Chapter 1
The night is a velvet black hole, a vacuum swallowing headlights and spilling them useless into the desert. Jesse grips the wheel like it’s the only thing keeping him alive, which maybe it is. A shift in the seat that doesn’t help the pain in his back, a mumbled curse, another hour burned off his life and into an endless stretch of cracked highway. His eyes blur. The darkness ahead is broken only by a scattering of dead gas stations and billboards like the headstones of failed escapes. Sweat trickles, sticky, into the collar of his T-shirt. The AC wheezes grit and more warm air. Jesse mutters, goddamn, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and drives.
He shifts again, then tighter still. Another curse, lower, guttural, lost in the white noise around him. There’s a beat-up pack of cigarettes on the dash. He can’t remember the last time he quit, how long he lasted, when he started back up. The cab stinks of old smoke, but it’s the least of his problems. Everything stinks — sweat, exhaustion, failure. Mostly failure. It clings to him, a smell he can’t wash off. He rubs his eyes, tries to keep them open, wonders how much longer he can go before they shut for good. His back throbs like an open wound, pulsing dully with each bump in the road, each mile wasted and left behind him. The cigarette shakes between his lips. A dry chuckle — even this, and he’s not man enough to admit he’s hooked again. Not to anyone. Especially not to her.
The tires drone. He hears them even through the rattle of the truck, feels the rhythm of the asphalt working into his skull. Smoke pours out of his nose and fills the cab again, swirling thick with heat and dust. Jesse shifts, rubs his eyes, keeps the wheel locked in place. It’s the middle of the goddamn night. He should be sleeping. Instead he’s here, chasing white lines through some deserted stretch of nowhere, America. Desert out one side, desert out the other. Skeletons of burned-out pumps haunt the horizon like charred bones. He doesn’t remember when he last saw a living soul. A real town. Anything. Fuck it. Doesn’t matter. It’s not like he belongs anywhere, or anyone’s waiting for him.
He can’t take it anymore, the hum, the dark, the empty. They’re eating him alive, grinding him into dust. They’re not all that’s eating him, not even close. He reaches for the radio, finds static, kills it, throws the cigarette out the window and lights another before the embers die in the breeze. He knows where he’s going, even if he doesn’t know the name — some flickering neon pit like the last one, something he can’t quite afford but can’t afford not to. He knows what it will be: faded walls, humming air conditioners that blow heat instead of cold. Still better than driving, always driving, chasing…what? He knows the answer. Can’t stand to say it out loud.
He keeps driving. He’s done this before, driving away, vanishing into the night. He used to call them cooling off periods. Cooling off, he thinks. Jesus. There’s a goddamn joke. That was when he thought he’d go back, thought he’d patch things up. They never patched up. Everything he touched just ripped more, tore wider at the seams. If she could see him now. Kate. That’s where his thoughts go when it’s too dark to see the road. Kate, and the vein in her neck, how it bulged and pulsed, looked ready to blow. Sometimes he thought it might. It’s probably pulsing right now, angry, maybe relieved.
“Goddamn it, Jesse.” He doesn’t remember what they were fighting about, the last fight. If it was even about anything. Just words and more words, as loud as they could spit them, years of old pain dressed up as new. “Goddamn it, Jesse, you stubborn son of a bitch. Just keep driving.”
It’s almost funny. Almost.
“Get out,” she’d said. “I’m tired, Jesse. Tired of your goddamn pride, your goddamn…Get out. Just get the hell out.”
His foot pressed on the pedal. Not like there was much left to pack.
She’s gone, he tells himself. Good riddance. You’re better off. Lies, all lies, but they’re softer than the truth. He keeps telling them, louder when he knows he can’t hear over the roar of the engine, the road, his own doubts pounding in his head.
She’s gone. Gone like everyone else.
His eyes flutter. He shakes his head, fights the urge to sleep. There’s nowhere to pull off, nowhere to rest. Even if there were, it would look like the last place: cigarettes smoked down to the filters, packs of black coffee, bloodshot eyes that matched hers too closely, staring at him from across the table. Staring at him in the mirror. He didn’t stay. He doesn’t know why he thought it would be different. It’s always like this, the lonely spiral into nothing, out of nowhere and back again, like some cosmic joke on repeat. Maybe the universe just thinks he’s funny.
He shifts in the seat, feels a rib strain against his skin. He’s losing weight. He can’t remember when he last ate. What he ate. Doesn’t matter. It never mattered. What he gains isn’t measured in pounds. Guilt, bitterness, self-loathing — it’s enough to keep him from blowing away, he figures, just barely. The dust pours in. The dust and the heat and the smoke and the goddamn failure. This time for sure, it says. This time you really fucked it. She won’t take you back. Nobody will. You’ve lost everything.
