Andrew Hilbert

The Owner’s Room

We were drunk. It was stupid but we were drunk. It’s not an excuse. It just is what it is.

We were celebrating Sofia’s acceptance into grad school. We were anticipating having no free time between us once she started, so we decided to do the whole Airbnb thing and rent a vacation home in Arroyo Seco, the mountains in New Mexico.

On our way up, we stopped by a small bar. Thanks to the liquor laws in that state, we could do all our bulk shopping as we sat on barstools and drank cocktail after cocktail.

A bottle of Jack. Two twelve packs of Bud. Fuck it. Make that two bottles of Jack.

The house was beautiful. Heated floors, a gorgeous view of purple mountains, and a fireplace. We dropped our things at the front door.

The owner had wood all set up for us and everything. He’d even left a note:

Welcome to beautiful Arroyo Seco and congratulations to Sofia on grad school! Mi casa es su casa. The hot tub should be heated! Remember to rate us on the Airbnb website! – Gordon

“Gordon,” Sofia said, “that’s a name you don’t hear too often.”

I nodded.

“Let’s get naked,” I said. “The hot tub’s ready.”

We wasted no time at all getting down to our birthday suits. I uncapped the Jack, took a big chug and passed it to Sofia. She did the same and passed it back. I took one of the twelve packs with me as we went outside.

“This place is fucking beautiful,” Sofia said.

“Uh huh,” I said and took another swig.

Fifteen minutes later we were both drunk. We can drink, all right.

An hour was about all we could take in the tub. The water had been heated to 101 degrees. My poor, sagging nutsack couldn’t withstand much more despite all its alcohol-induced numbness.

And I had whiskey dick.

So much for being naked…

By contrast, it was something like twenty degrees outside. The snow was packed in. As soon as I stepped out of the tub, my nipples got hard as rocks, and my previously pendulous scrotum shrivelled up to the size of a coin purse.

“Hu-huh-holeeeeeeeeeeeeey FUUCK it’s cold!”

“Um hum, YEEAH it is!” Sofia giggled. Our words waxed longer with our waning sobriety.

We slop-hopped back into the house, naked and giggling all the way. The good thing about vacationing in the mountains is that there aren’t neighbors to disturb. We could be as drunk and naked as we damn-well pleased and there’d be no one to judge or try stopping us.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Sofia said. “I j-just had the, ummm, fuck… I forgot…”

“Remember it when you tell me,” I said, my eyes crossing as I tried to roll them back into my mind to figure out exactly how drunk I was.

“Oh!” she said. Her feet were clumsy and her ankles wobbled as she shivered into some kind of clarity. “I got it! I had the, ummm, ca-raziest think – thought. I think, what if, wouldn’t it be fucking crazy if the Gordon, if that’s his REAL name, was like whacking off right now watching us on a webcam or something?”

“Pssssht…” my mouth was numb. “Fuck you. He’s propubly, probubbly, probably looking at my fucking dick thinking, Woah, that’m big’m.”

We both busted out laughing because we looked down at my dick at the same time. It was clearly still recovering from the intense cold. Nobody’d think that’m big’m about it right then, if ever.

Sofia wandered away from me and I stumbled around looking for the other bottle of Jack. It was, of course, right where we left it. Right next to the fucking front door, which we’d forgot to even close.

I uncapped the Jack and took a nice, big ol’ swig.

“What? What? What? Larry!” Sofia sounded confused – not confused like she had no capability of understanding what she was confused about, but confused like she was on the verge of understanding but never quite there. “What? What? What? Wow. Woah. Larry!”

“I’m c-coming, I’m c-comin’,” I said, belching loudly as I tried to locate her within the strange house.

“Larry, Luh-luh-lurry!” Sofia’s eyes were only half open by this point, the left one looking upward and the right one drifting rightward. She was absolutely fucking hammered. “Wha-wha-what’s erse ser?”

“Wh-whut?” I asked.

“Whaz erd sare?” She pointed to the placard on the door. It took me a second to quit seeing double, but squinting hard I was able to make it out.

“Oh no room,” I said, “Ohnor’s room, do not enter.”

“Owner’s rum,” she repeated, nodding with profound understanding. “Fuck him! We pained f-f-for therse, we go whern we wantgoer. I, I… I thought we lived in a freedom country??”

I raised my hand for a high five.

“Fuck yeah,” I said, “Fuck him. This is America!” Suddenly I felt the urge to hurl, catching myself just in time. “I almost threw up,” I said, and then I did.

Thick chunks of whiskey-infused vomit sprayed all over the door before us. Looking down, I could see that the large puddle I’d spewn had already begun to flow underneath the door and into the owner’s private room.

Fuuucck…

“He-heeere’s our chance,” I said. “We’s gotsa clean it up now, righ? We’s gotta go up in!” I pointed at the puke for emphasis and Sofia nodded her approval. I nodded back and then winked because I noticed we were both still naked. “Fuck yeah,” I said, pointing down at her freshly trimmed landing strip.

