The Dead Rat Inn

The inn was incredibly popular. Every year, the dead from all over the world came to rest here, and at that moment, a couple of drowned people even stayed, which was both a source of joy and sadness for the owner. The drowned were truly bourgeois, but as is often the case with such people, they were constantly complaining. The soup was too wet, the bed in the room was always wet when they went to bed, and—of course—they had wet towels in the bathroom. The poor souls probably never truly understood how they died... But how they paid! The currency they used was practically legendary among the dead! [And it should be noted here that if something is legendary, even among the dead, it must be truly incredible.] The drowned always paid with real gold coins from old Spanish galleons. No one asked them where they got them, because considering the manner of their death, that would have been truly indecent, even among the dead. ...and who cares, anyway, as long as old Spanish coins from the 15th and 16th centuries are so valuable? Exactly, no one.

Nevertheless, on a very charming and unusually frosty (one might even say deathly frosty, but that would be tactless on my part as the independent narrator of your little tale) November afternoon, a shadow fell on the reliability of the service and the truthfulness of the advertising slogan, "Only here is a truly dead atmosphere!" And here's how it all began:

The afternoon was unusually frosty and dark, as befits late November. Dark clouds gathered over the inn, and the staff rushed to open all the shutters so that they could bang ominously and unpleasantly [for the living] against the windows, rattling and creaking unmercifully. After about twenty minutes, the zombies acting as guards [zombies have never been particularly intelligent, and this was the only job suitable for them]. Of course, they could have refused to hire them, but Hell's lawyers were just waiting for posthumous racism to manifest.] He shut off the power generator. Darkness fell throughout the inn, so candles were lit. Add to that the storm that had begun to rage, and I'd dare say a truly graveyard atmosphere prevailed. And considering the health of all the guests, this statement is no exaggeration on my part as a writer.

At one point, the inn door opened, and lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the newcomer.

"Aaaah!" yelled one of the guests sitting in the hall, spilling the arsenic he was drinking from a cup.

At this point, it would be necessary to explain why someone dead was frightened. It was a murder victim, as identifiable by the knife protruding from his back (even God himself probably doesn't know why they didn't remove the tools they used after death... they must have considered them ornaments, even though they were extremely impractical), and by his bloody clothing and demeanor. For some reason, all murder victims exhibited symptoms of advanced paranoia after death, fearing everything and everyone.

While I was explaining this to you, dear friends, the guest had already entered the inn, closed the door, and headed toward the desk where the doorman worked.

This guest was different, even for a dead person. Wrapped in a cloak, covered up, and surrounded by a strange aura unknown to everyone present. He walked with a slow, confident gait, and the guests present watched him closely.

"Good morning," he said in a pleasant, resonant voice with an unfamiliar accent, "I'd like to... rent a room.

" "A room... for how many bodies?" "The receptionist asked with a hint of hesitation, as if the guest were about to hurt him.

"That's enough for one thing. Quite enough, yes!" He finished, chuckling to himself.

After completing the formalities, the receptionist handed him a carved horse bone card, then summoned the bellboy, slapped him on the flat head, and ordered him to take his belongings to the pleasant gentleman's room. Then the bellboy and the guest left the hall and headed for the stairs.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

By dinnertime, no one had seen the new guest, though undoubtedly everyone had already heard of him. Depending on who told them: tall, short, thin, fat, poor, and rich. Each person added their own special touch, convinced they weren't lying. Because if he was really that bad, he simply MUST be what they said. The closer to dinner (and everyone was, for some reason, certain he would show up), the more anxious the guests became. Most, of course, treated it more like a curiosity, and only the murder victims acted as if someone wanted to kill them again (and for that reason, they were very pleased. Thanks to this feeling, they could feel alive, at least for a moment). Finally, 6 p.m. was dinner time. The guests hurried downstairs, taking their seats at the tables assigned to their rooms. The table closest to the new guest was occupied by Countess Vrakula, an aristocrat who supposedly had Count Dracula himself as her mother's sister's aunt's cousin on her brother's cousin's side. This position suited her perfectly: She could already imagine how she would later become the center of attention, explaining what this new guest was like. One thing was certain: her description would be exceptionally vivid, even if the mysterious visitor turned out to be just another boring mummy, rambling for hours about pharaohs and all that sand in Egypt.

When everyone was seated, a new guest appeared. Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing (except Admiral Halfrotten, who was absorbed in searching for an eye that had fallen out).

