15. Stereotype

In which we were asked to write the scenario of a stereotype of a person being trapped in a hotel room, and seeing what they get up to. This version is... not quite finished...

It was useless. He had been there, according to his chunky imitation Rolex, at least ten hours. There was enough in the mini-bar to keep him going for another half a day, although whether he wanted to survive on them was another matter (he hankered after a Carlsberg.) He had tried the door and windows, tapped the walls and ceiling for air-ducts or other means of egress, like Jack Bauer in 24. After that, he had spent an hour trying every combination of Fuck, Cunt, Bastard and Arsehole to express his frustration, then fell upon the mini-bar gin. Now he lay on the bed, thinking of what he was absent from: his Merc, Laetitia; his bull terrier, Ronnie, who must have been missing him something awful; his mum, who lived in the front room with the filthy curtains close and the central heating turned to full all the time. Oh, and Trace, of course. He thought it was the done thing in this situation to picture her face, and found himself disconcerted when he couldn’t.

He was surprised to find himself waking up. He checked again; he had been asleep three hours without noticing. He prided himself on being the last out of the club, the final man to stop drinking and head home to bed. He hadn’t had an early night since he was 11, except when satisfying Tracy, after which he would soundly doze. Levering himself off the bed, he kicked the door repeatedly and shouted at it, spit flecking onto his Lacoste polo. After his foot became sore, he sat down again, turned and scrutinised the world outside the window. A road, strangely empty, but for a couple of parked cars. Trees – he didn’t know what kind. Georgian townhouses set back from the pavement. When he was 13 he had broken into a similar abode, snatching a DVD player, a laptop, a bottle of Teachers and a Nokia, all of which went towards his first scraper, a Vauxhall Corsa. He had reformed himself – he now listened to Hed Kandi comps instead of Scarface, and wore a shirt and trousers when phone-selling car insurance – but that spunk remained, or so he thought.

He lay back again on the bed, and considered that he might as well conserve his energy. His Motorola – usually buzzing with calls, left out on the table at lunch to make sure the others knew he was in demand – had disappeared; but surely someone would come for him, if he waited long enough. He just had to hold out.

He sat up, tried to laugh it off, cracked a line – No-one to fuckin’ hold onto yer coat-tails now, eh? – but it sounded strange ringing around the depopulated room. Standing up, pulling on his suit-jacket (Burton, but you wouldn’t know it) and smoothing out the creases, he trotted up and down the room, assuming his typical thrusting hands-in-pocket swagger, eyes fixed front. After a few lengths of the window-wall, he found himself stopping. It was like being told magic charms had no real power. Every tool he had was slipping from his grasp. He sat down on the bed again, had a mouthful of peanuts, and looked around the four white-stippled corners of the ceiling. He wondered when the last time was he had seen them. Whilst fucking that blonde bird, Whats’ername, from Essex, at that conference, she on top. Another on the tally. But these had not been; they had not even entered into his calculations.