No one’s coming.
I crawl under the bed like a child hiding from monsters, exceptIam the monster.
I’ve seen what I can do. What I did to get out. What I’d do again if anyone touched me. If anyone tried to drag me back. I’d rip out their eyes with my teeth.
But I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Or do I?
I don’t want to hurt her.
The vodka from the mini fridge tastes like plastic and regret, but it sterilizes the towel well enough. I press it to my face, and the pain is white. My vision goes blank, and I gasp like I’ve been tortured again. Or maybe I am dead? Maybe I’m still there. Still strapped down. Still in the dark. I hear the drill. I smell the burning.
My wrists burn.
When I look down, the skin is torn and purple, rings of rot burned in from the cuffs they kept me in. I run my fingers over them, and it makes me nauseous. My wrist is dislocated. My body jerks like I’ve touched a live wire. The scars are raised and angry, and some are still wet. Still open. As if the cuffs never came off. Like the steel is still there, invisible now, sunk into the bone.
There’s blood everywhere. My own, but others too. My clothes are stiff with it. Caked in dried brown patches like flaking rust. I can smell it in the fibers. I can taste it when I breathe. It clings to me like a second skin.
My fingernails are packed with dirt and blood. Black under the edges, crusted around the cuticles. I must’ve clawed my way out of somewhere. A grave? A hole? I don’t remember much. Where am I?
I stare at my hands like they belong to someone else. They tremble, and then they clench, and I watch the knuckles go white. There’s something under my nails. A piece of someone. Flesh. I rub my hands with the towel.
My feet are fucked. That’s the only word for them. Blistered and split open. Torn in places I didn’t know could tear. The soles are ragged, like I walked across glass and fire and didn’t stop until I forgot how to feel it.
I slam my head back against the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Just to feel something real again.
I whisper to myself, words in a language I don’t remember learning. Maybe I never did. Maybe someone whispered them into my ear while they peeled my skin back. Maybe they’re prayers. Maybe they’re curses. Maybe I don’t deserve to know the difference.
The silence in this room isn’t silence. It’s a pressure. A constant hum buried beneath my hearing—like a dog whistle made for men like me. I can feel it clawing at my spine, whispering beneath my skin,‘‘they’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming.’’Even though I know—logically—I’ve already killed them. Or most of them.
But logic doesn’t matter anymore. Logic’s for people who still know where they are. I don’t. Not really. I know I’m in this room.I know I found it, stumbled in like a dying animal. I know the ceiling fan is still spinning and that blood’s still dripping down my face. That’s about it.
I don’t remember screaming. I don’t remember anything before the motel sign.
I barely rememberme.
I stumble to the cracked mirror above the rust-stained sink and stare.
The man looking back at me shouldn’t exist.
His eyes are bloodshot, sick, empty things, ringed with purple and red, like he hasn’t slept in a century. My face is a map of wounds, bruises, and a jagged, angry cut in the middle between my eyes. My beard’s patchy and caked with dried blood. The cut is deep, like someone tried to carve the truth out of me and got interrupted halfway through.
The fucking fan is laughing at me.
I shuffle through drawers. Trash. Moldy envelopes. A broken comb with hair still in it.
Then, bottom drawer, buried under a stack of rotted motel bibles and matchbooks with phone numbers scrawled in red lipstick, I find it.
A phone.
Old. Flip-style. Cracked. Ancient.