The guest entered without a cloak, which was the most important news for everyone present, as they finally got to see him. It was a young corpse, quite well-preserved, tall, well-dressed, with glasses and a 19th-century hairstyle. He moved fluidly, his feet barely leaving the ground, as if drifting between the tables. He took his seat, bowed to Countess Vrakula, then called the waiter over and began ordering. Naturally, everyone listened (including Admiral Halfrotten, who found the table and peered into it) to hear what the guest was ordering. Everyone was rather disappointed that his meal was rather cheap and ordinary; they had hoped he was a traveler from distant lands, but everything pointed to him being merely some young and poor scientist. The guest ordered several rather large beetles, arsenic (which is the favorite, and perhaps the only, drink of the dead), and a shot of Helltar.

He ate everything in silence, thanked everyone, which was a testament to his impeccable manners, then rose from the table and went to his room. And no one else saw him that day. Countess Vrakula also finished her meal as quickly as possible and headed for the room designated as the bar, took a table, and waited. She hoped that the first people asking "Free?" would soon begin circling her, hoping to sit down and inquire about the guest. And she was right. Even though the entire bar was empty, everyone sat down next to the Countess, pulling up chairs and tables until the entire room consisted of one gigantic table.

But what could the Countess tell them about this guest? He ate his dinner and left... In fact, he was incredibly boring... He didn't even burp! He didn't even drop his fork! He didn't even wince while eating! So what was the poor Countess to do? Tell them about him in one sentence? Instead, she acted like a true lady...

"His gaze!" she began, her tone appropriate for everyone to hear. "He kept looking at me in such... such an animalistic way! Did he desire me? Oh, like any man! But his gaze... was so... profound, if you could call it that. You could feel him..." she paused deliberately to build tension—"feel his noble ancestry! To me, he was a demon escaped from hell!" At that moment, you could hear the "ah!" coming from the throats of everyone present. "Just wait until someone comes for him!"

And so the countess spoke for nearly an hour, constantly adding new facts she had "remembered."

"I'm sorry, Countess..." Admiral Halfrotten said to her later as they walked up the stairs together. "Could you tell me everything again?" At some point, my ears fell off, and before I could glue them back on, I lost track.

The Countess, of course, repeated everything with undisguised satisfaction, adding something new here and there.

The next day would have been just like any other, as the guest only left the room for meals, if not for a rather strange event that occurred after dinner. As usual, everyone arrived on time to observe the new arrival, and Countess Vrakula had already prepared her story. The meal, as usual, proceeded peacefully, but when the guest stood up... he sneezed. Everyone was instantly paralyzed. After all, who ever saw the dead sneeze? However, a rather logical explanation quickly emerged. Apparently, certain Masonic societies of the dead learned to sneeze solely to demonstrate their superiority over other dead... And this only made the stranger an even bigger and more intriguing mystery! From that moment on, everyone wanted to know who he was and what he was doing.

It even turned out that everyone felt a pressing need to pass by his room several times a day, and usually something dropped near the door, so that they had to put their ear to it, not wanting to overhear, to pick it up.

And what did the innkeeper say to all this? Oh, he was thrilled! All the dead who were about to leave the inn extended their room rentals just to find out more! He hadn't had such a turnover in a long time! He rubbed his hands together and prayed to everything with any power that the guest would stay as long as possible and leave his room as rarely as possible.

However, dear readers, as we all know, fortune is a wheel. And this also applies to the dead, although in their case, the wheel revolves around figures of eight, squares, and figures even drunken mathematicians could never have dreamed of. And so a sudden change occurred, which, instead of generating profits, nearly caused a scandal that would have plunged the inn into the deepest hellish depths of bankruptcy.

On the fifth day, after dinner, as usual, the guest hurried to his room. Soon after, he could be heard talking animatedly to someone, then shouting at them, and finally, the sound of breaking glass. And then silence fell. As usual in such moments, the silence was terribly awkward, and since all the guests were listening to the argument (none heard a single word, or even a syllable, but then they exchanged entire sentences), everyone felt uncomfortable with the prevailing silence. The entire floor began to move stools and tables en masse, and turn on the water. In short, they began doing all the things that make a sound and definitively kill the silence. And so, that evening, the silence was finally and definitively killed.

