Patreon - Non-canon SFW Extra 1 - Grand Azathoth Hotel

Ddraig the Red, former Death-Wyrm of Cymru, once chewed a demigod in half mid-sentence because he didn’t like the man’s accent. He had bathed in the blood of paladins, played strip poker with an archdevil (and won), and once broke up a holy war because both sides ran out of adjectives. He'd devoured saints. Out-drunk dwarves. He once headbutted a Philosopher King so hard the man reinvented himself as a Poet Queen, and honestly? Much improved.

That sort of résumé usually earned a little fear. A touch of reverence. Maybe a gift basket. But not here. Here, he was the doorman.

And it was raining soap again.

Not metaphorical soap, mind you. Literal, industrial-grade, bubble-bursting, eye-stinging soap, plopping from the sky in lazy globs like the universe had decided to run a bath and then got distracted halfway through. The heavens themselves were currently the shape of a weeping toddler’s face, each cheek a thundercloud, the nose suspiciously sniffly. Every few minutes the clouds blinked in unison and murmured, “No more pigeons, Daddy. They know too much.”

Tuesdays.

Ddraig stood beneath the awning, trench coat soaked in lavender foam, holding a battered clipboard that radiated the combined energy of a thousand bureaucratic disappointments. His horns had been duct-taped down to comply with Guest Comfort Aesthetic Protocol 47-B, which explicitly forbade any protrusions over 30 centimeters near the entrance after The Incident With Cthugha and the Cream Cheese Spread. Or so the new girl had said - she was a treasure of knowledge about the Hotel. Probably the "notebook" James had given her about how to be the best maid ever, by a former colleague of Him.

Whatever. There were still scorch marks on the ceiling. And someone’s left sock. He exhaled slowly, nostrils releasing a lazy spiral of smoke that smelled faintly of brimstone and parental disappointment.

All was still.

Then the television appeared.

It did not arrive with ceremony. It did not descend from a glorious portal, nor tear itself into the air with arcane screaming like most of the guests.

It just... was.

Hovering in the middle of the entryway.

An old boxy CRT set, ancient and yellowing, with rabbit ears twitching like antennae on a confused cockroach. Static filled the screen. The speakers crackled. The air around it went cold—icebox cold. Tomb cold. “You forgot your jacket and your soul” cold.

Ddraig didn’t move. He reached into his coat and retrieved a thermos of tea. Sipped.

And then—her.

The screen twisted. Bent. Crumpled like a plastic wrapper on a stovetop. Water spilled from the screen—real water, wet, chilling, pooled on the tile in great, weeping blobs.

Then she emerged.

A hand first. Pale, bloodless, jointed wrong.

Then a shoulder. A hunched, too-thin silhouette.

Hair—black, lank, and dripping—poured over her face like the Hotel’s worst mop had grown sentience and malice. She dragged herself from the set like a spider learning yoga. Her limbs jerked. Her spine cracked. Her movements broke several laws of physics and at least one OSHA regulation.

And then she stood, full height, water dripping from her gown in steady, sinister plips. Her hands hung limp.

Her nails scraped the tile. She tilted her head in a snap, too fast, and then—

“Seven days…” she whispered.

Ddraig blinked once. “...You’re soaking the stairs.”

She twitched.

“I am your curse,” she intoned, voice warped and distant, as if echoing through a haunted voicemail. “You watched my tape. You have seven days to live.”

The dragon sipped his tea.

“I don’t even have cable,” he replied.

The air buzzed with malevolence, the kind that made lesser beings weep and/or call their therapist. Still, Ddraig did not flinch.

“You will scream,” she rasped, advancing with jagged, lurching steps. “You will beg. You will—”

“Do you do phone bookings?” he asked flatly. “Or are you one of those ‘walk-in horror’ types?”

She hesitated. The wind machine behind her faltered. For the first time in her long, cinematic career, Samara Morgan looked confused.

“I... I emerge when I’m watched.”

“Not by me,” Ddraig shrugged. “I was reading Busty Astral Babes until five minutes ago. If that tape had played, I’d remember. I have a very strong anti-videotape union policy after the Incident with the Snuff Gorgons.”

“I was summoned!” she snapped, posture bristling. “By pain, by narrative, by cursed ritual! I belong here!”

“Do you?” Ddraig asked, flipping a few pages on his mental clipboard - that he now could visualize with even more clarity. Hehe, he truly was becoming of the hotel. He could feel it… “Let’s see... Samuel, Sammy, Samosa, Saran Wrap, Satan—nope, no Samara. No cursed children, no murder-girls, no haunted Betamax entities. Sorry. No reservation. No invitations. No summoning.”

Her head jerked sideways, twitching like a dial-up modem in agony.

“I am death incarnate,” she hissed. “I crawled from grief and rot! I bring the end!”

“You bring a soggy floor,” Ddraig muttered, nudging a mop bucket closer with his foot. “Also, you smell like coin-operated dread. Very 2003. I don’t think that counts as ‘modern horror’ anymore.”

She shrieked. The real kind of shriek—the banshee sort that bends air and curdles milk and makes ravens file complaints. A fern burst into flames.

Ddraig set down his thermos.

“Right,” he said, deadpan. “Guess we’re doing this.”

Before ghost and wyrm could escalate further—

“Yo!”

A voice drifted lazily from the corridor, muffled by a mouthful of toast and maybe mild existential despair. Khaos stepped into view, shirtless and barefoot, wearing a bathrobe decorated entirely with pictures of ducks screaming into voids. His hair stuck up in all directions. He was holding a spoon and a bowl that may or may not have contained cereal or a screaming galaxy.

“Finally!” he grinned. “You got my telly!”

Ddraig froze. Samara stared. The TV burbled.

Khaos pointed.

“That’s her! Right there! That’s the one I ordered. Well, prayed the Hotel for. Been bored since my kid left. But it's perfect! Kinda retro. All murdery. Fits the vibe of my bathroom. Thanks, Hotel.”

“You summoned me!?” Samara shrieked, drenched and livid. “I am curse, not entertainment!”

Khaos frowned. “I mean... kinda six of one, innit?”

“I am not a television!”

“You came out of one,” Ddraig said helpfully.

“I end lives. I shatter minds. I erase souls.”

“Cool,” Khaos said, already unplugging the television and tucking it under one arm. “You got HDMI?”

“I—WHAT?”

“Can you stream stuff or are you stuck with VHS?” he asked, poking the screen. “Asking for a friend. The friend is me.”

Samara shrieked again—a furious, sputtering, existentially offended sound. Her hair sizzled with psychic static. Her skin turned the color of bad reception.

“I am FEAR ITSELF!”

“Yup. And now you’re bathroom decor,” Ddraig said.

And then—with a grunt and a great lack of ceremony—he grabbed her by the collar of her soaked hospital gown and shoved her, headfirst, back into the television set.

There was a slurp. A pop. A half-hearted scream of, “You’ll pay for this in seven da—”

Fwip.

Gone.

The television beeped and blinked to a default blue screen with “PLEASE SELECT INPUT SOURCE” and a cartoon ghost waving.

Khaos gave a thumbs-up.

“Nice. Gonna mount this above the tub.”

He wandered off whistling something that made nearby clocks melt.

Ddraig sighed, picked up his thermos again, and leaned back under the dripping awning.

“Fuckin Tuesday.”