Chapter Text
“You know if this works, there’s no backing out. You’ll be stuck in there with me until we get out.”
Zim scoffed with an eye-roll at Dib’s warning- the umpteenth he’d given about this job -and continued to tear off pieces of the candy wrapper he fiddled with.
“Zim isn’t scared of a hotel , Dib.”
“This isn’t a normal motel , Zim. That’s the point. This isn’t your first time doing this, I don’t know why you’re being so blasé about it.”
Zim only shrugged in disinterest and Dib just sighed. He let Zim think he was being sneaky shoving his wrapper into the car door as Dib went back to reading over the guide one more time. If this worked, this would probably be the last time he’d get to review it in full. No matter how much had been documented, by its nature this job would be targeted in some way. Personalised. No amount of rereading could prepare him for all he might encounter. Still, it helped calm his nerves.
SCP 7819. The No Vacancy Motel, as it was dubbed by the field agents, much to the higher ups’ chagrin. They never were fans of the colloquial names for their little anomalies.
The file for this one went back decades. Numerous agents had gone through and documented what they’d seen and learned, and through their experiences a solid step-by-step guide had been able to be drawn up. Only SCP Agency members could enter, so with that caveat all the information was professionally noted and helpful. It should be comforting to have so much data on a location.
Dib frowned as he pocketed the company reader. The catch, he kept reminding himself, was that it was his job to reassess and update that info if necessary. There was any chance that things had changed in the last thirty-some years.
“You’re making that face again. It’s ugly.” Zim propped his head on his hand, elbow on the door, as he side-eyed Dib with utter boredom. That was its own catch. After a few too many close-calls, Zim had insisted on coming along on any job that had even a slim chance of danger. His reasoning was that clearly Dib was too incompetent to do his job and Zim needed to ensure he didn’t just die in the field. If he were being frank, Dib didn’t mind the extra backup and firepower. Though keeping Zim’s presence out of multiple job reports had been..difficult.
“This is your last chance to leave. You understand me when I say this isn’t one we can bail on, right? If it activates, that’s it. We gotta go through it.”
“What’s that human saying about broken records again?”
Dib clicked his tongue with a sharp sigh. “Okay, whatever. I warned you. I don’t wanna hear your whiny ass complaining later, okay?”
“Only if I don’t have to hear yours.”
With his own eye-roll Dib turned his key and started up his pickup. They pulled out of the parking lot of the last bit of civilisation they’d see for hours. Dib tried not to let himself think of the possibility it would be the last they’d see ever. With the warm painted sky of the setting sun behind them, they started off alone down the highway, willingly offering themselves up to the spider’s web.
Six hours later, they’d be caught.
“Holy shit..” Dib muttered. Zim perked up with a startle- it had been almost an hour since either had spoken at all -then followed Dib’s eyes out the right side of the windshield. He’d slowly tuck the screen he’d been tapping away at back into his PAK.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Dib slowed down as they approached the turn-in to a small parking lot. A slightly run-down ground sign stood out front, reading in tacky lettering ‘Rest-Eazy Inn’. If there were any doubts that this was just an abandoned roadside motel, that sign erased them. He’d read over that document far too many times to second guess the name now.
He didn’t pull in right away. There was nobody on this highway- hadn’t been for hours -so Dib just slowed to a stop some fifty feet from the turn-off point. Some part of his mind groaned at the action, drawing attention to his heavy eyes and urging him to just park so he could get some sleep. A clench of his jaw and he suppressed those thoughts. That was the SCP at work. He had too much experience to listen to memetic shit like that.
Zim didn’t seem affected as he sat wide-eyed and entirely awake. For all his disregard of the location up to now, the bug was being incredibly alert.
“See anything off? More than the obvious?” Dib asked as he reached around to the backseat to retrieve his bag. He made sure to discard the firearm within to under his seat before zipping it up then pulling his phone from his pocket, notes page already open.
“There’s nothing in the windows.” Zim mumbled with palpable unease. Dib furrowed a brow and looked up. The windows to the lobby were lit up but the curtains seemed to be drawn. Nothing was noticeably off about them.
