A sleek black limousine pulled up to the curb of the Crimson Hawk following and followed by two unmarked black cars. Several members of the Hawk's bellhops, a few waiters, a concierge, and a day planner were already waiting at the end of a freshly extended jet black carpet with deep blue trim. Whoever was arriving had paid for the full treatment and expected nothing short of five star service. And they were expected just as much as they were expecting, nearly three or four dozen cameramen and journalists were already waiting on either side of roped off sections beside the carpet for a chance at the perfect picture or an offhand comment they could bring home to story-hunger bosses. As the limousine stopped the driver exited the vehicle and made it to the passenger door. The concierge and two waiters approached, one already had a fresh crisp glass of champagne.
The driver opened the door.
Maximos' short, neatly combed blue hair poked out of a beaten up yellow taxi at the street corner that looked like it was made before he was born, and smelled like urine, old coffee, and day old pizza. Max work a knee thigh length black jacket, a black vest with a blue tie, and white undershirt this was matched by black slacks and dress boots. Black, thick rimmed glasses rested on his nose in front of mismatched black and white squinting eyes.
"I believe I can see it from here! It looks like your metal chariots are stuck in a line, we'll take the rest on foot." He said toward the inside of the taxi. Jack, squeezed his way out behind Max looking as ordinary as could be. He had an overwashed black tee shirt on which read "HoH: Against All Odds" in faded print, plain jeans, mousy brown hair and eyes to match. Jack looked at the traffic jam and sighed.
"You have magic keys that take you anywhere, but we had to take a taxi during rush hour?" He complained. As if in agreement the cab driver rolled down the passenger window and shouted something in a language which sounded like someone blowing bubbles in milk. Jack just looked between the driver and Max confused.
"Oh, of course!" Max leaned into the passenger window and handed the man a small pouch. "A little extra for your troubles." And then he turned to Jack. "Of course Jack, it had to be a surprise. If we just appeared inside you wouldnt be very surprised. Come on." The duo made their way onto the sidewalk proper and began slipping up the stream of people toward the large hotel.
"You could have walked us through a door in that shop, right there in three seconds and we could walk the rest of the way. Five minutes. We were in that car for three hours." Jack pointed a pale arm at the deli on the corner. Max looked at it and then back at Jack. And then he frowned.
"Hmm. No. Absolutely not."
"Why?"
"It's all very magical Jack. You wouldnt understand."
"Your ramble about magical stuff all day, your lying!"
"Mmm. No. I dont think so. Interdimensional vertices. Parallax scrolling sequences."
"You just didnt think of it, did you?"
"I...mmm."
"Wow."
"Oh look we're here!"
"Fanastic, three hours la..." Jack paused and stared at the building for a long silent moment. And then he looked at Max, and back, and to Max again just at a loss for words. Excitement crept across his lips daring to form the slightest hint of a curl. "...is this the Crimson Hawk?" Max just stared at him, and smiled. "This is THE Crimson Hawk!" Max looked like a proud parent on Christmas Day. "This place only appears when Heaven or Hell is starting! It's like it vanishes otherwise! I've looked across the whole city! How did you find it?!" Max didnt reply, he just continued to smile. Now, infectious as a good smile was, Jack was also smiling. "Oh...oh my god, does this Heaven or Hell is starting again?!" Max smiled. Jack stopped smiling. "Your not even listening to me anymore are you, your just stuck like that." Max...continued to smile. Jack waved a hand in front of his face. Max didnt blink, he only smiled. "That's just fuc--"
"What an excellent idea Jack!" Max proclaimed loudly. "Lets go in and get our suite!"
"I didnt say an idea..." The brown haired boy mumbled to himself.
"Quite. Quite." Max added and lead the duo inside. He never actually stopped that receptionists desk, he just started making his way across the lobby toward the elevator.
"Arent we supposed to check - oof!" Max stopped suddenly and Jack bumped awkwardly into him. The blue haired man was looking up at the ceiling like there was something dirty on it.
"Oh hullo there. Yours not supposed to be here, are you?" He said with a huge grin.
"What? What is it?"
"We're taking a detour. I hope you dont mind."
"Max...I dont even know where we're going, the receptionist is that way and I know damned well you didnt figure out your phone enough to call ahead. Hey - would you wait!"
Max had already made his way into the elevator and was pressing a floor button. Jack scurried in behind.
Cthulhu Wish Wrote:
Crimson Hawk Hotel - Room 589
The entire floor felt off, but this room was the absolute worst of it. Just outside the door the hotel lights flickered randomly and sporadically. The rest of the floor was properly lit but if you looked closely you could see the shadows play along the floor in random strange directions. The wall paper looked as if it was shifting, and the hallways were long and straight but they seemed bent and awkward. There was a smell in the air, something pungent like sulphur mixed with something fowl like an overturned dumpster in the hottest part of the summer. No one came in or out of any room, and their footsteps seemed to echo down the silent halls. Despite the carpeting.
