FATE'S PAST

by Jason Huebinger

  “I don’t, actually,” she admitted.

  “He said, ‘Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.’ So that’s what I’m doing. I’m forgetting about the crazy shit that happened last night and focusing instead on what’s ahead of us. And that’s New Orleans, baby!”

  “That sounds great, sweetie.”

  “So, how about we grab some food from that place the guy mentioned last night, pack up, and let’s hit the road?”

  “Works for me, but truthfully, I’m not all that hungry.”

  “I’m not, either. But we both need to eat, and I bet you a dollar that as soon as you smell food, you’ll be hungry.”

  Carrie smiled. “You’re probably right. Alright, I’m in, but give me a few minutes to clean up the room a little.”

  Carrie’s consistent need to clean up regardless of whether anyone would ever notice the cleanliness amused Cameron. Whenever they traveled, she would tidy up before they left the hotel room. In the morning, Carrie would kick Cameron out of the bed so she could make it before she left for work, and Cameron loved jumping on the bed the moment she put the finishing touches on it; this treachery would invoke Carrie’s meek wrath.

  “Who the hell is going to see the bed after you leave?” Cameron would often joke

  Carrie would reply, “You just never know.”

  Cameron brushed his teeth while Carrie put away their dirty clothes. After she finished, she joined him in the restroom, and he splashed water at her as she brushed her teeth. He felt refreshed and alive. The previous night was evolving from a pressing issue to a fading memory.

  Before Carrie finished brushing her teeth, Cameron left the bathroom and put on the same jeans as the night before while she was in the bathroom to ensure that he would maintain possession of the rock. He touched his pocket; still there, thank God, he thought. When Carrie spotted him in the same jeans, she said, “Ugh, are you really going to wear the same jeans today that you did yesterday? That’s kinda gross, Cameron.”

  “These are my favorite jeans!” he exclaimed. “And besides, I just drove in them. It’s not like I hiked or jogged. I’m sure they are fine.”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll never understand why dudes refuse to change jeans.” She walked back into the bathroom. “Hey,” she yelled from the bathroom. “Mind if I get a quick workout in before we grab breakfast?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I know how irritable you can be if you don’t get your three miles in.”

  “Oh, whatever.”

  “I’m going downstairs to find out what time checkout is.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  Now dressed, he patted the bulge of the ring in his pocket, and walked out of the room. He paused and looked again at the room’s “0000” sign. He shook his head and thought, I can’t wait to get out of this hellhole.

  Like the night before, the hallway was empty and quiet. He walked, listening for any signs of other guests. But he heard no crying kids or yelling parents. No couples discussed their plans for the day. And, as in the forest, he felt very much alone.

  Reaching the elevator, he pressed the “DOWN” button, and waited as it rumbled upwards. When it arrived, its rickety doors opened slowly, and he hoped to see someone else in the carriage. To his chagrin, it was empty.

  He stepped inside and pressed the “1” button. The doors closed. The lights flickered as it descended. The ride was silent, until he heard something. A voice.

  He looked around but saw no one. “Anyone there?” he asked, not expecting an answer. He was still searching the interior when the elevator arrived and opened its doors.

  He stepped off and turned around to give the elevator a final once-over. It remained empty. But the voice came again.

  “Cameron.”

  “Who’s there?” Cameron asked, but no one replied. He listened intently as he scanned the hallway leading to the lobby.

  In the distance, he noticed an open hotel room door. The hallway was dark, but the room lit, and the light inside seeped into the hall.

  “Cameron.” The voice was soft but also familiar. It called to him from a distance, though he could not tell how far. Considering his alternatives, his first inclination was to ignore the voice. His explorations had done him little good this trip. And really, what did it matter? What answers did he expect to find chasing more phantoms in this Hotel California?

  But the voice rung out over and over in his mind. It was so familiar. He felt a longing for the voice, as though it had been missing from his life for many years. In the voice’s soprano, a long forgotten sense of safety and comfort filled his soul.

  There was no turning back. He had to find out who was saying his name.

  He took a step towards the open door.

  “Cameron.”

  He took a few more steps, now only a yard from the room.

  “Cameron, come inside.”

  The voice was clear. It was the voice of his mother.

  Standing outside the open door, he closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and fought back tears.

  “Cameron, come inside. Please.”

  As always, he obeyed his mother.

  * * *

  Carrie took a few minutes after Cameron left to pack up most of his straggling clothes. Without her watchful eye, he would forget something. Usually it was something small: a sock, a pair of underwear, or a phone charger. But when traveling alone, he left something behind every time without fail.

  With the room in acceptable order, she stripped off her sleeping outfit and slipped on a pair of Under Armour running shorts, a workout bra, and a form-fitting gray top. As she did so, a pang of hunger rumbled in her stomach. She was glad to feel it, for hunger was the first thing she had felt since Cameron startled her awake in the car the night before. All she needed was a good breakfast and a brisk jog and everything would be right as rain.

  Once ready, she placed the room key in her pocket and walked out the room door. Recalling what the old man told her last night, she strolled towards the workout room on the other side of the hallway. As she walked, she scanned the doors, looking for numbering.

