Mikael's Umbrella: Chapter 8

The first bad thing was that the Italian neighbors* upstairs in the hotel shouted at Mariah. "Via con rumore!" "Away with noise!" Mariah grabbed earplugs--useful for walking down the street on a sunny, clear day with her sister--out of her travel bag and inserted them into her ears. Then she remembered the day of checking into the hotel, and shivers ran down her back.
The clerk, a well-dressed man in a black suit, handed them the keys. "You're that famous movie star, aren't you," he said nonchalantly as they prepared to go up to their floor.
"We aren't the only movie star family," Mariah's mom had said. "Be more specific." In her younger days, she'd been a high school English teacher, and to this day was consistently correcting peoples' speech.
"You know, with Laurel Reeth..."
"No," said Mariah's mom, insulted. With that, she took the family's baggage and stomped toward the elevator.
"Wait, sorry..." The clerk was really trying to regain his reputation. In a final attempt, he called out,"You're on the top floor!"
The top floor. Mariah took in these words with fear. That meant...there was no one upstairs.
Mariah ran. But not before they caught her.
"Hello, Mariah," said a small but athletic girl with sleek black hair that looked surprisingly like Mikael. "Welcome to Room 304."**


*I do not speak fluent Italian. It is the result of a lucky birthday gift that I can present this story to you in multiple languages. For those of you who do speak fluent Italian, or at least passable Italian, I apologize for any incorrect grammar the phrase may contain.
**For the public, Mariah's hotel was divided into three large parts. It was an amazingly tall and thick building, and so there was sufficient room space for this. For you who happen to know the significance of Room 304, I encourage you to visit this part of my blog: Click here to view it.

Mikael's Umbrella: Chapter 7

In the late evening sun, two figures were illuminated, so that only the silhouettes were visible. There was a shorter one, probably a girl, with long hair down to her waist. The other was tall, muscular, and much thicker, most likely a man. The two were surrounded by leaves on three of the sides, as if the figures were in a picture and the leaves were the border.
"Come on, hurry," said the smaller of the two to the larger without looking at him.
That was apparently the wrong thing to say. The larger grabbed the smaller by the shoulders and shook her. "We don't have to hurry!" he said, or rather, growled. There was a static noise here, blocking out some of his next phrase, and then... "... don't have to hurry!"
"Oh, well," said the smaller, and turned to what seemed to be dust, that blew away in the wind.

*  *  *

The hologram shattered like glass.

Mikael had been watching this. It had projected from the disk, and it all seemed very strange. But even so, Mikael realized three things.

One: The place pictured in the hologram was Kittero Park.

Two: The sky was orange in the hologram, which meant...what?

Three: The people in the hologram looked a whole lot like Mr. Leiber and Kallia.
But just as he thought that, he ran out of air.

*  *  *

El Paros was right next door to the hotel. Mariah knew she had to go there, she just knew it.

"Mom, let's go to El Paros for dinner," Mariah suggested.

"Okay, but you go alone, and it's up to you to get the reservation," Mariah's mom said.

Mariah was still sopping wet. She took her potion and tucked into her coat. Then she headed to her fancy bathroom to take a shower. She was off with a hotel bunch of towels tied neatly in a pink ribbon when a strange thing happened.
A slat opened in the ceiling above, and out dropped a disk. It was a clunky flat disk, clunky in the way of an old laptop. As Mariah threw on some clothes, she accidentally touched the disk, and then bad things started to happen to her.