“Shut up,” he tells the wheel. The air. Himself.
Nobody hears. Nobody ever hears.
He’s alone.
The night is endless. No lights, not even a star, just the broken road unspooling ahead of him like a fraying thread. Sweat drips. His grip slips on the wheel, a hot film between skin and vinyl. He wipes it on his jeans, feels the jeans stick to him like they’ve been glued in place. The bed of the truck is full of something, he doesn’t remember what. Maybe clothes. Probably dreams. He left a few in his rush to hit the road, left a few more at the last shitbag motel. Won’t miss them. Never misses them, but always remembers they were there.
His foot presses harder. He should pull over, get his bearings, get some sleep, but there’s nothing for miles. It’s death out here, death in a desert with his name already printed on the tombstone. It almost sounds good, but he’s not ready. Not for that. Not yet. There’s the truck, at least. Keeps him moving. That’s something. Something better than dying like an animal on the side of the road, picked clean by buzzards, forgotten before he’s even in the dirt. He’s seen the way they pick at the carcasses, how nothing goes to waste. The same can’t be said for him.
The cigarette’s dead, dropped somewhere near his boots. The pack is empty. Figures. Just one more thing gone, like it was never his. Like it was never there to begin with.
The air wheezes out of the vents, more useless breath, lungs giving out on a dying body. Like a man left behind. He remembers being left behind, almost before he could crawl. A quick flash, then his mother, how she faded before she went. The look in her eyes, how he never knew if they were seeing him or ghosts, or if it even made a difference in the end.
He smacks the dash. Useless, everything, and she wasn’t even the first to vanish. Wouldn’t be the last. The thought rips through him, but it’s like ripping through tissue paper — nothing to hold it in place, nothing to stop the tearing. He’s hot all over, melting into the seat, into the truck, into the empty around him. Sleep would help, or a drink. He has neither. Godforsaken, he thinks again. He hates that he’s right.
The back of his throat itches. He swallows, tastes dirt. He swears he’s been here before, not this road, but one just like it. Or all of them.
His mouth hangs open, dry. He needs something in it. A cigarette. A fist.
His eyes sting. They’ll close if he lets them. He wonders if he should. Maybe he’ll see Kate in the morning. Maybe she’ll still have enough pity to let him in, if not the heart to say the words he used to dream of, words like it’s OK, like I forgive you, like welcome home. He almost chokes on that last one, can’t remember when he ever felt it. Years? Longer? Or never at all?
His mother’s ghost flickers. No, just headlights, just another car barreling down the highway in the opposite direction. Probably someone smart enough to leave while they still had a place to come back to.
Then, when he’s sure he’ll pass out and drift forever, the outline of a squat building far ahead, barely a smudge in the sea of black. The flicker of neon, red and blue and all the colors of a bruise, so much like the others he’s squinted to see. VACANCY, VACANCY, VACANCY it says. Jesse doesn’t need more of a sign. He turns toward it, almost misses the ramp, almost misses his last chance to miss the way things used to be. He’s relieved, or maybe crushed.
They’re the same thing.
It says Sunset Palms, but he knows there’s no sunset here, only darkness.
Jesse pulls the truck into a parking lot that looks abandoned by everything but weeds. He kills the engine, sits a moment in the sudden quiet. The motel is squat and dying, crouched beneath a drooping awning. He gets out, and the night is a wet sponge, soaking him with heat and humidity. He rolls his shoulders, feels the joints pop, thinks briefly about sleeping in the cab instead. He rubs his neck, heads toward the yellow light spilling through the office window.
The VACANCY sign above him hums like a bug zapper, its flicker a bruise on the dark. The letters pulse in a rhythm that doesn’t match his own, doesn’t care. VACANCY, VACANCY, VACANCY. It’s a chant, a drill, a promise he doesn’t want but knows he’ll keep. Jesse Morgan, the boy who always ran, always came back. But not tonight, not yet. A fly sputters against the bulb, then dies and drops to the concrete without a sound. Jesse watches it fall, then feels it land, imagines it’s the last to ever notice. He spits to the side, hears his own moisture crackle in the dirt like it’s laughing at him.
He takes a breath, the humid night air like glue in his lungs, and heads toward the office. The gravel shifts beneath his boots, rocks worn smooth by feet just like his, running just like his, stopping for a moment, just like his. He shakes that thought out. They’re not like him, they can’t be, they don’t know what he’s lost. His shoulders roll under his shirt, his back gives out another soft pop, another weak protest. He’s beat, he knows it. He should keep driving, knows that too, but the flicker of neon has him caught, the light strangling any thought of freedom he might have had. Jesse opens the door, and everything smells of cleaner and burned coffee and him.
