise from the stairwell, mostly due to that time when the entire Von Trapp family had trooped down the stairs at midnight loudly singing away.

Jack got onto the bottom bunk, noted how much more comfortable it was to go along with Kenselton Hotel's sadistic little games, and instantly fell asleep from exhaustion.

#

"Jack?"

The voice that answered was steadier than Traven’s.

"He’s gone to bed."

"Oh."

Griffin sounded sadly disappointed.

#

"Check up on the others," Jack told Neo when he woke up. "The next potentially dangerous guy is going straight in there."

"Is Hamlet considered potentially dangerous?" Neo asked, but Jack had already gone off.

Ted shrugged. "Isn't that the dude with the two bees?"

#

"That's one," Neo said helpfully, pointing.

Donnie Barksdale never knew what hit him or just what he had done to deserve being forcefully grabbed and thrown into a locked room within the first minute of his arrival.

"Hi," Griffin said.

#

Hamlet started spouting Shakespeare, which on one hand didn't quite warrant him being thrown into their makeshift jail with a murderer and a potentially dangerous guy, but which on the other hand was still annoying. Besides, there were those two bees that Ted insisted Hamlet had, probably hidden somewhere about him, and no one was in the mood to be stung.

Tommy suggested the broom cupboard. Scott Favor was sitting in there moping about life. They pulled him out of the closet and locked Hamlet in. Bouts of angry Shakespeare filled the air.

#

"Your roommate didn't like you," Jack explained, climbing up the ladder to the bed above John.

---

A few of them had been hanging around the corridor the day that rum guy arrived; so named for his tendency to spend most of his time consuming the rum they stole from the eight floor, though to his credit he often joined in the raids.

He had entered the corridor, hesitated, and then taken cautious steps forward to greet them with a dazed "hi" that did not hint so much at the usual trauma newcomers experienced, but at him having his mind somewhere else, distracted.

"How many of you are there?" was the next thing he said, and while the question itself was not unusual, Conor didn't like the way his eyes seemed to look right through him.

"I don't know. About twenty."

The answer acknowledged with a nod, the newcomer left them and went opening doors, looking in to see who was in each room as he made a mental list in his head.

He reached a door that wouldn't budge. "Who's in there?" he asked, pointing.

"Julian," Scott said. "He locked himself in because he was sick of people asking him for help."

A faint smile.

The common room door flew open and Jack came out, heading for the stairwell door.

"Where're you going?" Conor asked.

"Down. They're planning to go through the floor and climb along the underside. They think there might be generators there holding this place up. I might be away for a while." Jack pulled open the stairwell door and disappeared through it. "Hey-" he said, noting the newcomer gazing curiously at the bolted door, "don't go in there. It's dangerous."

With that, Jack left.

"What's in there?"

"A serial killer and a potentially dangerous guy," Conor replied. "The first one killed two of us, so we locked him in there-"

New guy had paled. "Who was killed?" he interrupted quietly.

"No one you know," Jjaks said. "Just a British kid and a dude named Eddie."

"Which-" A pause. "Where."

Jjaks pointed at the scene of the crime. "In there."

New guy walked slowly to it and opened the door. The bodies had since been taken away by Kenselton Hotel's resident morticiary group, Soylent Green, but a large streak of blood covered half of one wall, more splatters of dried blood on the carpet.

He stood there, gazing into the room, until the others wondered what he was doing and went up to see. He wasn't doing anything much, just standing there.

"What's your name?"

New guy gave a start. "Uh," he said. "Uhm. Tim. Yeah."

#

"Neo?"

The One hurriedly closed his most excellent game of Freecell and hoped that Conor hadn't seen. "Yeah."

"Guy named Tim just arrived. Look him up."

Slightly pissed off at having his most excellent game of Freecell ruined, Neo grudgingly pulled up the piece of paper lying next to him and scanned through his handwritten list.

"There's no one named Tim," he said. He passed the paper to Conor. "Here, take it."

It was the entire character list of Keanu Reeves' films, names helpfully annotated in pencil with words like 'psycho' and 'mostly harmless' and 'I think this one's the Antichrist'.

"Wow," said Conor. "Is this the full name list?"

"Yeah. Take it."

