I: Horses Included

This boring, bland hotel lobby was hardly the place one would expect to hear the melody of an opera like this.

The white walls with their peeling paint, the old and grisled receptionist, the cracked window panes, it all shouted misuse and dispair to Valerie as she entered through the shakily revolving lobby door. This was not where she thought she would be spending her boxing day. Not even close.

Valerie walked up to the desk hesitantly, looking over her shoulder at the homeless man sleeping on one of the dusty benches next to the elevator. She pulled her purse closer to her, it's leather sticking to the  dry leather of her jacket, the sound of which was not loud, but seemed to alert the man behind the counter. He looked up at her from behind think hard glass, and Valerie noticed the gaze his beady black eyes stop on her chest for a moment before meeting her own eyes. She zipped up her sweater quickly before placing her purse on the counter.

Val was not used to these kinds of places, her father had always seen to it that all his children were always looked after. She had not quite gotten used to life without him. She was 22 when he cut her off- for reasons still unclear to Val herself, it wasn't like she was acting out any worse than Logan, or Dick, or Selena, her siblings, yet they had all retained their trust funds and company credit cards, even when he found about about Logan's arrests, Dick's drug problem, and Selena's constant shoplifting and deception. He still was feeding them all money, but not Valerie. For some reason she had been the one to become the outcast. She was the one who had been shunned from the family. It was her trust fund that was disolved, her bank account frozen. She was the one checking into a seedy hotel in the middle of the night.

"What'll it be?" Asked the man behind the counter, every word carrying with it the stench alcohol and halitosis, even through the glass.

"Just a room, thanks." Said Valerie, catching sight of her own reflection in the glass and saw that the cold and the wind had turned normally flowing brown hair seemingly upside down. This revelation did not improve her mood as she got a grimy key from the landlord and dragged her wheeled suitcase, filled now with what remained of her personal effects, past the sleeping homeless man into the elevator.

It shook violently as it began to climb, slowly, toward the 14th floor. Val tried not to look down at the floor of the elevator which was extremely dirty and covered in stains that she was desperately hoping were from a coffee spill or something, and not blood... she really hoped it wasn't blood. the walls were similarly dirty, they might have at one point been green, but they were more greyish brown than anything now, with the paint all but peeled off and what green remained had not aged well. Val thought about the likelihood that she would get some kind of degenerative infection just by being in this elevator. Whatever that likelihood was, she was happy when the elevator shuffled to a halt on her floor.

The carpets were a dark red, and carried the same amount of grime as the rest of this hotel. The sign above the door had called it "The Stagecoach." Val had been in an actual stagecoach on a vacation to Prince Edward Island when she was young, and it was about a million times nicer than this place, horses included. The walls of the stagecoach from her childhood had been lovely oak, stained and sanded to perfection, the walls in this "Stagecoach" were covered in peeling wallpaper with cigarette burns, and tears all over the beige and cream coloured stripes.

Val sighed and stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall, looking for the room she had procured, debating internally wether or not she was going to actually be able to sleep at all here. Given what she'd seen so far, she was hardly expecting her room to be any better. She continued down the hallway, looking for her room, number 7.

She saw it.

As Val pulled her suitcase up to the door, she stood and stared at it. Key in hand. She really didn't want to go inside, all she could think about was her bed back home, she corrected herself, in her family's home. It wasn't hers anymore. It hadn't been for two years now. Two years had never felt so long to her before, and it wasn't the lack of money. She'd been able to sell a lot of her jewellery and designer clothes, and had even been able to find work as a personal shopper for a while. What made the years long was the loneliness. She' gone her whole life surrounded by her family, and as deceitful and rebellious her older siblings had been, they had always made time to be there for her, attending her parties, listening to her, and she to them, they had been close, in their own way. Or at least she had thought they had been. Now they were gone, no one was returning her texts or calls. They'd left her alone, just like her so called friends when they found out Val's money was gone.

She felt like she was going to cry, a familiar feeling recently, and didn't want to break down in the hallway. She may have fallen a long way, but she was going to be damned if she let some randoms at The Stagecoach see her bawling outside her room. Besides the embarrassment, she was fairly sure anyone who lived here would try to steal her belongings, few as they were, in that event.

So, she pulled herself together, shutting out all thoughts of times gone by for the moment and put the key into the lock, turned it and went inside number 7. The light had been left on by whoever was last in the room and it flickered as Val closed the door behind her. The room was small, and to it's credit Val thought it was more dingy than outright dirty, she could tell that someone had at least made some effort in here, the carpet, while stained was at least cleaned recently, same with the large window on the opposite side of the room from the door. The bed was made as well, the closet next to the door even had some coat-hangers left in it, no door on the closet, but still, Val thought sarcastically, at least she got coat-hangers. She put her coat on one of these hangers and threw her suitcase on the bed.

But just as it landed something happened that would change her life forever.

A man dressed in black, all of a sudden, and without any warning smashed headfirst through the window across from the door, rolled to break his fall and stood up straight, immediately, less than six inches from Val's face as she stood, transfixed in terror, not able to move.

It was at that moment that he spoke.

"Hi there, don't suppose you know where to find the exit do you?"