The lobby is a dead man’s dream: dim, sallow, wrapped in yellow wallpaper that peels away like old skin. The room shrinks around him, holds him too tight, but at least it’s out of the wet heat, out of the night, out of the way. He runs a hand through his hair. It’s more sweat than hair, more matted than it’s ever been, more than he’d care to admit. A styrofoam cup sits on the table by the entrance, steam rising from it in long, curling ghosts. He wants it to be his, wants it so bad he’s got to shove the urge down before he takes it. Even the goddamn cup is ahead of him, even the old brew. If this is what he’s fighting against, it’s a hell of a battle he’s got to lose. Another fly — or maybe the same one, back from the dead just to fuck with him — does its dance against the ceiling light. He watches, wonders how much longer it’ll last.
The old man at the desk shuffles forward like it’s his last trip on earth. Jesse could help him, probably, but doesn’t. He needs to see this — see him make it the last few feet, see him raise his head, meet his eye, know what’s coming for them both. He looks like hell, like something that should have died before Jesse even got there, or something that did and refuses to leave. He’s empty, worn. Like him, Jesse thinks, but stops. He’s got too much pride left, even now, even here. The windbreaker sags off the man’s shoulders, green turned gray, looking slick with stains or sweat. Jesse thinks the same thoughts about himself, only different. Maybe they are the same, and Jesse’s just better at pretending he isn’t.
“Need a room,” Jesse says, and it echoes, thin, off the dying wallpaper.
“Figures,” the old man replies. His voice is thick, even though the rest of him isn’t. “You…” He stops, doesn’t finish. He scratches his cheek and keeps scratching until the scratching sounds like words. “Pipes rattle. Old place. Floors…They creak.”
Jesse narrows his eyes, not sure what to make of it. “The hell are you talking about, old man?”
The shrug Jesse gets in return makes him madder than he wants to be. No warning, just nonsense, half a mutter, half a smirk. Like it’s a goddamn joke only the punchline hears.
He should walk out. He should sleep in the truck, or at least have a cigarette until he changes his mind. He should, but won’t. Instead he stands there, not talking, looking right at this brittle old ghost. He smells the coffee, wants it again, wishes it had his name on it. Wishes it was his.
“What’s with the…” He can’t place it, that stink, like something left out too long and gone to rot. “…the smell?” he finishes, finally, and knows it’s just one of the thousand smells coming from him.
“Plumbing,” the man says. “Maybe.” The voice has the same tired shrug as the rest of him. “Mice,” he adds, then spits, halfhearted, onto the floor.
“Jesus Christ.” Jesse takes a step back, almost laughs. Mice. He’d love to meet the rodents big enough to fill the air with that.
“You’ll figure it out.” The key comes, rusty, metal, tossed on the counter with less care than Jesse had for his own life, and at that moment, he thinks that’s about right.
The smell hits him again, sour, strong, like it’s crawling inside his brain, making room for the rest of what the night is going to offer. But he’s too used to losing things, to smelling his own fear, to care.
“Room 6.” The old man does it without moving his mouth, Jesse swears. Without looking him in the eye, too. Jesse thinks it’s better that way.
So this is what it’s come to: him, here, listening to words just like his — clipped, finished with periods you can’t see — from someone he already knows. It’s too goddamn poetic for a place like this, but so is Jesse, so is his last ditch run, his last goddamn chance to hold onto whatever he thinks he’s got. He lets the cold weight of the key settle in his palm, lets the metal be the only thing between him and collapse.
“Fuck it,” Jesse whispers, the only truth he knows, and heads back outside.
The night sticks to him again. The heat, the sweat, the fear, the smell of old death clinging to something like a man and laughing at him with no teeth, like he’s been bested before he even stepped foot in the ring. The truck is still in the lot, still where he left it, still his. That’s all, but that’s enough, for now. The buzzing overhead digs in, hums deeper, bites into the tissue and tendon, and all he can do is pray that it doesn’t reach bone.
The hallway breathes out thick, hot air. Jesse stands in the middle of it, his mind shriveling in the heat. It stretches on and on in both directions, no clear beginning, no end. The bulb near the far wall flickers, casting shadows like fingers, like hooks, like memory. The carpet is a filthy scar that runs down the length of the floor. Jesse’s boots tap. Jesse’s heart taps. Jesse’s fear taps in time with both.
