by Mitch Goth
Rain wasn't quite sure what to make of the man who'd saved her life at first. He seemed genuinely concerned for her well being, but at the same time he seemed shady and mysterious to a high degree. This lurking suspicion she felt brought fear into her mind, even with the firearm still in her grasp, and it was only heightened when she caught sight of his vehicle.
In a neighborhood of poverty and, quite obviously, crime, Ben drove a heavily customized, flawless, sparkling silver Cadillac sedan and didn't even bother locking the doors. For a while Rain saw this as peculiar and dangerous, but then she noticed why he seemed so callous with his car. No matter where he went, no matter how fast he drove and no matter how long he let his car sit in one place, nobody even so much as glanced at it.
Rain watched out the window at the people they passed. Everyone was facing away, and even those that caught a look at the Cadillac quickly averted their eyes. After these countless observations, Rain's curiosity was peaked to the point of finally questioning her shady savior.
"What the hell are you?" she asked, sounding apprehensive to even speak to the man who'd rescued her.
"What do you mean by that?" Ben replied with a chuckle, confused by the odd question.
"That guy who attacked me knew you, you drive this expensive car around and nobody so much as breathes in its direction, and you can carry a gun around and not think a thing about it. So, I think it's my duty to ask who the hell you are."
"I'm a guy that carries a certain amount of respect with him," Ben answered as vaguely as he could.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I wouldn't worry about it, its not anyone's concern except mine."
"Shouldn't I know who I'm dealing with?" Rain figured. "Isn't there a rule about getting into cars with strangers?"
"Well, for one, you know my name and I know yours, so we're not really strangers," Ben pointed out slyly. "And you're already in my car, so its a little late to get cold feet about driving around with me. Besides, I gave you my gun, what could you still be worried about?"
"I'm not worried about anything," Rain responded quickly, attempting to cover up the nervousness in her voice. "I just want to get to know you is all."
"You don't want to know me," Ben assured.
"What if I told you I did?"
"I'd tell you that you don't know what you're talking about and say that your best course of action right now is to sleep away what's left of the night and leave everything that just happened behind you in the morning."
Before Rain could continue the dispute Ben stopped the silver sedan outside of a tall, decrepit brick building. She looked up at it in disgust and then looked back at Ben in partially bottled fright. Her hands tightened around the pistol.
"What is this place?" she spoke quietly, knowing if she raised her voice any further it'd crack.
"Believe it or not it used to be a hotel," Ben was either oblivious to her fright or simply ignoring it. It wasn't until he heard the familiar noise of the hammer of his revolver cocking back did he finally take notice of Rain's anxious stare in his direction. "No reason to be scared," he said with a quiet laugh.
"Why is that? Because you say so?" Rain slid her finger inside the trigger guard.
"If it'll make you feel any better, I'll let you hold on to that gun for a bit longer," Ben offered calmly. "But that's as long as you don't shoot me right now."
Rain recalled what'd happened in the alleyway. She looked back at the cracked, abandoned building that loomed before her. It was far from Buckingham Palace, but she thought it'd be better than another meth head infested alley, or at least she hoped it would be.
"Okay," her finger slid out of the trigger guard and her grip loosened, albeit only slightly. "But I'm still holding onto the gun."
"Fine by me," Ben shrugged, getting out of the car and gesturing for her to do the same.
The interior of the old hotel was far worse than the exterior. The doors opened up to a horror show of dust, debris, mildew, and mold. There were a few pieces of newer looking furniture strewn about the massive, mostly empty lobby area showing that someone had been inhabiting this building in one form or another. But, aside from the meager amounts of cheap looking seats and TV sets the lobby was a wreck.
It looked like it had once been a grand resort-like entrance hall to a luxurious inn. Now, the mahogany reception desks were destroyed with spray paint, the eloquent gold railings that lined both of the massive staircases on either side of the reception desks as well as the mezzanine that encircled the entire lobby were dust caked beyond repair and their faded paint was cracked and chipped.
"Jesus Christ," Rain muttered in amazement at the disrepair around her.
"I know what you're thinking," Ben replied, his loud voice echoing through the room, "but the rooms are better. We fixed up a few just in case we needed a place to lay low."
"Who's 'we'?" Rain wondered, hoping to get a straight answer this time.
"The less you know, the better," Ben struck down her question in an instant.
Rain was annoyed by the constant ambiguity Ben showed her. But, if his life consisted of shooting meth heads and knowing buildings like this one she thought it would indeed be wise to not know too much. Although, despite her understanding, curiosity dug deep into Rain's mind.
The trip upstairs was tiring work. The hotel was only six stories tall, but the elevators were obviously too far out of order to be stood in, much less used. The stairs were the same all the way up, their former elegance haunting Rain's mind and the imagined images of what their splendor once was stained her vision more and more with every blink. Each step was constructed of rotten wood and stained carpeting. But she could see beyond these flaws, and see what little beauty was still beneath the sickening shell. She found it astounding what a mixture of people and time could do to something that was once so great.
The hallway they entered into was green with dust and mildew. It smelled of an old basement, despite being several floors above ground. But, just like in the stairwell, Rain could see the beauty that once was.
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," Ben murmured Ozymandias.
"Where'd you learn that?" Rain wondered, invisibly amazed at Ben's knowledge of that poem.
"An educated friend of mine recited the whole damn thing when he saw this place," Ben said, once again leaving many details to the imagination. "Isn't it funny what time can do to a place?"