Sofia instinctually grabbed for the doorknob, but it was locked of course.

“Ki-kick it down, you fu-fuckin’ pussy,” she said, pointing at my dick.

“It’s c-c-cold, shu-shut up.”

Determined to prove something to her, I kicked and kicked but never really worked up the kind of drunk strength I expected myself to.

“We needuh SS-SL-AMM inna it…” I said. I made the motion with my shoulder into the door. “Thlee counts,” I said.

One, two, three…

The door came off its hinges and we landed inside.

“I think my buth’s gok sp-splinfers,” Sofia said, picking at her upraised ass. She had a good laugh, too.

But then the laughs wore off – they always do – and we were still splayed upon the floor atop a broken door. I’d landed on my belly while Sofia had landed on her back. I rolled over to look at her.

She looked scared.

“Sh-sh-sh-shit!” Sofia said.

“Whuh..?”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she just pointed at the ceiling.

I followed her finger to what she was pointing at.

A very fat, pinkish man stared down at us from a hammock made of chicken wire suspended from the ceiling. He was completely naked and covered with hexagonal lacerations where the wires cut into his skin. Hanging before him were a rigged-up water bottle and kibble dispenser – the kind you’d see in hamster cages.

“Shit FUCK duuuuuuude!” I screamed. “We gotta g-guh-get you downer there!”

“No, no, NO-NO-NO!!!” the strange man said, his voice shaking with fear. “He’s watching us…”

Swinging himself toward the kibble dispenser, his tongue lolled out just far enough to collect his prize. As he swung back, a huge metal paddle flew down from the ceiling and spanked him hard on his ass.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the scene.

“What’s so funny??” the man squealed. “That fucking paddle has NAILS in it!!”

Sure enough, I could see the reddened points on the the paddle where it had returned to the ceiling.

“Every time, every time, EVER GODDAMN TIME I swing for a sip of water or a bit of kibble, every time that goddamn bloody paddle comes down and…”

He could hardly find the words between his welling tears.

“…I don’t even know how to enjoy it anymore!”

“Wha-what?” Sofia asked. “The kibble or the spanking?”

He didn’t answer. He just swung for water and got spanked for it.

“The bastard. The BASTARD!!!! Makes the kibble extra salty, so I can’t help but get thirsty… Two spanks! Two spanks, guaranteed! What kind of monster?!”

Sofia and I looked at each other. We knew we weren’t dreaming or hallucinating, but we couldn’t help thinking that something about our unholy level of intoxication was making this even more bizarre than it already was.

That moment of drunken wonderment between us was cut short by a splash of warm liquid from above.

I looked back up. The fat guy was now pissing on us.

“Woaah, oaah, woaah,” he moaned in agony. “That bastard! The fucking son of a bitch! He’s watching! And he’s loving every minute of it! I KNOW he puts something in the water to make it burn when I pee… He loves this! He LOVE torturing me!”

“Luh-luh-lissen, dude,” Sofia said, stumbling to her feet. “Listen, you know? Like, riight?”

She then promptly slipped in the puddle of piss and fell back down on the floor.

“Ow, man,” she moaned. “That shit’s f-FUH-fucked up!”

“We g-gotta get you DOWN frrem der, man!” I said.

“No! No!” he shouted, wriggling in his rusty metal net. “He’ll find me. He’ll FIND me… He’ll find me and he’ll KILL me! And THEN he’ll kill everyone I’ve ever loved… He promised!”

Ignoring his blubbering, I hopped up and commenced grabbing onto anything I could hold onto in hopes of tugging his ass down. I was too drunk.

I lost interest when I noticed Sofia snoring. I was jealous. I hated when she fell asleep without me.

“You..” I said pointing to the man, “You. What’s your name?”

“Ugh, what’s the point?”

“Fine, dude. Whatever,” I said as I began to lay down next to Sofia. “I’m j-just gonna close my eyes fer a… fur a sec…”

And with that, I passed out almost instantly.

When I finally came to, it felt like someone was swinging a mallet around the inside my head. As my vision gradually came into focus, I saw that Sofia looked to be in even worser shape, dry heaving on her hands and knees beside me.

Like Adam and Eve after eating the forbidden fruit, we were suddenly aware of our nakedness and ashamed before stranger dangling above us. He swung himself in the direction of the kibble dispenser and snagged himself a piece.

As before, his ass was greeted with a savage swat of the paddle.

“OWW!!!”

Sofia looked over at me.

“I’m scared…” she said, wiping the puke from her mouth. “The door is off its hinges. Once Gordon discovers that, we’ll never get our deposit back!”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my groggy head. “Unless he knows we know something we shouldn’t…”

I pointed up and winked at Sofia. She smiled back, giving me a look like I was the smartest guy in the world and I was the one going to grad school.