He takes a step, another. A long blink and it’s the last hallway in the last motel, the last set of broken lights, the last set of promises made to himself and no one else. He was supposed to stop before it came to this, but it’s too late now, always too late, always this. It never changes, and neither does he, even when he lies to himself like it’s the one truth he can still believe. He takes another step, then one more. A warm gust from the room next to him. It smells of fear. Or of him.
The air is thick, stale, familiar, and something he can’t name clings to it like it clings to his breath. Like it clings to his life. Sour. Sweet. Empty. A long creak as he moves forward. The floorboards, the memories, the weight he didn’t think he’d brought with him. They all creak. They all drag behind. The floor stretches under him, a sound like brittle bone grinding on more brittle bone. It knows him. It knows his kind. The long haul, the end of the line. Jesse forces himself down the corridor, step by echoing step. The key in his pocket is a deadweight, a bullet with his name on it. He shifts his hand, feels it gouge into his hip, feels it sear the flesh and fabric until he might as well have tattooed failure on both and called it a day.
He sees the shadows flicker, like broken fingers, like broken oaths, like time coming back around again and this time taking him with it. He’s a goddamn idiot for stopping, a goddamn fool for starting, but those are his choices, the ones he makes every time the air gets too close to breathe. He hears the blood pound in his ears. He hears his own ragged breath. He hears the worn carpet sing a death song, all the voices one and the same and telling him nothing he hasn’t known since the night he was born. The bulb near the end of the hall flickers, just like the buzzing neon, just like the women in his life, just like hope. Faint, a heartbeat, and fading.
Jesse’s feet thud and the lights hum and the ghosts swarm in. They swarm fast. They swarm with more life than he’s ever known, more energy than he’s ever owned. His eyes droop, his shoulders sag. He is out of his goddamn mind to keep doing this, to think it’ll end any other way. The floors creak beneath his weight, a low wail as he grinds his heels into the carpet. A lower wail as the pressure lifts, then nothing at all when it’s finished.
He rubs the sweat from his eyes, pushes it out of his face like he’s pushing back all the doubt, all the worry, all the shit that’s still there, even if he pretends it’s not. He pretends a lot of things. He pretends he didn’t hear the old man, pretends he doesn’t hear him still, pretends he’s got a future past the end of the hall. Lies, but they’re pretty. Like Kate was, when he met her. Like life was, when he cared.
He stops, and it almost kills him, not stopping his body but stopping everything else. He tells himself he’s resting. He tells himself anything that gets him by, that keeps him from collapsing onto the floor and becoming another thing that’s rotting under the hot, thick stink of this place. He feels like he should have shriveled, but he knows there’s no such luck, no mercy, not for him. The only gift he’s ever gotten is survival.
The pause lasts longer than he wants it to. That figures. Time only rushes when it can hurt him, slows when it’s got a second to dig its claws in deep. There’s nothing like that out here, he thinks, just a deep, waiting patience, like the end of a rope. Or the end of him.
He thinks about another cigarette. He’s given up quitting. He gave it up when he left, and before. No shame in that. He wonders if the habit will outlive him, decides it probably will, decides that’s all the legacy he’s got. He laughs, bitter, a raw sound that is dry and sour in the muggy air, then keeps moving because it’s the only goddamn option he’s ever been given.
And he’s always been good at picking the wrong one.
When it happens, he doesn’t expect it. He should. But he never does, even now. Especially now.
Footsteps behind him. He’s certain. Tap, tap, tap. The same uneven rhythm. The same hesitant, stuttering beat. The same sound he’s made since the night he was born.
He whirls. Just the hallway, just the carpet, just the shadows flickering, just the heavy weight of air pressing down.
Nothing.
Everything.
He spins back around. His breath is ragged, his feet heavy, his mind wrapped in cellophane and tightening. A flicker from the light, a shimmer from his past, an echo from his chest and soul. It matches the rest, and he’s not sure if he should be thankful or if he should be dead. Probably both. Definitely both.
He has the wild thought, the dumb, weak hope that maybe it was the old man, the tired soul, chasing one more doomed god and not giving a shit when he misses. Chasing him, not giving a shit when he misses, because he always does. He can live with that.
He can live with anything but himself.
When he turns around again, maybe he’ll be gone. Maybe Jesse will, too.
His thoughts are scrambled, cooked. He should keep going. He doesn’t know if he can.
