Don’t Stay in Motels with the Word “Diamond” in the Name

 

Well, we’re back from our trip. We drove a total of 30 hours over a long weekend to see our friend get married and to hang out with our college friends and then some other college friends. It was a good time. I mostly stayed awake, and did not need any bees or bears to keep me awake.

And while there weren’t any bears, this is the story of the worst motel in all of America. I won’t tell you the name because that feels mean, but you can try to look it up if you want. It’s in central Kansas. If TripAdvisor actually publishes my review, it will be easier for you to find it, but I doubt they will. I think I broke their rules about threats, personal insults, and profanity all in one post.

But it’s okay. Because I’m going to tell the story here anyway.

We left for our trip after Pete finished work on Friday, which was about 5 pm. We had a long way to go. We figured that all we really needed was a bed, so we picked the cheapest room we could find called it good. The pictures didn’t look that bad.

We rolled into town at about 1:30 a.m. Our motel had happily kept their three-story neon sign on all night (a fact that I’m sure their residential neighbors loved), so it wasn’t too hard to find, even though that little town is pretty creepy at night.

We rang the doorbell to alert whatever on-call staff was supposed to be around, and after a few minutes, the light in the lobby flicked on. A potbellied man in wrinkly boxers answered the door. And by “answered the door,” I mean he fumbled with the lock, swung the screen open, and left us standing outside without a word.

We waited at the check-in desk as he stepped into the restroom next to us and peed for a while. We know because we could hear it. It was loud. What we didn’t hear was him washing his hands, which he definitely did not do.

Check-in went smoothly, considering he only said about two words. He mostly pointed at things and pushed a registration at us. Our “free breakfast” sat in open plastic containers in the corner of the room, and the air was…itchy…somehow.

We laughed and laughed at that weird guy as I tried to unlock our door in the dark. Then Pete tried. And tried. And then he pulled half of a broken key out of the deadlock in the door.

And I said, “There’s going to be a dead body in there.”

We dragged all our things inside and stood in the entryway. The blue chairs near the door sported thick, black stains on the seats and the backs. The carpet was the same.

There was no dead body. Believe me, we looked. But it was musty and smelly and nothing worked. We stood in the entryway trying to muster the courage to touch something. My skin crawled just standing there. I was about eighty percent sure that we would both get fleas and/or bedbugs by just being inside the room for ten minutes.

We peeked in the broken closets and the smelly fridge.

“There’s blood on this wall,” Pete said.

I looked. “Ugh.”

“Yeah. Those are definitely blood spots.”

“It’s on the picture, too.”

We looked at each other. It was 2:30 in the morning. We were so tired.

“I’m afraid I’m going to get herpes from that bed.”

“Pete, there was a broken key in the lock. Do you know what that means? It means that no one even tried to clean this room, and they don’t even know that they’re MISSING a KEY.”

“And there’s blood on the walls.”

“And on those chairs.”

“Yep.”

“We can’t stay here. This is terrible. We’re going to get murdered.”

“Yeah. Um, how did this place get any good reviews?”

“Probably because they kill all their guests before they can post anything negative online.”

“Well, we better get out of here, then.”

So we did. Pete woke that guy up again to see if he’d give us any money back (which we did not expect and did not get), and I sat in the car to guard all our stuff.

We drove around town aimlessly trying to find any hotel that would let us in. We almost slept in our car. The lady at the Super 8 took pity on us and told us about a different motel that had non-smoking rooms and that was cheaper than the Super 8. I will love her forever.

It was 3:15 by the time we found a room. We unlocked our door with ease and crawled into a bed that did not terrify our very souls.

The refrigerator didn’t work there, either, and there was light streaming through the cracks in the door, but we slept, woke up, and didn’t die.

And that’s the story of the worst motel ever. Never stay there. The word “diamond” in the name should have been a clue. No one would give them an award other than themselves.

Or, they stole a bunch of diamonds from their guests and thought, hey, that’s funny. Let’s put that in our name and laugh about it all the time.

Have a nice weekend, everybody.

P.S. – I think that the conversation that we had while I was writing this post was just as ridiculous as this story. Pete was like, “What are you watching?” and I said, “I don’t know. I think it’s the news in Hungarian.” and he was like, “Do we have to watch this? And what do you want on your pizza?” and I said that I wanted corndogs on my pizza and that it smells like corndogs in here, and he said that no, it doesn’t, and then I said that of course it doesn’t smell like corndogs out in the apartment, but deep inside my nose it does, and he asked how he was supposed to be able to smell that.

And then this really old Hungarian movie started playing and Pete went to get the pizza, and I’ve spent the last half hour trying to remember the name of that movie and look it up on the internet, but I can’t find it. It starts with an “S” and ends with a “prost”, I think. If anybody knows what movie that is, please tell me.