Vacancy

Assignment was to incorporate eight specific words into a short story. This is what I got.

Middle of nowhere. No guests. Past midnight. Off-season purgatory.

VACANCY bleeds neon blood through glass veins. It hisses – call it off, call it a night. The flickering fluorescent lobby lights are like a whisper: go to sleep. In the void of this space I can hear the clock stuttering like a stroke victim: c-c-c-clock out. Words from warm mattresses murmur – come, rest easy – tepid from dreams that never left, from guests who never signed in. These rooms have beds that breathe. Beds that talk. Beds that know.

But all this silence and stillness holds more sounds from both the unseen and the unspoken.

Outside, dead vermin hold cardboard signs – one that reads remain and rot and another suggesting leave and live. The sand blowing out in the witching hour breeze sings out: depart now for the desert will cradle this place like a grave cradles a coffin.

The longer I sit here the less certain I become when I clocked in.

Time.

It can be so easily distorted by boredom. So warped by weariness.

I'm staring at a blank logbook. The air thickens to jelly wherein my body sinks deeply and slowly. My elbows are old knuckles. My spine a rusty zipper. If I stand up now thistles will pierce out my skin, spilling crimson juice all across the vinyl floor. I feel my rotation's been retarded. Gravity-bound to this penny-scented desk. Pinned to this swivel chair like a thumbtack to a map. Motel as moon. Motel as failed star.

It must be best to stay seated. Listen to the motel say one thing while the exterior world speaks of another. Do some crosswords or sudoku as I hear them bicker around me. Or drown it all out with the radio.

Yeah. I'll do that.

But it coughs a collection of screaming souls, shrieking like a dentist drill having a miscarriage. I switch it off at the same time I hear a click. The same click of a lighter. The same click of a hammer pulling back. Door-hinge arthritis.

In comes an older man in a wrinkly suit three times his size. An undone tie. A purple neck. And the head of an insect. Mandibles and all. Pincers wiping sweat.

I remind myself to recite the script. To smile with what teeth I still have.

“Welcome, sir. How can I help you this evening?”

Isn't it morning?

“Room 6”, he mouths the words before I hear them. “I checked in earlier.”

Knowing the logbook is blank, I check anyway. A name is suddenly formed by ants.

“Uh...” I struggle to read it. Ants make for terrible handwriting. “Francis...Farkus?”

“Francis Farris”, he condescendingly corrects.

“Excellent. Thank you for correcting me.” Remember protocol. Remember my penance. “May I see your ID, please?”

Already out, already opened, never taking his eyes off of me, he puts his wallet in front of my face like an FBI agent proudly flashing his badge. Yup, Francis Farris is the name I see, but a human head is also what I see. Clean-shaven. Huge grin. All American.

“Thank you, sir. Go right on ahead. Have a great night.”

I hear no footsteps as he drifts like smoke into the corridor where the lights quit working full-time. He vanishes. As if absorbed by the hallway. No door opens, no door closes. I feel the urge to put a period next to his name made out by the ants. I think I need some coffee.

Inhale mold. Exhale static. A pulse I can smell. A pulse that betrays me between beats.

The coffee pot glows like a lantern, illuminating black oily sludge I still pour into a cracked mug I picked up off the floor. Sip, sip. Tastes of beans from the underworld.

Again I hear the hammer click. The lighter click. The osteoporotic portal.

She comes in leaking sand from every pocket on her person, from her purse and her suitcase. Dragging more with each clop of her high heels. It continues to drip like an hourglass from her hair as she stands at the check-in desk. Piles into the logbook, shaping her name. I'm puzzled. She sees I'm puzzled. But she thinks it's for another reason.

“Room 3”, she coughs into the air. Words created by dust. “I left for a meeting.”

Lying, I say: “Oh, of course. I remember you.” I manage to smile. “May I see your name and ID though, please?”

“Annabelle Avery.” She politely replies with her ID.

“Perfect, enjoy the rest of your stay.”

Deja vu. She walks past and towards the hallway disappearing the same way the bug-faced man before her did. Into the fizz of flickering fluorescence followed by the same deafening silence. Whose world am I living in? Is it mine? Is it theirs? Is it the motel's? Is there a world anymore at all?

Depleted, discombobulated, perturbed, I look down in additional vexation. I see the logbook – face to face, eye to eye. Literally. Red appears from around its sockets. It opens its mouth and the same red materializes. The red emerges through the pages, leaking for real. It bleeds over the entire page, oozing over all the rest of the pages and onto the desk. I push back on the chair and hit the wall behind me, putting a huge hole in the drywall revealing a half-naked corpse in the break room. The blood flows over the desk. A demonic Angel Falls before my very eyes.

Blood begins to bleed from my eyes and my mouth now. Relentlessly cascading until I'm blind, until I'm empty.

This is marrow memory.

This is orbital decay.

This is how supernovas swallow planets.