The Motel 8 was nestled alongside the highway. A blinking vacancy sign illuminated the potholed car lot in a dark red. The last shards of gray paint clung to the damp walls, overpowered by dark cement, naked with neglect.
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Room 311
Night
The white crystals settled in the crevice of her toned stomach. He was there, kneeling above her, a rolled-up dollar bill clenched between his fingers. He held it above her as he snorted the hell dust. Soon, his rough tongue trailed across her stomach, ensuring that none of the heavenly drug went to waste. His eyes, wide and scorching off his ever-shorter high, peered down at the girl below him. His girl. Her milk chocolate hair cascaded around her as her thin neck hung limply off the side of the twin bed. Sensing his completion, she lifted her head dizzily, eyes still closed but mouth searching. He complied, their kiss made ever more erotic by the crystals, which still plated his tongue. She sunk deeper into the kiss, greedily lapping up the thing she craved. It had only been a few hours since her last hit, but she needed more. She always needed more.
Finally, the need was too much, and she squirmed out of his tight embrace. Still entangled by the stained sheets, she scrambled to the foot of the bed in search of their pitiful stash. She knew they were on their last bag, but even so, her fingers greedily reached to undo it. Before she could untie it, her arms were abruptly twisted behind her back. Bony wrists were engulfed by strong hands. His warm breath whooshed past her ear.
“You’ve had your turn.”
She huffed, irritated as she had already begun to feel the threat of withdrawal snake itself around her. Her now sweaty palms pulsated inside his firm grip.
“Come back to bed now, baby,” he crooned. Sighing, she sunk deep into the withered mattress.
As he was still consumed by his high, for him, the last scraps of the night brought with them a sweet nothing. It was not sleeping he craved. No sleep left one vulnerable to dream; instead, he laid still, eyes glazed over as well as his mind. He did not care who he was. He did not care where he was. He lay soaking in his constructed illusion of ignorance. However, she lay vulnerable. Without the high to overpower her, unwanted thoughts began to infect her mind. She sunk deeper, weighed down by sickening sadness. Sadness that was more intolerable than the shivers that had begun to wash over her skeletal frame.
Room 103
Night
The squared TV set broadcasted Nickelodeon. A bright yellow SpongeBob danced across the small screen. A high crackling laugh bombarded through the weak speakers, echoed by the tinkling giggle of the the three-year-old boy sitting on the floor, inches from the TV set. His pudgy hands outstretched toward the screen as if his dearest wish was to topple into the pineapple under the sea. A few french fries lay discarded on the carpet in front of him, the remnants of his otherwise devoured Mcdonald’s Happy Meal.
Suddenly bright green bars appeared at the bottom of the television screen. As the bars decreased in number, the somewhat manic laugh of the sponge decreased in volume. The boy, now rather disgruntled, put his small fists to his ears and turned back to his mother, who had a black remote clenched in her hands.
“Sound!” The toddler protested.
“ Give black remote you, mister” with this, she ran over to him, lifting him in her arms. As she walked the few feet to the bed, she tickled his full tummy and kissed his button nose. Hours later, after her son had finally shut his eyes for the night, the woman flipped through the small closet for her Denny’s uniform. The plastic name tag read “Sarah.” Soon dressed, Sarah rushed out of the motel door, just in time to make her 9 pm to 4 am shift.
Room 311
Morning
As unwanted as it may have been, morning still came. That day the sun was banished, unwelcome by the couple who was still cocooned in their dark motel room, the cheap curtains drawn but the fabric too thin to do its job properly.
Abby was woken abruptly by an onslaught of bright light. Her head throbbed as she threw her head under her pillow. The sunlight danced off her bare skin, now coated by a layer of sweat. A cool hand stroked the small of her back, it was comforting, but even he could not stop the small tremors that rippled through her, signaling her need.
“John,” she began, her sunken eyes swimming in unshed pain.
“We’ll get more soon, Abby. I promise. I don’t want you to be hurting.”
