Numerous social circles saw it as the last remaining vestige of the old world, like a lost city, a sanctuary for the damned, those who belong to another time, one that was rapidly disappearing. Nowhere could a more peculiar and thought-provoking combination of individuals of such diverse origins be found: elite socialites on designer drugs intermingled with corrupt diplomats and government officials, heiresses to giant corporate conglomerates chatted nonchalantly with drug lords and international felons, exotic royals adorned with black diamonds spoke of yacht-culture with criminal bankers managing fraudulent investment funds. It was the best kept secret of the underground world to which they all belonged, an exclusive subterranean labyrinth of which they were members, a debauched wonderland of sin and pleasure, where every sensation was available to satiate, for a price. It was located in an old, abandoned hotel in a top secret mountainous region, renovated by an eccentric billionaire entrepreneur for the most sinister and perverse dregs of high society to flaunt their blood-drenched cash, satisfy their insidious lusts, their illegal appetites, their pathological urges and hatch plans and schemes and social strategies to artificially ameliorate humanities spiritual decay.
Rich junkies in white linen shirts and vintage blue denim jeans ripped at the knees swanned about as if it were their own private drug den. To others, it was a haven for shallow, materialistic, ego-driven artists; not interested in the sanctity of creativity or the pursuit of higher beauty, but searching only for fame and wealth, in fact to refer to them as artists is unequivocally false. A savage hoard of psychopathic mercenaries patrolled the premises at all hours and through all four seasons, armed to the hilt with privately patented commando gear and high-tech combat weaponry. Elites, exiled from their native countries for heinous acts of criminality, sauntered casually through the plush hallways, laughing off scandals and comparing their sordid crimes like athletes compare feats of strength, endurance and agility, gloating to one another about their most severe examples of unethical behaviour and malevolently mocking their victims. Media moguls and power hungry celebrities flew in via private jets and decadent helicopters, dining on three Michelin star cuisine and sipping champagne from crystal glassware; their every command successfully arranged and organised by a host of private servants, who cowered nearby them for the duration of their sacrilegious escapade. It was spoken of secretly, amongst the downtrodden, spirit-broken employees of the notorious hotel, that their guests’ demonic cruelty and supreme disregard for the wellbeing of others was undeniably unparalleled.
Imagine, if you will, a nomadic peasant: hands in pockets, fumble-bumbling loose change and cigarette butts, tripping over crumbling rubble and tumbling onto the ground, stumbling and grumbling – like a gambler whose bluff was rumbled – mumbling to himself in jumbled-up sentences, his nose numb from huffing and puffing in the freezing cold; this was the diametrically opposite human being to the wealthy elites who frequented Hotel Sovad, the absolute antithesis, the polar extreme. Such a man was viewed as vermin, in their poisonous minds, something to be eviscerated from the face of the planet, a vile disease, a sickly virus which ought to be cleansed, annihilated, so the earth can be purified and their futuristic, ideal utopian dreamland can arise from the ashes of history, thus proclaiming all infinite time before its ascension as: the primitive dark ages. It matters little to them, the unimaginable suffering which ordinary, innocent citizens must endure in order to bring into reality their twisted ideological vision; for no price is too high, no number of helpless children flailing in excruciating agony is too many, so long as they can enforce their distorted conception of reality and ethics on others, so long as they can construct the eternal plastic pyramids of modernity, no act is too heinous, no guttural scream too haunting, no living nightmare of pain and torture too agonising.
Short Story by Stamos Mardou