I sit on the edge of my bed, my head still spinning from the alcohol. I stare vacantly at the dark figure sprawled on the floor, legs propped at unnatural angles and head resting against the frame of the door to the bathroom. I can't remember who it is this night.
The light from the street light outside my window draws prison bars on the cheap stained carpet as it peeks in through the blinds in this dingy motel room. Another night in another city, notable only for it's airport that hosts local discount airlines. This is the third plane that has screeched past overhead in the past hour. Next door I can hear a man and woman grunting obscenely. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that it might be a wife or girlfriend, but after hearing him ask for her name twice, I'm not so sure. I'm even less sure when the irregular thumping ends after what seems like too short a time, followed by the door opening and closing. I see her quickly walk past the window, glittering in a dress too short and covered in sequins.
A few years ago there had been a study by NASA. Saying that if mankind was so inclined, we could have Mars colonized by 2025. As in people, living on Mars. They would just have to agree to it being a one way trip. Ships wouldn't have to be designed for return flight, instead the entire thing landing on the planet, and all of it's parts being cannibalized for building structures or carrying cargo necessary for living on a dead planet. Their only concern is that they would never find people willing to volunteer. Needless to say, they were completely surprised by over 400 people mailing in to ask if they could sign up. I was one of them. I got into many heated debates around the lunch room table.
Why would you want to give up your whole life? or
What about your family? Your friends? But the way I saw it, I would be embracing my life. There was nothing left for me here. My friends and family, they were all nobodies, just like me. They would never amount to anything more than underachievers working at shitty jobs, becoming shitty parents to underachieving kids. This was a chance to get away. To break free. To be remembered.
With the noise from next door having died down, I can now hear another voice, this time a few doors down from my own room. The motel owner is knocking on people's doors and not being welcomed too friendly. He's asking if anyone heard a gunshot from nearby, and if they are okay in their rooms. Each guest has their own colourful take on the term "Fuck off". A couple reply in languages I'm not too certain of, but the meaning is the same, I'm sure.
One reply sounds familiar. A word I don't understand in a language I don't quite remember, but still I know I've heard it before. And then I remember where I had heard it. It was one of the many words my girlfriend had shrieked at me on our last night together. You would think I would remember more clearly, but alcohol has that affect on memories. And I'm not sure if girlfriend is really the right word for what she was. She was the girl who didn't completely balk at my overly aggressive advances and flirting. She was the girl who would let me rest my hand on her leg without batting it away, and would curl one side of her mouth into a smile as I ran it up, either on top of underneath her skirt. She was the girl who would drag me by the hand when I was most drunk out of the bar, and be the one who I woke up to, staring at her naked ass as she pulled her clothes on and quickly left my room in the middle of the night. She was the one where I never remembered the times inbetween. On the last night I saw her, it turns out she was also the one who didn't think she was my girlfriend. I never remembered our time together any other time, but no amount of alcohol would strike that image from my mind. Maybe because that night I had gotten drunk by myself. Had stumbled home by myself. She somehow managed to be angry at me, despite being completely naked, in my own bed, with another man still inside her. Still humping as she screamed at me in a language I never bothered to find out the name of. I never did find out who he was, or how they managed to get into my apartment. Or why.
My travel suitcase stands upright by the dresser, unopened. I am still in my suit, having gotten to this motel only an hour ago. The dim red display on the clock reads 1:02. It's faint glow glints slightly on the metal finish of the revolver, sitting on the bed beside me. My hand just beside its handle, stinging slightly from the scratchy green material of the bed's blanket. I am convinced that motels use blankets like this to ensure people don't actually try to use them while sleeping. Hoping that they'll throw it to the ground so that they can get away with not washing it. That and because having sex on this can't possibly be comfortable. So you would throw it off for that too, and then put it back on to cover the stains and smell. It's the reason I always sleep on top of the blanket. Although I'm not sure why I even care.
The room is momentarily dazzled by blue and red, as a police cruiser approaches the street outside the motel. It stops at the light just outside the model, but from my seat on the bed I can see that the light is green. I get up towards the window and watch out towards the car. It is too dark and the police car's lights too bright to make out the man sitting in the driver's seat. Even though the car is angled away from me, I can feel his cold emotionless stare on me, picking me out amongst the motel rooms and watching me through the blinds. But suddenly his siren flares up and he shoots off down the street. Only as my heart begins to slow down do I realize it was racing in the first place.
I return to the bed, and look down at the gun. I touch the muzzle of the gun with the tip of my middle finger. I am expecting it to still feel red hot, but it is cool. My finger comes away feeling sticky. I hold it up to my eye and see that it is coated in red. I pick up the gun, inspecting it, and find that the end is covered in blood, bits of hair and pink bits. Is it brain? I look down at the green blanket again, and notice that there's a dark stain where the gun had been sitting. I drop the revolver to the bed again.