She did not respond, still hidden under the pillow in her feeble attempt to stop the pain. He had said this before. They had never let their stash get this low. How fucking careless of them, she thought. She had never gone this long without a hit before. Still hidden under the pillow, her trembling fingers rested upon his chest, her fingertips tracing the raised scar that ran from his stomach to his neck, the scar that was never discussed. After more than six months together, she still had no idea what had happened. Well, of course, she had ideas, too many ghastly ideas. Looking for a distraction from her own thoughts, her own pain, she broached the subject once again.
“John, please tell me.” She lifted her head slightly and peered with what she hoped looked like an innocent expression on her face while her fingers continued to etch a line along the scar
“For fucks sake, Abby, please don’t. Just let it go.”
“I just want to know you better, Jo-.”
He cut her off sharply, pulling her hand off of him, “That is not me. That scar has nothing to do with me anymore, Abby” He took a shaking breath and blundered on, “Am I bleeding? Abby, am I bleeding to death right here and now?”
Abby, taken a little off guard, gave a quick once-over; rather confused, she replied, “No.”
“Good, as long as this scar is not current mortal injury killing me as we speak, let’s not waste our breath discussing it.”
Her eyes widened in hurt, and her bottom lip quivered.
“Oh God, don’t give me that face.”He rolled his eyes in irritation. “Let’s not sit here and pretend I am the only one with secrets. You are seventeen. You are a fucking child, but you’re not at home. Not at school. You’re just drifting. You are getting high with a twenty-two-year-old.” He raised one eyebrow ironically. “Oh, feel free to interject if I’m wrong, but I would assume that a seventeen-year-old wouldn’t be doing, well, this” – he gestured at the decrepit room with a wave of his hand,“ unless they were running from something, something worse.”
Abby lay by him, silent. She averted her eyes, determined to look anywhere but at him. He was right. He was so fucking right.
As John rested his head back onto the pillow and stared blankly up at the wood ceiling, he finally whispered, “And trust me, babe, there really ain’t much worse in life than this, so let’s not look back. Let’s just run” John had spent a long time running. He liked it. People got hurt, eventually. People hurt people, eventually. Better not to allow there to be an eventually. He didn’t want to look at Abby. They didn’t have an eventually. He had gotten hurt before, but he had also hurt people. He was never going to again.
An hour later, Abby was awoken from her pitiful attempt at sleep by the sound of retching echoing from the bathroom. As she used her now-shaking limbs to lift herself off the bed, she became uncomfortably aware that she had been lying in a pool of sweat. Thick droplets of moisture clung to her breasts. When she sat upright, her ears became clogged by the sound of her racing heart, muffling John’s vomiting.
Room 103
Morning
Sarah tugged the light blue Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt over his round frame; the cigarette wavered tediously between her thin lips as her hands remained otherwise occupied with her son. After she had pulled him into a pair of ratty red leggings she pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and released the white smoke effortlessly through her yellowing teeth. Through the misty smog, the boy wrinkled his squashed nose in discomfort, his bright blue eyes now swimming in excess moisture.
The pair had been locked away in this cramped room for weeks now. This fact made obvious by the stagnant reek of smoke that had been engulfed by every cloth in the room. A once white loaf of bread was currently cloaked by a blanket of green fuzz lay forgotten on the desk. The desk, which was also cluttered by a disarray of work applications for coffee shops and grocery stores, the only jobs she was qualified for, her job at Denny’s was not sufficient for two of them. But, a high school dropout didn’t have the longest resume, and a single mom didn’t have the most time.
The young boy, who sat on her hip, began to wail. In response, she began to bob and pace. Tears began to prick her own eyes. She had run for freedom, but now here she was, trapped in this room by her own inability.
Sarah’s bony fingers reached for her last cigarette. She had to rush to the store for more soon. These white sticks had quickly become her only comfort. Without the soothing caress of warm smoke in her throat, the stress drowned her.
Fifteen minutes later, she tugged her chubby toddler through the local cramped convenience store, her bulging eyes searching the aisles. The young boy’s free hand grabbed a family-sized bag of Doritos; the brittle chips crunched loudly as he hugged it tightly to his chest. His mother’s eyes gravitated toward the sound; at the sight of the chips, she let a deep sigh escape her scabbed lips, but nothing more. To prevent a tantrum, she resigned in purchasing the damn bag.