"So, uh, if there's no one named Tim on here, then who is he?"

"He could be from a TV ad," Neo said, closing the Internet window. "Or he's lying and his name's not Tim."

#

"What the hell is this?"

"Texas Hold 'em," Conor replied without looking up from his cards. "Wanna join us?"

Kevin barely heard, starting to hyperventilate as his gaze darted wide-eyed around the room with its casually lounging inhabitants, all of whom looked far too familiar for comfort; he grabbed hold of the doorframe for support and started to stagger backwards.

"We're just a bunch of aliens," Tommy said lazily from where he was busy sharpening a stick with a penknife.

"Yeah," Jesse agreed, playing with the wood shavings. "We abducted you 'cause we want your brain."

Kevin visibly paled. "Why-"

"I fold," Alex said at the table. He pushed his cards to the middle and stood up, going towards Kevin.

"Who are you..." Kevin gasped. "Who are all of you..."

"We're not aliens," Alex said. "We're human. What happened to you happened to us-"

"Stay away from me!" Kevin yelled, gripping the doorframe.

"Okay," Alex said, stopping in his advance. "Just calm down before you get a seizure or something. Our resident doctor claims to be overworked."

"Why me?" Kevin demanded, still hyperventilating.

"Your name's on the list," Conor said.

"What list?"

Conor tossed forty cents onto the centre pile. "Call." He dug in his pocket and drew out the paper Neo had given him. He threw it at Kevin. It landed on the carpet.

Kevin hesitated; then he let go of the door, inched forward, and picked it off the ground. He unfolded it and scanned down the list of names until he reached his own. He stared speechlessly at it, then back up at the others. Most were ignoring him.

"It's all right, Kevin," not-Tim said quietly.

Kevin stared at him. "How did you know my name?"

"There's, uh, a version of that list with pictures," not-Tim said.

"...Speaking of the list," Conor said as he lost $3.50 to Jjaks and turned around in his chair, "is your name on it? Because I don't see anyone named Tim on there."

Sheepish grin. "Yeah, you got me. I lied about that."

Not-Tim went over to Kevin's side to peek at the list. Kevin instinctively flinched away; not-Tim picked up the list from his hand and glanced at it.

"Yeah," he said. "My name's there."

"What is it?" Conor asked.

"That's not important."

Kevin turned his head slightly to focus on him, his eyes still filled with suppressed panic. There was something different about not-Tim that alleviated some of his terror, the fear slowly leaving him to be replaced with the assurance that, somehow, everything was going to be all right.

"Please," he said. "Just let me go home."

"I'm sorry," not-Tim said. "I don't think we're able to do that."

"We're out of beds," Johnny added. "You'll have to sleep on the floor."

---

His mom made better waffles than the ones at Kenselton Hotel.

Jesse Walker poked at the rest of his breakfast, appetite suddenly gone and replaced by an acute shot of homesickness. He bit his lower lip.

He put his fork down and pushed the plate away.

Tommy looked hungrily at the remaining food. "Hey, you want the rest of that?"

Silence.

"...Jesse?"

"I want my mom," Jesse said after a while, his voice strangely choked. "I want to go home."

The word harshly triggered into consciousness repressed thoughts of a previous life outside Kenselton Hotel.

Tommy's hunger left him. He sat there for a moment, eyes downcast, then he forcefully pushed memories of his own world out of his mind. "We'll get home," he said firmly, forcing his voice to be steady. "We have to. Just... maybe not yet..."

But the last bits of his friend's restraint had fallen, and Tommy could only watch helplessly and with his own growing despair as Jesse buried his head in his arms and cried.

"We'll get home," Tommy repeated, with less conviction this time. He swallowed, and angrily brushed a tear away. "We'll get home."

#

He was always watching them, Alex noticed. Everyone else tended to do other things – talk, hang about, refuse to budge from the computer, break out in impromptu fights, read, run off to other parts of Kenselton Hotel, poke John Constantine with sticks... Whereas not-Tim just watched them. Sometimes during the process he would smile to himself at some secret joke that no one else knew about; but mostly he just watched them.