An hour later, not only was the silence dead. The lights and all the electricity in the inn were also dead. Inexplicably, they had suddenly gone out, and everything indicated that he wasn't going to show up. The staff, of course, tried to restore it as best they could, just like in hotels. The owner shouted at the receptionist, the receptionist shouted at the bellboy, who in turn shouted at the zombie working in the boiler room. The zombie, however, had no one to shout at, and even if he had, he wouldn't have, due to his intellectual limitations. Instead, he did what he did best: waved his hands a bit and muttered something incomprehensibly about brains and hunger.

Well, Countess Vrakula had a theory about this living corpse (as she did about everyone and everything, by the way). She claimed that Zombie must have been a neurosurgeon, because he was constantly talking about brains. She claimed that his lectures were truly intelligent and valuable. However, due to his slight speech impediment, only the word "brain" could be understood. She didn't even acknowledge that only that word could be recognized because it was simply the word he was saying.

Nevertheless, returning to our story, there was a power outage. The dead aren't afraid of such things, they aren't afraid of ghosts that might emerge from the darkness, because the idea that a ghost had come to haunt someone dead was purely idiotic. Of course, such incidents did happen, but more on that another time. Nevertheless, those accustomed to the comforts of death felt quite uncomfortable due to their lack of comfort. While they could see perfectly well in the dark, even we, the living, feel a sense of loss when something we don't need, but to which we've become accustomed, is taken away. Even if it were a rubber ducky we bathe with twice a week... And what could be worse for an innkeeper than customers who could complain and rant for eternity without needing to stop for sleep or a meal?

So he had to act. And he did it as best he could.

"You're the receptionist here, right? Exactly... Make yourself useful and solve this problem or I'll fire you!

That's how people with any power solve problems. As you can see, it's the same after death as before its inevitable arrival.

Nevertheless, the receptionist was quite intelligent and went straight to the new guest's room, correctly concluding that it must be his fault since such things had never happened before his arrival at the inn. And the fact that he was woken during the night for this very reason was unsettling, because that night he had his favorite dream. The one where he was playing poker with sheep. And he was winning... Anyway, he entered the guest's room and... He stopped dead in his tracks, to put it simply. Well, the guy... the guy... He was smiling!

Maybe you living people don't know, but after death, facial expressions disappear, and every conversation, every monologue, looks like something from Greek theater. No one knows why; it just is. And the fact that the guy is smiling can only mean that he is...

"Alive!" the receptionist finished for me, as if reading my mind.

He ran out of the room and ran to the director and told him everything.

"Get out," the director said, his lips pursed.

It was a problem... A big one, a deadly big one at that. There hadn't been a living person at the Inn since... since... forever! And the owner certainly didn't want that to change in the next millennium... What an embarrassment in front of everyone! He'd be a dead laughingstock to everyone! If the others found out, it would be a miracle if he could light a fire in the Hellfires...

"Ha!" he gasped.

If they found out! For now, only the receptionist knew, and he cared about his job, so he wouldn't tell anyone. The owner rose from his chair and ran out of his office (and it was a rare occurrence for him to leave it) and headed for the guest's room.

"Sir!" he began bluntly, making sure no one had heard them, "you have to leave!"

"But... but why?!" The guest seemed alarmed.

"Because you're alive! And rule number one is: Nothing living is allowed on the Inn's premises!" – then he remembered his secret that no one knew about, dismissed the thought, and continued – That's why you have to get out of here, and as soon as possible!

– But I like it here…

– Well, yes… – he always loved flattery – But that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't be here! I don't even know how you managed to leave the land of the living! And I won't go into that! You have ten minutes to leave the inn.

The guest wasn't a brave person, and after ten minutes he was already checking out. The guests didn't even notice, too concerned about the power outage, especially the murder victim with a tendency to paranoia. He was certain that someone had turned off the power to kill him a second time, and the fact that it was impossible wasn't important.

In any case, the guest moved out and no one saw him again. The fact that he was alive never came to light, although during a conversation, Countess Vrakula mentioned the possibility. Fortunately, no one took her seriously, although out of politeness, a few people agreed with her.

As for the weirder stuff: Immediately after the guest left, the power came back on throughout the building. This was never explained, and there was never a power outage again.

"So I shouldn't tell anyone?" the receptionist asked the owner.

"Definitely. If you want to work here, of course.

" "Fine." He breathed a sigh of relief. "What about the guestbook entry? Tear out the page?

" "Yes! All records of this guest definitely need to be removed..." What was his name, exactly?"

"Faust, sir," the receptionist replied.

"Strange name... probably French... They're strange, both before and after their deaths."

Then he returned to his office and busied himself with all the paperwork, which wasn't really necessary and which bosses simply loved.