trample on the little flowers or: doom in a $4 room

The Doom Apes have come for the people of the Sweet Flowers Motel, and for its gods. For Phlox, who craves apes, Prime, who makes war against all gods, and Aggie, who gave me two names so good I couldn't choose.

learn
 

Your fur is black and you have the eyes of a dead man. Your mouth is wide, and your teeth are dead men's teeth. Your hands are stronger and more clever than any mans. You have come a long way. It is growing dark, though it is not dark yet. As the sun rises, you will be gone. 

The game is played with Violence at the Street Level. the Doom Apes are Natural Born Killers (5) and skilled at grappling. Their arms are long (reach 2) and their fingers are like crowbars (lethality 3). They are horrible to look at (threat 3). They can climb and swing freely, and leap from roof to roof. 

The Doom Apes are bound to deliver the intended deaths, and only the intended deaths, of their victims. 

 

If a Doom Ape kills a victim in any other way but their intended death, they lose all of their killing power. Their only goal becomes to survive until morning, and their intended death is to be pulled apart by the fingers of Doom Apes. They may not take their own lives. If any of the Doom Ape's victims are killed by anyone else, a random Doom Ape suffers the fate above. 

You begin the game perched on the power lines outside the motel. Start a timer for 45 minutes. When the timer ends, it is sunrise, and the game is over. If all 17 victims have been delivered to their intended deaths, the Doom Apes will be reborn as men, naked and tender. If 13 or more victims have been delivered, the Doom Apes work continues. If less than 13 victims have been delivered, the Doom Apes are marked for death by their kind.  

 

 Encounter: check whenever a new area is entered or re-entered.

1-3: the occupant(s) of the room. if it's a hallway, path, parking lot or the pool, roll for a random victim. 
4-5: the occupant, plus a random victim.
6: a random victim, but not the occupant

 