It’s just a hallway, he thinks. It’s too much. It’s just a building. It’s too far. It’s just a room. It’s not a room at all, and he knows it, knows it in the fibers of his body, knows it in the drip of his sweat. The carpet is an anchor tied to his neck, the carpet is a map to his grave, the carpet is his only option. He steps. It stretches longer. He can’t get used to it, and it’s been like this since the night he was born. The flicker waits at the end of everything, laughs its shitless, shaky laugh, and holds on for dear life.
He’s lightheaded, worse than before. The air gets thick, almost past thick, then all the way there and then some. He tastes his own breath, hot and cloying and terrified. He keeps moving, but doesn’t remember moving, keeps walking, but doesn’t remember how. When the sickly sweet tang of what might have been dreams, what might have been his life hits him, he wants to throw up. But there’s nothing there, just like always. Empty. Sweaty. Alone.
The light stops. The footsteps stop. His body keeps going until it runs out of goddamn track, like he knew it would.
Room 6. The end of everything. The start. The door sags on its hinges, looks ready to fall and crash and put him out of his mystery. He hopes, but not with his whole heart, because that went too, along with the rest. The brass number is half hanging, scratched, mangled, just like he is. It feels like home.
Jesse presses the key into the lock. It fits, and he knows this better than he’s ever known anything. He knows he’ll open the door. He knows he’ll stay. He knows the light will flicker until it flickers out, and he will be there, same as before, same as after. He will be there, his own personal, stretched out version of hell, and it will own him in ways he can’t even let himself imagine. He’s almost grateful. He’s almost brave enough to push it open. He’s almost Jesse.
The smell of decay greets him like an old friend. Stale air and mildew, breath and death. Jesse stands in the center of it, more tired than he’s ever been. The room is a holding cell, small and bare, more rot than walls. A broken chair, a stained dresser. A rattling AC unit that stirs the heat but doesn’t chill it. A bed, the bed, his bed. It is huge. It sags. It stares.
Jesse stares back.
He stands there, thinks maybe he will collapse without even trying. Maybe it would be best. The cheap plastic blinds clatter softly in the wind from the rattling box, but nothing cools, not a breeze, not a chance in hell, not him. His thoughts wrap around him like the air: cloying, sticky, full of exhaustion and hurt. This is it, he thinks, but he’s thought that before, when the silence stretched too long between fights. This is the end, he thinks, but he’s thought that before too, before everything snapped and shattered and all he could do was walk away. It never was the end, even when he wanted it. Especially then.
He wants to walk away now. It’s as easy as leaving the room. It’s as hard as facing himself again, now, after everything, after this.
The bed is huge. The room is small. The air is full of heavy lies, the same lies he’s always believed. It’s full of old, sour dreams. It’s full of failure. The air is full of him.
The sheets sag inward, a soft crater. They don’t belong in the room, not this room, not with its lopsided drawer, its splintered chair.
The dampness hits him, grabs at his neck and throat, fills them with warmth that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel fair. The more he stands there, the more it presses in. His brain collapses. His nerves collapse. His bones collapse. Maybe he can rest, finally, finally, finally.
He’s scared to, scared like he’s never been, not with Kate, not with anyone, not like this.
The buzzing outside is louder than he can handle. It blurs the last of his resolve, flickers past hope, past mercy, past him.
He stands there, like it’ll be enough. He knows it’s not.
The bed.
His feet scrape along the floor. They sound like mice. He laughs, almost, and the sound is sadder than he’ll ever be.
His head swims, but it’s swum before, dived and floated, nearly drowned, and here he still is, where he was never supposed to be.
Alive.
He doesn’t think it can be called that, but it is.
He strips to his jeans, his T-shirt. His T-shirt sticks to him, second skin, second self, tired, damp, beaten down. He lets the clothes sit there, waits for them to get up and run off, abandon him too, but they stay. Of course they do. Only the things he loves ever leave.
The bag falls with a soft thud. The bed doesn’t care. It calls to him, dark and sweet. It calls to him, and he wishes he were the kind of man who could say no, the kind who could move on, the kind who had any options left.
It dips, it sags, it threatens to pull him in.
Jesse wishes he could say no. But he’s too tired. Too alone. Too much of both to ever say anything else.
The bed.
He moves to it, already too far inside, already further than he can go.
The end.
He moves to it, and it doesn’t surprise him when the mattress starts to sag under the weight of something other than his.
Jesse frowns. Of course it does. Of course.
He feels the cheap blanket beneath his skin, the heat, the wet.
The lights flash VACANCY, the room is VACANT, his mind goes VACANT.
He is empty.
He is here.
He collapses.
He is here.
The end.
The warmth closes in, just like the night, just like the dark, just like him.
The end.
His breath stirs. His chest stirs. His dreams stir.
The mattress stirs.
The end.