The Old Roommate

Thunder was rattling like a machine gun. Rain drops were plummeting down onto a towering mansion, its wood slabs soggy bread loafs. Out of the rain came a cloaked figure, clothes like wet tissues, his cloak's hood watching over his forehead. He stepped into the mansion, water dripping down that one leg as he gazed.
Glancing beyond, he saw an old lady, face like a melted candle. "I'm the hotelier. Hurry up with answers?", she muttered, her face wrinkles wobbling like beef slabs.
"Joe Loxsom", he said.
"I'm staying here for a month and I'd like room 3", Joe said at a matter of picking a number below ten.
"That'd be five thousand English dollars", she said. Joe's eyes widened. He searched his pockets and gave the agreed price.
"Thanks. Take first left up those stairs, take next left, and take second right", she said pointing her wrinkled skeleton arm at glossy stairs, showered in grease. Joe escorted to room 3 and opened the door, seeing the floor rough tree slabs. The wall was elephant skin. Joe slept on the shelf that night, head dangling like a heart nailed at the lungs to a wall. He heard heavy breathing of a bear. Next night, he felt wriggling sensations of bugs crawling beneath his hands. The night after that, he saw red eyes of an alligator staring through cracks of the door. The food he had at the hotel was unsatisfactory and his room smelt like dead fishes. This was the worst hotel Joe had been to. One night as the moon haunted the mansion from above, Joe heard tearing, coming from the library. He stepped out the shelf and walked out of his room, shaking in fright like a jelly slab. Joe took a silent step into the library and saw what made him freeze being a tall, skinny hunchback ripping pages from the books. The hunchback revolved his head to Joe, his face an old, chalky raisin, staring at Joe. Joe fled out, hearing the hunchback, galloping behind him. Joe burst into the office of the mansion to see the hosteler's confused face as she slumped in a chair.
"Someone was ripping the pages out of books in the library", Joe shrieked.
"Show me", she said as she got up on her feet of sticks. Joe opened the door and stuck his head outside it, eyes peeled for the hunchback. He heard a voice, sounding like a whale's cry.
"Look above and look again. The only question now is when", he said. Joe looked up, seeing the hunchback swinging from the ceiling.
"for 70 years, I have been getting my revenge. All I ask for is your life that's your Senge". Joe glanced at the hotelier.
"What is he talking about?", he said.
"70 years ago, he lived in this mansion. He accidently set the whole mansion on fire. I expelled him. For 70 years, I have never known that he has been lurking within the mansion and ruining it", she said.
"You should of thought about your contemporary action before you started to do that detraction", the hunchback said, rhyming every time. The hotelier got a small gun from her pocket as darkly colored as vantablack and shot him, the copper bullet making a small hole into his jacket and sandwiching into his muscles.
"If that's the way you want to play then you can leave and I will stay", he said, jumping down from the ceiling and running off like a gibbon. Joe caught up and tripped him over. The hunchback tumbled, his hands waving in the air like a squid, blown with a hair dryer.
"If that's the way you think you like, then get the knife from my pocket and strike". Joe seized the hunchback's knife. As he laid a finger on it, the hunchback punched Joe and Joe got a glimpse of the hunchback's eagle skin fist. The hotelier rang the police and five minutes after fighting, Joe heard knocking on the door. it was them. He seized the hunchback, grabbing him by the neck and opening the door to the police.
"What's going on here?", the biggest policeman said with a grin on his round face. The hotelier came and told the entire story and the police stopped smiling. taking the hunchback by the hand, he was snatched out of the mansion and taken to prison.
"This is not the last of me, I will be back for your death, you see", he said. That night, Joe could not see the red eyes of an alligator staring through the crack in the wall. He could only see the moon outside his window their to greet him with a smile.














































































































































































































































































































































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