Ted claimed that this proved his alien theory. Aliens liked to observe humans to find out more about their behaviour. They also liked to cut up humans and use them in experiments, but he hoped that not-Tim was not that kind of alien, because getting cut up for experiments sounded like a totally heinous way to die.

Ted had since found Alex to be better company than the fourth floor's resident geek, who just sat in front of the computer all day and made the occasional sound to show that he was still alive.

Ted was also not one to just sit about speculating, and so one morning he went up to not-Tim, who was busy listening to a post-breakfast argument that had broken out between Julian and Perry: a rather colourful affair that involved phrases such as "covered in germs" and "at least it's better than looking at teeth all day and giving little kids nightmares".

"Are you an alien?" Ted asked.

Not-Tim turned his attention to him. He stifled a laugh. "Why – what makes you think I am?"

"You're not like the rest of us," Ted said. "You're different."

A pause.

The smile faded a little, then not-Tim placed both his hands on Ted's shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

"Ted... if anyone ever makes fun of your intelligence, don't listen to them, okay?"

Ted blinked.

"Just because they don't see..."

Not-Tim broke off as he noticed Alex staring at him. He returned the favour with added intensity.

"Who are you?" Alex asked softly.

Not-Tim released the teen. "Just an alien," he said. "Don't worry; I come in peace."

#

Hamlet was delivering monologues inside the broom closet. Ears pressed against the doors, they could just make out the words:

"But though the four walls of this closet of brooms
Doth imprison my body, yet still it hath
No hold on my spirit, nor on my soul-"

"We should record this and sell it as the lost works of Shakespeare," Tommy said.

"Yeah," Jesse agreed.

"And waiteth here patiently for sweet release,
When- MARRY, A COCKROACH! DIE, FOUL FIEND!"

The teens heard the sounds of panicked stompings and a sickening squish.

"...I think we should leave out that bit," Jesse suggested.

"Yeah."

#

"Stop poking me," said John Constantine.

#

"What planet are you from?" Ted asked.

Not-Tim looked discomfited by the question. "Um," he started, when he was saved by the loud crash that was Matt overturning the table and shoving Tommy to the ground, where they broke out into a vicious fist fight that Tommy was trying to escape from, screaming apologies whenever his mouth wasn't being hit.

"YOU TWO BREAK THAT UP!" Conor shouted, hurtling over to the teens. Paul was already there and trying unsuccessfully and painfully to separate the two, until Conor and Alex joined in and managed to wrangle them safely apart and hold them there.

"HE POKED ME WITH A STICK!" Matt yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Tommy.

Tommy spat out blood. "I said I'm sorry!"

"WHAT DID I DO TO YOU, HUH?"

Tommy wiped blood off his mouth with the back of his hand and wondered if that was a trick question.

"Okay Tommy, no more poking people with sticks," Alex said. "Give me that stick."

Tommy reluctantly handed over the bit of tree. Alex tossed it aside, where a sudden expletive indicated that it had accidentally hit Kevin. (No one noticed, except not-Tim, who walked over and picked up the stick. He gave it an experimental twirl. He poked himself with it for fun and to see what it felt like. Then he got bored with it and tossed it aside, where a louder expletive indicated that it had accidentally hit Kevin again.

"Sorry," said not-Tim.)

"It was just one poke," Tommy said, thinking of the many more that John Constantine had been subjected to with much less complaint.

"I WAS JUST SITTING THERE!" Matt hollered, blinking angrily as red started to flood his vision, his headache intensified by the recent exertion.

"Calm down, Matt," Alex said quietly.

"Where'd you get that stick?" Conor asked.

"I found it," Tommy said. "In another block. Some guy named Scarecrow was covered with 'em."

Matt extracted himself from Conor's grip and went out the door. He entered his room and lay down on his bed, folding the pillow over his ear to try and quell the throbbing in his head.

He didn't like this place at all.

#

"Yeah, there's an alien," Neo said, slightly annoyed at Conor interrupting his most triumphant Minesweeper game to tell him what Alex had told him not-Tim said. "His name is Klaatu. Go away. I gave you that list for a reason."

#

Alex unbolted the door and nudged it open with his shoe, hand firmly grasping the handle in case he needed to shut it quick. He pushed in a box of food and drinks and stared at a bunch of bottles sitting on the desk.

