MicroHorror

Gideon Kingsley felt his hotel’s sheet, and for once was not appalled. He had been staying here a month in Budapest, and had put up with slow room service, massages by people who literally didn’t know their arse from their elbow, and toiletries that might as well have come from a janitor’s closet. The sheets rifled him the most. They claimed to be 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton, but anyone of his expertise could feel multiple-ply fibers that only contributed 250 or 125 true threads. He logged a daily half hour yelling at the staff to get their act together. The whole staff was immigrant, from Turkey or someplace, and he finally had some response when he began threatening to deport them. There’s Europe for you nowadays. But the threats were worth it, for now Gideon was feeling one of the silkiest sheets of his life. The new toiletries in the bath were of high caliber, in four big ornate jars that actually looked hand-made. And that knock on the door must be his massage. It was a new masseuse, an older woman who applied some wonderful tingling lotion. The hotel had gotten it right, finally. Gideon smiled, for the first time in a month, and looked up from the massage table. The whole staff of the hotel was here, staring at him silently. Gideon struggled to move, but the masseuse had him pinned, and gagged him with cloth. The sheets had been stripped from the bed, and were being ripped into lengths. An old man began chanting, and approached Gideon with a metal hook, closer and closer to his nostrils. Gideon shouldn’t have threatened to ship these people back to Turkey–although he had a feeling they weren’t Turks.