Checking into hotel loneliness - Short Story

buiscuit2168

My grandpa once told me the hardest thing about getting old was he didn’t have a roadmap for old age. Once I had a roadmap for my life but somewhere the route had changed. Now I sat on a hard bed with a soft purple headboard. They didn't seem to fit. But what in life did always fit?

From the bed, I could see the red neon light on the opposite building flashing.  Girls, Girls, Girls. Three red and blue dancing girls kicked their legs in a can-can dance.  For a few minutes, I was memorized wondering about these iridescent girls. Were they real? Of course, they weren’t real but there are girls just like them somewhere. They were probably in the building waiting for lonely, drink dependant men to call or maybe it was for some underage juvenile who wanted to see what it was like to be with a woman. Something he probably fantasized about for years every night while he lay in bed while his parents were watching telly. He might have been fantasying about some Russian teenage girl he saw on his phone during math class.

I pulled my knees in close to my chest. The room smelled of damp and stale cigarettes.  A spider weaved its way in between the faded embossed wallpaper the type bought in the 80’s because it looked posh, now it just looked plain cheap. The liver shaped watermark covered with a bluish black mold reminded me a liver or maybe the grim reaper. I stared at it for a few minutes I swear the corner of the watermark was the hand of the grim reaper ready to knock on a door of some poor unsuspecting victim.

I shivered, my feet cold, the excuse for a duvet had fallen off them. I rocked back and forth pulling my knees in tighter and looked down at my patchy red varnish on my toenails. I studied my chipped partially nail polished feet. I didn’t care what they looked like. When I went to the hospital to have my children I always painted my toenails, my feet were the last things the obstetrician would be looking at. But now I hadn’t painted my nails - I didn’t care.

The neon sign flicked on and off a loose connection now so it said - -irl, Girl,- irl. Its message was still clear though. The potential clientele wouldn’t care, they weren’t looking for perfection. In their drug dazed utopia, they wanted to escape reality, and if that included a pretty woman that was just a bonus.

The pipes gurgled as the hot water tried to make it way through the air locked network of plumbing. I started to sweat even though I doubted the room had heated up, the tip of my nose cold. The thin-walled room shook as a door somewhere on the same floor slammed shut followed by a woman’s shrieking, ‘You bastard, you haven’t paid me, I’ve to feed my kids.’

Laughter and footsteps past my door. ‘Whore.’

My chest tightened and my breathing quickened with the room started to close in on me. The light that spilled from the streetlight onto the bed narrowed and walls started to crowd towards me. With the rise of panic, I looked at the bedside locker beside the bed. Its watermarked surface didn’t have the habitual bedside lamp hotels always provide. I doubted if the hotel had provided the bible either but the bible was the last thing I wanted. 

I cast my eyes around the room, the dim light coupled with my loss of ability to focus made it hard to see if I had put anything on top of the thin MDF chest of drawers across the room. Finally, I saw the Xanax at the bottom of the bed. I grabbed the bottle and with shaky hands unscrewed the lid. Half a Xanax would suffice.  Moving my tongue around my mouth I tried to make salvia, it took a while but eventually, it did the trick. Soon I  was with the men in the building opposite and lay back on the soft headboard. It was hard not to imagine what went on in this room. What drove people here? Was life that lonely or did they need to fulfill some depraved fantasy? I squirmed a little thinking about the sordid sex that occurred here.

The manager had not been able to hide his surprise when I asked for a room. He gave me the hourly rate but I told him I wanted it all night. He had pushed his fingers through his greasy hair, his raised arm revealed yellow patches of dried sweat. When he spoke he pushed his chewed rollie out with his tongue sticking to his bottom lip. 

‘Ye've to be out by 10 am. Sharp - its ensuite.' Throwing me the keys he went back to reading the paper he mumbled, ‘Cleaner ‘av to go in.’ His interest in me gone.

Soon I was breathing normally stretching my legs out in front of me. An argument ensued on the streets below. A mixture of accents all speaking English. No, it wasn’t an argument just a delivery. Doors slammed and a truck engine roared to life fading into the night.

To the right of my hand on the bed lay the Xanax bottle, its contents spilling out onto the duvet. I picked up the bottle and with the other hand I slowly picked up the tablets dropping them one by one into the bottle. My breathing now normal and the sweating stopped.

I had seen three doctors in various locations of Dublin giving small inconsistencies when I filled out the doctor's registration form. Nobody checked. I looked presentable. Middle-class accent with kind off up to date clothes. Zara isn’t expensive. I didn’t even need the utility bills I had scanned and altered the address on them. Photocopiers are so good these days it's so easy to alter any documents with a half decent computer.

‘Yes, doctor. It happens every day it is so hard with three screaming kids, and going to collect them at school - it sends, I dunno I just feel tired and like crying all the time.’

He gave me the prescription without batting an eyelid. And so did the other doctors, mind you one of them could hardly spell Xanax and had to Google it. ‘Sorry,’ he said to me with a lovely smile, ‘I’m from Pakistan – not long in the country.’

I dropped the last tablet into the bottle and threw my legs over the side of the bed and stretched before moving slowly to get water at the sink in the corner- the ensuite. I must have been in the room a while now the street was quiet. The sign on the opposite building still flashed but its nightly job was was done. Something moved and stopped in the middle of the room. A mouse. I didn’t move. It didn’t move. We started a staring game. Each summing up each other wondering who was going to move first. The mouse looked away first scurrying into its safe place somewhere dark, somewhere secure.

The glass beside the stained tap looked clean but I flinched at the coach roach lying on its back, its eight legs ridged. It wasn’t going anywhere. Unperturbed by the dead cockroach I filled my glass and avoided looking in the stained mirror. I couldn’t look. I knew my eyes would question me. Within seconds back at the bed, I pulled on my sweater. I suddenly felt cold. Unaware I had been holding the other half of Xanax I threw it into my mouth and threw back my head to swallow it but my throat was dry. I swallowed a small bit of water wanting to keep the rest. It traveled down my esophagus to my stomach I waited for it dissolve in the acid in the hope it would enter my bloodstream quickly. After a few minutes, I took the bottle, unscrewed the lid and emptied the contents into my hand.

One, two, three, four, into my mouth.

A drink of water.

I drank it sparingly.  I’d a long way to go.

Five, six, seven, eight, more water. I lost count after twenty. One hundred and fifty tablets I had accumulated over the year. I don’t know if I took them all. Maybe I finished when all the water was gone.

Drifting into music. Soft music. I love music. The soft headboard sucked me in. Everything was purple. Soft soothing purple.

 Shouts. Banging on the door. Bright light penetrated my thin eyelids. I shook. I kept falling into a kaleidoscope of purples and reds.

Someone shook me. Shouting at me. Lots of voices. Bodies moving fanatically sticking needles into me. I was being lifted.

I don’t think anyone would have noticed my toenails now.

   

femur61

I enjoyed it

I thought it was good, often wonder who stays in those grim hotels.

nuac

Sad to end up staying in such a place, but glad to see that narrator survived.

Gives you a picture of the mind of a person contemplating suicide.

Many of us know people who went down that route. Helps us to empathise with them

Mr E

That was grim but very well written. Thank you. Glad the narrator survived too.

One minor typo - I think the word you wanted to use in the second paragraph was mesmerised?