Traveller’s two pale white hands gripped the steering wheel tightly at ten and two. The sun was rising now, illuminating the seemingly endless grassy fields surrounding him in a pale blue glow. His window was open, and the warm morning breeze blew through his sweaty hair. The gravel continuously crunched under his tires.
His gaze instinctively shifted to the empty passenger seat next to him.
Without warning, the entire world shook. Startled, he turned his attention ahead. The rumbling continued, maintaining the same force. His eyes rapidly scanned the horizon, searching for some clue of what was going on.
Looking down at the blinking yellow, engine-shaped light on his dashboard, he received his answer. He was also annoyed to find that pressing down on the gas pedal no longer affected acceleration.
He didn’t put too much thought as to where he would pull over; it was all dirt anyways.
On the side of the road, he lifted the hood and looked in. There wasn’t any smoke coming out of it, but beyond that, he wouldn’t be able to diagnose much more with certainty out here. The only thing he knew for sure was that he would have to walk.
He popped open the trunk. There was only one item in it: a purple backpack. Unlike the trunk, the bag was just about as stuffed as it could be. Its zippers seemed ready to pop open at any moment.
He flung the heavy sack over his shoulder and slammed the trunk shut.
The road was long, and his white, tucked-in tee-shirt did little to protect his skin from the scorching rays of the summer sun hanging above. The bag weighed down on his thin shoulders as if he were carrying an entire tree on his back. His right shoulder had already started to strain under the weight; he swapped the bag over to his left shoulder.
The land around him seemed fluid, moving like calm ocean waves.
Switch to right shoulder.
Looking back now, he couldn’t even see his car anymore.
Switch to left shoulder.
As a matter of fact, he hadn’t seen a single other car the entire walk. Other than his crunching footsteps, the road had remained completely silent.
Exhausted, he let the bag drop to the ground with a deep thud. His shoulders slouched forward and he let his drenched hair hang. He raised his hand and rubbed the sweat onto his forehead—an attempt to both dry his hair and moisturize his skin, but all it did was further irritate the already bumpy, red surface above his eyebrows.
His hand ran slowly down his face, drenching his eyes in the relief of shade for the brief moment before his palm passed the tip of his nose. He viewed the landscape above his index finger with disbelief.
An unassuming, lone motel stood down the road, accompanied only by the same all-encompassing field that had followed Traveller this entire trek.
With a sudden burst of energy, he lifted the hefty purple backpack over his shoulder and ran.
The motel’s coat of aged white paint had dried and chipped in many spots, revealing the older coat of black paint beneath. The building didn’t seem to take up much horizontal space and was only one storey tall—about half the height of the sign standing in front of it, which read: “The Pearly Motel.”
As he entered the front lobby, the conditioned air hit him like a blade to the face. Instantly relieved, he approached the front desk. Not even looking up to the receptionist, he reached into his pocket and slammed a crumbled collection of green twenty-dollar bills onto the desk. He spoke between his deep recovering breaths, without any modesty: “One bed. And I need to call a mechanic.”
Like the road he walked along to reach here, the parking-lot surrounding each of the rooms’ entrances was also made of gravel, which crunched under each step.
Having already given the local mechanic over the phone directions to his marooned car, he walked towards his room. Even though he was given the room closest to the lobby, he was still thankful that the motel had an overhanging roof to provide him with some shade on this short walk.
There was only one vehicle in the lot. A tow truck was parked in front of the room furthest from the lobby. It had a shiny red paintjob and the driver’s door had a painted-on design of a sharp hook, circled by the curving words “Hook’s Tows” which bordered above and below.
Reaching Room 1, Traveller stopped and inserted his key into the lock, which produced the kind of strained, loud crunching sound that only comes from decades without oil.
“Get the hell back in here!” a deep, aggressive voice called out.
Traveller turned to view the commotion.
A girl charged out of the room in front of the tow truck. Her eyebrows pushed down angrily on her tearful eyes. Her white collared shirt was messily untucked, and about half of the buttons were sporadically undone, but a preppy red hairband held tight onto her split bangs, which parted like velvety curtains around her youthful face. She walked barefoot on the harsh gravel, pushing forward without any hesitation.
A man followed her out. He had the sense to put on sneakers, but he hadn’t been wearing much else above: red-dotted boxers and a wifebeater. He had the kind of bulky build that obviously hid a monstrous layer of muscle beneath his gut. His head was uniformly buzzcut, but even at this short length, his greying hair was apparent.
