The Consulate

The outside of the hotel was covered with mirrored windows that reflected the beautiful world around it, hiding the true nature of the building. It had opened three decades prior under the same guise as how everyone's American Dream starts, a simple idea. House a few people for an undetermined amount of time in exchange for money seemed like a simple enough concept. Unfortunately, like many simple ideas, it became warped, twisted from the inside. the building festered off the side of the interstate, drawing in simple people with simple ideas. Some stayed in its rooms, others stayed to work, each colliding together and hardly interacting more than at face value of a few simple pleasantries.

How are you?
                      Did you enjoy your meal/stay?
                                                                  What brings you to Wisconsin?
                                                                                                                Are you having fun?

Cars would stop under the front awning to unload their luggage. In sunny weather, the awning acted as a shield. In rain, it acted as less of a shield and more of a water relocation device through strategically eroded sections that were too pricey to fix.

People walking in through the sliding doors are taken off guard into the spacious foyer. Triangles of pseudo-jade adorned the peach tile floor, encircling a diamond of the same pseudo jade with the hotel emblem-a gaudy cursive "C". The only thing golden about that hotel had been that "C" which no longer sustained any usefulness as the name of the hotel had changed six years ago to appear more family friendly and sleek. Though its name changed, the fact remained the same: It was a bit of a dump.  Messy, disorganized, and filled with every type of human from dreamer to discriminant with every shade of scoundrel-in-sheep's-clothing in between.

Dreams started there.

                                      Dreams became perverted there.

                                                                                                                         And dreams died there.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.