Alex's eyes narrowed. "Where'd you get that rum?"

- flashback -

"Want some rum?" not-Tim asked a bookshelf, cheerfully holding up a bottle.

"You're drunk, dude," Ted observed.

Not-Tim wandered over to the locked room and generously donated several bottles of rum to Griffin and Donnie and Don John, wanting to share the happiness. The three prisoners were initially suspicious of the strange person who stumbled in and gave them rum, then realised that he was simultaneously drinking out of one of the bottles, which meant that they probably weren't poisoned.

But by this time, the rum guy had however left the room and remembered to re-bolt the door.

- end flashback –

"...Right," Alex said.

"Can we get out yet?" Griffin asked.

"I don't think so," Alex said. He shut the door and shot the bolt home.

"Why bother to feed them?" Johnny asked bitterly from his vantage point against the opposite wall. "They killed people. Let them starve."

Alex looked at him. "Two of them are technically innocent," he said, pointing at the locked door. "If you want to kill them, I can lock you in there as well."

Johnny walked off.

#

"I'm serious. I'm not staying here. Get me out of this freak show."

"Newsflash: It's not like the rest of us like being here,"Conor said, waving his mostly-eaten apple at the newcomer's face.

A dry laugh. "This is insane. I don't have time for this."

"Huh," Conor said. He leant against the wall and took another bite from his apple. "Too bad."

"I have work-"

"Not anymore." Conor finished his apple and held out the core. "You mind throwing this away for me?"

He got a murderous glare and decided that his offer wasn't about to be taken up.

"Fine," Conor said, and went off to the common room. He lobbed the core into the trash and washed his hands. The newcomer had followed him in. Conor rolled his eyes and turned to him.

"What's your name?"

"Nelson."

"Right, Nelson. You're here. You can't do anything about that. So deal with it."

Nelson looked as though the only things stopping him from strangling Conor around the neck were a proud unwillingness to stoop to that level of primitive savagery and an inability to get over the fact that Conor looked almost exactly like him-

"And we're out of beds, so you'll have to sleep on the floor," Conor added.

-but this was pushing it.

Nelson swallowed. "I'm not sleeping on the floor," he stated.

"Yes you are," Conor said.

"No. I'm not."

"All right then, there are three other beds. Two of them are soaked with blood, and the third is in Bob's room. He's been known to throw up on his roommates. In the middle of the night."

"..."

Conor gazed restlessly around the room. "I'm going to the bar," he decided.

"Wait-"

Conor raised an eyebrow.

"How long do we have to stay here?"

"Beats me," Conor said, walking back towards the door. "I'm going to the bar, and you're not following me."

#

"Kevin?"

Kevin rolled over and squinted into the dark to see who was speaking.

"Take the sofa," not-Tim said. "I'll sleep on the floor."

---

It is after a day or two living at Kenselton Hotel when the deeper questions really start to hit you. By that time, the shock and accompanying nausea or excitement upon discovering you are fictional have started to wear off, and the other issues surface.

There is, for instance, the ever-present question of what makes you you, what makes you different from everybody else. Many people living regular lives already have problems with this, but at Kenselton Hotel, where for convenience and logistics reasons you are made to live together with other characters played by the same actor who had played you, the question is all the more pertinent. Being almost consistently surrounded by people who look like you and sound like you and in many instances share the same mannerisms and certain aspects of personality as you takes its toll after a while. In many cases, this eventually leads to feelings of being expendable and having to acknowledge the painful fact that if you were to die that day in some gruesome accident, any one of those other fellas could take your place and no one would really know the difference, except maybe family and close friends.

Kenselton Hotel is a place where you go against what you think is right and play up all the stereotypes and labels that have been attached to you in your life, clinging desperately on to that last shred of identity that tells you who you are and what makes you different from the others.

The more insecure characters usually resort to using nametags, crude stickers with ‘HI MY NAME IS -----‘ printed on them. The even more insecure characters take the alternative route of trying to kill off all their floor mates, which some guy named Gabriel in Block J was rumoured to be in the midst of doing because he wanted to be special or something silly like that.

#

"Watch out for the rum," not-Tim advised Neo as he entered the common room. "We snicked the eighth floor's supply. Want some?"

