A Hotel in Germany
By Catriona Ward, first published in After Sundown
In a dystopian future, an assistant to a movie star, who is also an immortal slave, must take pills that reveal her true monstrous form in order to help the movie star fight her battle with cancer.
Author
Published in
Year
Words
Genres
Plot Summary
An assistant to a movie star, Cara, is woken up by a phone call from the movie star who can’t sleep. Cara first thinks that the call is from her dead brother or dead daughter. Cara goes to the movie star’s room and helps her put away her expensive jewelry and then makes the two of them tea. They both go back to Cara’s smaller room and the movie star eventually goes to sleep. Cara takes some pills in the bathroom and feels her senses dull. The next day the shooting for their movie goes well and Cara is asked to make copies of the movie star’s call sheet at the hotel reception desk. There Cara has to speak with Greta, a receptionist who does not like Cara or the movie star. Greta helps Cara make copies but only after a long process. Cara returns to the movie star who was worried about what was taking her so long. That night Cara sits by a window in her room so that an implant in her forehead can have something pretty to watch. At four a.m. Cara gets a desperate call from the movie star and she rushes to the receptionist desk to get a briefcase from Greta. Cara finds the movie star in her room curled up in pain, which Cara knows is from the movie star’s cancer. Cara goes to the bathroom and takes a pill to cleanse her body and the implant falls from her head. Her teeth grow into long sharp fangs. Cara returns to the movie star to transfer blood as she sticks an IV in both of them; the movie star is frightened when she sees Cara’s true form. Cara wants to stay strong as she is no longer affected by the tainted air that has kept her weak for so long, but she knows it cannot last. She reminisces on the fact that she is a distant ancestor of the movie star and is an immortal slave to her so that she can help with her health issues. She mourns the loss of her brother and daughter. She takes some pills again from the briefcase and is in agony as her body becomes weak again. She wakes up much later to the movie star panicking because her jewelry was stolen. They find a perfect hole in the safe and an investigator predicts that it was a professional thief who must have known that the movie star was out of her room. One night Cara gets mysterious phone calls and believes they are from Greta. Cara pretends that they are her deceased brother or daughter and is comforted by the silence. A few days later Cara is in the room with the movie star and they perform a familiar ritual of Cara sticking a feather in her ear and the movie star feeling it vicariously. Later in the lobby, Cara watches as Greta is arrested for stealing the jewelry and she realizes that Greta was not the one calling her late at night. They return all but one piece of jewelry to the movie star which they cannot find. When the shooting is finished, Cara enters into a large capsule for transportation and feels the missing piece of jewelry around her wrist, keeping it when she planted the rest on Greta. She hopes that one day the dead will call again.