As she reached the back counter, her eyes locked longingly on a crisp new package of menthols that sat caged in smudged plastic behind the pudgy clerk. His small black eyes, partially hidden by his colossal cheeks, peered expectedly at her. Without breaking her gaze tethering her to the pack of cigarettes, she nudged a crumpled ten-dollar bill across the dirty counter, gesturing vaguely at the pack and her son, who was now stained bright orange from the Doritos, which he had already forced open. A jagged rip had been roughly torn through the plastic, which had to release half of the bag’s contents onto the stained floor.
Room 311
Night, again
They had nothing left. It was gone. Everything was gone. John had given the last reminisce of their stash to Abby that morning, but it hadn’t numbed her pain for long. It was too hot to sleep. Then it was too cold to sleep. The two lay in that room, mummified by withdrawal. Sometimes when the fire inside them threatened to burn, they would crawl outside on their small balcony, sucking in the cool air as if it was their deceased heroin. Minutes morphed into seconds or hours. Time didn’t have meaning. They processed hot, cold, nausea, and pain. Nothing more.
Room 103
Another night
The boy woke up in an empty bed. The rough sheets were bunched at his feet. A side effect of a restless night. Sarah had been at work for a few hours now and wouldn’t return for hours still. He began to cry, waiting to be mollified by her arms any minute now. She didn’t come. He wailed louder and louder, but no one came. He was so hungry. They had skipped dinner that night, his chips and her cigs bought in its place.
His teary eyes saw his bag of chips crumpled up in the corner of the bed. Famished, he crammed fist fulls of chips into his small mouth. They were so good. The salt coated his tongue. But then he couldn’t breathe. He gasped but no air came to his airway clogged by a chip he had attempted to swallow whole.
Terrified, he ran to the door and flung it open. He tottered out into the cold in a desperate search for his mother. But the night was empty.
Room 311
Another night
They lay on the cool concrete balcony once again. The grey concrete reflected the opaque clouds. The clouds protected them from the light of the moon. Wrapped in the thick black, they let the cool air lap their sweaty bodies dry. Their deep raddling breaths were interrupted by the shrill squeak of a rusted door hinge below them. Abby craned her head to peer through the railing.
A mustered yellow light illuminated the browning grass below them. A young boy, Jesus, he couldn’t be more than three, she thought, wandered through the door. His large eyes spun around the parking lot in desperation. He had his throat entangled by his stubby hands.
“Holy shit, is he choking?” Abby screamed,
“What?” John flipped from his back to face her.
“There’s a boy, right? He’s right there,” she pointed through the bars at the young boy who now looked quite pale; his wide, dark eyes contrasted sickeningly with his sallow skin. She scrambled to her feet, swaying dangerously as she attempted to climb down the metal fire escape, which clung to the side of the building like ivy. John followed, resting his hands on her hips to steady her.
They bounded down. John’s bloodshot eyes never left the boy, whose white-blond hair so eerily matched the color of his own snarling locks that, now matted to his skull with cold sweat. The two were still vibrating with chills when they reached the bottom. John knew how to save this boy. He knew he could. He had been a soldier, for fuck’s sake. Soldiers were meant to help people. Some people, he corrected himself, his fingers tracing his own scar, a constant reminder that some people weren’t worth saving while others were unsalvageable. He willed his convulsing body to go faster and finally reached that ghost white boy, that young, innocent boy. John collapsed to his knees and quickly reached his branch-like arms around the boy’s blue shirt and squeezed. An orange shard of something flew from the toddler’s open mouth, followed by a deep gulp of air.
The three sat on the lawn in stunned silence. The yellow light from the room and the red of the motel sign intermixed into an orange hue. The couple could not call the police. They didn’t want their questions. But they sat. Sick and tired as they were, they sat with this boy in silent agreement that they would stay with this young boy until he was claimed.
Brushing on Words 