Welcome to the Q(ueue) - Episode 4 - Mosquita Muerta

[The following farcical serial fiction may be unsuitable for readers under 18]

{In the EU’s newest member state—Hallico—ruthless competition exists for exceedingly wealthy, eccentrically depressed clientèle seeking luxurious euthanasia. Digging its niche in this hotel-cum-hospice market via personalized service, a family-run boutique competes with 5-star properties to put these mortality tourists in the grave.}

“—guess I’d ask that UN Human Rights Council: Have any of you even held a baby? I mean, truly been present to precious life’s pure beginning? Seen that delicate head burrow into your chest, felt that soft hand wrap round your finger, and heard their giggles to keep from crying over Taylor’s ended Eras Tour?”

Wall Street Journal Travel and Vacations columnist PEPPER CARLSON (31), on-stage moderator for tonight’s Hospice Hotel panel as part of Hallico’s Palliative Care Conference, confusedly blinked at impassioned WILLEM ZETELAAR (50), Limbo’s house doctor awash in applause from an INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE packed in like sardines to Halle’s Obligatory Museum of Modern Originals (HOMOMO); more precisely an expansive wing therein housing the Societal Insincerity exhibit selected for event set-up ease with its artist-installed emptiness.

Willem, swiveling in his vermilion Saintluc Coach Lounge panelist chair from Ms. Carlson toward the International Audience while he adjusted his wedding band and considered his own grown kids’ innocent years, “Because if they had, they’d too believe babies deserve as dignified an off-switch as adults. Our market research team, studying premature expiration frequency across generations, has discovered three data trends. First, from MRIs, that deep depression digs brain caverns. Second, that agonizing apathy, according to patient psychiatric records, sucks its victims into yawning darkness where they become irrevocably lost. And third, that early-onset melancholia, as witnessed during child focus groups, disproportionately affects those under one. It’s based on these discussions—in-fact—that Limbo provides discounted room rates to all infants!”

Nonplussed Pepper gazed across what had turned into a standing ovation. Knowing the Q didn’t take reservations for minors, she looked with a modicum of hope to the death doctor seated beside him in a long-sleeved Chantilly lace dress from Yves Saint Laurent.

Setting her paloma masquerading as an agua fresca pomelo on the curvaceous abstract end table, Saki Fernandez was not about to be outshone. “It’s all about balance.”

The journalist’s hunched shoulders dropped and she caught herself containing a smile farther from the organizers’ impartiality expectations.

“Since opening the Q’s doors in 2004, we’ve offered freedom from suffering to thirty-one thousand three hundred thirty-three guests as of last night. And I’m pleased to say, thirty-one thousand three hundred three of them have chosen the pentobarbital.” Pushing through claps via her headset microphone, “An industry-leading 99% unaliving rate!,” before being enveloped by a palm-slapping crescendo.

Saki smirked at lip-pursed Willem.

When the journalist’s stiffened upper-arm joints had scraped her ears once more, she comprehended why her editor—whose case of the crabs Pepper let slip last office holiday party—had championed her for a conference-paid trip to this metropolis hugging the North Sea.

“In that time, the Q has annually employed a staff of eighty-plus people who’ve all been from my husband and I’s children, siblings, parents, and extended relatives. That’s to say, we’ve satisfied labor demands solely by relying on our family’s dedication to each other and the provision of this safe, personalized escape for a most discerning clientèle.”

A blasted peasant this self-righteous one was. Willem, sipping spring water from his Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani bottle, did not regret his recent infidelity sparked by the hate-freaking opportunity at Bar Van Der Space Slut with a certain Q front office manager.

“Along those lines, I’ve just learned that one of my daughters is giving us a new blessing nine months from now.”

Saki basked in further applause.

Discussion train off the rails from her planned line of questions, the panel conductor discreetly popped a Zyn from her Ann Taylor high rise trouser pant pocket and succumbed to tabloid fodder, “That’s fantastic! And who by chance will be the lucky parents?”

Beaming, “We’ve not met this mystery man yet, but Kiko can’t stop raving about him.”

