Steve spits on the table. “Hey, fuck you. Your dick’s a hallucination, pal.”
I grip the empty coffee mug and whip it across the table. Steve’s eyes widen and he squeals, but the mug passes through him as it would a ghost and shatters against the wall next to us. Shards of glass bounce off my face but I don’t mind. The other patrons of the restaurant stare at me, gasping and whispering amongst themselves, and I don’t mind that so much either.
“That was a real asshole move,” Steve says, and vanishes. Clap on, clap off. Clap on, clap off.
The server tells me if I don’t lift myself out of the booth and put one leg in front of the other until my body has exited the truck stop’s premises, she will dial a set of three digits into a telephone and request the assistance of the authorities. I consider the bodies in my car. I consider the things left to be done. I consider the existence of humanity.
I stand up. I walk. I smile at the restaurant patrons as I pass but they do not smile back. No one is smiling except for me and I can’t even be sure I am really smiling because I think maybe one of those shards of glass from the shattered coffee mug has cut open my cheek and now this mask of a face has become inside-out. But maybe that’s also a hallucination.
I drive. I do not know where. I kill time like I kill my friends. Like I kill hotel guests. I kill time like I kill myself.
A person can only drive as far as their bank account will allow. The corpses in the backseat tell me if I stop, I’ll die. If I even slightly ease my foot off the pedal, I’m fucked. Don’t bother looking in the rearview because I’ll only freak out at the sight of a thousand black-and-whites trailing behind me, sirens blaring. Except I do look, and the road is dark and empty. Detective Garcia’s lifeless eyes stare at me in the mirror, casting blame for her death.
“This isn’t my fault,” I tell her. “I didn’t kill you.”
“You didn’t save me, either.”
The detective tries to laugh, but ends up coughing out something wet and cold against the back of my neck. “If you’d just come clean in the beginning, I would still be alive. George would still be alive.”
A fist bangs against the front passenger seat’s head rest and a voice shouts, “Yeah, asshole!”
“I am innocent here,” I tell the dead bodies in my car. “I am a victim just as much you all are.”
“Who’s the one still breathing?”
I focus on the road, which blossoms into a parking lot. In the center of the parking lot, a five-story tall building sits in hibernation. Soon the building will awake and devour the universe. The hotel. I’m not scheduled to work tonight yet I’m still here, because where else is a night auditor supposed to go? This building is my only destiny. Night auditors die in their hotels, like soldiers on a battlefield, like Chucky Cheese janitors at the bottom of a ball pit. Spin a night auditor around for five minutes and every direction they take will lead them back to the front desk. Metal to the magnet. Bumblebee to the pollen. Toilet paper to the asshole.
I cut off the engine at the edge of the parking lot, next to the dumpster. The corpses have stopped talking. We sit in silence, waiting for a solution that’s never coming. Plane crash survivors jumping up and down on an island undetected by radars.
The smell of the corpses hit me hard and I have to run from the car, blindly into the woods, and find a comfortable place to discharge the cheeseburger and coffee I’d guzzled down at the truck stop. Afterward, I stand up and continue walking into the woods. I don’t want to go back to the car. I can’t deal with the corpses any longer. They expect results and I’m only going to disappoint them. If I keep walking into the woods, maybe I’ll stumble across the edge of the universe, and maybe I’ll leap off.
Instead, I walk into a wall. My nose cracks and I stumble back, one step, two steps, three, then fall on my ass. The woods are the definition of darkness but I can still make out the shape of a small house. Barely even a house. More like a shed. An abandoned shed in the woods behind the hotel. It exists. Kevin had told me about it many times, said he’d spotted it while cleaning the trash that’d blown out of the dumpster. I thought he’d been bullshitting me.
The edge of the universe is a shed in the woods.
Salvation.
I scramble toward it, knowing whatever’s waiting inside this place will save my life, will make everything better again. I push open the door, expecting a treasure chest in the center of the room, and instead find a small baby lying on a blanket, the inside of the shed illuminated by a pair of lanterns.
Regret is instantaneous. A burst dam flooding a town.
I turn around with plans to flee and stop at what—who—is in front of me, and stumble into the shed until I’m backpedaling against a wall, and Kia steps inside and closes the door.
Part 26
“Isaac, what are you doing here?”
“Me? What the fuck are you doing here?” I point at the baby on the floor. “Is this yours?”
She’s eyeing me like I’m some lunatic, like finding a baby on the floor of an abandoned shed in the woods is a perfectly normal thing for a person to do. Her stare says to lighten up, to chill the fuck out. Her stare is saying the impossible.
Kia scoops up the baby and hugs it against her chest. “Of course she’s mine. This is Saturn.”
“Saturn?”
“Yeah, Saturn.”
“She was conceived in a Saturn, wasn’t she?”
“As a matter of fact—”
I hold up my hand, not wanting to hear the rest of her answer. “What are you doing here? I thought you left.”
“Dude, I never said I was moving away or any kind of shit like that. I just said I couldn’t keep hanging out with you.”