"This...is your suite?" Jack said as Max came to a stop outside room 589. He had been walking since they exited the elevator with his pocket watch out like it was a compass. Now he had finally stopped, here where the smell was the worst. Max looked excited, a smile played across his lips at an awkward unsettling angle. He didnt answer. He licked his lips once and then moved to open the door. "Hey whoa! Wait! That could be someones roo -" Jack immediately froze in place. He didnt want to freeze in place. He just did. He had moved to the threshold of the door and looked inside and what he saw caused his entire mind to lock up and his body to freeze. None of it seemed possible. None of it made any sense.
"Look at this, such a treat!" Max looked back and forth across the room, his right eye flicked through colors like a rainbow strobe putting together the scene from every angle with a plethora of different sights and forms of vision. He took a step and sloshed through a piece of something wet, he flicked it aside with his foot. It moved a distance but when it landed it was a different shape and a different color than the thing Max had kicked. "We have...something demonic. A little...oh I know that magic. And something..." He ran his hand along the wall, the wall warbled at his touch like it was made of jelly instead of sheetrock. "...Oh. Oh I see. My jobs been done for me."
"Are...you doing that?" Jack's voice rang out. And then after the sound had played he realized he wanted to speak and his mouth moved.
"No, Jack." Max replied casually. He moved beside the bed, beside a discarded carton of cigarettes and toward a shape that slumped in the corner. Something dark. But not black. Something that seemed to pull all the light in the room toward it, and infact seemed to be pulling the whole room toward one corner. "Reality is struggling around us. This creature should not exist. And in its mind it certainly should not be dead, it's likely too old to even recognize death. And so the fabric of this plane is struggling to accept that."
Jack took a step forward into the room, and then collapsed flat onto his face. He felt the plush carpet splash around him like a pool and felt himself sink into it. He immediately had the feeling of hundreds of ants crawling all over his skin. "Helthf, Felelhchtu alananbuyankaso equalainioa. Falak, syenpystbrt." Jack said, and for a flash of a moment he understood what he said, in the very next he realized his tongue tasted like sour milk and he did not at all understand the words that he had said or where he had learned them. He tried to retreat back, and scramble to his feet and the he realized he was already standing, and he hadnt left the threshold of the hotel room.
"Exactly right. But its equalainioun, alanbuyankasi. You had the syntax backwards. Good effort though. Took me years to get even decent at it." As Max spoke the words they hung in the air like solid objects, the corner of the room pulsated and angry black veins stretched through the wall like the pulsing of a putrid heart. The mass in the corner made indistinct squelching. "No, no, that was your mistake not mine. She got you rather good. You should have left the duck alone. You are quite dead, trust me."
Jack watched the corner of the room melt and fall away. The building opened up in its wake and infinite stars swirled outside forming, a face? A shape? Something so old. He heard a droning, buzzing noise in the back of his mind and took a step back. He was on the opposite side of the hall - the buzzing was coming from him. Still screaming. His mouth was closed. He put his hands over it to make sure. He was still screaming.
"Oh no." Max laughed and made a dismissing wave with one hand, while he reached the other into the mass of black viscera beside the bed. "There wont be any comeuppance for her from any of you." His hand went all the way in up to the shoulder. The veins trashed and moved across the walls. In the hallway all the room doors opened and shut, slamming over and over randomly across the whole of the fifth floor. "Let this be a lesson, you cant just take..." Max made a jerking motion, there was a muffled wet pop and then he moved pull something out from the lurid mess. "...whatever you want, and expect there to be no consequences."
Jack realized he wasnt screaming. He was in the elevator with Max. Max was using a jet black handkerchief to clean off something long and white in his hand. It looked like a sabertooth tiger fang. Max's handkerchief's were all white. This was black, now. He opened his mouth to speak.
"It's a rib bone." Max said before he could. "Right out of scripture, some god used it form human women. That makes it symbolic of a woman. And creation. And being that it was at the site of a slaying, its a very strong symbol for death as well." There was a length of purple and black fabric draped over Max's arm. And something in his hand. "Oh this? This is a curtain, it has blood from both fighters on it. And a strip of leather. Everything to tie the moment together so I can solidify it."
"...Your going to make something out of...all...that?" Max just smiled. "For who?"
Max just opened his hand, an eyepatch fell down and hung off his thumb by it's strap for Jack to see. "For her."
He stopped midstride as she launched herself, any words he would have given voice to becoming afterthoughts. His chin tilted up slightly, even as he let the faint etch of a smile appear on his face. "-!" He was already bracing both his legs, arms catching her as she crashed into him and turning the force of it into a bit of momentum that he used to spin them both in a full circle. ...That sound of ice breaking...