Pretty Dead City JC looked at him all the time. It was starting to get unnerving, as if Chris wasn't feeling this place making his nerves fray at the edges all on its own.
He didn't know who first noticed it - maybe Lance; Lance tended to notice things - but suddenly they were aware of things happening around them.
Doors opened and closed. Closed signs disappeared. Streetlights turned from green to red. Always when they were looking away. Chris tested it by staring at a light for ten minutes. Nothing happened. Then he thought of his watch and looked at it to see if it was still working, and when he looked up, the light had changed.
Their watches had all stopped. This surprised no one.
"I guess we're officially caught in one of those really wackass X-files episodes," Justin said.
"All that's missing now is Queequeg," Chris said.
"We need a plan," Justin suggested. "We can't be running up and down this damn street. You'd think there's only one street in all of LA."
"This isn't LA, Justin," JC said. "We don't know where we are."
Justin scowled at him and waved an impatient hand in the general direction of the rest of everything. "What is it, then? It looks like LA--"
"Maybe it's your fucked up nightmare, I don't KNOW," JC growled and they all sat up a little straighter. Chris bit his lip and stayed quiet.
"We still need a plan," Justin said.
"We could just camp out in, like, the hotel or something," Lance said mildly. "It looks like we're not moving. We've been walking for days, and we're not getting anywhere. Maybe we should just wait."
"What hotel?" Chris said, but his head turned almost automatically to look behind him, and the natty glass door said HOTEL.
How convenient.
He pushed the door open and thought he heard the jingle of a little bell somewhere far away.
The lobby was wrapped in soft, grey shadows. The floors looked dusty and unwashed at first, but when he took his first steps on it, he saw that it was just a trick of the light. He could almost see his reflection in it if he squinted a little.
They walked past the small restaurant in the hotel, and he thought he saw more ghosts there, eating their hotel food and talking and moving around, but they didn't come near him and there were no warm tingly feelings.
He realised he'd started missing eating. He wasn't hungry, but he missed the whole deal - smelling food and cutting it up and putting it in his mouth, chewing and swallowing. He couldn't imagine doing it anymore, but he missed it.
He couldn't smell food, even though there were plates laden with pasta and steaks and fried vegetables and potatoes and gravy on the tables. He turned away and headed for the stairs.
They couldn't turn on any lights, but there was a hazy glow in the hallways, as if the light from outside was a mist, floating into buildings along with them.
One room on the second floor was unlocked. How convenient, Chris thought again.
Walking up the stairs had sapped him of his strength again. He had a quick image of this fucked up world as some kind of giant amoeba, and of them trapped inside its membranes, being slowly digested. That's what it felt like for sure. He held up his hand and told himself he was being melodramatic. His hand didn't look shrivelled or old. It looked exactly like the everyday Kirkpatrick hand: small but not effeminate, the nails short because he had never been able to break the nervous habit of nibbling on them but clean and tidy because fame and fortune brought perks, such as regular manicures.
The bed was a double. There was also a sofa. They stood inside the door like a flock of lost sheep, and Chris felt their eyes on him.
The silence seemed to take on a life of its own. It wasn't just the absence of sound.
"I'll take the damn sofa," he said, finally.
Joey and Lance shrugged as one man, but Justin looked distressed for a second. Then JC said, sharply, "Fine," and Justin threw Chris an apologetic glance and went to sit on the bed.
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