“But…”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but c’mon, you aren’t my dad, man. You don’t have me by some kind of twisted, fucked-up leash.”
“All this time, you’ve been behind the hotel.”
“Well, most of the time, sure. This is my home.”
“This place is abandoned.”
“It was abandoned up until the time we claimed it.”
“We?”
“Yeah, me and my brothers.”
“Right, your brothers. And where are they again?”
“I don’t know, man. They don’t show their faces here that often. Hell, you probably have a better idea than I do. Why are you bothering me with this dumb shit?”
“I’m sorry.” I step forward, intending to caress her cheek as a better apology, then think better of it and step back, step forward, step back, step back, step back. “What do you mean, ‘I’d have a better idea’?”
She rocks the baby in her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What?”
“You said I’d have a better idea about where your brothers are than you do. Why would you say that?”
But she doesn’t need to answer me, because it’s so fucking obvious I could kill myself.
“They’re not,” I say, but they are, of course they are.
I want to keep stepping back but I’ve run out of floor space. If I was a stronger person I’d just step through the wall, through the trees, finally find that edge of the universe once and for all, say hello to whatever’s at the bottom.
Kia’s cool girl, I-don’t-care-about-your-emotions attitude drops at the sight of my expression. “Oh, shit, Isaac, they told me they told you, said you knew everything.”
“I…I…”
“Shit, I’m sorry, I thought…”
Anger drives me forward, hands balling into fists. Don’t strike a woman holding a baby. Don’t strike a woman holding a baby. “They’re your fucking brothers. Those two pieces of shit? Goddammit, are you serious?”
“You can’t pick your family.”
“This whole time, you guys were…were…what?” I want to hit something. I want to hit everything. “Explain this to me, please, help it make some sort of sense, o
therwise I’m going to explode, and you’ll have to clean up my blood and guts off your stupid baby.”
“Hey, fuck you, man, don’t talk about Saturn that way.”
“Fuck Saturn,” I say. “That’s a terrible name for a baby.”
“So is ‘Eye Sick’, you asshole.” And because I’m concentrated on the baby in her arms, I don’t notice her leg until it’s between my legs, and my testicles are on fire and I’m falling to the floor.
Hands cupping my junk, I groan and roll around on the floor, anything to make the pain go away. “You bitch,” I shout, “what have you done to me?”
“Well, if I’m wrong and there actually is a god, then I just prohibited you from ever reproducing, but we’ll have to play that one by ear,” Kia says, shushing Saturn, who’s in the early stages of a crying fit. “They told me you killed a guy, you know. Said you threw him off the roof, that you were crazy.”
“And you believed them?” I try to laugh but only end up gasping, half-convinced she split my scrotum.
“So it’s not true.”
“Not exactly.”
“Did you a kill a guest?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What happened to you?”
“You left me.”
“Oh, fuck off, don’t you dare make me responsible for your own shitty decisions. In case you forgot, I’m the one who tried to convince you to quit that stupid fucking job.”
“I would have run away with you.”
“You don’t even know me, Isaac.”
“I could have learned.”
“You have learned what?”
“You. Everything there’s to know about you.”
“That, right there, man.”
“What?”
“That’s psycho, stalker talk.”
“No it’s not.”
“That’s, like, what someone says before they fuckin’ skin ya and wear ya as a suit.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Everything is ruined. Everything is so fucked.”
“Look, Isaac, I’m sorry about what’s happened. I really am. When my brothers told me to get close to you, learn about the hotel, you were just some dickhead behind a desk. I was doing what I thought was best for Saturn. There’s not a lot of ways to make money when you’re a homeless bulimic single girl with a baby. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive.”
“There are other ways to survive.”
“You don’t know the kind of life I’ve had.”
“You’re right. And at this point, I don’t even give a shit.”
“That’s the spirit.” She pauses, shushing the baby, then looks up at me again. “Listen, I never meant to actually stab you, okay? I only meant to scare you. I didn’t think it’d actually break the skin.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve never stabbed—oh…oh, motherfucker.” I punch the floor and my knuckles crack. “You were the one who mugged me? Are you fucking serious? What the fuck?”
“Well, yeah…who else did you think it was?”
“Fuck.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“You stabbed me.”
“It was an accident.”
“I can’t believe this.” I breathe in deeply and slowly exhale. “Wait, so those assholes have had the wallet all this time?”
“I guess, yeah.”
“I’m going to kill them. I’m going to fucking kill them.”
The baby begins crying harder.
“You’re upsetting Saturn.”
“I don’t give a shit. I have a right to be upset right now. Your stupid baby needs to see how evil her mother is.”
“I am not evil.”
“You’re practically Satan at this point.”
“Man, fuck you. I could have stabbed you a whole lot deeper than what I did.”
I don’t respond, just continue trying to prevent a panic attack. Somehow the shed shrinks even smaller than what it already is. I cross my arms over my chest and sit on the floor and rock back and forth. I scan the rest of the shed and notice the walls are lined with shoeboxes and bags of black sunglasses.
“What’s going on with all this?”
“What?” Kia says, disgust in her voice as she rubs her baby’s back.