The figure on the floor hasn't moved a single time since I awoke on the other side of the bed, my face still showing the small impressions the carpet has left on my cheek. I stare at it, not sure if it's a man or a woman. I curl into as small a ball as I can make myself into, on the corner of the bed furthest from the gun. I pull a pillow from the head of the bed and put it under my head. And after a moment of hearing another guest curse the motel owner, I pull another pillow and put it over my head. I desperately will sleep to find me again, will the alcohol to draw me back under it's influence. I found out that when a man has nothing left to lose, and nothing left to care about, sleep comes pretty easily.
I never normally dream. Or I never used to. The alcohol seemed to change that. After a night of drinking, the day and night that I was awake would fade to black as the memories were dissolved by the alcohol coursing through my veins, and as it ebbed during my sleep, I would dream. Tonight I dreamt. I dreamt a thousand faces of women, in different states of ecstasy. All women, and girls, that I had been with throughout my life. One faced morphed to another as they all screamed silently, mouth agape and chest heaving. And yet, it was anything but a sexual dream. Anything but. It felt hollow. With each face as it flashed before me, I thought of the ways they had been cute, or funny. Their quirks. What made them human. And how none of them had ever found the humanity in me. That I was never anything more than just flesh to satisfy flesh. But then the dream shifted. To her. The one girl who had actually been with me for an amount of time I still remembered. She took my hand, and led me. We were suddenly standing in a great big field, standing in golden grass that grew to our knees. She laughed, and dragged me towards the forest growing in the distance. As we grew close I saw that it was dark, looming. But she pulled me in, into the forest, dashing between trees and bringing me deeper in where sunlight didn't penetrate. There, we stood, in the perfect dark. Unable to see each other, but still I could feel her smile warming me. She stood close to be, one hand gently carressing the back of my head, the other tracing a line on my collarbone, her chest pressed against mine as I felt her breathing softly, her heartbeat slowly beating with my own. She whispered into my ear, but I couldn't make out the words. But it comforted me anyways.
I slept, until I heard a banging on the door. I removed the pillow from over my face, the moldy scent of the pillow being replaced by the smell of death that had filled the room during my slumber. My eyes open just as the door burst open. Two officers burst in, flashlights peering into the room and guns drawn. But all the bravado they had just established vanished quickly as the aroma of the room filled their noses. The first doubles over, and his partner, behind him, coughed his way back out of the room. I looked around, considering if I should attempt to make a run for it, or perhaps go down in a blaze of gunfire. I pick up the revolver into my hands again, measuring it's weight as I considered my options, but the cops were back in the room again. They turned on the lights, blinding me as I shut my eyes tight, gun up and pointed squarely at where I hoped their chests would be. Suicide by cop, that's a pretty unique way to go, right?
But moments passed and nothing happened. I squinted, letting my eyes adjust to the harsh light provided by the single uncovered lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The one officer was making his way back out of the room, while the other was peering into the bathroom. I could make out the figure on the floor now. He was a man, dressed in a black suit just like mine. He was even wearing a name tag just like me. But his face was obscured, partially by the door frame, and partially from the mess of blood and hair around him. The other officer came out of the bathroom, and stared right at me, down the barrel of my gun. He didn't flinch once. He even put his gun away.
"Okay... I'll go quietly." But he just stared, closing his eyes and sighing, before leaving the room too. I could hear the two of them outside discussing quietly, but not able to make out what they were saying. I put the gun down again, and got up to look at the man on the floor. I stooped down beside him, but it was no use. His face was unrecognizable, just covered in blood. His name tag was similarly covered in a layer of blood, and I had no desire to try and clean it up to learn his name. I stood again, and walked into the bathroom.
Strewn from his head and leading to the bath tub were several bottles of whiskey. All empty. Blood was sprayed all over the room, and bits of pink were all over the one far wall, as well as a small black hole in the center of the mess. And that's when my own reflection in the mirror caught my eye. The mirror was covered in blood, almost more than any other part of the room, but as I tried to wipe it away so I could look at myself, that's when I realized that there wasn't any blood on the mirror. It looked red because my own face was covered in blood. I inspected closely, my right temple bearing a black hole, surrounded by burn marks. The hair on that side was also singed or loose, and the skin leading from that side of my face was flayed off, and just hanging off me. As I turned to check the left side of my face, I noticed my left eye wasn't working. As I tried to stare into it, I noticed it was gone, the remains of it oozing between my bruised and swollen left eye lid. I turned my head slightly and saw that the left side of my head was missing a few inches. White bone poked out from behind skin, and pink bits were leaking out of it, onto my shoulder.
I looked back at the man on the floor and saw the revolver clutched in his right hand, his brain leaking out from the spaces between his skull that poked out of his skin.
