Hostel

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Hostel

IsaLee was sitting next to the windows. She could see the far out, could see the lights of the other Houses, of the other hostels, well IsaLee did not really know, hostels like hers, houses like, like what?

IsaLee could not see much outside, the windows were fogged, fogged by rain, fogged by dew, fogged by dirt, may be the windows were getting old and the glass panels would need to be changed, IsaLee had noticed that she was always seeing some kind of fog cloud sometimes looking like a sand cloud, when she as looking straight ahead.

IsaLee could see from her Penthouse the other buildings, she could see that she was in rain and fog, so strange, the others, they looked as if they were having a normal niece day. It was not possible that the cloud should be only on her House?

IsaLee got her Penthouse from her parents; Her parents gave it to her because they loved it so much. IsaLee was not sure that she was so fond of it herself. She would have preferred something more slender, something with more energy, something that would make travelers to come and visit her Hostel, stay in Her Hostel, enjoy Her hostel and speak well of it. or did they still go on calling it her Parents Hostels, did they only see it as the falling down of all the hopes and joys and pride of her parents?

IsaLee was told that her Hostel was so beautiful, as beautiful as it had been when built by her parents.

IsaLee would have liked to see her Hostel, she felt that it was not fair, she could see through the windows all the other buildings, but she could only see a tiny little bit of her own Hostel, sometimes, it is true, she managed to see a reflection of it in the Windows of the facing Houses if the sun was right, but it looked so strange, not at all as she figured it to be, not at all as they were telling her. IsaLee would so much have wanted to see her own Hostel, not just a little bit of the ledge running round the Penthouse, but see it as others were seeing it.

She thought of herself as something a bit complicated but with some hidden harmony.

Truly, quite often she felt more like this:

But they told her that this was not at all what she was looking like, that she was tall, well built, beautiful, charming, they even showed her what they thought she looked like.

Why would they lie to her, it was nice to know that they looked at her and admired her and wanted to be with her, she just wished she could also see herself like this, enjoy being beauty and harmony.

Sometimes she felt that something was very wrong with her, her head would be spinning, she felt as if her feet were floating in the air, as if there was nothing under her, as if she would would fall for ever, as if the danger was there, in the blue peaceful sky and they would laugh at ther.

she had gone to many architects, they all told her that she was in perfect health, that her structure was sound; she could not explain that anxiety she was feeling. When she tried to explain what she was feeling, they would look at her as if she was crazy.

One architect took the trouble to look at the basement and she found that she had been right, she had been built on huge caverns, they did not quite know what had been intended, possibly it was some old forgotten subway or some shelter of some kind. the architect was not very hopeful, he just told IsaLee that most probably she was in no danger of these caverns under her foundations, that if you looked at all the buildings, they were all built on complicated systems of caverns and holes, that much had been done to reinforce the structures but that at present the best they could advise was to live with, after all, it was very rare that a building would collapse and when it happened, mostly it was the fault of the owner who had overloaded the system.

IsaLee often wondered why nobody ever entered into her room, so far as she could understand, nobody ever entered into the Penthouse. Yet in the other Hostels, she could see all these people laughing, having fun, running, looking, eating, being with one another, she would so much have wanted it could have felt.

Yet she was not alone in the Hostel. She could hear the Power system which appeared to run all the time, she could hear the lifts, she heard them bumping their way up, sloshing their sounds when disgorging, it must have had something to do with her, she could hear the lifts stopping at her floor, she could hear that someone, something was left at there level, she waited, nothing ever happened, she did not know whether to be afraid or anxious or happy about it.

IsaLee wished her parents had not been so fond of music and talk and pictures and sensations; She would so much have wanted to have a rest from the constant attack of images flashing from the TV sets, TV set in each corner of the main room, TV set over her bed, TV set in the bathroom, TV set in the kitchen, if really they needed all these TV sets, why did not at least set them so that they would be tuned on the same programme, IsaLee was getting so confused by all these voices, all these images, all these explosions. When she wanted to rest, to close her eyes, the TV sets would continue, as if there was one set in each eye socket. Why did all these TV programs, why did all these channels have all these programs about parents, about children, about love, about being abandoned, about grieving, why could they not show something pleasant and restful? Why did all these programs go on an on about the lost animals that had been forgotten, abandonned, hit by running cars, was there really no happy animal.

Her parents must have been great communicators, everywhere you had these phone sets, even if they must have belonged to another time or another technology, whenever IsaLee wanted to call, when she lifted the phone, there would just be that hissing noise and no connection, yet, when she was beginning to doze, the phone would start ringing and even without lifting the handle that voice would be asking her why she was such a poor child, the voice would ask her why she could not be like others, why she had to be so shy, why she could not be like this girl, the voices would tell her not to go and play with the others, to remain locked and safe. Then IsaLee would not be able to sleep again.