“What do you mean? I just see the lights on-”
“There’s no lights. It’s-..they’re just dark.” Zim pursed his lips and his antennae twitched. “They look.. wrong .”
“Descriptive.” Dib snarked, ignoring the quick glare Zim shot at him. The alien unbuckled then and fidgeted in his seat.
“Are we gonna go in or are we just going to stare at it for the rest of the night?”
“Eager? I thought you told me this job was stupid and boring?”
“Shut up and drive.”
Dib laughed humourlessly at Zim’s bite and finished typing up his shorthand notes. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting at a glance. There were descriptions in the guidebook about how to park with other cars around, to not look in the windows, to not linger too long. There was one specifically unnerving warning about being inside before a burning car put itself out. Dib was thankful they hadn’t pulled that card.
But they had pulled the empty parking lot card. There were no other cars, not one. Just a singular streetlamp at the center front, nearest the building, casting a sickly yellow glow over the lot. Most of the one story motel was bland and dark, the only signs of life being the lights from the lobby, at least on Dib’s end. If Zim was already seeing differences in the parking lot, Dib started to bite at his lip how different navigating the interior would be. They’d cross that bridge in a few minutes, he guessed.
Dib pulled in a few spaces down from the front doors. Something unnamable told him parking directly out front would be a bad idea. The car sat just on the cusp of that dirty streetlamp’s reach and for a moment he simply sat there with the engine running. Or, it felt like a moment. A sharp, urgent grab at his arm shook Dib out of his stare at the steering wheel and he pivoted his eyes to Zim.
“Don’t do that.” He warned in a low tone. More fear reverberated in those words than perhaps Zim intended, but the sound reminded Dib to not let the inexplicable sudden exhaustion win him over. He had a job to do. He turned the car off, double checked his bag, then wordlessly nodded to Zim to get out.
Their doors shut in unison and that was the last sound to ring out. The night air was cool and smelt of asphalt and fallow corn fields. There were no sounds out this far. The wind was still, no animals were around, no other cars drove past. Zim’s antennae ticked at something Dib couldn’t hear, but the bug made no mention of it so Dib only started forward without a word towards the front door.
He blinked against the relatively bright light of the lobby. It too was merely a dim fluorescent yellow, but after a few hours of staring down a dark highway with nothing but your headlights, any light seemed a bit bright. It didn’t help that his eyes stung with tiredness that made him want to shut them for a while. There was no confirmation on whether the feeling of fatigue around this SCP was natural or influenced, but if Dib’s experience with insomnia was anything to go by, this didn’t feel normal.
“What’s first from that little list of yours?” Zim asked as he scanned the room. He spoke softly, thank god. He’d follow close in tow as Dib approached the worn check-in desk.
“Wait until we hear the sounds.”
“What sounds?”
“Any. Hush.”
For a few seconds the lobby echoed the sound of Dib tapping the desk bell. As it settled back into silence, he took proper stock of his surroundings. It was a small entry area shaped in an odd, narrow L. If the front door were the top of the L, the check-in desk was parallel with the bottom. They were closed right now, but on the way in you passed a set of double doors into the breakfast bar as well. Continuing past the desk it was a straight shot view down the first hallway. Though the motel was single-story on the outside Dib already knew that this space didn’t care for physical reality. He could just about make out the nook at the end of the hall that the elevators sat in from where he stood.
“Dib.”
“Shh.” Dib held a hand up with a stern look. Zim silently grouched and folded his arms across his chest like a child. He took a step closer to Dib though, coming to stand nearly shoulders touching with him as those big pink eyes distrustingly panned over the lobby in methodical fashion. After a few moments, the bug started to tap his boot against the cheap bathroom tile flooring of the lobby in a nervous tic.
Dib couldn’t blame him. It was six, maybe seven agonizingly quiet minutes before they’d both pick up on the same sound at the same time. Turning around, the two eyed the door to a closed off room behind the counter. In a normal motel Dib would assume it to be the managers office perhaps. Muffled through the thin walls and maybe a layer of blankets, the unplaceable noise of heavy slapping could be heard. Like someone open-palming a pillow. Alongside it, every few seconds, there was a grunt. A singular grunt of exertion. Dib thought he heard speaking, but the words were entirely inaudible. Could he hear crying?
