laugh at people’s living quarters,” I warn. The truth is, I haven’t spent a night there yet. I’ve been avoiding bunking with my buddy since I don’t like to be that rude houseguest who overstays his welcome, so my rental car has served the purpose of my cat naps, but now I’m looking forward to a solid eight hours of sleep in my near future.
“That place smells like semen,” she says, snarling as smoke wafts from her nose.
“How do you know?” I ask, smirking. “Anyway, I can think of worse scents.” With a raised brow, I lean back against the telephone pole we seemed to end up at. “But tell me, since you seem to know so much about this ‘hood, do you know of any good breakfast joints around here?
“That little shack behind Chet’s serves breakfast.” She drops her butt to the pavement and grinds the steel toe of her boot over it.
“Chet’s?”
“Yeah, you know the bar where you were just hitting on me?”
“A breakfast shack next to a hole-in-the-wall bar? Where the hell am I?” I scoff through laughter.
“Don’t knock it. They have the best bacon hash you’ll ever have.” She pulls her leather coat tightly over her chest and moves past me toward the opening of the trailer park.
“What exactly is bacon hash?” I yell after her.
“You’d have to see for yourself.” Her voice carries through the soft wind and the grinding of gravel under her boots. “Have a good night,” she says, waving over her head at me. “Watch for cockroaches, Boston.”
The word forces a shiver down my spine. War I can handle. Blood, guts, missing limbs, yeah, I can handle that shit. Rodents and insects, no fucking thank you. How the hell did she know that, though?
“G’nite, Bambi.”
Should I offer to walk her home or some shit? Seems to me like I’d get a swift kick to the balls if I did something dumb like that, but—yeah, I like my balls right where they are. Plus, I think I just saw another bulb blow on the Sawdust Motor Inn sign, and if any more go out, I might not be able to find my way home tonight.
With Bambi out of sight, I head through the lot and squeeze through some bushes in hopes of finding a shortcut to the motel since my lazy ass is sick of walking, talking, and any other word that ends in an ing today.
The closer I get to my new sleeping arrangements, the quieter the world around me becomes—the moments I fend off—the moments I try to ignore—the moments the nightmares follow me like my own damn shadow.
You need help, Jags. You should talk to someone. Running isn’t the answer. You can’t run away from your nightmares forever. The voices of reason take over, and I want to shove the heels of my palms into my ears to stop the sounds, but the dialogue is inside of me and there’s no way to muffle those words.
I pick up my pace and push open the front office door of the motel, finding a girl who couldn’t be more than fifteen standing behind the plastic-coated countertop. Her hair is stringy, kind of blonde but tinged darker from grease. Black makeup is caked below her bottom lashes, and her cheeks are sunken in as if she hasn’t eaten in a month. Her focus lifts from the magazine she was focused on, and her eye contact is direct, though her pupils are nearly hidden behind her eyelids. “Hey,” she says. “Need a room or…”
“There’s an ‘or’ option?” I ask, taking a look around this small area that, indeed, smells like bodily fluids. The surrounding windows have cracks running from top to bottom and the floor is covered in brochures and dirt. I think it’s dirt. We’ll go with dirt. The one wall without windows has peeling orange wallpaper, exposing a coffee-brown, rotting wooden wall, and wow, this place is just spectacular. To think that my hotel app said this place was only three stars, I don’t even know what to say. Liars.
“Yeah,” she sighs, as if I’m annoying her. “There’s an ‘or’ option.”
“What exactly is the ‘or’ option you speak of?” I am in a motel, aren’t I? What else is there besides a room? Access to my own personal bathroom?
Before I have a second to come up with another possibility for this “or,” the girl unbuttons the top three clasps of her shirt. Oh, hell no. I look behind me, scared someone would