An Unfortunate Accommodation

As they say, hindsight is always 20/20. The Mandarmani trip with my family started out exactly as one would expect, with a small caveat: it was a largely spontaneous one, and the 'hotel' was booked less than a week before. This obviously put our backs against the wall regarding accommodation options, since at this time of the year, every single 47-year-old man and his family in Kolkata decide to toss a coin between a trip to either Mandarmani or Digha to momentarily escape their day-to-day struggles, instead of just seeking professional help (perhaps we were an example of this phenotype ourselves). These 47-year-old men in question had booked every single decent resort to the brim, leaving us with no choice but to consider the next best option: a 3.7-rated hotel on Google with sea-facing rooms. Let's call it the Puffin Resort. Judging by the written reviews, the place was excellent, but for some curious reason, they came almost exclusively from young men who seemed unusually enthusiastic about the quality of the beds and mattresses provided. We thought nothing of it at the time.

After a gruelling 6-hour drive with a lunch break in between at Kolaghat, we finally reached Puffin, but our stay there began rather inauspiciously. A tempestuous storm was brewing, with frequent flashes of lightning illuminating the entire evening sky. On top of that, the lights at the Puffin had all gone out moments before we arrived, as the lady at the reception desk informed us. We decided to take these unfortunate circumstances on the chin, and promptly agreed to spend the rest of the evening in our respective rooms to recover and recuperate for the days ahead. Me, my dad and my cousin were assigned one room, and my aunt and uncle another. The keys were handed to us after some basic identity confirmation, and we started walking to the other side of the property, where our rooms were located.

As we walked under the blazing black sky in the dark, it started drizzling, but I couldn't care less about that at the moment, since I spotted something which made me overjoyed to no end.

"Guys, look!" I pointed. "There's a pool! Why don't we-"

I was rudely interrupted, first by the surge of electricity returning to the power grid of the Puffin, lighting up the entire resort like a cheap casino and illuminating us in strange red and green neon lights, and second by a completely topless woman popping out of the waters of the aforementioned pool. Needless to say, I forgot the rest of my sentence.

My first instinct was to help the poor lady. Perhaps her swimwear had fallen off in the murky pool and she simply hadn't noticed? But no, she seemed quite pleased with herself, and when she spotted us, it seemed as if she was more confused by our presence than vice versa. After another quick glance, she jiggled away to, presumably, her room.

As these events were transpiring, all five of us were understandably transfixed to our spots. We exchanged a few looks, and telepathically agreed to never talk about what had just happened again.

The situation only got weirder when we reached our rooms. Both the bathrooms had a completely translucent wall and a similar door, and if you got close enough to them, you could quite clearly see the person inside the bathroom, especially if the light inside was turned on. The bathroom's layout was interesting as well. The toilet and shower area were not separated, and were right next to each other, almost as if... no, it couldn't be. As we were inspecting our bathrooms, I thought I heard an eerie shriek in the distance, perhaps from the room next to ours. It was not continuous, and came at regular intervals. Annoyingly, no other member of my family could clearly hear it, and I attributed it to some poor injured kitten mewing outside.

Presently, the hotel manager decided to pay us a visit to see whether we were having any difficulties. After a bit of small talk (where we had come from, the weather, etc.), my aunt decided to ask him about what we would be getting to eat for dinner.

"What? Dinner?" He was visibly shaken by this seemingly unexpected question. "Our guests don't usually ask for dinner... but I suppose we can prepare something for you if you insist..."

"Huh? What do you mean your guests don't ask for dinner? I thought this was a resort?" my aunt demanded.

The manager gave no immediate reply and exchanged some uncomfortable glances.

I think that was the precise moment it started dawning upon me and my family that Puffin might not be a normal family resort after all, and the "injured kitten mewing outside" was not a kitten at all, but two human beings absolutely going at it.

"Well, you see," the manager hesitated, "we are a resort, but, erm... our guests are mostly couples..."

Time seemed to stand still after this outrageous statement, much like the solitary chair beside our bed, which I had incorrectly assumed to be a space for reading prior to this conversation.

My aunt, determined as ever, paid no heed to the implications of what the manager said, and badgered on bravely. "What can you prepare for dinner?"

"Would roti with chicken be alright? It will take some time though. We are not really accustomed to-"

"Yes, alright, alright," my aunt replied impatiently.

The manager left, and we sat there in silence, soaking up the incredible conversation which had just taken place in front of us.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, my cousin mustered up the courage to ask the million-dollar question. "Is this place a brothel?"

"Seems like it," my uncle replied. "Well, there's nothing we can do about it anymore. Every other hotel is full, and we cannot leave either way in this thunderstorm. Looks like we are spending the next few days here, boys!"

Nobody slept particularly well that night, probably thinking about the countless couples that had participated in rigorous intercourse on the very beds we were trying to sleep on. Thankfully, I had thought ahead and asked the manager to provide an extra cot bed in our room, and I slept on that instead, while my cousin and my dad occupied the main one.

My sleep in particular was interrupted, of course, when I jolted awake in the middle of the night and saw a dimly illuminated man on our veranda. As you might expect, this triggered a fairly substantial bowel movement in me, which was exacerbated by the man turning his head and staring right at me. I screamed and scrambled to turn on the lights, and awoke my dad and cousin in the process. I pointed to the man, whom I had by now presumed to be either a robber or a ghost of some poor soul who had caught some STD and died in that resort, which caused my two family members to scream in terror themselves. In response, the man, now fully illuminated by the lights of our room, held up his hands as if in apology and just... disappeared. A few seconds later, someone knocked on our door.

I think now would be the right time to describe the exact layout of the veranda provided to us by the Puffin. It was an open one, with a few waist-high bars placed for protection, and there were only a few inches between our veranda and the staircase veranda, which was similarly built. If one wanted to, they could easily jump from the staircase one to ours, and subsequently get into our room by sliding open its glass door. Calling this a safety hazard would be quite an understatement.

Anyhow, I peeked through the peephole in our door and saw a middle-aged man with a screwdriver in his hand, smiling awkwardly. My first thought was that this was a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-type situation and he was probably going to kill us all with that screwdriver, but nevertheless, I hesitantly opened the door.

"I'm so sorry," the man squeaked. "The manager sent me to fix the lights in the staircase, but I couldn't get high enough to the one on the veranda without placing my foot on the bars of your veranda, and I sort of slipped and fell into yours before I could adjust my footing."

All three of us stared at him for a few seconds in absolute incredulity. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just a few minutes to 2 AM.

"Um, I don't even know where to begin," my dad croaked after a while. "Please ask your manager to do maintenance during the morning hours from now on."

The next two days passed by without any major incidents, unless you count looking for teabags in your room's cupboards and finding condom packets instead as a major incident. The kittens kept mewing, and we asked for a thorough cleaning of our room the next morning, along with freshly washed mattresses. The food was absolutely disgusting, as was to be expected, but the trip was undeniably memorable. I would suggest every person reading this to take your unassuming family to a brothel on a trip at the soonest.

Looking back, the reviews had been perfectly honest. The mattresses were, in fact, very comfortable, if you ignored all the suspicious stains everywhere.