Zim turned sharply to lock eyes with Dib, hairless brow drawn taut in concern. Dib nodded, hoping that Zim understood it to be confirmation that this was what they were waiting on, then he set his hands on the desk. Taking the guidebook’s instructions literally Dib hopped himself up onto the surface and slid over it to come down on the other side. He had to fight a shake of hesitation to pound his hand against the door a few times in succession.
He heard Zim intake a breath sharply and without looking Dib just flashed a hand up to silence the bug. He listened, and of all the times for Zim to be compliant Dib was thankful to hell and back he chose to be so now. The guide specifically said to not speak once you heard the sounds. Dib had reiterated the importance of quiet on this job to Zim countless times. How many of those warnings had stuck in that empty cranium of his was yet to be seen.
After a minute of intermittent banging, pausing only when the noises ceased, something pushed against Dib’s shoe. He looked down to see a folded cloth napkin, bunched up from being forced through the crack beneath the door. He stooped over to pick it up and found tucked inside a room key. Clipped around the head was a flat plastic tag, but it had no number etched onto it. Just blank black plastic.
“Thank you.” Dib spoke towards the door then came back around the counter and nudged Zim along towards the hallway. He silently stared Dib down with narrowed eyes and antennae laid all the way back, only speaking when they were halfway down the corridor. And even then he hissed only just above a whisper.
“What on Irk was that ?”
“Step one. Step two is to shut. Up .” Dib replied. He’d interrupt Zim’s confounded noises with an added: “And don’t look through the peepholes.”
“Why not, what’s in there?” Zim mumbled as his volume dropped even quieter.
“Nothing we need to see.”
A near inaudible Irken cuss then Zim fell silent. The two walked side by side down the awkwardly long hallway, Dib a step ahead to be the lead. He didn’t want to stop to type on his phone so he tried to make mental notes of the location. It bled tacky, looking like something straight out of a dying commercial city in the late 90’s. Bland wallpaper, cheap painted wooden doors, royalty free looking landscape photos hung at odd intervals down either wall. There was nothing interesting about the space and nothing at all to indicate it was anything dangerous. Aside from maybe the high risk of contracting something.
Unconsciously, Dib clenched his teeth though. The night had just started. How long it took and where you had to go to get to your room was indeterminate. The elevator ride alone could take a half hour. It was near 2 am when they arrived. Time was in flux in this place, but it could easily be nearly sunrise real time before they even reached the room. Dib hoped beyond reason they’d get lucky and could leave without much incident.
That was wishful- and frankly, ignorant -thinking though and Dib knew it. SCP 7819 was,in some way not fully understood, a personalised location. Though major elements remained consistent and most flexible phenomena seemed random, there were smaller but impactful things that seemed tied to the individual. Who knows, far more than was known could be individual but so abstract and metaphorical that it went unnoticed. Even if things went ‘smoothly’ down here, Dib might still walk away mentally exhausted.
That was just regarding him, too. Half his brainpower was focused on Zim. For whatever reason- Dib suspected it was because he was foreign to the planet -Zim was unaffected or affected differently by supernatural entities and events. He could see things as they truly were, without the veil a lot of creatures could put up. He couldn’t be affected by the same tricks and could put up a stronger fight than any of them were ready for. As powerful as some supernatural beings were, they ultimately had all come up on Earth. No matter what they knew, they couldn’t prepare for Zim.
The fact this motel had manifested at all meant that Zim was yet another outlier to its laws. In the decades since its discovery, SCP 7819 had only ever allowed in current or past agency members when they were alone. Zim was not a member, and him being here meant, of course, that Dib wasn’t alone on his car ride. Yet, here they walked. What that meant about how Zim was being perceived by the SCP, he had no idea yet. But off the dome guess? Zim might not be considered a ‘person’, or at the least he wasn’t a viable target. If that kept him relatively safe from the potential dangers of this place, that just made Dib’s job all the easier.
But again, wishful thinking and all that.