“The sunglasses. I know about the shoes, but what’s with the sunglasses?”
“Oh.” Kia sighs. “You know those Ray-Ban sunglasses spam things that litter Facebook?”
“Uh, I guess.”
“Well, you can thank my brothers for those.”
“This doesn’t surprise me.”
“Listen, Isaac…”
“What?”
“I’m sorry for all of this. I really thought you knew about it. Billy, he said they told you. I thought about coming back to visit for old times’ sake, but figured you never wanted to see me again.”
“Well, he lied.”
“Plus he said you had killed someone, that you’d gone crazy.”
“So what?”
“So…I don’t know. I have a baby.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Well, man, I do, okay? And you know what? This baby is the most important thing in the world to me.”
“More important than purging?”
She spits in my face. “Fuck you.”
I let the spit trickle down my cheek, then stand up and calmly walk out of the shed. I stop at the door and turn around. “You know, I had it all planned out in my head. None of this was supposed to happen this way. You and I were going to fall in love. We were going to rescue each other.”
And Kia laughs and says, “Not everybody needs rescuing, Isaac.”
Part 27
Eventually the sun rises. I park in front of a house on the opposite side of town and wait for Mandy 1 to pull into her driveway. She’s just finished night one of her two-night work week at the hotel. She will not be clocking in tonight for her second shift, not if I have anything to say about it. Once she is inside her house I get out of my car, holding Detective Garcia’s pistol. What am I doing. I know what I’m doing. These are the things I have to do. These are the things that must be done. I point the pistol and pull the trigger. I’ve never fired a gun before yet my aim is somehow perfect. The gas tank gives birth to a bullet hole. I flinch, expecting a massive explosion. Nothing happens. I shoot it again. Still nothing. Bells ring in my ears and I can’t hear, I can’t breathe. Bells ring in my ears and it is the only sound that has ever truly existed. But where is the fire? Where is the mayhem? Where is the apocalypse? Where are the owls? I dive back into my car and drive faster than I’ve ever driven in my life. Did she see me? Maybe my plan will still work despite the lack of an explosion. Maybe she will be so frightened, she will flee the state. Or maybe she recognized my car and I’m driving into an ambush. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
There are many flaws to my plan. Mandy 1 might not call off from work. Perhaps strangers attempt to explode her car on a daily basis and she’s simply gotten used to this way of life. Or maybe she’ll find refuge at the hotel. It might be the only place she feels safe now.
I punch the steering wheel and when it honks it sounds like an owl shouting an obscenity. I yell the same obscenity back at the steering wheel. I will not be spoken to in such a manner.
Somewhere between driving and crying uncontrollably, I fall asleep. When I wake up, I’m still driving, only I’m no longer on the road. Trees surround me yet somehow I have not crashed. I scream and press harder on the gas. This is the way I’m supposed to go. If there’s one thing left in this world I can trust, it’s the choices of the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind has no hidden agenda. It simply reacts. There is no thought process or outline. The unconscious mind is no one’s bitch.
“Where the fuck are you going?” George screams from the backseat.
“Pull over!” Detective Garcia joins in. “You’re under arrest, Eye Sick! Just give it up!”
I shake my
head, eyes on the dark nothingness ahead. “The dead don’t talk, so shut the fuck up.”
“Dude, you can’t talk to me that way,” George says. “You killed me, asshole. The least you can do is show some respect.”
“Dead or not,” Garcia says, “I’m cuffing your ass and bringing you downtown.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say, finally giving in to this insane conversation. “Why would you take me downtown? Wouldn’t you take me to the local police department that you work at?”
Garcia doesn’t respond. Clearly I’ve won this argument.
I plunge deeper into oblivion. Texas farmland surrounds me and I can’t quite shake a Chainsaw Massacre vibe. If my car suddenly breaks down, there is little doubt in my mind that someone won’t come along and offer to give me a lift back to their trailer where they’ve prepared a feast with “night auditor” as the main course. But I don’t break down. At least, my car doesn’t. I’ve long broken down, and there isn’t a spare in the world big enough to put me back together.
Part 28
Saturday night and I stroll in the hotel like I own the place, and really, once you consider everything I’ve been through in this building, I might as well. At this point, I’ve done plenty to mark my territory. Not quite eleven yet. Yas stands at the front desk, on her cell phone. When she sees me, her expression brightens, which is immediately peculiar considering how clear she’s made her indifference toward me in the past.
“Isaac,” she says, “I didn’t know anyone had gotten a hold of you.”
“Mandy can’t come in tonight, right?”
She nods. “Yeah. Some crazy people tried to shoot her? I’m not exactly sure. But she refuses to come in, says she’s hiding at a friend’s house for a couple weeks until the police arrest somebody. It’s super weird.”
“It’s a weird world.”
“So Javier isn’t coming to do audit tonight?”
I pause. “Did he say he was?”
“Well, nobody could contact you, so yeah, he said he would just do it.”
“Could you give him a call and tell him I made it in, after all? I’m okay with working tonight. It’s no problem.”
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 23