Neo shook his head and closed the door. There was a young fellow sitting at the table, munching on cornflakes.

"He's the cornflakes guy," not-Tim informed Neo. "He doesn't talk. Just came in several hours ago."

Neo looked at the cornflakes guy. The cornflakes guy looked back at him. Neo reached out a hand and slowly pulled the cornflakes bowl towards him. The cornflakes guy watched its slow progress across the table, then something seemed to click in his head. With a yell of anguish, he yanked the bowl out of Neo's hands and held it close to himself, his breaths coming quick and shallow as he stared at Neo with hurt bewilderment in his eyes.

"And... yeah, don't do that," not-Tim said to Neo. "The last time someone tried to take his cornflakes, he cried."

Tears were already starting to form. Not-Tim patted the cornflakes guy reassuringly on the shoulder. "It's okay," he said. "I won't let anyone do that again."

The cornflakes guy put his head on the table and wept, arms cradled protectively around the cornflakes bowl. He liked cornflakes. They were his life. They gave him meaning, and purpose, and nourishment, and were the only thing in this strange place that made any sense at all.

He wanted to go back to the rooms that he had always lived in. There was the big room, which had a long dinner table lined with chairs, where he ate his cornflakes, and then there was the small bedroom of his that had just a bed, a desk, and a cupboard. It was connected to the bathroom which had a toilet, sink and bathtub, and next to that was the huge non-house-warehouse filled with cornflakes, packet milk, and other necessities...

And then something had taken him away from all that and put him in some strange place, and the only things familiar were the boxes of cornflakes sitting on a shelf.

Not-Tim offered him some rum, and he cautiously took a swig. His eyes lit up. He smiled, got off his chair, and did a happy dance just as the door opened and John walked in looking for a weapon.

John Constantine does not like happy dances.

He likes them even less when they are danced by people who look like him.

John glared at the cornflakes guy, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and flicked ash into the cornflakes bowl.

The cornflakes guy broke out of the happy dance and stared in stupefaction at the bits of black ash floating in the milk. Tears once again started making their way down his face. Not-Tim mentally swore.

John couldn't find a gun. He settled instead for a lightsaber which someone had stolen from another floor, and activated it and waved it around a little.

"Look after him," Not-Tim told the recently-entered Ted, pointing at the cornflakes guy and taking the contaminated cornflakes bowl to the sink. He emptied its contents into the trash, glared at John, washed the bowl, poured some cornflakes in, glared at John, added milk, glared at John, nearly got sliced up by the lightsaber, and returned the new bowl to the cornflakes guy.

Satisfied with his new weapon, John left the room, ignoring everyone. Neo followed after.

#

Luke Skywalker searched frantically around for his most prized possession. "Have you seen my lightsaber?" he asked, meeting Han Solo in the corridor.

"The Keanu-spawn took it," Han informed him.

"And nobody stopped them?" Luke asked incredulously.

"Apparently they know kung-fu."

"Not all of them!"

"Why take the risk?" Han asked, then bolted off as Indiana Jones came running down the corridor loudly demanding his hat back.

#

"Where are you going?" Neo asked.

"Finding a way out."

"Jack and his friends already tried that."

John Constantine headed for the lifts without a word. Neo followed him in as he entered one and hit the button for the top floor.

Exiting the lift car, John activated the lightsaber and plunged it into a random wall, carving out a rough square which he kicked in.

He was met with the bewildered gazes of the British Holdout group, sitting in the next room having tea for the umpteenth time that day.

The British Holdout group consisted of British folks who had discovered, to their chagrin, that the actors who had played them were not British, but American or Australian or Canadian or Eskimo or of some other barbarian nationality. Few outsiders knew just what kind of activities the British Holdout engaged in, other than that it involved a lot of talking in British accents, reminiscing about England, discussing English culture, laughing at Americans, and mostly drinking tea.

There had existed for a time an American Holdout group, but people made fun of them and they soon disbanded.

Unperturbed, John left down the corridor, reached the end, and cut out a portion of the wall there. This time it couldn't be kicked in. With the help of the lightsaber, he managed to get the wall portion onto the floor, and beyond the hole was darkness. John stuck his head through, looked down in the darkness past the sheer window-less side of the hotel, looked up in the darkness past the sheer window-less side of the hotel, and took his head out of the hole.