“There was only one floor from the outside.” Zim muttered low as he stepped past Dib to look at the elevators. There were two, both with a half circle of glass above them depicting what floor they were on. No numbers were listed, just ticks with an arrow. Dib hit the call button and stepped back. He tugged Zim back by the sleeve as well.
“It’s an incongruous space. There’s a lot that isn’t gonna follow the rules of reality here.”
“Zim doesn’t like that.”
“No one really does.” Dib let out a breath and tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. They both watched the arrow slowly lower then finally settle on the far left as a ding rang out and the rattly elevator doors slid open. As they parted, they revealed a person. Or, the image of a person. The guide made a strict note of mentioning that no one else in this place will be human. Dib fought back a shiver at remembering that.
The figure inside was a slight, short, barely twenty years old looking person. Their head hung low with shaggy blond hair obscuring the upper half of their face. They wore clothing too heavy for the weather, worn through all over with a tattered blanket drawn around their shoulders. The Vagrant. Dib didn’t honestly want to share an elevator ride with any of the entities this motel held, but of the three known possibilities, this was the best to get. No time for complaining here.
Dib quickly cut a hand sharply across his throat, hoping Zim understood he needed to Not Speak, then led the alien in with him to the elevator. Zim resisted but didn’t make a scene about fighting. He did, though, shove his way into the far corner from the ‘person’. That was fine by Dib, he was going to have Zim put his back to the wall anyway. Dib quickly eyed over the elevator panel, picked a random button high up in the jumbled numberless mess, and set himself at the back of the car beside Zim.
A few minutes into the ride Zim would slip his gloved claw down and clutch at Dib’s sleeve. Dib let him without comment. This wasn’t Zim’s first time coming on a job with him, but all the others had been sporadic, last minute tag-alongs on usually easy work. Anything more important Dib didn’t tell Zim about. Not until he’d come back at least. This was the first time Zim had forced his way into an outing and his first encounter at all with an SCP like this. Dib couldn’t remotely blame him for being so on edge and unsettled when all of Zim’s experience before had been with slightly weird objects and a couple creatures that mostly tried to run.
Dib tried to keep himself at ease though. For the job and to try and ensure Zim didn’t fuck this up somehow by being jumpy and trigger happy. There was a specific rule about not bringing in firearms. If the SCP had noticed that Zim’s PAK held enough weaponry to arm a platoon, it hadn’t done anything to indicate that. Everything was just as described in the report so far. For the sake of both of their lives, Dib prayed to whoever the hell that it stayed that way.
Movement to his right drew Dib’s focus back down from the arrow climbing up. The figure had turned around to face the both of them. It’s face was now visible somewhat, uncut bangs still hung over one eye. But their plainly average self now looked at the two with an unreadable expression. Dib just about heard a sound of alarm die out in Zim’s throat as he held his breath and tensed up fiercely against the corner. Dib would quickly grab Zim’s hand and squeeze it, hoping it was enough to keep him quiet as the figure evidently picked him.
Dib knew what the Vagrant did, but he honestly couldn’t recall if he’d told Zim. He’d warned about the Business Man and the Hiker, as they had more pressing rules to remember. But the Vagrant acted as almost a free pass. Just don’t talk, which was already a given for most of the motel. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever mentioned it. But Dib felt a bit sorry regardless at just how startled Zim was.
The Vagrant stepped up and wordlessly set its arms around Zim. With the action they inadvertently wrapped him in their ragged blanket as well. The bug entirely locked up. Better that than losing his shit at least, Dib thought, as he felt Zim’s claws dig hard into the back of his hand. He didn’t turn his head, but Zim’s big pink eyes, wide as dinner plates, snapped to Dib and Dib didn’t need words to know that Zim was asking him what the absolute fuck was going on.
But then the elevator jostled a bit and, just as suddenly as they’d done it, the Vagrant let go. They reached around to unclip something from the side of a backpack hidden under the blanket and they offered it towards Zim. Dib nodded insistently and, with visible hesitation, Zim gingerly took ahold of the item. At the same moment the elevator dinged and the old doors jostled open into a T intersection hallway. Dib kept a tight grip on Zim’s hand as he shuffled from the elevator and he only just got a glimpse of the Vagrant one last time as the doors shut.
