SUBJ: The Trip to Eilat By Alan Jacobi Haifa, Israel Submitted to HumourNet by Alan Jacobi Our trip to Eilat had been planned for months. Everything was carefully laid out and planned, from our aimlessly drifting between the waves, to our aimfully sweet-talking beautiful Swedish tourists out of their virginity. To our last test we already came prepared. Granted, the shocking Hawaiian shirts and the "just as colorful" shorts we were wearing made us stick out amongst the "commoners" strung up in their uniforms, but this did not even prevent us from giving the third finger to the guard who asked who we were. I scribbled up the last equation while slipping on the webbed shoes and sticking the snorkel into my mouth, and to the sounds of the mini bus honking outside we threw the test papers at the old hags who were supervising the test (whose looks reminded me of vultures looking at their pray, waiting for it to fall so they can enjoy its flesh). Not more than two minutes later we were already on our way to the golden city, the fantasy of every teen in northern Israel. The bags -- carefully packed by our parents, right down to the rubbish such as hats, sun block, and a telephone card -- were thrown immediately on departure into the school trash can, where an organized torching of notebooks (and one old hag who wandered in there in search of evidence of cheating) began to organize. As we all are well aware, the last day of school is best described as: "What can they possibly do to us *now*?" and as such presents lethal danger to anyone in the vicinity -- teachers AND students. That did not bother us at all as we surfed down the stairwell rails, and leaped out from the window to one of the many poles that stood in the school yard ever since that idea of crucifying cheaters (which had sparked up the principle's imagination but had fallen in the parents' committee meeting). We completed the trip to Eilat with no particular difficulties. That was the *last* thing we did with no particular difficulties. Our smiles faded away as we opened up the Mini bus's doors. A searing wave of heat hit us. We stood in the gates of the fabled "Princess" Hotel and took comfort in the notion that we could surgically attach ourselves to the A/C for the duration of our trip. "Who reserved rooms?" a question arose from the crowd. The looks that passed among us cleared up any doubts we had as to our now-desperate situation. "Nobody reserved rooms?" asked one of the victims. "Who the hell was supposed to reserve the rooms?" "I was told Danny would take care of that" said one. Danny, of course, had never heard of the entire thing, and continued to claim that he was told Itai would reserve since he has connections, but Itai claimed to have no connections whatsoever and he was told that Shai had already ordered reservations at the beginning of the year, and Shai thought I won them on "Wheel of Fortune." Sam meanwhile returned from the air conditioned lobby and told us that even the hotel's cellars were booked till the 2000's. Having no other options, we passed from hotel to hotel asking here and there about rooms. Turned out that every single hotel was at 250% capacity at least till the end of the Summer and part of the Autumn. In one of those we met with old friends who told us how they got a special deal on sleeping in the janitor's closet and inside the ice machine. At last, in the outskirts of town, we came upon a rather poorly maintained building with a sign Ho el. (The "T" was lying on the ground beneath the sign.) Still, our condition did not allow us to be picky, and we approached. As the automatic door opened we saw a wild-eyed tourist standing inside arguing with the clerk. Upon seeing the doors open, his eyes widened, he grabbed his bags and dashed outsided laughing maniacally. When he was outside he paused for a minute, turned around pointed at us, and as the door closed behind us he started laughing again, his eyes burning with madness. Shaken up a bit, we dismissed it and approached the desk. We were met by a man looking like someone out of a wanted poster, with a rather large belly, -- not at all covered by his stained undershirt -- holding a cheap wine bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He took a sip from the bottle and politely asked us, "Whaddya want?" One of our more courageous members took up the negotiations while we took a look around. There was a small fish tank above which sat a sign asking not to feed the fish. The sign apparently was taken all too seriously since all of these fish were floating bellies up, and their fishy eyes blank and lifeless. There were a couple of pay phones, a sign that stated there was a recreational room in the basement, and a door that led to the pool (from which, strangely enough, screams were coming). Just off the lobby was a small souvenir store. Meanwhile we received the keys to the two rooms we took. A small test confirmed our suspicion that these two keys were identical to each other (except for the numbers on them). Another small test revealed that actually they were identical to every other key in the hotel (which, later that night, also proved to include the key to the hotel's safe). Upon entering our rooms, we heard some noise from the bathroom. Opening the door carefully, we were met by a giant cockroach, the size of about three blood hounds. In perfect Hebrew, he demanded all our money. Horrified, we shut the door, catching one of its antennas in the jamb. Swearing like a cheated prostitute he pulled on his antenna till it got dismembered and lay on the floor. We were on our way to the phone when we heard several gunshots, and three nice, round holes opened up in the bathroom door. We grabbed the phone and dived behind the sofa, dialing furiously for the reception desk. - "Reception desk, will you please hold?" - "No dammit! What's going on here?" We shouted between gun shots. - "Is there anything wrong?" - "A giant talking roach is in the bathroom -- tried to mug me, and now he's shooting at us!" What would anywhere else in the world cause the desk to "hang up on these weirdos" was met here with frightening comprehension. "There's a shotgun behind the door for that exact purpose. Have a nice day." A short search turned up a loaded shotgun from behind the