The Last Room

The ceiling is stained with cigarette-smoke, its yellowness casts a hue over the small space bellow giving the hotel room an air of jaundiced ill-health. The once proud, thick red-piled carpet now lays over glued to its underlay under the sticky remnants of a thousand spilled meals, and dangling like two angry snakes the exposed wiring of a missing power point provides me with an option for lighting a cigarette if need be. The room's aroma is akin to that which you would find if your head was zippered in to a twelve year olds school bag that had been left under the rays of a hot sun, and the periodic holes in the ceiling gives you the feeling you are never alone. Purple-black mold and mildew creep from every crack and crevasse of the bathroom’s exposed concrete eating the wall slowly like a gangrenous leprosy. A perpetual sheet of water lays over the floor of the bathroom, the less than clear liquid trickling from the cistern and cold water taps, the hot water system is rusted into disuse, The leading edge of the ceiling fan's blades are thick with matted dirty grime that releases itself on occasion, sending small globs of goop spinning through the air and my only window opens out toward the mayhem of the adjacent bus station across the road, this curtain-less window does not shut.

Room service comes in the form of a bare-footed ten year old boy who although holding a menu describing fifty dishes is only able to offer me fried eggs and bread with milk tea, the milk I suspect may be taken from the cow grazing on the refuse of a communal bin full of vegetable matter. The vegetable matter is not from my hotel though as my hotel only has eggs.

At 9pm the hotel reception area turns into a bar and casino for out of work bus and rickshaw drivers, their cries of joy and anguish throughout the night only just rising above that of my immediate neighbours who it seems have invited all the hotels guests into their room for a game of cricket or some other such banging and cheering game. At 5am the bar and casino below closes due to the arrival of someone important, I suspect the egg delivery man, and the casino is now converted into a hostel for bus and rickshaw drivers, they lying across every surface in drunken repose readying themselves for their next shift.

At 7am having had very little sleep I step carefully through the mass of bodies sprawled throughout reception in search of somebody to take payment for my stay in room 201. I announce myself loudly in request for attention and a bleary eyed figure rises from behind the counter and hacks several coughs from his congested throat before extending his palm upward toward me looking for money. A small frown comes over his face as he checks his paperwork before asking.

"You had eggs?"