“Dib..Dib what..what was that. What was that, what on-” A slap as Dib cupped a hand to Zim’s mouth just as his voice started to rise. Dib winced with a hiss through his teeth as Zim fucking bit his palm, but he didn’t remove his hand.
“Keep your fucking voice down. I told you this place was a lot and you shrugged me off. I told you not to complain.”
Zim harshly shoved away Dib’s arm and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He whisper-shouted back, jutting a claw into Dib’s chest. “All you told me was that the building was weird. You never said there were freaky THINGS inside of it.”
“I definitely did, you just don’t fucking listen.” Dib took his eyes off Zim to pan the crossroads they stood in. This level looked slightly different than the ground floor. The walls were yellower, the doors less evenly spaced. The carpet pattern was like someone zoomed way in on TV static. The ceiling was popcorned. Someone was watching them.
“Where are we going now then? There were no numbers on that panel, what floor are we even on?”
“Shut up, lemme..” Dib waved a hand with a deep furrow of his brow. He gripped the key in his hand, hyper aware of how sweaty his palm was. A dull ache started up at the base of his skull and behind his eyes. He didn’t look at any of the peepholes, but he eyed the crack of every door within sight, checking to see if any were open.
“Dib, where are we going.”
“Are you literally incapable of not talking or something-?”
“We’ve been standing here for ten minutes Dib.” Zim cut in, tone heavy with irritation but eyes pleading. Ten minutes? There was no way they were here for ten minutes, they just got off the elevator.
“I don’t need your dramatics right now Zim, we just got to this floor.”
“No, no-no-no, stop that.” Zim waved both his hands then reached forward to snatch the key from Dib’s hand. A surge of anxiety hit Dib as the bug did so and he immediately was stepping on his heels to keep up as Zim pivoted and took off briskly down the left-hand hallway.
No more than twenty feet from the crossroads did Dib start to slow and feel his headache fading unnaturally fast. It only took a couple seconds for him to connect the dots and he slapped a hand to his forehead. For fuck’s sake, he’d stayed in the crossroads too long. Goddammit, of course he was freaking out. One of the first rules in the book and he’d instantly forgotten. Shit.
And hell, where was Zim? Dib refocused to the hallway in front of him and saw nobody. Just a stretch of hall another sixty feet on then a ninety degree turn to the right. He didn’t hear footsteps either. A real rise of anxiety stabbed up from his gut and he swallowed the urge to call out. Keeping his eyes to the ground, Dib balled his fists and carried on forwards.
It never crossed his mind to check his phone for the time. Partially out of the worry that was steadily speeding up his walking, mostly out of the unnatural exhaustion that was creeping into his bones more and more every step he took. It was so easy to zone out and lose track of how many turns he’d taken. This branch off that intersection was a straight shot, how had Zim gotten so far ahead to stay out of sight? That was assuming he and Dib were seeing the same floorplan.
He was yet to confirm it, but Dib guessed that when it came to location SCPs with no fixed floorplan, Zim was capable of seeing past the mind-fuckery and could navigate the space differently. It would line up with the other abnormal ways Zim dealt with the..well, abnormal.
If that had happened though, there was no telling where Zim had ended up. The building appeared despite there being two people in the vehicle, so Dib had thought it didn’t recognise Zim. But then the Vagrant had picked him in the elevator, so it could see him? Dib huffed and grit his teeth in frustration at himself. He hadn’t even thought to ask Zim what that entity had given him, the trinket he was offered. Good god he never should’ve let Zim come along.
Then again, it had been Zim that had shaken him from the fatigued trance the motel was trying to put him under. Twice now. Dib was the one with the knowledge of the supernatural and the understanding of how to evade it (generally). But Zim’s training was definitely a buff no matter where they were. Goddammit, where was he?
Dib’s spiralling panic was stopped dead in its tracks as he turned a corner and was met with..a ballroom. Or, maybe that was too grand a word. This was just a motel, after all. But it was a large room set up with maybe eight or so round tables unevenly spaced. Each had half a dozen high backed chairs at them, though they seemed to be counter stools as the seats themselves were the same level as the tabletops. Heavy, off-white curtains lined the walls far too close to each other to be covering actual windows and a gaudy faux crystal chandelier hung a little too low from the center of the ceiling. It was a budget ballroom fit for the cheapest of weddings and awkward community events.
