Heartbreaker's Hotel

Heartbreaker's Hotel
Heartbreaker's Hotel
Zone Num	148
Location	Hey Deze
Unlocks	Available in a Bad Moon ascension
Recom Stat	0
Combat %	0
ML	NA
Terrain	indeterminate
Special Adventures
Lucky	None
refreshedit data

Heartbreaker's Hotel is located in Hey Deze.

Non-Combat Adventures

You can find a random choice of four floors, one of which is always the lobby.

Lobby

You jab the lobby button and head back out. As you pass through the door, you feel the world revert back to normal.

1st

You take the elevator to the mezzanine, but you don't have any chump change to put in the vending machines, so you continue to the first floor (before you ask, the lobby is the zeroth floor in this particular hotel.) You lie down on your bed and turn on the white-noise machine on the nightstand. Turns out that in Heartbreaker's Hotel, "white noise" means 'the tortured screams of the damned,' so you quickly shut it off. You close your eyes and drift off to sleep.

You awake to a crackling sound and a delicious smell. When you open your eyes, you immediately realize the sound is crackling flame, and that smell . . . oh my. How can you sleep when the beds are burning? You leap out of the bed, only to find the floor to your room has vanished. You plummet down, down, down into infinite blackness, screaming your head off all the way. In the distance far below you, you can just make out the shape of the continent on which the Kingdom of Loathing rests. You remember that it's not the fall that kills you, it's the going *PAFF!* into the ground.

With a wrenching full-body twitch, you snap awake back in your own bed. You hear the smoke detector start beeping, and you're not taking any chances, so you climb out the window and down the fire escape.

3rd

You step into the elevator, quip, "going up, sir," and push the button for the third floor. When the elevator stops, you say, "your floor, sir," and check into your room. You close the blinds, consider raiding the mini-bar, then lie down to get some shut-eye. As you drift off to sleep, you hear a ripping noise, almost like five razor-sharp claws ripping through your sheets from below and tearing up towards your sensitive nether regions.

You jolt awake, and the claws are gone. Then you see the box next to the bed that says, "Magic Razor-Sharp Claws, 25 meat." You don't remember putting any meat in the machine, but the sheets are torn to ribbons. You decide you'd rather climb out the window than have to pay to replace the linens.

4th

You take the elevator to the mezzanine, chump, check out the ice machine, then head up to the fourth floor. You lie down in bed and try to get some shut-eye.

You find yourself walking along an endless maze of hospital corridors. You see a nurse, and tap her shoulder to ask for directions, but when she turns around she seems to be missing part of her face. Specifically, the 'face' part of her face. You turn and run, passing featureless, grey children with knives, headless teddy bears with giant claws, and leech-looking things sucking on puddles of blood. You run, screaming and crying. Behind you, you hear heavy footsteps thudding toward you, and the scrape of metal on concrete. You turn to see a giant monstrosity wearing a big metal helmet, dragging a ridiculously huge sword as he stomps after you. You turn and run, not stopping until you hear an enormous, booming crash behind you. You flip back around to see the metal-headed guy has run into a low-hanging beam and fallen flat on his back. Maybe he should have cut some eyeholes in the helmet. Your hearty chuckle at his misfortune is cut short, though, when one of the grey kids stabs you straight through the calf.

You wake up screaming in your hotel bed, soaked in sweat. Just as your heart rate starts to return to normal, you hear crashing footsteps in the hallway outside. As you leap through the window, a guy with a metal helmet and a giant mop pokes his head in your room and says, "Housekeeping!

5th

You step onto the elevator and punch the button for the fifth floor. The doors slide open and you head down the hallway toward your room. However, when you reach the other end of the hall without finding it, you begin to think something might be amiss. You're pretty sure this is the correct floor. Hmm.

You decide to return to the lobby to confirm your room number at the front desk. Another elevator stands at this end of the hallway, so you push the call button instead of walking back down the hall to the elevator you came in... and then it occurs to you that there was only one elevator in the lobby. Is this a service elevator? Maybe you shouldn't...

• PING* The elevator door slides open, pouring a tidal wave of bright red tomato juice into the hallway. Caught in the deluge, you struggle to regain your footing, but are pushed violently backwards by the thick crimson liquid. What the hell is going on? Is this some kind of nightmare? A nightmare about tomato juice? What's scary about tomato juice, for crying out loud?

Then, as you start to call for help, some of the liquid gets into your mouth. You gag and sputter at the awful taste, and realize that this isn't tomato juice at all...

...It's CLAMATO.

You begin to scream in panicked horror, and choke as the foul devil's brew slides down your throat. You begin to sink, and the red tide washes over you, cutting off your air... and with a start you wake up at your campsite, sweating profusely and trembling with shock.

6th

The elevator rises, then slows to a halt. A bell rings as the door slides open, and you step out into the sixth floor hallway and head toward your room.

You open the door, and your eyes widen in shock. A man in some sort of dog/bear costume is sitting on the bed, with another man, who is doing something that you can't quite make out, but perhaps that's for the best. "S-sorry, I must have the wrong room," you stammer, stumbling backwards. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up as you bump into someone behind you.

Slowly, despite your every instinct screaming at you not to, you turn around... and find yourself face-to-vacantly grinning face with someone wearing the head of a gigantic cartoon fox, and a fuzzy red bodysuit to match.

"Hhhhelllp meeee," you hear a tortured voice whisper behind the mask. The gruesome figure gestures at you with huge fuzzy paws. "Help me... my zipper... stuck..." One of the paws reaches for you as the other tugs at the fuzzy red pants.