"Yeah, we're screwed," he concluded, deciding that Jack and his friends had been right after all at least about this much.

#

"...Is that Keanu Reeves' bank account?"

Neo jumped. Alex was standing behind him, with Ted, both of them munching on popcorn.

"Oh... that. Yeah." Neo ran his fingers through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles and look vaguely like someone else's hair. "Uh," he said. Then he closed the Internet window, as well as the ones showcasing his attempts hacking into Matrix fansites to make them display the message 'Neo was here' whenever they logged on.

"Want some popcorn?" Ted asked, offering him the bowl.

"No."

Neo closed another Internet window that showed that all four of his Neopets were satiated with food. He bet that Smith didn't have any Smithpets, and that bit of info made him unreasonably happy. He shut down the computer.

"I don't suppose you've got any escape ideas, huh?" Alex took more popcorn.

"What?" Neo asked.

"Just in case you did."

"No," Neo said again.

---

Static. A beep, and we see a pretty nice view of a wall. A small red dot, followed by the letters 'REC', adorn the upper-right hand corner of the screen.

"Awright!" says the teenage cameraman-cum-narrator, the young Keanu-spawn named Jesse Walker. Not that his identity matters, because we won't be seeing much of him apart from what gets in the way of the camera.

"Welcome to the fourth floor of Kenselton Hotel. It starts out over there, see -"

The camera swings to show us one end of the corridor.

"-the stairs are that way, and there are more stairs that way." The camera swings around in a nausea-inducing manner. "If you go up the stairs to the eighth floor, you can find some really great rum."

The camera settles somewhat, and moves along the corridor with the cameraman. Left turn. A hand appears and pushes open the first door on that side of the corridor. We enter the room.

"That's Bob." The camera focuses on Bob Arctor, sitting on the bed and staring blankly off into space. "He doesn't say anything much. So we put him in here. Everyone else complains about the noise from the stairwell."

We leave the room. The door closes, and the camera turns to the one next to it.

"And that's Julian in there. He's our resident doctor, but most of the time he's asleep. He's probably just pretending 'cause he's sick of people pestering him for first aid. Sometimes the rum raids get nasty, see. And..."

A door opens, and out come Neo, Ted and Alex, the latter two still munching on popcorn.

"Hey, popcorn! Can I have s..."

The camera pans down slightly and then goes blank. When the picture comes back on a second later, the amount of popcorn in the bowl is significantly less than before.

"Okay, where was I..."

John Constantine stalks past carrying the deactivated lightsaber in his left hand and looking generally mad at the world. He gives the camera the finger as he passes, not turning his head.

The camera points towards another door.

"That's where we lock up the crazy ones: Barksdale, Griffin, Don John... There was a lot of noise in there this morning; sounded like gunshots, but it's awfully quiet in there now. Let's go take a look..."

A hand appears and unlocks the door. It pushes the door open.

For a moment we see an empty room... then suddenly loud noises erupt, the camera gets knocked around, yells and screams are heard, AND THE SCREEN GOES BLANK.

#

The door opened. A teenager fell out. The door slammed shut. Seconds later, it opened again, disgorged a damaged camera, and shut again.

Jesse Walker picked up his totalled camera and got unsteadily to his feet, left hand clamped over what he was pretty sure was a broken nose. He used his right forearm to wipe blood and tears somewhat unsuccessfully off his face. Down the corridor, Alex smeared popcorn grease off on his jeans and rushed over.

"Hey, you okay?"

Jesse thought of saying, "Do I look okay?" but didn't, because if he opened his mouth blood would go in, and he was neither hungry nor a vampire.

"You shouldn't have gone in there," Alex said a little too late, indicating the closed door. "We keep 'em bolted in there for a reason... Ted?"

"Yeah?"

"Get a piece of paper, write 'No Entry' on it, and stick it on this door. I'm taking him up to the hospital."

"Sure, dude," Ted said. "Why don't you ask Dr. Mercer for help?"

"I think he's asleep."