door. I took off one of my shoes and threw it across the room. The roach turned to shoot the shoe; that mistake cost him his life. We dragged his corpse to the hotel's trash bin and tossed him over another one of his species. Having secured the room, we looked around a bit. We found that the air conditioner had only two options: Siberia or Hell. We chose Siberia. Soon snow started to form above us which went nicely with the static on the three- legged TV with the broken screen from one of the killer roach's bullets. Some eggs were forgotten in the freezer and now it looked like a certain scene from Aliens (the second one). We closed the refrigerator. Pretty soon, we realized that if get bored at night (and lose our common key) we could visit each other through the windows that were closely linked to each other. This left us feeling miserable with the notion that we may: A) Not be able to use the A/C B) Not be able to use the refrigerator C) Not be able to watch TV and D) Have to post guards at night (since any third-rate burglar could just walk into our room (and also, another encounter with one of the "Roaches of Death" was possible). Downstairs we also learned that the automatic door only works in one direction. Inside. It was not in the owner's interest to install sensors on the inner side of the hotel since, as the phrase goes: "He who leaves, never comes back." Having no other choice, we decided to scope out the hotel's features. First, we walked into the souvenir store. It contained hats, T-shirts, various clothing articles, cameras, batteries, bathing suits, and other various objects, all having one thing in common: All of them were obviously used. Some of them even bore labels with the names of the previous owners on them. Upon exit a colorful brochure caught our eyes. It told of the hotel's special program for this week. Ugh! Special Diet evening in the pool! The pool is gonna be full of fat people, only 300 pounds and above may enter. BUT the evening starts only in the evening. The pool, for now, was ours. Sprinting, we arrived at the pool and with no further hesitation jumped inside. It was not long till we noticed a few interesting facts: - There were plastic bags floating in the water - The water was salty - The water was foul, salty, and had plastic bags floating in it. Actually, none of these made our mental alarms go off. It was when Sam yelled that he'd been stung by a jellyfish that realized the water had been taken from the sea, from the hotel's beach. Yes, right next to the "Contaminated water, do not swim!" sign. We darted outside and headed to the showers. Since the hotel's taps produced the exact same water as in the pool, we had to shower with the spring water we had brought with us to drink on the bus. We would have checked out at that instant, but it seems the clerk had disappeared. I put a dime into one of the pay phones and immediately heard chewing sounds. That moment I could have sworn I heard a burp. I would have been shocked, but after the encounter with the roach, I decided anything's possible. We reached the decision that we would stay in the Recreation Room in the basement for the night, and head back on the first bus tomorrow. The Recreational Room turned out to be a pretty elegant room, equipped with several early-century pinball machines, whose only fault was lacking any small silvery balls inside them. Also there were some obviously out-of-order arcade machines, and some pool tables. For security reasons, the owners tied the cue sticks to the table with a long metal chain. That is acceptable in many places. What is NOT acceptable in many places is also tying all the balls to each other, and all of them to the table, which was also nailed to the floor. This design, by the way, spread throughout the hotel right up to the chained soap bar and towels. In our despair, we went back up to our rooms, and tried to shield ourselves from the A/C's chill, which went right through our summer clothes (and which would simply not stop once it had began its deadly operation). The next morning, exhausted from the cold and lack of sleep, we went down to the lobby to arrange our much-awaited departure. Several new items in the souvenir store caught our eyes. We recognized them as our own personal items, among which was Sam's "Asthma medication pump." The primitive clerk explained to us in three languages why we could not leave without an additional payment which he called: "The payment for the non payment." Being as anxious to leave as we were we almost paid that ridiculous bill when some unlucky tourist wandered into the hotel and the doors opened briefly. We grabbed our bags and made a run for it. We welcomed the scorching heat as it cleansed us from the memories, and we ran to the nearest bus station. On the bus we met with our friends who had taken the janitor's closet and ice machine offer. They seemed to be suffering from a similar lack of sleep, and the unmistakable look of someone on the brink of loosing his sanity. We eyed them suspiciously trying to cover our own "scars" as they did the same, neither of us wanting to appear as losers. "So, how was it?" we asked... "Great..." they said, dimly aware they were not fooling us. "How was yours?" "Fantastic" we said with an "if you won't tell, I won't" look. "Ok, so we both had a great time," they said, entering into our tacit agreement. Silence lurked over the rest of the trip home as we left Eilat -- passing on our way a bus full of obscenely fat people all hunched over some brochures... The End (Note: This story is strictly fictional. Neither I, nor my friends, have ever gone through such a nightmare). ******************************************************************** Anyone w/out a Sense of Humor Is At The Mercy of The Rest of Us. :-) ******************************************************************** To subscribe to the "HumourNet" mailing list, send the following command to "lyris@lyris.net" (without quotes): subscribe HumourNet your_name, your_city, your_state or country where "your_name" is your real name, etc. Thus, my subscription request would read: subscribe HumourNet Vince Sabio, Washington, D.C. Be sure to turn off sigs and other extraneous info in your mailer before sending a request to a list server. --961020--