 The Victims

1. No one. roll another encounter in 1d6 minutes.
2. No one. roll another encounter in 1d6 minutes.
3. No one. roll another encounter in 1d6 minutes.
4.  No one. roll another encounter in 1d6 minutes.
5. Lashsay Killgore is glorious, glamorous, surged to the barbie degree. Her nails are so sharp they've popped like catwoman claws through the white costume gloves she wears. She's spitting from the zyn she's packing into a pink mug that says Babe, like the pig. She will die honorably, in single combat
6.  Duncan Valentine Lashay wants him bad. He's got the ladies on his arms and he's got the long red trenchcoat and the tight black pants. he's got a long black cigarillo and the worst spray tan you've ever seen. He's got to die the tender, beautiful death of a true romantic.  
7. The ladies: in a bikini, always squinting, is Eliza Louisa, and she's gotta get in your face to see ya. She's vindictive and brave as a tiger and she loves Dawn Needat very very much. They are never apart. Dawn Needat is scrawny and pigeontoed with a desperate look in her eye and a shaved head. she's got a pack of scavenged cig butts and anytime someone is going to throw something away she asks if she can have it, so she can look at it from all angles and eventually conclude it's worthless. It is not their time to die, and they must not. 
8.  Little Lina Coughlin. The owner-operator the Sweet Flowers Motel. she wears a big green blazer with big sharp shoulders and she wears big turquoise rings on her tiny frail fingers and big hornrim glasses on her tiny sharp nose. she must die believing her death was an act of god. 
9.  Donetta Dill has lived here for a while now, doing oily reiki and raking in the dough. She looks much older than she is; her hair resists any attempt to change its color from slate grey, and her face is folded and tired. she's got a big ouroboros tattoo on her chest, elaborate dragon art on her acrylics, and dresses like a Japanese schoolgirl. she's supposed to be immortalized in her beauty forever when she dies. 
10.  Amber Anglin checked into her room to stakeout a bust that was supposed to go down on a parking lot drug deal. she never checked back out; the deal came and went, but she refused to admit she missed it. with every passing day she discovers a new layer of this conspiracy, and the stakes get higher... right now, the state governor might be implicated in a plot to smuggle drugs in the bellies of little girls... her lips are chewed, her short hair fried stuff and sharp by bleach. her lips are chewed, her tank top is too small, and she's got like 9 different belts criss-crossing her waist, one of which holds her gun. she 's supposed to die feeling something inside of her that shouldn't be there.  
11. Dion Bane has been here since he was discharged. He's got a butt chin, perfect pearly nails, and disgusting teeth. In the center of his bulging pecs is a photorealistic tattoo of a snarling doberman. He's supposed to die with teeth as shiny as his nails. 
12. Penny Puddin has been here for a while too, fucking who she has to and trying not to think about it. has got deep bruise purple eyes and she's always fidgeting with the white lace of her chamise and the sapphires on the necklace she'll never take off. she'd fight for the hand of Duncan Valentine. she's supposed to die without knowing if she's dreaming or not. 
13. Bennie Gage is fat and beautiful and worldly, with cat-eye sunglasses and a big hand-woven straw hat. Her wide smile is all glittery with lipstick and she must die satisfying her lust for life.
14. Booker Gage is the worst; white guy dreads and crusty lip rings, pink distressed jeans and a Blue Eyes White Dragon t-shirt. He must die like a dog. 
15.  IRS Agent Trenton Sloan, who has one arm and no fear left in him. He's serious, dedicated, determined to understand how this place is still open, and he must die like a cartoon. 
16.  Ina Anna. She is like a lizard herself; cold-blooded, and eager to prove it by holding a frigid palm to your face. She is old, and friendly with everyone here; it is her aloe plants that liven each of the suites. The Man from Meslam alone is her enemy, and she hisses like a snake in his presence. She must die nurturing the growth of something else. Whatever it is, physical or conceptual, living or unliving, it will bloom with bright flowers.  
17.  Halina Ivory. She's bugeyed, with a shock of red hair and a slightly-too-small blue tracksuit that covers up the more-than-slightly insensitive tribal tattoos down her spine. She must die holding that pose. 
18. King Nixon. He's tall and skeletal, with long, beautiful curly hair and astrological tattoos that turn his face into the wheel of heaven. His jean jacket and his jean pants are almost completely sewn up in jesus patches. his fingers twitch in his driving gloves. He must die Christlike.
19. Pudena Nun. She's short, and her body is covered in tacky horror tattoos; ghostface chases teens around her tummy, jason stares stoically out from her shoulder. She wears a loose-fitting daffodil colored suit and matching gloves. Her hair is done up in a crocheted headscarf she made herself. She and King Nixon are disgustingly in love; you can't pry them off of each other.  Both are assassins, both here to kill Amber Anglin, who has grown too close to the governor's involvement in a ring which smuggles drugs in the bellies of little Catholic schoolgirls. she must know her killer is coming, and when they arrive, they must be masked. 
20.  Garland Killgore: A holy man, a sign spinner of incredible skill. This is Lashay's brother Garland, and he will take no other work, nor will he take money from her or Lina. He lives off of the coke zeros from the lobby, bouncing and juggling them off the sign for the Sweet Flowers Motel. He alone knows you are coming. He will greet you, and perform death rites for each of your kills, consecrating them with soda. He must die last, with quiet mercy.

Then there is the Man from Meslam. 
He is always in Room 13. He is seven feet tall, and bald. his skin sags off of his bones. his skin is hot and blotchy. he is sweating all the time; his grey sweat shirt is completely wet and clings to his body. it has a huge brown stain all down the front. he is otherwise naked. his hands are huge. he picks chicken off the bone in front of the camera and forces it into his anus. when he shits, it spills from his mouth. he must die being cleansed completely. when he does, a breeze blows through all of the rooms, light and clean, like it comes from the sea.   

 

 

 The Sweet Flowers Motel

 

Rooms 5-9 have a front door and a sliding back door. There's a little window to the west of the front doors and a bigger window to the west of the back door. The bathroom is to the west of the front door when you first come in, and has a cheap plastic tub, a sink, and a mirrored cabinet.  the bed is in the north west corner of the room, and there's a tv across from it on the upper north corner. 

Rooms 15-18 are as above but are smaller, with no back door and no tv. 

