Death Hotel I

It was my two weeks out of the year. I know, ha ha, weekend warriors. You ever notice it's always the shittiest people who call you that? It's always the gung-ho, "My uncle was a Marine so he told me blah blah blah" bullshit that comes out of the overweight and overly stupid types that always wish they'd had the guts to sign up but never could stomach the thought of leaving their safe and warm womb of a home. I know the type, because they're the ones that always are so quick with it.

I'm digressing before I begin. Sorry. Let me start again- it was time for me to go to the Field Exercises. My unit was an engineering unit, so we went out to a big field on some gigantic Army base in Loisiana. I don't really remember the name, but I guess it's not really too important, right?

Since we were all three of us chronically short on meaningful employment, my mother, my brother and I all shared the same car. But it didn't matter- the guys in my unit had my back, and were more than happy to carpool me and a couple of other guys along with them. As long as we chipped in for gas, they didn't mind bringing us anywhere. And so we went. A small horde of us, descending on some podunk town next to a sleepy Army base in the middle of nowhere.

It was like a vacation for most of us. Yeah, we'd be working hard, but we got away from our real life jobs for a while, got to put on a uniform and do something interesting for a change. Most of us were either young enough that we'd never known anything but reserve service and were always ready to do something different, or old enought that they remembered what it was like being on active duty and liked being exactly where they were. But everybody was happy to be out of town for a change. My unit, naturally enough, were the evaluators. I won't go into it too much, because it's not important to the story, but this is important: We were the ones sleeping in the hotel, while the rest of the sad sacks got to sleep in the tents. It wasn't half bad.

When we drive up to the hotel, it seems nice enough. A regular civilian hotel, slightly worn carpet, smallish rooms but that's fine, strip mall down the road a little bit. No big deal. My ride drops off me and two females, and says that they'll be back in the morning. He drives off- the rest of their hotels are down the road about five minutes.

The females were both in my unit. To save some money, they decided to room together. I don't know what it is about girls that makes them want to do shit like that, but hey, whatever. One of them, the short brunette, was my good friend. We'd gotten to the unit about the same time, and we spent most of our drill weekends hanging out and just kind of chatting about stuff. We weren't very alike, which honestly is fine, because we both liked to pick on each other. Sometimes I got the feeling that she wanted to be more than just friends, but sometimes I wasn't sure if that was my lonely singleness speaking or the way that she kind of stuck to me almost more than I stuck to her.

The other one I didn't really know. She was taller, and had dark black hair. She could have been native american but seriously, who knows in this country? She could have just as easily been Italian or something. She was the quiet one, and never really wanted to talk to me. Which wouldn't be a big deal, since I never wanted to talk, except that she always kind of had this air about her, like the reason she didn't want to talk is because you were shitty. Like I said, I don't really care too much about any of that, so it was whatever.

I got her room number, you know, just in case it was important (it wasn't like that, seriously), and left. I already had her cell phone number, and would probably call to make sure everything was ok. She had a habit of getting lost and besides, she might want to go out and get something later. I'd brought food (I always bring food on trips) but you never know what she brought. Probably nothing. I don't think she'd travelled much.

The hotel was one of those hotels where you walked in the entrance, then through a door to get into the courtyard. The courtyard was open to the air and had a fucking lots of plants in the middle, like it was some kind of jungle oasis breaking through the concrete slabs at the bottom of the thing. For some reason, the ground floor was the top floor, and the rest of the rooms kind of tunneled into the ground. I remember as a kid being confused once in a mall. I remember me and my parents had gotten in from the parking lot, then took the escalator down into the mall proper. When it was time to go, we just straight walked out of the place, no escalator, no nothing. My kid brain was reeling with ideas of alternate dimensions, of mirrors, and of portals to nowhere. I wondered if the door we entered in was an in-only door, and what exactly that meant for the world. Was there another one of me in that other world, or what?

Later, of course, I figured out that it was just built on a hill, and they probably didn't feel like messing with the rough New England terrain and so they just kind of build shit with the lay of the land the way it was. If I'd have been just a little bit older, I think that I'd have solved it immediately, but still, I could never shake the weirdness of it all.

This place kind of reminded me of that. I figured that it was built on a hill, and maybe I'd look at it later. I mean, c'mon. Exploring is fun, even if it's in a kind of crappy hotel, it's always nice to check things out. Maybe I'd find a vending machine or something. I didn't see any other ones, or any ice machines, or anything. I'd have asked the clerk, but really, checking in was about bad enough and I wasn't really in the mood to have to ask the first-generation immigrant anything more complex than I had to. Where do they get accents like that, anyways?

