Hotel California
PNYV
The young grey stallion checked his spedometer again. He'd been driving down this dark desert highway for hours now, trying to get to Las Pegasus, and had gotten lost many times. The cool wind blowing in his hair helped to calm and cool him somewhat, but he was still somewhat worried he'd never make it to his destination. A short distance ahead, he could see a town on the horizon. This would be near the tenth or twelfth one he'd driven through this evening alone, and he wasn't looking forward to another drive through the narrow city streets.
As he passed out of the town, he noticed the warm smell of colitas coming from a roadside farm. “Damn hippies, better keep their illegal activities outta here,” he muttered to himself as he drove by. After a while, he noticed a shimmering light far off in the distance. As he focused on it more, he felt himself getting more and more tired; his head felt to be getting heavy and his sight was growing dim. He knew he had to stop somewhere for the night.
He pulled up into the parking lot of an old-looking hotel by the coast. As he got out of his car and walked towards the door of the hotel, he noticed a unicorn mare standing in the doorway. She looked to be about middle-aged, with a dark blue coat and a lighter blue mane. He couldn't see her mark; however, he did notice the little bell she was holding with her magic. Peering into the blackness behind her, he pondered. Was this a heaven for the resting traveller, or was this hell? He felt like the lack of other cars in the lot was probably a bad sign, but ignored it; not only was this a rarely travelled road, but he was too tired to drive back to the motel in the town.
Suddenly, the mare pulled out a candle and lit it up. She gestured for him to come before walking deeper into the hotel. As he entered, he saw a very carefully maintained lobby that looked almost like one of the classier hotels he'd stopped by. The mare walked through a door into a corridor, with closed doors on either side. As he walked down the corridor, he almost thought that he heard them talking to him.
He felt like they were saying some sort of welcome. As he listened closer, he heard a distinctive sound. “Welcome to the Hotel California!” he heard them say. He knew they were saying some other words, but he couldn't strain his ears enough to hear them. He followed the unicorn mare into the room that he'd chosen, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was extremely well-equipped. It had a double bed, a window overlooking the ocean, and it even came with a top-quality television.
As time went on, he could tell that she wasn't all there mentally. Somehow, even though she was only a hotel hostess, she had managed to afford a Marecedes Benz. He passed it off as dedication, or as an inheritance; it looked to be almost ten years old. He also discovered that he wasn't alone there. There were quite a few very handsome stallions who were her 'friends' that also lived at the hotel. They danced in the courtyard every night, until well past midnight. As he watched them dance, though, he could tell that while some were dancing with smiles on their faces and with obviously happy memories, some had that glazed-over look that he had seen on so many faces trying to forget their past.
He sat at a table overlooking the ocean, sipping from a glass of wine. An empty bottle stood on the center of the table. The stallion tried to refill his glass, but noticing that it was empty, he called for the hotel's server. When the server arrived, the stallion simply asked for him to bring him his wine. The server replied simply by saying, “We haven't had that beverage here since 1969. Would you like to drink something else?” The stallion respectfully declined, but realized that something was up.
He heard some voices calling, seemingly from far away. He strained his ears to hear them, but all he could make out was “Welcome...” He decided to go to sleep, and slept peacefully for a few hours; ten minutes past midnight, however, he was awoken again by the sound of those voices calling. This time, he could almost certainly hear them saying something.
“Welcome to the Hotel California,” he heard one of the voices say. “It's such a lovely place.” said another. “What a nice surprise!” said a third. A fourth, far more serious-sounding than the others, simply said, “Bring your alibis.”
The stallion found himself in a room with mirrors covering the ceiling. In his hoof, he hold a glass of pink champagne on ice. Next to him, a very sad-looking young mare said to him, “Y'know, we're all just prisoners here of our own devices,” looking off into the distance as if searching for something. He walked into the master's chambers, where all the staff were gathered for a weekly feast. They all stabbed at their food with their steel knives, but for some reason they couldn't make a dent into it.
The last thing that he remembered was that he was running for the door. Although the room covered with mirrors had seemed creepy before, it was like heaven compared to where he was now. He felt the darkness nipping at his tail as he tried to find the passage back to the previous room. With no luck, he turned to the guard, to whom he pleaded for the keys to get out. “Relax,” said the guard with a monotonous voice. “We're all programmed to receive. Though you are able to check out any time you like, you can never leave!”
The stallion looked around him. The world was melting. He found the door to the outside, and tried to open it. When that didn't work, he started begging before turning around and bucking it as hard as he could. When it wouldn't yield, he tried to stab through it with one of the knives. Suddenly, he felt the ground disappear from below his hooves; trying to run to either side, he only felt the air beneath his hooves. He was then greeted with only the sensation of falling, falling into an endless void. He felt the white envelop his body, pulling his life out of him...
…and he woke up in his car, parked on the side of the road. “Whew!” he said to himself. “That must have all just been a dream.” However, one detail, which would normally be ignored and never thought about, stuck out. It unsettled him, chilled him to his very core. There, on his dashboard, was a sticker with those five words on it.
“Welcome to the Hotel California.”
