Room 6

By Kristin Koppes

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“Are you sure the card won’t work?” I asked the motel check-in clerk.

“Yah, I’ve run it three times. What other proof do you need?” the clerk responded, flipping his too long brown hair out of his beady eyes and handing me my card as if it were a dead rodent. Jerk.

I was never good at confrontation, and he clearly wasn’t budging, so I replaced the useless credit card and dug into my wallet and pulled out the $40 I planned to use for food along the drive home. I still had a bit of cash my grandad sent for my birthday a few weeks ago. Lord knows I never go out at college so I still had it. My meal plan got me what I needed at the dorm cafeterias.

I handed the guy two of my four crisp $20s. The clerk held each $20 up to the flickering light to check for a watermark before placing it in the cash register and handing me my change and an actual key. I hadn’t been to many motels before, but I’m pretty sure most of them had key cards. “Here’s your change, $5.95. You’re in room 6, Stretch.”

He was referring to my height. 6”5’ and 187 pounds is what most would call “a string bean”. I nodded my thanks and grabbed my brown faded suitcase. I would have wheeled it to room 6, but three of the wheels no longer turned so I carried it instead.

As I exited the motel’s lobby, the screen door slamming behind me, I noticed two men walking toward me from the parking lot. They were unkept and rough looking. One man was as short as my mother. He was probably around 5’3” and had a pot belly. His black hair was thinning on top, but he had a greasy ponytail in the back. The other man had a bushy red beard and was quite obese though he was over 6’ tall. His hair was under a trucker hat that said, “Seaside Stop” which I’m guessing is from a coastal town because there was no seaside near Sidney, Nebraska.

I noticed my shoelace had come untied, and I set down my suitcase to fix it. On my way down, the shorter man bumped into my shoulder. 

“Hey! Watch it!” he exclaimed loudly in a gravelly voice. An unpleasant odor wafted toward me from where I was now sprawled out on the gravel. It smelled like body odor, cigarettes, and rotten meat. 

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “Sor...sorry,” I muttered. 

“Oh, Roger, I can’t take you anywhere without you getting into a fight,” the larger man said. His voice was a contrast to his companion’s. It was higher pitched than most adult men and sounded almost musical. 

“Zip it, Lenny,” the man, Roger, I guess, snapped. 

The two men pulled open the door to the lobby and continued their argument inside. I could no longer hear them. Grabbing my room key and suitcase, I dusted off my too short pants and lumbered toward room 6. I unlocked the door with the actual key and stepped inside.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. There was a huge brown stain on the lime green shag carpet. The bed was unmade and the pillows were thrown around the room. The only thing that looked new was the TV. A note on the counter told me the maid service is no longer in service. 

My old suitcase sat on the ground while I started to straighten the bed. I peeked into my wallet to double check my cash supply flipping past my Nevada driver’s license seeing my name, Kirby Woods. 

Once the bed was satisfactory, I flopped down and turned on the TV. Grandad lets me use his Netflix because I help him set up his account. Since the TV was new, I logged in and started watching A Series of Unfortunate Events. I probably was the only college freshman who still watched it. I don’t care. I like predictability. 

I must have fallen asleep because it was dark outside when I heard voices through the walls. It sounded like the two rough looking men from earlier plus one other voice I didn’t recognize. 

“Give us the money!” the first voice shouted. It sounded like Roger’s low voice. 

“I don’t have it! I’ve told you,” a man’s voice sobbed. Then there was a smack and a scream. 

I moved closer to the wall where I heard their voices. There was a picture of a meadow hanging on the wall. I lifted a corner of it and saw a hole the size of a baseball beneath the frame. I could see into the next room. 

Roger, the smaller, smellier goon was pointing a gun at a man’s head. The man was strapped into the room’s office chair with a coarse looking rope. I held my breath. 

“Roger, we know what we need to do. He knows the deal,” Lenny, the bigger man, said in his singsong voice. 

“Please, for the love of...” the restrained man cried.

Boom. The gun had gone off. 

I immediately collapsed to the ground and knocked into the picture frame. I barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting. Once the contents of my stomach had emptied, I stumbled out of the bathroom.

That’s when I noticed the meadow picture on the floor with a cracked frame and two sets of eyes staring at me through the hole in the wall.  There was no pretending I hadn’t just witnessed what happened in their motel room. Nor was there any way they didn’t see me heave my guts out confirming that fact.

Roger smirked and lifted his gun, “Looks like we’ve got more business to attend to, Lenny.”

Lenny gave a slow nod as the edges of his mouth lifted. “Yes, we do, Roger. Yes, we do.” 

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Morse Code

By Megan Baird

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The lightning tells me stories about you, and I’m not the best at morse code, but I think it just said that you haven’t been happy since you left. It says you sit around waiting for something to come along that will make you feel the way you did when we first met. Back when everything was new and on fire and we couldn’t get enough of each other. Don’t you know that type of love doesn’t happen twice?

It tells me that you haven’t felt comfortable enough to let your wounds bleed into someone else since you last did that with me, and that now you sometimes feel like you’ll overflow. I want to tell you that I’ll always be here to catch what spills over, but I can’t. Not anymore.

It tells me that even though it has been years since we said goodbye, every time it rains you picture me dancing. You picture that incredible day in the middle of the street in front of your house when we didn’t care who saw us or what they thought, and for a moment each time, you wish for what we used to be and wonder where I am.

Well, I am right here watching the lightning, and it’s telling me stories about you. 

I bet wherever you are, it’s trying to tell you something about me too.

I wonder if you take the time to listen.

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