This Week’s Creative Writing Exercise 1

Focus on the senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing

A hotel room: You have arrived in a very luxurious hotel room. Describe your room. Bring it to life. Include colours, textures, smells, sounds and flavours.

The Hotel Room by Karina

The door creaks open, slowed down by a thick, red carpet below. Circumventing the expanse, unveils a scattering of glass tables and leather chairs, juxtaposing a certain chaos, in an otherwise, orderly place. Blades of light echo throughout, reflecting between mirrors and other gregarious gold objects, sparingly placed about the room. Those shiny, souvenirs were weeping now, round, tears sliding down their slender bodies, collecting into a pools on the ground. The floor to ceiling windows are half open, and yet no breeze or wind penetrates within the vast chamber. Dust had settled some time ago, and now reproduces itself in all corners of the cavernous space. An odd sight – such rich colours and textures, melting and blurring into a gold and red mirage.

Eyes are immediately drawn to a high table at the bar, stocked with all kinds of spirits and mixers. Disco lights project a dancing scene onto the surface of the bar, and yet no music plays. A stool is awkwardly positioned, seemingly too far from the bar for the sitter to be able to lean against it. Deep black marks are etched below the back chair legs, as though the sitter had pushed back away from the table, quite hurriedly. A shot glass lays, cast aside, next to one of those curious, gold objects. Taking the figurine up, it slips between the hands, silky, gilt doll of prestige. The outline feels like that of a muscular individual, firm in pose, clutching tightly a laurel between his own hands.

The brightness of the light makes it difficult to see again. Vision is clipped. Swollen eyes adjust to focus on the farther side of the room. A thin, wisp of smoke. Hazy, at first. More copious, now. Ears adjust to focus on a sizzling, crackling sound. Crisp and burning. The nose flares, upturned in repulsion. The dense air indicates heat is escaping from within. Approaching the kitchen space, reveals something is roasting in the oven. And it’s almost done.