Hotel Ygg

The sounds of laughter and conversation floated up from the hotel bar, punctuated occasionally by the soft tink of champagne glasses touching in a toast.
A couple was paused on the hotel's center stairwell. They leaned against the railing, talking quietly to each other in the low, yellow light of a crystal chandelier. The woman's arm was draped luxuriously over the railing, her lacquered fingernails drumming against the wood. With her other hand, she clutched a crystal champagne flute, half-full, golden bubbles rising and popping softly against the glass. She put it down, briefly, when she reached for the man's hand. When she picked it up again, the glass was full of yet more cool, clear champagne. 
In the hallways, guests floated towards the bar. The sound of their footsteps was absorbed by the plush and immaculate carpet that was somehow unblemished by the passage of so many feet. Wherever the guests walked, the carpeting rebounded behind them, its red fibers eagerly filling the space of their footprints. 
In the bar, a low cloud of cigar smoke wound its way around the heads and shoulders of the bar's patrons. The tapestried walls kept the smoke in; swaddled and hushed the conversation. Music drifted in along the smoke. At the front, the glistening bar top, polished to a mirror sheen, reflected the cool blue lights behind the bar. Stacked neatly on shelves, in front of the blue lights, were regiments of glass bottles at varying levels of fullness. There was not a speck of dust on them.
There was laughter at the bar. Ash hovered at the end of a cigar that, although it burned, never seemed to shrink. A glass of champagne was set against the bar, and several seconds later was refilled. 
At the far end of the room, several plush couches were arranged in a half circle. A claw-foot table was placed between them, and a low, floral centerpiece sat on top. The flowers had been masterfully arranged. Not a single petal looked out of place. To the arrangement's left side sat a tray of champagne glasses, all full. Bubbles rose and popped delicately against the glass. Someone laughed. The clawfoot table flexed its talons against the carpet. Glasses chimed together in a toast. 
In the foyer, a guest sat at a plush bench, admiring an oil painting. A speck of dust—a remnant of the bar smoke—settled onto the bench and promptly disappeared. The painting showed an expansive landscape, resplendent in sunset reds and yellows. Hillside curves were immaculately shaded, tree canopies frosted with reflections of the sunset. Every centimeter of tree bark was carefully picked out, from the carved wooden faces contorted with horror to the small, flowered vines draped over their trunks. A pair of dogs near the midground chased a bushy-tailed squirrel. The dogs’ limbs were too long, their grey muzzles too short. Their eyes too red. They were not dogs. Across the landscape, the setting sun dappled the grass with beams of crimson light, drawing skeleton-edged shadows from the trees.
The guest on the bench blinked. The dogs became dogs again. 
The guest took a sip of his champagne as his gaze drifted slowly across the foyer. There were other paintings, their colors bright against dark wood frames, masterfully textured landscapes nearly hypnotic to the eye. On an empty bench rested a tray of champagne and an open cigar box. The sound of other people was quieter here, the soft melodies of distant laughter muffled by the rich tapestries on the walls. There was an orchid nestled between two paintings, resting serenely on a table, each of its purple blooms pristine. Its dark, waxy leaves were draped across the table, the colors of the paintings reflected subtly across their surface.
High above the orchid and the paintings, dangling from the vaulted ceiling, was the crystal chandelier, casting warm yellow light down onto the room below. The occasional rainbow twinkled across the face of a turning crystal, speckles of color dancing across the foyer’s immaculate carpet. Air from some unseen vent, heated to just the perfect temperature, sighed past the chandelier’s regiments of hanging crystal, descending on the foyer to brush past the orchid, the paintings, the bench, the guest. 
Still sitting, the guest noticed a faint prickle in his legs—a twinge of discomfort at his inactivity. He shifted, but did not stand; his feet, planted on the plush carpet, had melted to a puddle of exposed vasculature and slowly carbonating bone. A dribble of flesh leaked onto the carpet, where it was instantly absorbed. The carpet let out a small sigh of pleasure. The guest took a sip of his champagne, and the prickling sensation disappeared. Somewhere, someone laughed. 