When IsaLee was feeling hunger she would call the Room Service and food would be on her table. Quite often food be on her table without her having wanted it or ordered it. She would look at it, not wanting to eat, then she would take a bit of a cake, then another bit of another cake, then a cream, then a soda, yet it did not seem to change her hunger, it was only filling her with a lot of ballooning emptiness.

It must have been a very old building her parents gave her, apparently there was no way to regulate the temperature. Sometimes the air would be so stuffy and hot, so thick and stinking that IsaLee could barely breath. The windows would not open even if she could see that there was a handle to open them, and when she called for maintenance, she always got another Service and when she got Maintenance a recorded message told her that the system was regularly check and that at present there was no fault to report. It was worse being in that hot stinking air than when the whole system was turning to ice, she was feeling the screws of ice digging into her chest, squeezing her head in a vice, no blanket seem to do anything about it, she would just become more and more cold.

Here comes the end of the story: the in-between is at this time missing.

She would hear them shouting and she could believe that she heard them fighting. At times the Room Service would stop entirely, no meals appeared in her penthouse, she would be waiting and waiting, instead some nauseous odor would fill the room, the kind of horrid smell you have when a mouse had died under some piece of furniture and you go and look and look and when you find it your feel that you would have preferred not to find it.

IsaLee could hear the maintenance staff, she could not clearly understand, as if they were directing abuse at her, the room would get so hot and so putrid and she would hear them. IsaLee would shout through the wall for them to stop, to stop hurting her, that if they did not maintain the House, sure she would suffer, but they would all suffer, the House would collapse or worse the House would start decaying.

IsaLee would shout at the room Service to stop being such a pain, why did they have to harass her, were they not one and the same building, what was the point of making her room so unfit to live in, all this shouting, these flashing lightening jumping out of the wall and making her shriek in fear.

In the beginning Maintenance had been so quite, so polite, she did not have to do anything, all things appeared to take care of themselves, she never saw them, never heard them, never felt them, then she noticed a discomfort, she starting noticing that things were not as before, the pressure was increasing on her, it could not be true, it was impossible, but she really believed that the walls were beginning to bulge, and she would cry and shriek in fear and pain.

She had called the Architect, she had called many architects; Some said that it was just normal, this was an old buildings, it was already ill conceived from the start, other Architects would tell her that she had not cared enough about the maintenance, not given enough attention to all the tasks needed to keep the strength of the frame. Some Architects said that this was all nonsense, that there was nothing from with the building, what was happening was that buildings being constructed nearby were changing the pressure on the foundations, that being taller than her, they were obstructing the light, that the obscurity and heat were no longer properly working, that the dilation and contractions were little by little destroying the frame of the building. Others insisted that the new excavations for the Parking's, for the new Express Subway were taking out the base of her existence.

City Lanscape, Andrew Abramov

http://home.sport.rr.com/abramov1/cityscapes_landscapes.htm

And she would ask all of the Architects what she should do?

One was telling her that she must take it upon herself to go out and look at the Tower the Way it was interconnected with the surrounding. Another Architect told her that she must connect all the transmissions in the Tower and sit and take control of what was her property. Some suggested that she should take legal and offensive actions against the surrounding buildings that were damaging her vital space.

IsaLee did listen to all advice and did all of it and therefore none of it.

She was told very much later that some kind of putrefaction had installed itself in the underground Parking and when the Architects tried to get free of it, the procedure make a hidden gas tank nobody had ever heard of explode, that the Parkoing could no longer be used.

She could hear that the Maintenance staff had taken over the Room Service and was little by little taking over room after room of the buildings for its own purposes, forgetting about any duties and care that they had to give, only concentrating on development and increasing and taking over room after room.

IsaLee felt she could do nothing about what was happening to her Hostel, she retired further and further into her Penthouse, she painted the windows some kind of grayish shade, just so that she would not see and not be seen. She put all the TV sets in one room and put them one in front of another, they were really looking stupid, as if they were holding a Congress.

When the Building was bought, it was so rotten that there was nothing they could do about it, nothing they could salvage.

The building was put to rest, and as they were pulling it down they found some strange looking roundish grayish cauliflower looking object that seemed to belong to nothing and have no function and they jokingly called it IsaLee.

A park was built in the place of the building, but as the park had no function, nobody to love it, they had to clean the left over syringes everyday, finally they did not even bother about it, the weeds took over the park, then came small bushes; Apparently this is what the rats had been waiting for all the time.

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