"My fucking God" I yelped, retreating backward until my back was pressed against the wall behind me.
I rubbed my eyes once, then twice, willing them to stop playing tricks on me.
Still, nothing changed.
The speaker had now made themselves at home on the small desk where they had suddenly appeared, nearly causing my heart to stop.
"Maya is sorry for troubling sire... Maya is here to help."
My hands rose to my head. Was I going insane?
Perched on the desk, the fattest and largest rat I had ever seen was staring at me as I stared back at it. The fact that it had spoken again only made things worse.
"Please someone tell me... someone tell me I am hallucinating," I mumbled fervently while trying to look anywhere else but at it.
"Sire is fine... he got the job he wished for," the rat said.
That was certainly not the kind of assistance I was seeking. I slowly began to edge toward the door. I definitely should have left earlier, as soon as things began to behave weirdly, but it was not too late yet.
Not if I could get past that door.
They might have locked the gate, but I knew there were people waiting there. I just needed to get near, and then I would scream the shit out until someone came to help.
I was just about to dive toward it when the rat stood on its fat back legs and casually waved.
The door slammed shut with rattling force.
"That sire cannot do... Maya will not let him"
With another wave, the rat sent one of the forms floating to my face. It was the first form I had signed earlier.
"Sire cannot forfeit."
I stared at the signature on the paper like it had appeared there by itself. Suddenly I seemed to be seeing everything for the first time, really seeing.
My eyes immediately flew to one of the sentences below:
You are bound to uphold this agreement or suffer in house punishment for forfeiture.
Just a short while ago, the phrase "in house punishment" had seemed like a harmless joke, but now I was face to face with a talking rat, and the words seemed to scream at me from the page.
"I will not say a thing to anyone," I pleaded as I fully acknowledged the reality of the rat's existence and my dire predicament.
"Just let me out please... I mean no one would even believe me."
The rat stared at me for a while. It could have been just my imagination, but I thought its eyes were getting moist. Good thing. It was sympathizing with me.
The next moment, however, another paper was sent flying to my face.
This one was the last one I had signed, accepting the job offer.
For a second I shut my eyes, trying to wish all this away. Not that it was working.
"I swear I thought it was a joke... I would have never signed it otherwise."
The rat just spread its two front limbs as if to say it does not matter. That whichever way it had happened, the bottom line was I had appended my consent to all this.
Seeing my pleas go to waste, I turned to anger instead.
"And where were you all this time?"
Because I would have never signed had I seen a talking rat.
"Maya was here... sire was not observing."
Like the hell I was not. "I looked at this place countless times. Nobody was here. Certainly no damn rat."
A brief silence stretched while it stared at me. I was not an expert on reading rats' facial expressions, but this one seemed to have been hurt by my statement.
"Looking... not the same as observing. Sire knows this. Sire is an accountant."
The thing was now using principles of auditing against me. What was there to observe? It was a tiny and plain room. One could see all the corners without trying.
"In that case you must have seen me. Why did you not say something?"
Apart from Tom and Jerry, I cannot say I have seen rats shaking their heads, but this one now did.
"Rules bind Maya. Maya must not interfere."
The way the rat said it gave a feeling that just like me, it too had been in this position. It explained the sympathetic way it had looked at me earlier.
"Maya must introduce sire... sire must begin his duties."
With a wave of its front limbs, the papers that had been hovering before me flew back and rearranged themselves neatly.
The rat grabbed them before jumping down.
I straightened up. This was it. She was going to open the door. As soon as she did, I was jumping out, screaming like I had seen the devil, which I might have.
She would most likely stop me with her magic but at least I would have screamed already. Fuck their punishment. They too had fooled me into this.
"Sire should follow."
The door I had been waiting to open did not. Instead, the wall behind her slid away, and she began to walk down a staircase that had appeared behind her.
She stopped on seeing I made no attempt to follow.
"The wall might shut sire behind, trapped forever."
For a while I thought that was a threat. I was about to decide to take my chances here when I realized she might be serious.
I mean my doubting habits were in fact what had landed me in this place.
If I had been quick to believe, I might have been safe. All the signs had been right in front of me.
I pushed the chair out of my path and stepped behind Maya.
The hole groaned shut and I followed her down the staircase. It looked like we were descending beneath the hotel's ground floor, which meant we were headed for the underground.
The stairs looked just as grand as the building itself...framed potrates of what appeared to mythical beings across the ages decorated the walls... From waring gods... Seraphims... To vampires literally in the act of their trade to even creature whose their names I didn't know... All seemed to welcome me with the reality of their existence. God! Now I was too gone to be saved.
Even if police showed up, which I did not see why on earth they would, getting that wall to move and the staircase to appear was simply impossible.
I was trapped and a consenting prisoner of this place.