 

In the suites, the bathroom is to the south of the door, and larger than the ones in the standard rooms, with jets in the tub. The beds are in the southwest corners, and there's a big tv on the eastern wall.  there's two big windows along the western walls above a small couch, and no back door. they all have a kitchenette in the northwest corner with an electric stove and a microwave, and three aloe plants; two on the windowsill and one by the bed. 

 

 1: Entryway

Vending machine in the northwest corner. Every so often it growls like a beast and spits 1d6 coke zeros onto the floor. Sometimes they have holes punched in them like there's something sharp in there committing soda murders. The carpet by the machine is sticky and brown.  

 

2: Lobby

There's two faux leather armchairs against the west wall and three on the south wall. they're all scratched like a cat got after them bad. The windows on the east wall are almost as yellow and sticky as the flypaper. Every so often, the singing catfish on the wall squeaks out a little gob of I Don't Want to Miss A Thing and its mouth closes around an incompetent fly. The dripping ac unit rattles and groans along. Behind the particleboard desk there is a big display of peacock feathers, fanned so that, when she's sitting, it looks like Lashay Killgore the receptionist has a glorious tail. 

 

Duncan Valentine and the ladies are in here; he wants to rent Room 7 and he wants it NOW.  

 

3: Staff Bathroom

The light in here is broken, and when the door is closed it's pitch black. a distressed and slightly water damaged zebra clipped from a safari magazine stares blindly out from the wall. It shares this dark place with a gummy bar of soap, shaped like a lobster. 

 

4: the Back Office

The blinds are bent and dirty with dead flies, there's a water stain on the ceiling and a vanilla Virgin Mary candle burning on the big metal desk next to an open bottle of gin. There's two little rocks glasses next to the gin; one is empty, and the other one has gin and a little collection of drowned flies. 

 

This is Little Lina Coughlin's office. The desk comes up to her tiny frail chest when she's standing, and she takes drunk naps under it curled up like a cat. 

 

Room 5

This Donetta Dill's room. The bed in here has been stood on end and crowded into the corner to the immediate east of the front door. In its place, a massively heavy daybed of dark wood and silk sheets on the futon looms. There's massage coil and an incense burner on the bedside table, which has been shoved awkwardly into the middle of the room. at its foot, a chunky panasonic boombox plays "enter the wu-tang." stacked next to it are a collection of healing vibrational frequency tapes, all of them played on the hand-pan by a guy named Guru Ashwagandha. 

 

There's a whole skincare store worth of anti-aging kelp products cluttering the bathroom, and a covered plastic bowl of muddy henna hair dye on the floor by the toilet. behind a poster detailing the location of the chakras and instructions for locating the rare "blood dragon" chakra, a little hole in the drywall has been made, and a roll of about $8,000 has been stored. 

 

Room 6

This is Amber Anglin's base of operations. In here the TV is always tuned to 1000 Pound Sisters and the windowsills are full of chipped little gnome figurines. There's a set of binoculars on the dresser, next to a police badge and a dinky little film camera. 

 

There's a towel under the door to the bathroom but it's okay; it's been converted into a darkroom. there's like 30 pictures developing of all the other people who stay here and have stayed here, many of them shot though the windows into the other rooms. most of them have writing on them that says stuff like "crazy? or LYING" "on DRUGS" "Human Monster" in sharpie. there's also some photos of the shadows of the power-lines on the sides of the motel walls, betraying a sophomoric but sensitive talent...

 

Room 7

Unoccupied, and foggy with insecticide, enough to sting your eyes and make you choke back puke. The bed is made neatly but has an indent in the mattress and pillow, the silhouette of a someone who laid there too long. the covers nestle down into it slightly. In the far corner of the bottom drawer of the dresser in there's a pack of american spirit turquoise, still in the cellophane, and a zippo lighter with a little log cabin engraved in it.  

Room 8
Dion Bane has lived here for a while. There's two huge chunky triple-finger diamond rings in the ashtray on the beside table along with all the cigarette butts, and a worn paperback called The Subtle Serpent of the Orient on the bed. Under the mattress there's a bolt action hunting rifle (5 rounds), 2 extra magazines, and a combat knife. there's a cummed-in nudie mag in on the floor at the foot of of the cracked mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

 

in the bathroom, the towel is sopping wet with grey water and the toothbrush in the sink is totally bloody. 

