The Horror At The Belvedere Hotel

writing by Andy Fraser

photography by Jason Clarke

Small girl...Mary-Jane...from the village. One eye bigger than the other...dad's got a wooden hand...but that's irrelevant...not even remotely pertinent to the story. She slips on the moss on the steps to the door of The Belvedere Hotel...and winds up sprawled across the indignant rockery like a Goth Bambi flung against a remote jagged cliff-face on the south coast of some God-forsaken hostile country in coldest Europe. Something like that.

Her hands bleed slowly as the butler with the nose like a billhook carries her through the winding hallway and into the kitchen.

'Here's your work experience girl' he growls at the anorexic chef

'A bit late...and a bit damaged...but it's a start'

Ten minutes later she was perched betwixt a dead cockroach and a corroded bread-bin...wiping her hands on a sodden dishcloth and wondering if anybody actually ever came to stay at this hotel. An unfamiliar song crackled from the piped radio.

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated
Nothin' to do and no where to go-o-oh I wanna be sedated

'This is not the sort of music I'd expect to hear in a place like this' she mused.

'It's The Ramones....classic punk rock' said the anorexic chef...as he used his foot to squash an abscondee mushroom into the seagrass flooring.

'Classic...maybe...but not exactly classical....which is what I would expect to hear...in such a spooky environment'