“Leave me alone.” She had the soft voice of a very enraged mouse.
Digging her toes into the hard gravel, she took another step, but the brute’s big, meaty hand had clamped almost completely around her bony arm before she could get much farther.
He pulled her back into an embrace and a messy, forceful kiss on her lips. His massive arms wrapped around her.
Both her hands on his chest, she somehow managed to pull herself away. “I said leave me alone!” She turned to leave, but his hand gripped her arm again.
This time, instead of an embrace and a kiss, he harshly pulled her towards his other hand, which had been readily waiting in the position of a back-hand slap. His hard, hairy knuckles and fingers clashed against her soft cheek. “Fuckin’ spoiled brat!”
Her face followed through with the momentum of the hit.
Her head hung away from him and her free hand felt at the tender flesh of her upper cheek.
She looked up, finally noticing Traveller.
Traveller had still been by his door, watching.
She looked directly into his distant blue pupils.
Traveller looked down for a moment, then opened the door to his room and entered.
She watched in disbelief. The man pulled her back into the room by her arm as if she were a lifeless ragdoll.
Both doors shut. The outside world went silent.
Traveller let out a strained breath.
Traveller’s eyes carefully scanned the room. The space was fairly simple, even for a cheap motel: a white-sheeted double-bed tucked snug into the corner of the room, old eggshell-white walls, scratched up wooden floorboards, and a wooden night table—likely built in the 50’s—next to the head of the bed.
Traveller’s attention was drawn towards the shut bathroom door at the other end of the room.
He quietly dropped the purple bag. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a closed switchblade. With a quick flick of his wrist, the blade sliced open. He held it ahead, ready for anything, and stood on his toes as he stealthily crept deeper into the room.
He approached the bed first. The sheets hung down to the ground, obstructing the view of anything under the mattress. He got down on one knee and lifted the sheets. Other than a few cobwebs, there was nothing down there.
Back on his toes now, he approached the bathroom door with caution.
Reaching ahead with his open left hand, he gently pushed the wood of the door with each of his fingertips, allowing the door to slowly drift open. Then, with a sudden burst, he leapt in, pushing the door the rest of the way open with his body.
His arm relaxed.
Other than a sink, a toilet, and a shower, the bathroom was completely empty.
He closed the blade and returned it to his pocket.
He walked to the sink and looked in the mirror, realizing how irritated the skin on his face really was. He made a mental note: the first stop after getting the car back would be a pharmacy for some after-burn lotion.
He turned on the sink and cupped his hands; it was only after water finally touched his lips that he realized exactly how dry and cracked they had gotten. After a few more sips, he turned off the tap and walked back into the main room.
He dragged the purple bag back to the bed, got down on both knees, and started to push it under.
A normal bag would’ve fit under this bed no problem, but this bag was stuffed about as wide as the belly of a well-fed man. Traveller pushed with both hands, exerting his arms even more than they already had been today.
Half of the bag fit under the bed, but it had reached the apex of its thickness and wouldn’t budge any farther. Traveller thought for a moment, then, using his leg as a pivot, propped his arm over his knee and lifted the bed as much as he could. Jaw clenched and face turning red, he managed to get about an inch of lift.
Within an instant, he used this slight leeway to push the bag the rest of the way under, released his strained grip on the bed, and retracted his other hand from under it. The bed made a loud thud as it hit the uncarpeted floors.
He sat on the ground, panting. The sheets hung off the bed, reaching the ground, just as they had when he arrived; from out here, there was no sign of anything under the bed.
Exhausted from the unexpected amount of physical labour, he lifted himself up and immediately flopped onto the mattress. He rolled over to the left side of the bed and lay on his side, directly facing the wall.
He pulled out the blade again, keeping it closed as he held it under his pillow.
Traveller shut his eyes for just a brief moment, basking in the diluted afternoon sunlight shining through the semi-opaque blinds.
It was pitch-black when Traveller was pulled back into consciousness. He looked over his shoulders, towards the rest of the room. Through his blurry, half-asleep vision, he could see the dark silhouette of a person standing by the other end of the bed, leaning towards him.
His grip around the blade tightened.
“I need a place to hide,” the shadow’s soft, mouse-like voice whispered.
Traveller released his grip.
Through the darkness, he could see now that the skin surrounding her left eye was darker than that of her right.
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