Room 9

It's nasty in here!! the sheets are all stained and there's a big tank of nitrous with a shrinkwrap of a dauchsaund getting blown up like a balloon on it and a mask connected. there's a velvet painting of a horse on the wall and a half eaten snickers under a pillow. 

 

In the bathroom the sink is dripping onto the candy-flavored condoms and the radio is playing an MMA: Boner Jeeter vs Jonah Peter.

10: Suite Hallway
Smells very strongly of pine-sol masking the scent of black mold. Linoleum floors, blue and white with orange koi fish patterns. The suite doors are all along the western wall, and a large sliding door on the eastern wall opens to the pool.  

Room 11 (Suite)
This is where Bennie Gage lives with her son Booker. A big Japanese steel chef knife sits on the kitchenette counter next to some browning apple slices. There's tar tracked across the carpet. On the bed, sky blue sheets and a gigantic pile of pillows, all with needlepoint swans on them  The bathroom has lilac walls, hand painted, and silly little white clouds painted on the ceiling. The whole space is heavy with expensive perfume.

In the bottom of the kitchenette garbage can, underneath the bag, there's a ziplock bag of dirt weed, a holographic grinder, and a slightly damp pack of papers. This is Booker's stash. 

Inside one of the swan pillows there is a little mother-of-pearl inlaid box with an amber glass jar of a hybrid straight from Hindu Kush, a and little jade grinder and pipe set. This is his mother's stash. She knows about his, he doesn't know about hers. 

Room 12 (Suite) 
This is the room of Trenton Sloan. Tidy, well-taken care of, everything in its place except for a filing cabinet, which was clearly dragged in here from outside and has torn up the carpet in a crash-landing trail leading right to its heavy grey feet. Inside are the particulars of the motel's accounting. Next to it, a set of stainless steel dumb bells. All the plants in here are dead and have turned to mush. 

Room 13 (Suite)
a nightmare of grime. This is the domain of the Man from Meslam.  there are blackout curtains over the windows and all of the lightbulbs are dead. you can feel the walls, floor, ceiling are coated with an oily grease like teenage skin. roaches pop and hiss underfoot. the air is foul, thick with the smell of opiod body odor, raw sewage, rotting food and food too processed to rot. The only light comes from a desktop monitor livestreaming the room from a multi-lens web camera setup that looks extremely expensive. everyone in the chat is posting passages from Nergal and Ereshkigal , pleading again and again for earth to be spared. In the pale green flicker of the screen, everything seems underwater. Strangely, the aloe plants thrive, fronds fat as a wrist, but their insides have turned noxious, acidic and carbonated. behind the computer chair, an altar of beer cans and ragged chicken bones. 

 Room 14 (Suite) 
Ina Anna lives here, in a riot of green and flourishing life; potted plants hanging from the ceiling and extending twining limbs and leaves to loop throughout the room. The shower running, flashing, overflowing with ferns and broad-fronded tillandsia. A heat lamp in the corner by the bed glows gently on an open-air gecko habitat, and the things cling to the walls and the ceiling and the lightbulbs, dropping onto the pillows of the bed which is scattered with mulch and lightly fungal. 

Room 15
Empty, but stinks of stale weed. The back window isn't closed all the way, and some stray leaves blow around on the carpet underneath the ceiling fan's idle wind. Booker Gage sneaks in here to smoke weed and cry. 

Room 16
This is where Halina Ivory lives and draws and jacks off after her janitorial shifts at the Catholic school.  Has a little salvaged elementary school desk and a chipped white dresser competing for space under the window. On the desk, a sharp sharp pencil, a bowl of stale sour cream and onion chips and a bunch of half-finished sketches of dancers that reveal the burgeoning specter of lust. 

The bathroom mirror has been turned into an image board, so that only your face is visible, surrounded by a flock of crying angels and great artists; Degas, Renoir, Lautrec, Manet, Sargent. They weep into your hair, or prop an easel up against your ear.