Across the way, tucked into the corner, was a continuation of the motel hallway. The carpet looked to be a different pattern, but otherwise it was just a copy paste of the halls Dib had been hurrying through for fifteen minutes. He didn’t head for it right away though. He stepped slowly over the threshold where the carpet met linoleum. He ran his hand over a table as he walked past it but jerked back from a pinch on his finger. A splinter. The table was like painted plywood, unlacquered. Looking closer the chair seats weren’t leather either. They looked stiff and lumpy like badly molded clay. It was almost a chair at a table, but Off. Wrong.
He made a point to not touch the tables again as he manuevered through the tight clutter of furniture to a curtain. Dib only frowned though as the cloth didn’t move. He couldn’t see how, but it was like it was affixed to the wall itself. A semblance of a curtained window. Off and Wrong. He stared at it for a few moments before letting out a small gasp and pulling his phone from his pocket. Distracting his nerves with the job he was here to do sounded pretty good about now.
Dib would be nearly done shorthanding his notes from the last forty minutes when his heart spiked at the sudden sound of running footsteps. He spun around, backed into a table hard enough it squealed across the floor. Unconsciously he held his breath as a blur of pink and black came into view and wild eyes met his.
Zim stopped so suddenly his torso jerked forward with momentum. For a few seconds they both stood frozen, staring at each other. Zim clutched something in his right hand that Dib couldn’t see. From his hip something bounced against his leg before coming to a rest. Dib’s eyes flickered down to that movement and he finally saw what the Vagrant had given the bug: clipped by a carabiner to his pants’ belt loop was a little rubber keychain in the shape of a ship. A space ship.
“WHERE THE _” Zim began, but quickly trailed off into a series of Irken cusses Dib couldn’t keep up with. He heard something about “this filthy nonsense building” and a “freaky mind-reading room”, but most everything else was lost to Zim’s utter panic. Dib broke out of his stunned silence and quickly closed the gap between him and the bug, grabbing him by the shoulders tightly and interrupting his slew of insults and questions.
“Hey-hey-hey-hey, shut up, sh- Zim, ZIM. Hush it. I don’t know how loud we can be in here, we’re not that far from the rooms-”
“Zim doesn’t CARE how loud he’s being. This WORTHLESS, IMPOSSIBLE place is _” Another string of Irken words. Dib huffed and gave a curt look over Zim’s shoulder then behind himself to the other hall. Nothing in either that he could see.
“Look, I get it, I get it. This place is fuckin’ weird. But we’ve still got an entire night to get through and I can promise that there will be weirder things than walking through non-linear hallways-”
“I wasn’t in the hallways, Dib .” Zim snapped as he pushed Dib back a foot. He drew his hand up where he dangled the room key from its tag. “I went in a room.”
Dib blinked. “You..Zim you’re not supposed to go in any rooms!”
“Then what’s the KEY for?!”
“It’s for me to use you fuckin’ idiot!” Dib snatched the key from Zim’s claws and shoved it into his pocket alongside his phone. Zim snarled at that but didn’t verbally argue.
“It opened for me. What else was I supposed to do.”
“Woah woah, wait what?” Dib’s anger dropped a bit, bafflement slipping into his edged tone. “It opened for you?”
“Yes. A door opened as I walked past.”
“And you just walked in ?”
“NO, Zim isn’t a moron,” Zim grouched as he crossed his arms over his chest. Dib could retort that claim all night but he held his tongue this once and let Zim go on. “I wasn’t going to. But it was-...” Zim, though, cut himself short. Mid-sentence he seemed to second guess what he was saying and his tense shoulders drooped. Dib gave it a few moments before trying to pry the rest from Zim himself.
“..it was, what? This is kinda important for me to note down Zim. If you actually saw inside one of these rooms, that’s one hundred percent something I need to know.”
Zim pursed his lips and looked to the floor. Dib sighed.
