It was a sad, pathetic little hotel six and one quarter miles off the main drag, a rundown old lodge with two stories, the upper of which had caught fire sixty-six years ago, and had since never been reopened to the public. Business at the hotel was slow, as was expected, and the owners, now old and fragile, did their best to keep things light and sober, but depression comes in many forms, and the old man put a gun to his temple some years ago.
In darkness, Leon pulled his beater car into the hotel’s gravel parking lot, and the stones beneath the well-worn tires crunched and cracked. He staggered out of the car, an ominous, painful trickle of red blood ran down his pant leg and onto the stones below, and he turned a weary eye to the distant horizon line, hardly a glimmer, and he even managed a sigh as he turned to the hotel.
The skeleton behind the desk, bony and gaunt, was in reality, a thin, old woman of about ninety, her white hair tied back in a tight, painful bun. With dark eyes, distant and vague, Leon signed his name, and paid the money in slow, painful steps. She closed the register and looked away without even a hint of acknowledgement. His key was slid to him across the counter by her thin, needle-like fingers.
And Leon climbed the stairs dragging, his near useless leg behind, breathing heavily as he went.
His room was the first door on his left and he struggled with the latch because the key stuck from lack of use, but eventfully it opened once he put his weight into it, and it swung him into the room. He bit down so as not to cry out from the pain in his leg, and the door closed shut tight behind him.
The light in the room blinded him only temporarily, and his head began to hurt from the fake yellow glow of the light bulb, and over the lampshade he threw his coat, dulling the luminance immensely.
He gazed around the room, still squinting though the bedside lamp barely gave off a glow. His head pounded and even the shadows seemed too bright. The small room seemed no larger than a closet, a single bed pushed aside, a coffee-stained table and a toilet that sweat, leaving a cold, disgusting puddle on the green tile floor in the bathroom. It was a simple room, and he didn’t need much, his was a superficial existence. A last private sanctuary.
The 30-year-old wallpaper, as old as he was, the insect covered fly-paper hanging from the ceiling in the corner, and a miserable streaked window that faced east, it was as if it were meant to be. As if God himself had finally looked down upon the earth, and handpicked the little man, and said, “Tonight, I will make this man’s dreams come true.”
Leon couldn’t help but notice the sad irony. All his life, he’d fought, and scratched, and worked so Goddamned hard, worked his bloody fingers to the bone, and had never once received a lick, not once had things gone his way, had the stars ever aligned for him. But tonight, a night which would probably be his last night on earth, tonight things just seemed to click.
He should laughed, instead he threw up.
He already began to feel the changes in his body, the way he moved, the way his feet shuffled against the floor in half steps and his obvious reaction to light. He felt weaker, his bones hurt, his head spun, and his skin felt cool and clammy to the touch.
He stepped into the bathroom, small and crowded, a layer of mould along the beige tile of the wall in the corner behind the toilet, and he gazed at his faded reflection in the streaked mirror. He seemed so distant, out of body, like a copy of his former self. Like a sad, sorry alter ego.
Leon shuddered, his breath painful and short, and his eyes, now beady and sunken, darted towards the bloody wound in his throat. Hours ago, he had wrapped an old white sock with tape to stop the bleeding, but the sock was now a deep red and stained and a trail of blood ran down his neck and into his shirt, down his busted leg, down to the floor.
He ripped a hotel hand towel and applied pressure again to the wound, the pain was nauseating, his mind numb. He stepped back into the room, his head pounding, the light excruciating. He needed to sit down, he needed to relax, Leon needed to think.
But thoughts would not come; only memories, only sad, twisted memories.
How many had there been? Three? Four? Had there really only been one? His mind blurred, a jumble of misinformation, of misfiring synapses. He supposed that one was all it took. Pale and ugly, like a bat, or a human-like mole, wrinkly and gaunt, like the proverbial creature of the night he was. “Goddamned vampires,” he thought, “Goddamned mother-sucking vampires.”
And then he laughed, and there was nothing left to throw up.
He felt his body grow weaker, more tired, and the pain in his limbs was severe and it took all his strength to stand, and reach for the thin, rather transparent curtains, which he pulled aside. Far off in the distance, beyond the hills, Leon could see the first glimmer of sun peak over the horizon line, peak over the crest of the earth.
And Leon sunk back down onto the bed to wait, to await his chosen fate. “Not me,” he thought, “not me.”
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©2010 Michael Treader
Michael Treder’s short tales of fiction have appeared in several issues of Quantum Muse and in the Cynic Online Magazine. He currently lives in Montreal.
http://www.michaeltreder.blogspot.com
Tags: Michael Treder
March 16th, 2010 at 5:56 am
Enjoyed it. Nice pacing and great descriptions. That poor bastard.