You scream and run for the elevator. The bedroom doors slam open one by one as you pass them, and nightmarish grinning figures reach out at you. Raccoons, cats, horses, more foxes, all staring at you glassy-eyed and calling your name. "Join usssss..." "Unleash your inner animal..." "Come play with us, Eigenbasis..." "Yiff! Yiff! Yiff!" The other creatures take up the chant: "Yiff... Yiff... YIFF... YIFF... YIFF! YIFF! YIFF!"

You reach the elevator and hammer desperately on the call button. "Come on!" you shout. "Please! Come on!" The terrible fuzzy inhumans stalk toward you and grab your arms and legs, the chanting drowning out your screams. As they drag you away, your field of vision filled with grinning animal masks, you hear the elevator bell ring, but all too late. The chant of "YIFF! YIFF! YIFF!" echoes in your head as everything goes black.

You wake up at your campsite gasping for breath and praying that it was only a dream.

7th

You step into the elevator and press the button for the seventh floor. After a moment, the bell rings and the doors slide open. You step out and find yourself in a vast gray desert, pierced here and there by blocky stone columns that seem to defy normal geometry. Turning, you see two thick silver poles standing waist-high behind you, as though you had just walked between them. As you turn around some more to examine the scene, you are startled to discover three figures in dark robes standing near you. "Jeez!" you exclaim, "Don't sneak up on me like that!" They do not reply, but simply stare at you, their faces concealed by their hoods, their hands tucked into the opposite sleeves, like monks.

"Er... what's going on?" you ask. "Where am I? Did I die somehow? This looks like it could be Purgatory, or some kind of weird German Expressionist idea of Heaven..."

One of the figures, the tallest, lowers his hood, revealing a severe-looking elderly man with long stringy gray hair. "You think that when you die, you go to Heaven?" he asks, sneering coldly. "You come to us!" He pulls his hands from his sleeves, revealing a silvery orb about the size of a baseball. Two sharp prongs pop out of its surface, and it darts out of the man's hands with an angry whine, flying directly toward your face. Annoyed, you swat it away, and it it hits the ground with a clank and rolls off. The old man looks somewhat confounded.

"Leave this to me," intones the second figure, lowering his hood to reveal a man with a chalky white face and rows of steel pins piercing his bald scalp. "I have such sights to show him." He opens his hands to reveal an elaborately-engraved black and gold cube, the surfaces of which begin to twist of their own accord. Suddenly, the front of the box pops open, and a hook on the end of a long chain shoots out of it, piercing your flesh!

"Ow!" you say, pulling the hook out and dropping it onto the ground. "Look, I'm not into the whole body modification scene, okay? I mean, sure, a tattoo now and then, but too much is too much, you know? Look, are one of you guys going to tell me what's going on, or not? I don't have the time to waste on stuff like this."

"Time?" says the third figure. "You have all the time in the world. All the time you need..." He lowers his hood, revealing an impish-looking grin and a shock of curly brown hair held back with a terrycloth sweatband. "...for sweatin' to the oldies!" He pulls two tiny barbells out of his sleeves and waves them at you maniacally as you shriek in fear and panic. You stumble backwards between the silver pillars and find yourself on the fire escape of the Hotel. You run screaming down the stairs and out into the night.

9th

You step in the elevator, press the ninth floor button, and ascend to your floor. You quip, "Fourth floor, Women's Lingerie," as you step out and down the hallway to your room.

You settle down into bed and close your eyes. Almost immediately, it seems, your alarm gives out a warning. Oh, no! You're late for school again! You're never going to make it on time! You grab your books, and give yourself a look, but you get to the corner just in time to see the bus fly by. You sprint to school, and slide into your desk just in time.

The teacher asks you to come up to the front of the class to give a presentation. You stand up, and see that you're wearing nothing but your underwear! Time seems to stop as everyone points and laughs at you.

"Jeez, what a loser," a jock sneers, "look who wore his underwear to NAKED DAY. What a dope!"

As the whole class points and laughs, a bell starts to ring. "Ah, saved!" you shout. . . and wake up in your hotel room to find that the bell was the fire alarm. You climb out the window and down the fire escape.

11th

You ride the elevator up to the eleventh floor, then head to your room for the night. Before you go to sleep, though, you pull back the covers on the bed to make sure there isn't any chocolate on your pillow -- you're not going to fall for that one again. You had to ask for extras of those tiny shampoo bottles last time.

Instead of chocolate, though, you find a tiny dried-up monkey's paw. "Hmm," you think, "I bet this is one of those things that grant wishes. I mean, logically, if you find a dried-out monkey's paw on your pillow in a hotel in Hey Deze, it's bound to grant wishes, right? They wouldn't leave a plain old monkey paw on your pillow, that just wouldn't make any sense."

You sit on your bed and carefully consider what to wish for. "Let's see... I could wish for a twelve-inch pianist. Or for half of my head to be painted orange. Or to be beaten half to death... Oh, wait, I've got it."

"Monkey's paw," you say, holding up the nasty little brown thing and closing your eyes, "I wish I were the most powerful adventurer in the Kingdom!"

After a while you open your eyes, not feeling any different. The paw, you discover, has started to melt in your hand; turns out it's made of chocolate. You eat it. It's not very good chocolate.

In the morning, you inexplicably wake up at your campsite with the feeling that this has all been rather anti-climactic.

Notes

• Adventuring here drunk does not result in drunken stupor.

References

• Heartbreaker is the name that schizophrenic musician Wesley Willis gave to one of his "demon voices."
• The zone's name is a reference to the song 'Heartbreak Hotel' by singer Elvis Presley.