“Okay… Okay. I have no idea what you could’ve seen here that would make you clam up. But I literally don’t have time to sit here and try to get you to talk. But you are going to tell me later what you saw, got it?”
A non-committal nod was all he got but Dib would have to take that for now. Zim got stubbornly silent about the most inane of things, there was no telling what this could possibly be about. For all Dib knew Zim just realized he didn’t know how to describe it and would rather play the silent act than fumble through his words. Whatever the reason though, they had to keep moving. The guide had been pretty clear about being quiet and they’d broken that rule plenty. Dib thought he’d very much like to keep this night moving before the building decided they were too unruly a pair of guests. Whatever that entailed.
Zim didn’t need to be told to follow as Dib started for the new stretch of hallway. They left the cramped ballroom and were funnelled back into what felt like a slightly narrower winding path. Actually passing through the space now Dib noted another difference to the rest of the halls he’d seen. There were more doors. And many of them were oddly placed, sometimes impossibly placed. Two doors on either side of a corner, realistically leading into the same room but almost certainly being two different rooms in this hellhouse. Doors set four in a row, frames touching. Many started showing up without handles. Zim would tug on his arm and point down a hallway they passed where all the doors were several inches off the ground, sitting in the center of the wall.
As they went, Zim would draw closer in until he just bit the bullet and hooked his arm around Dib’s. He had a resting sort of grimace on his face and Dib very maturely kept his teasing thoughts about to himself. Not the time.
Especially not when something inexplicable slowed him to a stop and his attention was drawn to a door on the right. Zim furrowed his brow at Dib then followed his gaze to the door.
“..what.”
“That’s it I think.”
“‘It’?”
“The room it wants me to stay in.”
Zim made his little hum of questioning confusion but Dib didn’t elaborate further. He unhooked himself from the alien and fished the key from his jeans. It slid into the lock with ease and the handle would click, letting Dib gently push it open without stepping in.
It was dim, but a bedside lamp was on inside, illuminating the room. It was an odd lamp to see, being one of those classic green ones you always see in libraries. But it was doing its job and that’s all Dib cared for right now. From their place in the doorway, the two could see a weirdly large bed with a dark red wood frame pushed footboard first against the center of the left-hand wall. A small flatscreen was mounted above it awkwardly high on the ceiling. Like the kind of TV you’d see in a sports bar. It was already on, playing ads for items with no brand names spoken.
There were three vanities that lined the right-hand wall, all stocked with what you’d expect in a hotel room- coffee creamer, sugar packets, napkins, a couple pens and a stack of sticky notes, a phone charging port. An old one, for a wireless telephone to sit in. Though there was no phone that Dib could see.
Immediately inside the room was the bathroom to the left. The door was shut though and had no handle. Not even a hole where one should be. Just flat wood. Dib made a point to listen carefully as he moved cautiously inside the room. He didn’t want to know whatever the guide meant when it said to barricade the bathroom if you thought someone was inside.
“This is it?” Zim whispered, sounding almost disappointed. Though as he went on Dib realized that tone was annoyance more than anything. “Zim’s room was far more impressive.”
“Would be neat if you told me in what way.” Dib half-mindedly answered as he shut and locked the hallway door and properly moved into the room. It was either abnormally small for a motel room or the bed and three vanities just dwarfed it, but it felt vaguely claustrophobic. Dib paused at the head of the bed jutting out into the room and quickly ran through the guide in his head.
“Okay. Check the room, make sure nothing’s in here.”
“What can be in here?” Zim asked hurriedly and scoffed at Dib’s shrug.
“I dunno. And I don’t want to. So search.”
Zim grumbled but obliged and took to peering behind and between each vanity. There really wasn’t a lot of space for someone- or something -to hide in here, thankfully. Dib knew the rooms could be far more crowded and spacey with more nooks for anything to be tucked away in.
For good measure, Dib moved the end table without a lamp over into the small hall space where the bathroom and hallway door were. It didn’t touch wall to wall, but it took up the walking space. If anything entered from those doors, it would have to move aside or move over top of that table. It was small, but any amount of comfort was welcome right now.
