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If you’re from D.C., then you are more than likely to have some family living down in the dirty south.
I was raised Catholic, so you can rightfully guess that I have dozens of cousins along the Eastern seaboard. This summer, I visited North Carolina to see my cousins, and let me tell you, getting there isn’t always peaches and cream.
The early summer rains can be horrendous. With flat land and nowhere to drain, the roads are subject to torrential flooding. In my case, well, I was lucky to be alive when I hydroplaned down I-95.
“Hey guys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m gonna be a day late. Front left tire burst on me when I hit a puddle,” I regrettably told my cousin.
If you’ve heard the term country mile, that’s about as far as I was from a AAA servicer. So what’s a woman to do stranded halfway between point A and point B, soaking wet, and without a working car?
To my right, I noticed a flickering sign that read ‘OTEL.’
Hoping that I’d luck out and it was merely missing an ‘H,’ I ran for cover underneath, to discover the missing letter ‘M.’
“…Of course,” I thought to myself.
Being one strip of about twelve rooms, I figured that they would let me in the lobby at least with this never-ending downpour.
I wandered to the front doors where I met a woman inside. Her name tag read ‘Bonnie.’
She spat a hefty wad of tobacco dip into a bottle before addressing me.
“Got one room vacant,” she said with such a wide grin that I could barely decipher her next words. “You’re lucky, it just opened up.”
“Oh, thank God.” I said.
“$40 for the night, but the ice machine is spent. So I’ll give ya $5 off.”
“Sounds good to me.” I regrettably agreed.
In a moment’s notice, she traded my cash for a key and a receipt, and I made my way to the room.
It was the last room on the lot, Room 112.
Inside, I did what most of us boujee city folk do, and examined everything in sight with a face of disgust.
Some things I noticed:
Blood on the lampshade
Warped ceilings from water damage
Blood on the shower curtain
A table with no chairs
I scanned the room and noticed a strange lingering scent, almost like a man’s cologne, which I chalked up to the maintenance or cleaning crew. At least I hoped that what I was smelling was Lemon Pledge, and not some voyeur.
This wasn’t unusual for a dingy motel. And after the deluge, I was just happy to be indoors, after all.
The bed looked surprisingly neat, although I’m sure a black light would reveal a different story.
I’ll shower in the morning, and wash all my clothes tomorrow, I thought.
How bad could it be?
~
Bad. I never sleep well in strange beds. Had to find something to distract myself from thinking about the blood drops and the thick, carpeted floor. Oh, how I wish I had brought slippers.
My first thought was to turn on the TV, but the reception was shit.
Nothing but fuzzy screens and one infomercial advertising the sharpest knives in America.
Yeah, no thanks.
I retreated to the drawers below the TV stand. They were stuck. I wasn’t going to allow anything else to get in my way today, so, I wrapped my sleeve over my hand, for both grip and for germs, and pulled the fucker open.
What lay inside surprised me.
The cabinet was full of canned food, air freshener, dish washing liquid, one plate, one cup, one fork, and half a jar of peanut butter.
“The fuck?”
Who leaves something like this behind? Or better yet, who goes through half a jar of peanut butter at a motel stay?
I was intrigued by my findings, but slightly disturbed as well.
I had to keep exploring, to keep me busy, and to find out who the hell had previously stayed here.
I opened up the closet, and upon first look, it appeared empty. Just the normal amenities: hangers, metal shelving, and a small safe for guests. I turned on it’s knob to open it, hoping to find something inside, when I heard the familiar sound of crinkling plastic.
I poked my hand behind the safe and noticed a small plastic bag tucked behind it. Inside of the bag, was a money clip holding nothing but the stale air inside the bag.
“Who would leave an empty clip behind?”
Just then, the power cut out, and with that, the A/C unit’s piercing hum came to a fault.
“Shit.” I muttered.
The humidity from the summer storm seemed to take over the room instantly, and my instant-gratification instincts kicked in.
Got to get some ice, I’ll put it in this bag and press it to my forehead. That’ll do.
Jesus, the air was just too thick. You could swim through it, shove past it, or even embrace it.
I grabbed the empty ice box, braced myself for the rain, and headed to the ice machine.
It was a dark, rainy pathway.
“Miss!” A woman suddenly shouted at me, as I turned the corner.
The woman from the front desk appeared before me, Bonnie, soaking wet, as if she had been standing outside since I met her.
“Ice machine’s broken, miss. Sorry.”
“Oh, right, sorry. It’s just, my power went out and—”
“Working on that, best for you to stay in your room then. Nice place, ain’t it?”
“…Perfect,” I lied.
Defeated, I headed back to my room and splashed some cold water on my face. My phone, dead. My car, a day away from me. My mind, unsure of what to do.
Beside me, the bedside table drawer had the essential and predictable Bible inside, like every cheap motel in America has.
…”Sure, why not?” I thought. I haven’t read the scriptures since I was a child. Shall I start with Genesis?
When I flipped open the pages, a photograph fell out.
It was a picture of a man, a woman, and a little girl, maybe 6 years old.
They looked happy. I wondered why it was there, why someone would leave such a bright, sunny photograph in a such a dismal, shoddy motel.
I flipped it over. On the back of the photograph, there were black ink smudges.
Just then, the power flipped back on to my advantage, when I noticed that the ink smudges seemed as though they were from someone who had written on top of the photo.
“Was this written… here?”
Who writes from a motel?
At this point, I was convinced that someone had been living here, in this very room, which had suddenly become vacant, as Bonnie had said.
But the way that everything was left behind, left me with a feeling that there was something left in this room. Something like a note, somewhere, with smudged ink on it’s page.
If I were living in a motel, and wanted to write a letter to someone, I can imagine it being important. Sad, even, especially if it was written on such a sentimental photograph. So I thought, where would I place a note like this? Under my pillow?
I proceeded to tear apart the bed then, keen on finding some romantic tell-all, some lifelong story written on one page to keep me busy through the night.
There was nothing under the pillows, but I knew better.
Hell, I was raised Catholic, and Catholic guilt runs strongly, too strong to keep secrets.
I ripped off the pillowcases to find awfully stained pillows, brown and yellow, shaking me to the core.
But the pillow on the right hand side, next to the bedside table with the Bible, had a very small hole in it.
Disgusted, and beyond anything I’d ever do at such a damned, bloody motel, I winced as I reached my hand into the molded pillow, and pulled out a note.
It was there, with its smudged ink and all. I unfolded it and read aloud:
“It’s been 3 months, Jess. I can’t take this anymore. But I won’t stop trying. I won’t leave town.
…First they started with the phone calls, and the notices on my door. Then they started cutting off my phone line, the water, the power. They’re threatening me now… I just want to get back to you, and to Sara. They said they’ll freeze me out, whatever that means. I just want to make things right.
Jess,
tell Sara that
Daddy’s coming home.
Yours,
Michael”
A chill crawled up my spine like a starving spider.
Why hadn’t this letter been sent? What had happened to Michael, and why did he leave so much behind?
The power cut out again, just as I was starting to cool off, aside from the sweat that had broken out on my forehead.
“…Freeze me out…” I repeated, over and over and over, until it made sense.
Bonnie had said the ice machine was broken.
Bonnie had said that there was only one room open.
Bonnie had said that I was lucky, through that wide, deceitful grin of hers.
~
I didn’t get any sleep that night.
I re-read his words, his plea for reconciliation to his Jess, and to his Sara.
I’m not sure what had happened that brought Michael to the motel, and I’m not sure what happened to him once he left the room 112.
But I had a feeling.
A dark, lingering feeling…
That the woman at the front desk, Bonnie, was responsible.
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