  She had noticed that their room number was “0000,” a fact she decided not to mention to Cameron. She could tell his mind ran wild with the strangeness of the road trip, and she didn’t want to cause him further strife. Maybe she would bring up the room number once they arrived in New Orleans, surrounded by welcome chaos.

  At the end of the hallway, she saw a single door ajar, dim light bleeding from the crevice. The door looked no different than any other, and the room had no label. For a moment, Carrie worried that she may walk in on someone. But the room was in the location the old man said: down the hall and on the left.

  In an abundance of caution, she knocked. She raised her fist and hit the door twice, but her strikes made no sound. She tried again to no avail.

  “Hello,” Carrie yelled. “Anyone in there?” No response. Now confident the room was empty, she opened the door and stepped inside.

  The interior was no bigger than a large closet, with a single black treadmill in the corner. She didn’t even see a television. A phone hung from the wall opposite the treadmill. This phone caught Carrie’s attention because of its see-through covering, which exposed the phone’s brightly colored electrical components. She had not seen such a phone in many years.

  Stepping towards it, she tried to place where she had last seen a similar model. When close to it, she realized she owned the same phone in high school. The interior gear colors were even the same as her old phone. As an adolescent, one of her crowning achievements was convincing her parents to purchase her own dedicated phone line. And after school, she would run up to her room to “study,” and then lay in bed awaiting calls from her various girlfriends. She remembered how the gears would light-up whenever a call would come in, heightening her excitement. She spen
t countless hours on that old phone, mostly over now-forgotten gossip, but a few of the conversations stayed with her.

  Turning her attention to the treadmill, she experienced second thoughts about working out. The treadmill was about as “old school” as it got, constructed of a black belt and two handrails for balance with no electrical cord or bright display. But she proceeded, for she wanted to sweat away any lingering effects of last night’s craziness.

  She stepped onto the treadmill’s running area, which felt as firm as concrete. Step by step, she walked, the belt pulling backwards with little resistance. Now certain the contraption wouldn’t fall apart, she quickened her pace. Faster and faster she ran, her arms pacing her legs.

  After a couple minutes, she noticed something strange: she felt no fatigue. Her heart maintained its steady beating. Her breathing was calm. No beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She ran harder, but her body did not respond. Soon her legs were a blur, and her arms flailed in-synch. But no matter how hard she ran, her body did not respond.

  She quit after a few more minutes of effortless sprinting, hitting the machine as she stepped off. What the hell is wrong with me? she thought as she patted her body to find out if the running had caused her to sweat. She was dry. Her heart beat slowly. But the hunger persisted.

  Something rung loudly behind her. She turned and saw the phone light up, just as it used to in her youth.

  * * *

  Cameron walked into a large and ornate room. To his left was a bathroom with marble countertops and high-end finishes. Silk blinds covered a large window to his front, and a king-sized bed rested across from a wooden cabinet with a flat-screen television mounted above it. There was a small desk with a purple chair near a cabinet. Like in Room 0000, stains dotted the floor, but the design and construction of this carpet was far more expensive and lavish.

  To Cameron’s astonishment, the room looked exactly like a room at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.

  He walked to the bed, reviewing its cushioned and tufted headboard. He remembered the bed well, for he lay in a similar one about two years ago on a night he wished to forget. He had fed his desires that evening, and now its memories followed him like a starved feral cat.

  His eyes welled, and he fought back tears. One drunken decision caused him two years of doubt and anguish. He figured he would have proposed to Carrie a year earlier but for that night and the lingering doubts after it. And worse was the burden of a secret that weighed more than any back could bear.

  The memory blasted his mind, hitting so hard his head ached. Rubbing his temples did no good. Then he realized the pain was not internal, but rather skin-deep. He raised his hands to his head; when he pulled back his hand, blooded spotted his fingertips.

  He surveyed the room until his saw a full-length mirror resting in the right back corner of the room. Waking towards the mirror, he wiped the blood on his jeans. Now in front of the mirror, his reflection revealed a cut on his forehead. He had suffered a cut before in that exact spot on the same night that had caused him so much residual regret. In front of the mirror, his forehead bled the same way it did that night, bleeding from a wound that never healed.

  He recalled his lie to Carrie: he had tripped over a stray chair and hit his head against the corner of a nightstand. She bought the story, but every time he saw the remaining scar, pain stabbed at his heart. He worried his pain would never leave. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe he deserved it.

  A slight sound shattered his remembrance. He froze in place, for he knew the sound: someone had opened the door to the room. He turned his sights from the mirror to the doorway.

  A massive silhouette stood in the boundary of the doorframe, its head nearly touching the top, its shoulders broader than the edges of the frame. At first, Cameron assumed he could see the details of the person if he moved into better lighting, but when he walked away from the mirror and towards the door, Cameron realized the dark shading of the silhouette did not change. There was but a shadow standing between Cameron and the hallway.

