Chapter 6
Daniels rubs at his eyes, his knuckles dry and stained with tobacco. His mind is slow and woolly, drifting through thoughts like soup. The furniture looks old and ratty in the flickering light, just shapes collapsing into other shapes, like everything else in the damn place. Maybe he should fix that bulb. Maybe he should fix a lot of things.
Another glance at the coffee. Cold. Smells like the scorched taste of another night he won’t make it through.
His eyes slip closed, just for a moment. Just long enough for him to sink down, feel the chair soft and damp beneath him, the carpet old and fraying around the edges. Somewhere upstairs, the faint scent of decay twists through the air. A whisper. A thing left to rot. A sound like someone forgetting you exist.
The bell rings..
Daniels wakes with a start. The cup almost spills. He looks up. The young man — when the hell did he get in here? — stands across the counter, exhaustion hanging off him like the cigarette smoke he smells of. He’s in his thirties, maybe younger, but looks like he’s dragging ten more years behind him, beat-up backpack hanging from one shoulder, rumpled clothes like he’s worn them for days.
“Need a room,” the guest says, his voice dull and scraped out.
Daniels looks at him, not quite seeing. The man’s eyes are heavy, bloodshot, his whole face ashen with fatigue. Looks like a ghost. A husk. Maybe he is.
For a long moment, Daniels considers not answering, just going back to the slow thud of his own thoughts.
“Thirty bucks,” he mutters finally. The words are a relief. A burden.
The guest stands there a moment longer, as if hoping for a better answer. “Cash,” Daniels says, and it sounds like a sigh.
He watches the young man shuffle forward, slow and half-certain, glancing at the lobby like he might find a better deal hiding behind the stains and broken chairs. “Need it or not?”
The guest nods, but his shoulders slump. It’s a nod of defeat. A nod that says I’ve got nowhere else. The words a motel loves to hear.
He digs into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled wad of bills, hands them over without a word.
“Receipt?” the guest asks.
Daniels rolls his eyes, grabs a scrap of paper, and scrawls something illegible, hoping the man will just leave. “Here,” he mutters, dropping it on the counter.
“Room 6,” he says.
The new traveler stares at the key. Doesn’t touch it yet, just looks at it like it’s already bitten him. “Got a TV?”
“Maybe.”
“Phone?”
Daniels gives a vague, sideways shrug. “Not sure.”
The man lifts his chin slightly, glancing back toward the door, the road, freedom. It’s a false hope. If he walks, Daniels knows he’ll be back, empty of cash and choices. They always come back.
They stand there in the thick, dead air.
The guest finally gives up, takes the key, turns toward the hallway.
Daniels watches him go. Almost says something. A warning, maybe, but his tongue feels heavy in his mouth. Besides, the guest doesn’t look like he’d listen.
He glances down the hall again, a twitch of pity moving through his chest. Only a twitch. The man is gone, already swallowed by the dim light and sour carpet. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe it’s better that way.
Daniels leans back, feeling the chair beneath him, feeling the weight of his body like a promise of sleep he can’t keep. Maybe tonight, he thinks. Maybe if I close my eyes and don’t open them.
His head droops, and he jerks it back up, dreams and waking life a blur of shadows and nicotine. He takes a long, useless breath. Stares at the ceiling.
Maybe the young man will be lucky, get bored and leave before it finds him. Before the soft, waiting darkness slips its arms around him and makes him part of it forever.
Ain’t my problem, Daniels thinks, but he feels the dread pooling in the hollow of his bones. “You’ll be fine,” he says, meaning the kid or maybe himself.
A muttered curse. A plea.
The cup of coffee sits cold and untouched. He closes his eyes, feels the motel close around him. Feels the rot upstairs like a pulse, like a heavy, familiar heartbeat.
He sleeps.
He dreams of the tear in the mattress, the wide, wet grin that splits open, reaching for him.
The corridor stretches before the new guest like the innards of a living thing. Long, dim, with a hundred shadows hanging like bats in the corners. Buzzing fluorescent lights flicker once, twice. Long shadows follow him like he owes them money. He stops outside Room 6, eyes the door, and pushes the key in. It sticks. The whole building seems to groan. The guest enters, a stale rush of air and old smells meeting him like an accusation. The room feels strange, warm and soft and alive around him. He drops his bag onto the chair, kicks off his boots, flops onto the mattress. He doesn’t even bother with the covers. His eyes close, and he doesn’t notice the faint, dark smudge where his body meets the sheets. Under the mattress, something is already stirring. Something older and hungrier than the room itself.
The man sleeps in the endless dark, lost beneath the shroud of covers, deep inside the soft of the bed. The mattress bulges slightly, cradling him. It shifts, gentle and warm, like an embrace. In the deepest seam near the headboard, a small, moist tear forms — no bigger than a fingernail — and from it, an eye blinks open. Bloodshot. Human. Jesse’s. It flicks from side to side, slow and glassy, and freezes as if sensing the new life above. A wet sound escapes the mattress, stitched together from hunger and joy and something that could almost be called love. Outside the window, the neon “VACANCY” sign buzzes and blinks, the light flickering off and on, like something trapped and struggling.
The mattress bulges again, bigger this time. Wet sounds and dark, bleeding stains.
The room falls completely still again. The darkness deepens and spreads.
As the new guest drifted into uneasy sleep, the mattress sighed contentedly—and Jesse sighed with it.