by Adrian Birch
Dead in Bed, Part One
by Bailey Simms
Copyright © 2014 Adrian Birch
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. All of its characters, including Bailey Simms, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The following material was discovered on an abandoned blog. It had been hosted by a teen under the name “Bailey Simms,” though little is known about the author’s identity.
Among Ms. Simms’s blog posts was a completed serialized novel entitled “Dead in Bed.”. Interspersed within the novel’s segments, updates described events in the author’s life from the winter of 2013 until the spring of 2015. At that point, the posts abruptly stopped.
The blog has since been shut down. Its contents, however, have been retrieved and are reproduced here in full. The original material has not been altered.
The whereabouts of the author remain unknown.
December 27th, 2013. 1:34 p.m.
First Post
Okay, here I go. My first blog post. Deep breath . . .
So, hi everyone! Or, I guess I should say: hi absolutely no one! Because I’m sure exactly zero people are actually going to read this blog, and I’m pretty much just going to be shouting into the deep dark abyss of the internet. But whatever. I don’t care. If I don’t force myself to start a blog and post segments of my novel to it every week or so, I know I’ll never actually write it. And I really want to write this novel. Doing it means a lot to me. That’s why I’ve decided to publically commit to it in this post.
In case someone actually does end up following this, thank you SO MUCH for reading! Seriously. You’re awesome and I love you! Please ignore the fact that I don’t even know you. You’re reading my blog, so I love you anyway despite that major flaw in our relationship. If you have any questions, follow me on Twitter (@BaileySimms) and tweet me or message me there. Best way to reach me. I’ll totally respond.
Anyway, the very first installment of my novel is coming in the next update! It’s going to be called Dead in Bed. So stay tuned.
xxBailey
January 5th, 2014. 11:49 p.m.
DEAD IN BED, Part 1: Fifty Shades of Gangrene
I woke up in a motel room I’d never seen. No matter how hard I’ve thought about it since, I have no memory of how I got there or what happened the night before.
There were beer bottles all over the side table. Not to mention a completely empty eighth of Jack Daniels. What looked like some kind of fancy foreign wine bottle, also drained, was filled with cigarette butts. The TV, one of those old boxy sets, had fallen back against the wall, and in the corner an armchair was lying on its side. Feathers were everywhere; one of the pillows had been torn open.
I was pretty sure I was alone.
No one was in bed with me. When I leaned over to check the floor I saw only more feathers and more beer bottles scattered across the carpet—along with my clothes. All of them. My jeans were in a pile against the wall with my underwear still bunched inside. My bra hung over the one armchair that was still standing.
I realized, only now, that I was totally naked.
I tried not to think about the fact that there was no good reason I would have needed to check into a motel if I’d been with my husband. I'm barely 21, but I live in a really small town where just about everyone gets married before they're twenty, like I did. It's just what people do around here. I looked at the mess around me; I'd been dating Shawn since I was in high school, plenty long enough to know that he definitely didn’t drink wine. Not even whiskey, really.
And yet despite my fear about whatever it was I’d done the night before, and despite my apparent blackout, and the pervasive smell of stale cigarettes—and some other smell too, I noticed now, something faintly rancid—I felt, well . . . great.
It was as if I’d been sleeping for days and had woken up completely refreshed. I didn’t have the slightest headache. I didn't feel a hint of nausea. When I stood, I practically leapt out of bed. I pulled on my pants and felt like I had the energy to race up the face of a cliff
But I still couldn’t remember anything.
Other than the bottles everywhere, there was no evidence of whoever else had been with me in the room. The only clothes I’d found on the floor had been mine, and the bathroom was empty. The only thing in the mini-bar fridge, weirdly, was an empty gallon milk container.
I looked under the bed and checked my pockets, but I couldn’t find my phone. So I couldn’t even look at my recent calls. Had I lost it, or had someone stolen it? I had no idea.
Outside, it was a beautiful day. But when I stepped into what I recognized now as the parking lot of the Starlight Motel, I realized that it wasn’t morning. The sun was already starting to set. Apparently I’d slept all afternoon.
Now that I was out in the fresh air, things started to come back to me about the day before, if not the night.
Suddenly I remembered what I'd found at the high school with my brother-in-law. I remembered how I’d helped carry it even. I remembered the stench, and how afterward I couldn’t quite wash off the smell. I wondered if maybe it was the scent I'd been smelling inside the motel room.
I also remembered why my car was nowhere to be seen. I live in Muldoon, Colorado, and if you haven’t heard of it, you’re basically like everybody else in the world who isn’t from Muldoon. We don’t even have a stoplight. It’s that small. The only thing that ever happens is the fair, once a year. The kids sell their livestock, there’s a carnival and a rodeo, and everyone pretty much has an excuse to get drunk all weekend.
I do the books at this trucking company whose office is right across from the fairgrounds. I usually park in the lot there, and when I got off work early yesterday there was this huge bus blocking my car. It was emblazoned with a massive Bryce Tripp logo. He was supposed to be this up-and-coming country star, but, honestly, I hadn’t heard of him before a few days ago. (How big could he really be if he was giving a concert at the Muldoon fair?) The people in charge of his bus must have been waiting to get into the rodeo grounds where his concert was going to be, but I couldn’t find the driver anywhere. I couldn’t even reach my husband because the cell phones were already jammed from everyone arriving from out of town.
So I’d asked my boss for a ride home. I remembered now. I’d figured I’d worry about my car later. I hadn’t really needed it anyway then because Ian, my brother in law, was supposed to give me and Shawn a ride to the fair that night so we could drink, then he was going to bring us home later.
That had been the plan anyway.
Now I was at the Starlight Motel, alone, without a car or a phone, and still no memory at all of how I got there.