"Time and people," Rain added, looking around at the graffiti scrawled across the walls of the corridor. "Time is kind of relative, don't you think?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, a place like this, left out in the middle of nowhere, or even in a smaller town or city, would probably be in a lot better condition," Rain explained. "But in this city, with so many people around, and so many more variables, time takes its toll a lot faster. Time will destroy everything eventually, but it takes just a few of the right people to shorten the time of that destruction."
"You're pretty smart, you know that?" Ben remarked with a nod of understanding. "You get good grades?"
"Not really," Rain shrugged. "But that's more of a lack of motivation than a lack of intelligence."
"Can I ask you something?" Ben asked, stopping at a door at the end of the hall. "Why'd you run off anyhow?"
"If I answer that question, will you finally answer one of mine?" Rain replied.
"Fine," Ben sighed. "But you've gotta answer me first."
"I ran away because of my parents."
"Care to elaborate?"
"They were threatening to send me to some girl's academy in North Carolina," Rain went on. "They thought I was being damaged by my surroundings or something like that, which is complete bullshit because I live in some rich, lakeside neighborhood. But still they thought I was no good and I needed straightening out."
"How'd they come to that conclusion?" Ben wondered, intrigued by her story.
"I sort of got caught shoplifting," Rain admitted.
<
br /> "What? A soda or something?"
"A three thousand dollar handbag."
"Shit," Ben exclaimed in surprise, "you don't mess around."
"But that was really more of the straw that broke the camel's back for my parents. I'd been pissing them off in a bunch of different ways for months now. I'd be out late, I'd come home drunk or high, stuff like that."
"Drunk or high?" Ben laughed. "You don't exactly seem like the type."
"That's what everyone says," Rain groaned. "But the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
"Why'd you get into all that stuff? You seem too smart for it."
"That's kinda part of it. I had never really been a person with a social life or a person at all. I was just a machine that would study, eat and sleep. The grades were great, but they can only take you so far before you look around and wonder where the hell your life went. I'd never done anything adventurous or interesting. I just stayed in and did nothing but what my parents wanted, because I was always scared to do anything else. But, all it really took was some harder classes for me to finally crack. I needed to release the stress somehow. So I went out with people, I got drunk, I smoked pot. My grades dipped a little bit, sure, but nothing major. Of course, to my parents it was like I'd signed my soul to Satan when I deviated from my straight shot to being valedictorian. Didn't take long for them to have enough of me, and then me to have enough of them."
"So what's your plan now?" Ben inquired, too far in to not try and know everything.
"I don't know, really," Rain shrugged. "Avoid being sent back, for the time being. I figure, I've got a decent enough education, it can't be that hard to live on your own if you're smart enough. Finding a good job can't be all that hard."
"I'm gonna have to disagree with you there," Ben chuckled. "A decent mind doesn't mean anything if you don't have any degrees or past jobs to back it up. That's life."
"I'll figure something out, I know that much. I'm smart enough to figure something out for this situation," Rain assured.
"So, what do you want to ask me?"
"Well," Rain hummed for a moment. Now that the time had come, she couldn't think of anything worth asking. "What exactly do you do?" she spoke the first serious question that came to mind.
"I am a salesman," Ben replied, still being heavily vague.
"Of what exactly?" Rain pressed.
"What people on the street refer to as, 'Emeralds'. It's a designer drug that comes in a little green tablet, thus the name. It's not the biggest thing out there, but its pretty cheap so we sell a lot," Ben spoke frankly about his business.
"You're a drug dealer?" Rain was visibly shocked.
"To be honest, yes," Ben nodded.
"What's it like?" Rain showed minute interest in the pills he sold.
"Another honest answer is that it's basically concentrated THC, nothing more than a fast, cheap, heavy high not too far off from weed. But meth heads say it does some great stuff when they mix it with their crystal. So unless you plan on picking up a meth habit too, my suggestion would be to not waste your money."
"Good to know," Rain nodded as she slowly opened the door to her room.
For a moment she feared what was on the other side of the door. But as soon as it swung open her fears were washed away. The room had been cleaned fairly well. It was fixed up cheaply though, the walls were whitewashed and the furnishings were nothing more than a twin bed and a small chair in the corner. But it was miles better than the streets, so Rain was eager to take it.
"Need anything else?" Ben asked from the doorway as he watched her drop her backpack on the mostly spotless floor and collapse onto the bed.
"Nope," Rain sighed in heavy fatigue, "I'm good."
With a single nod, Ben shut the door and his footsteps disappeared down the hallway. Rain was about to slide away into sleep when she remembered something, something that simply couldn't wait.
She got up and rifled through her pack until she found her red notebook. She opened up quickly to an empty page and began writing a new entry.
Dear Mom and Dad,
As much as you'd probably hate to hear this, life is beginning to look up for your defiant daughter. Life around here is different, I can tell that much already. But, unlike what you've been trying to teach me my whole life, different doesn't always mean bad. This world is open to me now, filled with all the opportunities you two were too afraid to give me. This whole world makes me happy, and I hope my happiness makes you sick.
I've already come across my fair share of danger, so there's no sense in worrying about sheltering me from that anymore. But, I can take care of myself. I know you won't believe that, you never did whenever I told you in person. Despite what you think, I can look out for my own well-being. Its easier to do without you breathing down my neck. Everything is easier now.
Rain paused her writing to look over at the pistol she'd left on the bed when she tumbled onto it. She stared at it for a good minute before returning to her journal.
Everything is easier, but everything is more dangerous too. But, although you'd like to think I couldn't take any danger on my own and get homesick at the first time of trouble, I don't miss whatever "protection" you thought you gave me. To tell you the truth, the danger of it all is kind of exciting. If I came back to you, I'd miss this life far more than I miss you now.
Yours truly,
Delicate Rain
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