So I laid my shit down, and started to unpack a little. Everybody knows to put the shit you want immediately on top of the bag, so naturally my change of clothes was right there, and so were my cigarettes and those water-proof matches that come in the MRE. I was always afraid that the lighter'd hit something and explode in my bag and take holes out of my shit, so I never travelled with one. I know, it's stupid, but hey, cigarettes taste better from a match anyways. Don't judge me. I walked outside and had a quick smoke. It was nothing special, but I'd been stuck in a car for five hours with a guy who'd said "absolutely no smoking." There's not a cigarette in the world that isn't good after five hours of knowing you can't smoke.

My room stood across from the balcony, which overlooked the courtyard. It must have been later than I thought, because it was dark as hell out there. I couldn't hardly make out the balcony across from me. Only a couple of the outside lights were on. I wasn't sure if it was because the wiring here was bad, or if the lights needed changing or what, but I decided it added a kind of restfulness to the place. It was nice to not have a thousand neon lights burning at all hours, honestly.

I finished my smoke, field-stripped it (you kind of flick out the ember, stomp it, and then stick the butt in a pocket or something and throw it away- you can tell people that have either served time or their country if they do that), and threw the butt away in the dingy trash can.

Local TV is always wierd, so I left it off. I didn't really care what was going on, anyways, to be honest with you. I changed into my PJs, brushed my teeth, and decided to leave the shower for the morning. I didn't hardly have any hair and I spent most of my day sitting in a car anyways, so it could wait. I mean, it hadn't even gotten hot yet. It was the middle of February and there was frost into the late afternoon. Not that I need to explain my personal habits, I guess. This part isn't really important anyways. I'm just trying to get you to understand what my night was like, you know, the sorts of things I was thinking about at the time. Not much, is my point. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day, and I needed my rest- the first day always featured us walking from place to place, getting used to things, meeting new people, that sort of thing, and I'm not really a big fan of meeting people. If I was going to have to meet a lot of new people, I either needed a beer or a good night's rest and since you're not supposed to drink on FEX that was that.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I could have sworn that the lights flickered on and off and that's really all it takes to wake me up. But by the time I opened my eyes, it was back to normal. Dimmer than I remembered, but normal. No big deal. But the thing is, I couldn't get back to sleep. I had that "oh shit" moment like I'd had before, in that car accident.

When I was a little kid in New England, I could remember being in my Mom's car while she drove us somewhere. Possibly to school- we lived, literally, on the side of a mountain and sometimes the power went out. This was before everybody had cell phones; when the power went out, the alarms didn't go off. When the alarms don't go off, you kind of wake up whenever and that's just kind of how things work out when you live on the side of a mountain in New England in the winter. We got very good at card games, my family did.

But anyways, so we slept in this morning and missed the bus. Not a real big deal, says my mother, she'll drive us to school. And so she does. And I'm not really happy- the road is slick and I've got a feeling in my stomach like everything's not going to be ok. For a kid who's about ten years old, whose thoughts are usually occupied by things like Pokemon and breakfast cereal and shit, this is an unusual feeling. This is Doom with a capital D. But I didn't want to say anything, because my mom was worried about the black ice and didn't want to say anything. I didn't know this at the time, you understand- I just could feel from her body language that something was wrong.

We ended up crashing into a sign, slipping on some slick ice on an incline. It could have been worse, says my mom- at least we didn't go off the edge, or flip, or spin backwards and go in an uncontrolled slide straight down the mountain and crash into something at the base. Here's the thing- the difference between going off the side of the mountain and not doing that and dying was a fractional second at best, the second when she cranked the wheel to the right side instead of the wrong one.

So when I got that same feeling again, well, I couldn't get back to sleep. I figured that maybe a cigarette would even me out, and then I'd stand out at the courtyard and stare at the stars until I fell back asleep. At the very least, the cigarettes would help replace my queasy gut with a jittery one, and honestly, I'd take anything other than the capital-D.

My cigarettes were on the end table and the lighter was in my pocket. I put my pants on, grabbed the smokes, and walked outside of my room and to the balcony.

Everything was off. At first I thought that maybe it was the sunset, until I remembered that the sun had set hours ago and it had to be at least midnight, since I didn't get to the hotel at eight and I didn't lay down until ten or so. So where in the hell was this off-red color coming from? You know that color you get when you close your eyes but it's bright enough for you to see from? You know, the color of heart transplants or a ruptured intestine? Everything was cast in that exact rusty red, with the lights by the doors lending a weakly orange dim light.

The feeling in my stomach got a lot worse.

I lit my cigarette anyways. What am I gonna do, go outside and not smoke anything? Fuckin' absurd. I smoked that cigarette with a taste like bile in the back of my throat. I didn't get halfway through it before I stripped it and tossed it down the courtyard. I went to go back in my room, but the door was closed behind me. Check my pockets- no damn key. Which I have to say, is not really what I wanted to have happen. With my luck, the asshole behind wouldn't believe me that it was my room. That was if he could understand me- I sure as hell could barely understand him. Had my wallet, anyways, so off I went.