Exuberant whistles peppered clapping.

Scanning around cool as you like, Dr. Willem Zetelaar swallowed chunky, sour saliva in the absence of a rubbish bin.

“—told that parasite formerly known as my agent looking to leech me one last time with an offer from some hot auteur casting his WWII drama—I don’t care if he’s coming off a Palme d’Or; I ain’t playin’ Hitler without makeup and wardrobe!”

Within the Q’s cozy confessional, Takumi Fernandez absorbed frustration from disgraced six-time Academy Award nominee FREDDIE FITZGERALD (41) somehow showing no signs of calm, notwithstanding all kinds of affection from emotional support chihuahua Claudia nuzzled in his crotch.

Winless following each invitation to Hollywood’s biggest night, the impatient actor had bared heart and soul most recently in an Oscar-bidding role for the film that fused “Forrest Gump” and “Philadelphia.” Unfortunately for Mr. Fitzgerald, critics and audiences alike were less fond of brays, crinkled fingers, and drool drops dominating his slow character’s gay love scene.

Lying lengthwise on a cushioned parota settee perpendicular to Takumi in his beige egg chair, Freddie further ranted, “And right when I was about to stick a size fourteen foot fifty-five hundred miles through the phone into his mouth, a microcosm of my career came into view.”

Pausing for dramatic effect as he’d done during innumerable interviews with enraptured TV hosts privileged by his appearance, “That of my Netflix nature documentary feeding Fruit Roll-Ups to uncontacted Amazonian tribes. While you were busy ignoring friends and family fixed to a digital square of those moving images, I was on the other end ignoring cast and crew five feet away forging friendships burgeoning into a family from together dodging six-foot arrows, because I was too busy hoping to be an image that would mesmerize you; you, whom I’d likely never meet nor be patted on the back by for presenting perfect entertainment; you, who are a meaningless meat vehicle blissfully unaware of being hurtled through the Milky Way after having taken for granted being glued to the ground by gravity.”

The hotel’s Saint Laurent silk-crepe-jacketed feelings consultant, nodding and noting how Freddie had seamlessly included him in his scornful scorched-earth path, brought boiling anger bubbles to a simmer by silently crooning part of their property’s pre-shift anthem. ‘—when said by guests, in so many words, Screw you pests, we’ll study like nerds, to pass their tests, regurgitating like birds, feeding chicks in nests, before polishing dropped turds, until satisfaction crests.’ And when that didn’t work, he totally tuned out.

After all, if he stretched his head close enough to the golden ‘Q’ trickling water through its tail into a marble font nestled within an entwined-vine wall, he could vaguely make out the latest chisme running rampant about the identity of Kiko’s baby-daddy.

Declaratively stabbing his broom into the center of the parota dance floor during a much-deserved break from thankless table-setting, commis de salle KENJI NISHIDA (18) tried to persuade his cousin behind the bar that all roads led to Heiden Street, “It’s obviously the Rusty Trombone bouncer.”

Donning her adventurously-buttoned YSL white cotton poplin shirt under a silk pinstripe vest as she polished Waterford glassware for dinner service in Baile de Los Muertos, Honoka Fernandez conceded, “On the one hand, he’s got a nice butt. On the other, last I heard my sister reference chocolate starfish, she was like, guacala…”

Kenji—his Grinder bio indirectly judged—fell swiftly back into organizing cutlery.

“I heard he’s a cheesemonger at Constipé,” claimed house car driver WATARU NISHIDA (52) with hand over mouth to his nephew MIGUEL FERNANDEZ (38) behind the parota bellstand in the Q’s buzzing lobby.

The bell captain, reviewing today’s printed due-ins and recalling Kiko’s lactose intolerance, remained dubious of her going for some fromagerie’s Gouda-slinger.

Glimpsing a satin pique shirt collar curled above the grain de poudre jacket of his cart-rolling bellhop, Miguel artfully guided this young man away from the throng of guest families excited for guided tours of the morgue, funeral home, and cemetery. The bellman’s boss, unlucky since making some aluxes quite cross on holiday, couldn’t afford unforced errors from his department.