At the bar, the music had changed. A piano near the lounge had begun to play. A woman in a red satin dress tilted her head to watch the keys, her dark eyes distant. As she lifted the glass to her rouged lips, a ribbon of flesh melted off the back of her finger, running down the fluted glass and dripping onto the edge of the piano's lid before vanishing inside. The piano gave a faint, satisfied hum as its ivory keys danced of their own accord.
Tapping a skeletal fingertip against the champagne flute, the woman pursed her lips before turning away, back to the woman she had been talking with before. The other woman smiled at her, her smile wide. Too wide. The eroded musculature of her face revealed pearly white teeth all the way back to her molars. Their conversation continued, though neither woman remembered that they spoke. 
To their right, standing behind the piano, was a man who may have once been listening. His face was fixed with a small, vacant smile, and he leaned back against the lounge’s thick curtains, one of his hands locked around a champagne flute. His other hand was gone, as were his legs and lower torso. Blue-green viscera tumbled from the cavern of his deteriorating ribcage, a heavy tongue of curtain folded across his chest, delicately prodding the tangle of his intestines as the acid it excreted slowly digested it away. The pink folds of his lungs, still rhythmically expanding, were visible underneath his ribs. From the ruin of his chest, a globule of chymifying flesh slid down his innards and landed on the carpet. The fibers absorbed it and, eager, twitched for more. 
Beneath the music and the conversation was a low hum—the satisfied sigh of the carpeting, the drapes, the couches—all slowly dissolving their nearest guest. Nowhere was this hum louder than the bar’s lounge. There, amid the cigar smoke that curled its way across the couches, rose a faintly sulphuric fume—the acidified flesh and blood and bone of four former guests, now half-congealed puddles of sludge against the couches. Beneath the puddles, the leather couch was writhing slowly, raising sections of itself to lap at lumps of sizzling bone. Half of a skull, foaming in a thin skein of bile, rested against a chunk of blackened liver and a tangled wad of hair.
A single, bright blue eye looked out from the skull. Like a bubble in a champagne glass, acid shivered up through the iris, blood and fluid mixing as they swelled through retina, sclera, cornea. Then, with a low, wet hiss, it popped, sending crimson-stained vitreous fluid spilling across the curve of an eye socket, the blue iris a deflated ruin. A section of couch cushion separated from the sofa, the leather sliding into the eye socket and spooning out the rapidly desiccating eyeball, rolling it across its acid-slicked length with a shuddering, contented sigh before dropping the burst eye into the pool of digesting flesh and settling back against the couch.
In the lobby of the hotel, a guest had just arrived, though she could not remember opening the doors to enter. She glanced around, taking in the handful of comfortable-looking chairs, the wide reception desk, the music drifting in from the bar. On the reception desk there was a note, written in large, friendly letters. 
We will be with you shortly, it said. Please enjoy a glass of champagne as you wait.
The woman tilted her head, perplexed for a moment, then suddenly seemed to notice the tray of champagne beside the note, as though the glasses had appeared and filled themselves the moment she had thought to be curious. Walking to the reception desk, the woman picked up a glass and took a sip. The drink was cool, refreshing. She moved towards one of the comfortable-looking chairs as she took a few more sips of champagne, though she didn’t sit down. Instead, she found herself captivated by the music in the bar, and, suddenly unworried about waiting for someone at the desk, was drawn towards the noise of conversation, the tink of champagne glasses and the sound of music drifting towards her on soft pillows of cigar smoke.
Somewhere, someone laughed. 

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G. M Paniccia is a virologist and writer based in New York. She is a co-host on the weekly thought experiment podcast “What the If?”. When not sciencing or writing, she spends her time rock climbing, playing capoeira (badly), or zoning out in front of her aquarium.