“What now then?” Zim asked, lean-sitting against the fake air conditioner unit hooked up to the wall beneath another set of curtains, though these were a deep wine red to match the diamond carpeting. Dib gave up looking for a TV remote and just sat on the edge of the bed.
“We go to sleep.”
“What?” Zim laughed a sharp, humourless laugh and gestured outwards. “There is no way that I’m going to sleep in this place.”
“We have to, or we’re not getting out. The next step needs us to sleep first.”
“Why? What’s next?”
“Well,” Dib cocked his head and cringed a bit. He’d actually not thought about this until just now. “We should..wake up in the pool. Or the pool room anyway.”
Zim let out a whiny groan and threw his hands up. “For Irk’s sake, is there anything here that makes sense? Zim is about fed up with being here. Are you sure there’s no way to leave already?”
“Positive. And I thought we made a deal about not whining?”
Zim stuck his tongue out but did stop talking. Dib sighed softly and laid down on top of the duvet without taking anything off. There was no chance he was taking anything off his person here.
With a dramatic eyeroll Zim conceded to Dib’s pat to the other side of the bed. He crawled over Dib- he could’ve easily enough just walked around but whatever -and plopped down heavy onto the covers. He curled up a bit on his side, facing Dib. Above them the TV continued to run through multi-minute long ads about nothing. Jewellery and websites and kids toys, all of them playing through faded static like they were from the early 2000s. None ever spoke a brand name nor showed a logo. Now that Dib listened closer, actually, there were hardly anything spoken at all. Everything said was vague, non-descriptive, just the most bare bones corporate commercial sounding sentences without any meaning. Unnerving.
“What’s after the pool?” Zim asked softly. Dib dropped his eyes from the screen to Zim’s, bright and vibrant and darting around his face as Dib answered. He swallowed a yawn to speak.
“We- or at least, me -need to get something from there. There’s an item in the hottub apparently. Then we need to talk to someone in the breakfast room. After that we sleep the rest of the night and when we wake up, if we did everything right, we return the key and leave.”
Zim’s eyes narrowed in distrust. His words were heavy with it. “Right. That easy.”
“Not really. Or, well,” Dib yawned. “It depends on the person I guess. We don’t really know what the goal of this place is, if it’s malicious or just unintentionally weird. But it tries to get you to stay. You have to actively, consciously fight that. And the way it tries to convince you works on some people.”
“Not on you though, right?” Dib’s half-closed eyes opened at the question and he cocked a brow at just how fearful it sounded. Zim stared him down though with complete sincerity.
“I..yeah, no. I don’t wanna be here in the first place, much less stay any longer than needed. I’m just here to see if the guidebook still works.”
“Okay. Good.”
Dib bit at the inside of his lip and huffed a sigh through his nose. He’d let the quiet white noise of the TV ads fill the quiet before speaking again.
“What was in that room, Zim?”
It was Zim’s turn to eye the TV, feigning casualness. But Dib knew his tells all too well to be fooled. No, Zim was just trying to avoid the question. Go figure.
“Zim, you need to tell me. That’s why we’re risking ourselves here. You can’t experience a crucial bit of this thing then just not tell me what you saw.”
“Can’t it wait until we leave?”
“I don’t see why that would matter. Unless you’re just hoping I’ll forget by then.” Dib laughed internally at the silence that followed that accusation. Of course that’s what Zim was hoping for. Dib went on. “Just tell me what was inside. What did it look like?”
“It looked like your filthy house.”
“Christ you’re such a child.” Dib rolled his eyes with a playful shove to Zim’s shoulder. He spoke lightly but firmly. “You’ll tell me before I turn in my report. I won’t let you keep that secret.”
Zim gave him a coy raise of the brow and a smirk that dared Dib to try. If he'd had the energy to he’d take the bug up on that invitation of argument. But as it was he was struggling to just keep his vision focused on Zim, much less hold a lengthy conversation with him.
So instead he finally- finally -let his eyes fall shut and didn’t fight the immense exhaustion that swept through him. He knew he’d be out like a light in under a minute, so Dib spoke up in a sleepy mumble before that happened.
“Go to sleep, m’kay? This might not work if you stay up.”
“Whatever you say.”
And Dib was asleep before he could even think of a reply.