Room 17 
Empty, with a suspicious bulge under the carpeting where King Nixon and Pudenda Nun have stored a katana, a switchblade, a gold plated uzi (32 rounds), an extra magazine, and two suicide pills.  

Room 18
King Nixon and Pudenda Nun have just checked in.  Has a mouse problem; they're hard at work making their way through the King James. There's a pharmacy of prescription bottles on the nightstand, and two duffle bags on the bed, one half unzipped with the snout of a big plush panda sticking out. In the other is a bottle of GHB, a pair of aprons, and two scalpels. 

In the bathroom, the pipe holding the showerhead has almost rusted through completely and it dangles tenuously above the the tub, which is full of twelve bags of ice, slowly melting.

19: Storage Shed
Rusty nails on the floor, the glint of paint cans. There's a weedwhacker and a push mower in here, a shovel and a pack of four raid bug bombs. A gas can, half full. 

A door on the south wall has a fresh coat of paint, shining in the cobwebbed dust of the shed. It could be a door in a nice neighborhood, but it isn't.  

20:  Little Lina Coughlin's Room
The tiny twin bed is crowded into the southwest corner. A heavy, gigantic driftwood cross dominates the wall above it, severe and judgemental. The room has no windows. A heavy wooden chest on the east wall is filled entirely by the largest, thorniest dildo you've ever seen, nearly three feet long, resplendent on a satin cushion, multiplied by the mirrored interior of the chest. Alongside it, three heavy bottles of gin, one of amyl nitrate. 

On the northeast wall, scarcely able to open because of the proximity of the bed, is the door to the bathroom, decadent and modern, clearly a separate addition built at great expense. It is a steam room, just shy of a sauna, with walls of exposed and fragrant wood, and a paneled glass roof that offers an emerald view of the tree overhead. A chic little toilet with a chic little bidet cozies coyly in one corner. 

21: Path
A lumpy, tree-lined footpath of black asphalt that connects the Rooms 5-9, the Storage Shed, and the Pool. Even at night, it retains the tarry, sticky heat of the day, clinging to feet and claiming stray leaves and cigarette butts. 

22: Patio
A stretch of concrete approximating a patio. The sliding back doors of rooms 5-9 open out onto it. it's sparsely populated by sun-bleached beach-chairs. A thick shrub of holly and wasps lines its north edge, providing a stinging sort of privacy. 

23: Pool
The pool is warm and still, its circulatory system slowly choking on a glut of algae and dead skin cells. A little bird tries not to drown. 

24: The Trees 
The trees are lovely; they cannot be otherwise. The ground between them is coarse and blistered with warring anthills and sand. shocks of daylilies at the foot of each tree, a lone hammock belonging to Donetta Dill and a set of wooden wind chimes work together to provide a quiet counterpoint. 

25: Behind the Trees
Down through stiff grass and thorns to a sewage pond, then up to another freeway. The sky seems narrow. 

26: East Parking Lot.
King Nixon and Pudenda Nun have a long, low two seater chopper that they built together. Halina Ivory has a struggling vespa. Lashay Killgore has a bright pink lifted jeep that tells everyone she beat cancers ass (and didn't break a nail). Little Lina Coughlin has her dented mini cooper: honk if you love Jesus. honk to be saved, honk if you're lost, honk if you miss home. The street light here doesn't work. 

27: West Parking Lot
Donetta Dill has a sexy expensive ass charger here, looking like a jungle cat next to Penny Puddin's little sick kitten of a fiat 500. A parking space away, Deon Bain's white pickup rots. It was his grandfathers, and he hates it and the old man bitterly. Amber Anglin had a car here once, long since repossessed, and Bennie Booker has a volkswagon bus, sky blue. Next to it, Trenton Sloan's rented SUV looks like a spaceship. Ina Anna has a little hippy beetle with a crazed contraption to make it run on sunflower seed oil, the whole thing decked out with daises. 
The Man from Meslam has no car here. He was brought by another. 

28: Parking Lot Entry/Exit
A huge patch of lilies, tall as a man. If Garland Killgore was not here, there would be no sign at all, but he is always here, and always the last to leave.
 

real life