Walking back from the lobby, somewhat on alert, with snacks in hand, is how Sable spots Gwyn. They come to a full stop for only a second, before picking up a frantic pace in his direction. ”…Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait. Are you real?? Or is three days alone here my limit before I start hallucinating?” -askroom13
Gwyn tries his best to have no expectations as he leaves his room, so that he won’t be surprised by anything. Still, he's unprepared to see anything as casual as another person wandering down the hall with snacks in tow—an androgynous blond, with a patch of black at the front of their hair. He’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that they seem just as surprised to see him.
He pauses, tucking his room keys into the pocket of his slacks. He cues in on their accent (an occupational hazard), but knows it won’t help him figure out what’s going on. “Yes, I’m real. I’ve been abducted. Are you the same, or do you mean to be here?” he asks, defaulting to what he considers best practice: answer questions, skip redundancies, move it along. His tone, though edged with anxiety, makes an effort at calm and courtesy.
He opens his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling and a mattress too pristine to be a home and thinks, tiredly, ‘Not again.’ It takes Gwyn a tick to realise that the thought is outdated, and once he does, he bolts upright.
The walls are cloud grey (tasteful). The bedspread is green (soft). He’s still wearing the dark slacks and vest from his last shift. Dreamless sleep falls away, its gauzy veil slitting itself open on the sharp edge of time to reveal:
Panic. Where is this?
Gwyn throws his legs out of bed, stumbling to his feet (bare; where are his shoes?), and for a split second, he lives in a better reality, one where he’s simply been roofied for a blackout shag rather than abducted for unknown reasons—but he feels too well for that, he knows, and he hasn’t been to the club in weeks.
Though his heart pounds in his chest, he projects an outward, wilful calm as his gaze tracks from left to right. It's a large room—not a suite, but large enough. The low-pile carpet, the TV, the fridge, they all mark his surroundings as a hotel. And, as far as hotel rooms go, this one is perfectly to his tastes.
The catch is, of course, that Gwyn can’t stand hotels.
‘If this even really is one,’ he thinks to himself as he crosses to the desk (beautiful, old wood, leagues beyond what he could afford) to examine the brochure resting on its surface.
“The Inndefinite,” he murmurs aloud, tasting the shape of his mouth and tongue as he says it, even as his brow furrows and humour quickly withers at the pun. It brings to mind a colleague, and as Gwyn begins to read with dwindling patience for answers, he begins to calculate the likelihood of his coworker staging all of this as an elaborate, ill-advised joke.
A burst of static. Gwyn jolts, and swivels as the dim room floods with silver light.
“Welcome to The Inndefinite! We’re so happy to have you here—” too loud, Gwyn scrabbles for a remote—“and you’ll find over the course of your time here that we have everything you need and more. We’re sure you’re wondering about check-in. We would like you to rest—” Gwyn rushes to the TV for built-in controls and finds none. He doesn’t find any plugs or wires either.
What?
“—assured that check-in was completed upon waking in your room, and no further steps are necessary.”
The words register. They settle. Gwyn stares at the TV as it continues its strange, distorted speech. The discordant layers of noise seem to scrape against his nerves, and he hurries back to the abandoned brochure, scanning it, and quickly realises the TV’s recording is the same. Great. He can just listen then, and uses his newfound freedom of hands to rush to the window and throw open the curtains.
…
There’s a painting in America, New York maybe, by an abstract painter. They say that the span of red across the giant canvas was so complete, so overwhelming, that it drove those who saw it to anger. Gwyn was experiencing something similar, here, with a far colder, heavier emotion.
He closes the curtains.
The TV is loud enough that he can hear it from a distance, so he lets it continue its spiel, paying three-quarters attention—there may be details in the announcement conveniently left off the brochure—as he sweeps the room for cameras, microphones, or any of his own belongings. “We do have a few hotel rules—” the TV is saying as he enters the bathroom.
Snapping on the light, he takes a hard look at himself in the mirror, checking for concerns he might not have felt. He only sees the same face he sees every day. Maybe a little paler, from the situation, his hair yet uncombed. He sweeps a hand through it in a halfhearted fix before clicking his tongue and turning away.
“1—” He finds keys on a small cabinet by the door.
“2—” He finds his socks in the closet, folded so neatly it feels invasive.
“3—” He yanks on his socks and shoes, teetering between fright and fury.
“4—” He finds balance, choosing a deep irritation instead.
“5—” Either this is a prank or it isn’t. If the former, he’ll kill his colleagues and the restaurant can find a new bartender. If the latter…
“6. Don’t leave. We’d hate to lose you.”
Chilling. For a moment, Gwyn wonders if the door will be locked. He had been procrastinating the test for that very reason.
Still, the TV falls silent behind him, and gut feeling says he’d be worse for stalling than not. Better to try for answers than not.
A young man from the UK of Chinese heritage—black hair, brown eyes. Prior to checking into the hotel, he was a server at a high-end restaurant in London called “The Brittle Bow,” though people who watched the news ten or so years ago are more likely to have heard of him from somewhere else. He's newly arrived to the Inndefinite.
He has a sleek and refined character to him. Though suave in customer service mode, he cools quickly off the clock, appearing long-suffering and irritable. He isn't as misanthropic as he seems, however, and prefers the company of others rather than his own. He proves himself surprisingly adaptable, and prefers cooperative solutions to solo acts.
(Updated 02.10.2025)
Frequently Asked Questions
‘Somewhere else'?
Gwyn had his face and name revealed on national news and the social media as one of the “Olvidaxis Orphans,” a group of children who had been trafficked to various countries as pediatric test subjects for pharmaceutical drug trials. Despite it being about ten years since the exposé, the resemblance between him and the old photograph is clear.
Any relation to—
Similarities to the names of existing public figures is 100%, purely coincidental. No relation.