He flattened the bellman’s offending collar, and only then, did he allow those stacked bolsas en route to the Burnt Woman suite, to be delivered to its occupant; a past hedge fund manager who pearl-dived for fun. The charismatic billionaire, shopping and performing pro-bono evidence collection with Halle’s marine homicide unit during his stay, was, for the purposes of Heiden boutique sales and city safety, sadly departing on the morrow.

Covering his mouth too as he turned back to Wataru, but with his filtered guest list like a play-calling NFL defensive coordinator, “Do you know many traffic tickets she’s had torn up?” Off Wataru’s head-shake, “Let’s put it this way: the woman’s been riding more than her moped around Halle’s constables.”

The service elevator ascended for EOD Shu Fernandez sharing a ride with orderly Junya Nishida. She was on her way to deactivate smoke detectors in the Alux suite so that neither its pint-sized incoming guest, nor others in-house, would be bothered by incessant screeches. In other words, they were prepared to welcome a brewery owner’s widow who wouldn’t imbibe without her Treasurer Luxury Black fags.

And if Uncle Miguel could be believed (questionable as he regaled one with his horse race winnings), the widow had loaded her Praetor 600 before takeoff from the Amalfi Coast with beer—barrels.

Junya: “But have you seen the jawline on Quelque Chose de Pretentieux’s sommelier?”

“Yeah,” shrugged Shu.

“It could slice through trees!”

“But also my mum’s papaya.”

“He wouldn’t hack that.”

“Says who?”

“His Patois tongue.”

At the risk of taking too long a tangent on maternal fruit, Shu let her mother’s cousin pass through parting doors.

A smug smile stopped short of crossing his lips, having been radioed to handle a second-floor guest purportedly finger-painting his diarrhea on hall walls. On what had the congressman relapsed? If Junya had been a betting man, as season-pass seats shared with Miguel at Break-a-Leg racecourse suggested, the orderly would’ve gone big on ayahuasca.

Chancla-clad housekeeping manager Estefania Fernandez, inspecting the vacant Chicomóztoc suite’s seven travertine stone statues erected within as many niches, smelled vinegar on them. An unforgivable cleaning blunder. Her grandniece Yui, butler for the Q’s original suite, would be redistributed to the hotel crypt to toil away toothbrushing Estefania’s leather sandal collection. “On whom are most people wagering in your pool?!”

Chef Concierge Ayase Fernandez arranged watches just so atop the walk-in wardrobe’s central buffet. Each of these expeditiously mailed timepieces were being given gratis to Chicomóztoc’s next guest; also known as the world’s sexiest wrist model. Respective maisons so craved that their jewelry be the last to grace his wrist, that if it pleased the model, all were willing to make child sacrifices on this negotiating chest.

When said pieces had evenly caught the wagon-wheel chandelier’s light, he supplied the wholesaler of Heiden’s scented stationer—Gli Alberi Sono Sopravvalutati—to his metiche grandmother unencumbered by closed-toe shoes despite that abhorrent foot fungus, “Giuseppe Materazzi!”

“But had you considered one of those vatos at We Zijn Misschien Gebakken?,” posed That Mexican OT to stoically stood Diego Fernandez. Nice and toasty on the artist-in-residence suite’s Cleo armchair from Fendi Casa and Marcel Wanders, this baked rapper was chilling far too awesomely to perform at the moment. Also, he was halfway interested in seeing if he could peer pressure the Q’s sober General Manager.

Knowing their next musical act would be delayed on account of a late-Fall snow and that the Q needed Virgil René Gazca another night past his contract, Diego gave up on getting him on-stage on-time.

After two puffs he hoped would coax Virgil into an eventual sound check, the GM passed his proffered blunt back. Meanwhile, he remembered three hippies who’d convinced his wildest child to drop out of Leika University; the same van-life trio co-founding that speculated bakery across Heiden’s canal. “You may be on to something.”

Mr. Fernandez’s small, nostalgic smile was met with a hearty laugh from Virgil.