Ted ambled out of the supply room minutes later with a piece of paper with 'No Entry' written on it. He looked around, trying to figure out which door it was that he was supposed to stick the sign on. There's only one way to find out, he decided with a shrug, unbolting the nearest door and peeking in.

Neo's reflexes kicked in just in time to yank Ted away to safety and slam the door shut. Grimacing, he struggled with the wiggling door handle and shot the bolt back home. Someone on the other side kicked the door. Neo heard swearing and mutterings of, "so much for lunch."

"Give me the sign."

Ted passed it over along with the scotchtape, and Neo taped it firmly to the door. No entry.

#

"What happened in there?" Alex asked as they entered the stairwell.

Hand still clamped over what he hoped was still sufficiently his nose, Jesse Walker made several incoherent noises and gave up trying to talk.

He remembered hands grabbing hold of him and yanking him into the room the moment he'd opened the door; camera dropping from his hands and hitting the ground, someone slamming the door shut again, and a sharp box to his face as he'd tried to struggle out of his captor's grip...

"Don't kill him, Donnie. Not yet."

The voice had come from the upper bunk bed in the room, where David Allen Griffin lay smiling at the ceiling.

"Let me go!"

Griffin laughed. "What did you expect would happen when you opened that door? Mr. Jack Traven and his friends keep us locked in here for a reason."

"You killed them!" Jesse yelled. "Jonathan, and Eddie..."

"Yeah," Griffin admitted. "I was bored. What did they do with the bodies, anyway? I never got the chance to ask."

Jesse vaguely remembered a group named Soylent Green assuring them that they would take care of everything.

"What do you want with me?" Jesse asked instead.

Griffin rolled over on the bunk to face the teen down below. "Nothing. You're the one who came in here, after all. Of course, it would be great if you could ask your friend Jack to let us out of here. It's getting a little... claustrophobic."

"What makes you think he's my friend?"

Griffin smiled. "You're not locked in here with us, are you?" He pulled himself up into a sitting position and dropped down to the floor. "See that door?" he asked, pointing at the small room's only exit. "It's unbolted now, thanks to you. We could just walk out there, and they'll just put us back in here. That's not very nice of them, is it?"

"It wasn't very nice of you to kill Jonathan and Eddie."

"Hit him again, Donnie."

Donnie Barksdale happily obliged. Jesse yelled as his nose broke.

"Before they stuck us in here, I did some research on your friends out there," David said. "Why don't you ask... Neo... how many people he's killed?"

"Neo's a good guy," Jesse gasped through the pain.

David laughed and gestured towards the door. "Let him go," he told Donnie.

#

Humans are, for the most part, lovers of convenience. As long as they have a fairly comfortable life and are not in any sort of immediate danger, most would be content to go on living the same way they have been living for years.

Among movie characters, the population in general is slightly more impulsive and adventure-seeking; even then, many of those in Kenselton Hotel had soon to come to terms with the fact that there was no visible way out. Meanwhile, they had good food from the cafeteria (cooked by standard-issue gourmet chefs who spoke no English and smiled a lot), comfortable beds, lots of company, entertainment facilities and no more worries of regular life.

It was all like a very long holiday, and one they could do nothing about. Most eventually gave up trying to find a way out and resigned themselves to getting by one day at a time.

True, this also meant a significant lack of purpose in life, but who needs purpose when you can amuse yourself by sticking Kryptonite into (the late) Clark Kent's tea when he's not looking?

Besides, there were the tales of those who had tried too hard: a group of intrepid escapees who called themselves the X-Men had rallied themselves together (an impressive feat in itself), broke through an external wall and ventured out into the dark void beyond. They found nothing, and a particularly blue-looking member of their party spent his days following that with a look in his eyes more crazed than before, muttering incoherently in accented English about dark places that went on forever.

Attempting escape upwards, one simply emerged on the roof of the building with nothing but more of the same darkness all around.

The only thing that held promise of escape were the ones who ran Kenselton Hotel: the receptionists at the arrival floors, the cooks, the cleaners, and most of all the guards. But all of these, when pressed or interrogated under torture, claimed knowledge no further than what their jobs entailed; all too were standardised and gave off distinct robotic vibes.

Chapter 9 »

#