  Even more unsettling was the glimmer of light from the shadow’s hand. When he was in a better position to see the doorway, Cameron saw that the light from the hall flickered off the steel of a knife held by the shadow, a knife with a tip stained red. Blood dripped from the tip of the knife onto the floor.

  Cameron froze in place as the shadow raised the knife outward at chest level. “So,” a voice boomed from the shadow, “here again, huh?”

  Wide-eyed, Cameron had no response

  “Quiet, eh?” the shadow said. “That ain’t like you. Ain’t like you at all. Where’s the flood of bullshit flowing from that mouth?”

  “I—” Cameron began, but did not finish.

  “Just shut up ’n’ listen. You ready to pay yet? You got the bills?”

  Again, Cameron couldn’t vocalize a response.

  “Guess not,” the shadow said as it lowered the knife. “Well, ain’t payday just yet. But it’s comin’, boy. Comin’ sooner than you think. Best be ready.”

  A moment later, the shadow disappeared. When his senses returned, Cameron walked out the door. He looked both ways down the hallway, but his body cast the only shadow that remained. And when he looked back at the room, it was no longer a glorious Wynn suite; instead, the room looked no different than the one he slept in the night before.

  Keep it together, he thought. Don’t go freaking out now.

  Breath after breath, he tried to calm his heart; it beat so rapidly that he swore his chest trembled. He closed his eyes and listened, hoping to hear the wonderful voice of his mother, or even the terrible voice of the shadow. He only heard his deep breathing.

  He opened his eyes, stared at the mundane room before him, and decided that he didn’t want to talk to the old man. What he wanted was to feel Carrie in his arms, to steady his mind and heart. So he turned from the transforming room and walked back to the elevator.

  He pressed the up button and the doors opened. The cart was empty, so he stepped into the elevator and pressed “2.” A few moments later, he arrived.

  Before stepping out, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. Though his sanity was waning, he had to hold onto whatever grip he had left. For his sake. For Carrie’s sake.

  He turned left and walked to Room 0000. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. Remembering that Carrie had the only key, he knocked and said, “Carrie? You in there?” Silence.

  She must still be working out, he thought. He considered trying to find her, but decided to let her enjoy her exercise. She always said it helped “clear her head,” so he hoped at least one of them would find clarity.

  He rested his back against the wall next to the door. A few moments later, his knees weakened and he slid to the floor, his back still planted on the wall, his face in his hands. The voice of his mother echoed in his ears. It had been so long since he heard her voice. Too long. He had forgotten how similar his mother’s voice was to Carrie’s: both voices were sweet, steady, and calm. Both voices were like sedatives for his frenetic thoughts.

  Fighting back tears, he prayed Carrie would finish her workout soon so he could hear her voice again.

  * * *

  The multi-colored phone rang loud, its guts lighting up with each ring. At first, Carrie tried to ignore the phone, but the noise persisted, increasing in volume with each ring. The sound echoed in her ears, causing her head to throb. And, worst of all, something within Carrie convinced her that the call was for her.

  Get over it, Carrie, she thought. There was no way the caller wanted to talk to her. No one but Cameron and the old man knew she was in the hotel, and only Cameron knew she was working out. Far more likely, a hotel employee was the intended recipient of the call. Probably another guest calling random internal hotel numbers to request fresh towels.

  Yeah, she thought. The call’s not for you. But no matter how hard she tried convincing herself, the lingering feeling remained. So instead of fighting it, s
he decided to leave.

  After covering her ears, she walked past the phone and to the door. She pulled the handle, but the door did not move. She tried again with more force, but the door remained closed. Tensing her muscles, she pulled with all the force her small body could exert—the door did not react to her attempts at opening it. It was as if Carrie were pulling at the wall.

  Her frustration built, magnified by the constant onslaught of the phone’s ringing. She slammed her hand against the door and yelled, “Hey! Anyone out there? Help please, the door is stuck!” No one responded. “Come on! Please help!” Only the ringing answered her pleas.

  She placed her head against the door and steadied her breathing. In analyzing the situation, she realized that she would have to use the phone to call the front desk. Which meant she had to pick up the phone to escape the workout room. This prospect frightened her, despite the nagging feeling that the caller wished to talk to her.

  As she approached the phone, the volume soared, pushing her back a step. She clasped her hands against her ears and dove towards the phone, her hands outstretched. Her hands grazed the phone and knocked it off its holding.

  She stepped back and reviewed the phone. It hung silently for a few seconds, its coiled line causing it to bob up and down like a buoy over light currents.

  A voice came through the speaker. “Carrie?” the voice asked. “Are you there, Carrie? Please pick up.”

  She did not move at first, her unwavering sight fixated on the dangling phone calling her name.

  “Carrie?” The voice was louder this time. “We need to talk. Now.”

  She approached the phone, her hands extended as if preparing for an attacker to jump out of the speaker. She picked up the phone, placed it against her ear, and said, “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “Oh, so you’re just going to pretend you don’t know who this is?” The voice sounded familiar, though Carrie could not place it. The caller was male and sounded young, his voice unconfident with faked resolve.