Incessant

A 700-word flash fiction piece about a man who is given another chance to do things right.

The door inched closed for the last time �" the divorce had been brutal. He was not only ostracized by his friends and colleagues but by his and ten-year-old son. Joseph Newmaker padded away from his home and out of town with his son’s school bag stuffed with necessities and his thumb pointing to an unknown destination.

A brisk evening licked his face when the sun dipped below the desert horizon. He’d walked several miles when a classic pickup truck pulled beside him. A disheveled middle-aged man wearing a business suit with countless creases slumped behind the wheel. “Where to?” 

“Anywhere but here.”

The man drove into the night and through the next day listening to Joseph’s story with interest and absent of questions. Joseph had completed his tales and they stared through headlights in silence until the driver pointed with a nod. “There’s an Inn up ahead. I’m sure they’ll give you a bed for the night.”

Joseph stood in the road and watched the truck idle away. The license plate read, AWISH4U.

*****

The Victorian Inn perched in solitude with grace amongst sand dunes punctuated by shadowy silhouettes of cactus. An elderly woman stood in the doorway. “You’re going to catch your death standing out there, young man.“

Joseph shuffled up three steps onto a covered porch. A wooden placard posted beside the door read �" Our doors are always open for you. “I don’t have any money to pay for a room,” he said.

The woman smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s take a seat and enjoy a nice cup of hot tea.”

Joseph discovered a chain bolted to the wall and the door. “How do you close the door?”

The woman snickered. “Don’t worry about that,” and patted the red velvet sofa cushion beside her.

Joseph sipped tea and surveyed the quaint parlor �" small and elegant with eighteenth-century decor and flames billowing from a fireplace.

They had finished their tea and Joseph trailed the woman upstairs and down a hallway past each room with an open door. 

The woman cupped her mouth with a hand and snickered, “Always the same questions.” They stopped in the hallway outside a guest quarter. “Here’s your room,” she said. 

“It’s nice,”

“It hasn’t changed a bit.”

Joseph scanned the room �" quaint and simple while boasting the same elegance as the rest of the Inn. “Remember to keep the door open,” she said, then shuffled back down the hallway.

Unable to sleep, Joseph slipped out of bed and latched the door shut. He lied in bed and stared at the ceiling. “One more chance, please?”

He awoke the next morning. His heart pounded. Sweat dripped from his face. He showered and ran downstairs. Before he left, the woman gave him a dollar. 

Joseph furrowed his eyebrows. “What’s this for?”

“Spend it wisely,” she said.

Joseph didn't have to walk far before an old pickup truck idled beside him. “Where to?” the man said.

*****

Joseph woke up in an abandoned warehouse and reflected over the past ten years. The lottery ticket he’d purchased with a dollar given him by an old woman had been a blessing, but he’d lost his lucrative life through a nasty divorce. Dressed in a soiled business suit, he slung a backpack over a shoulder and heard a clinking sound. A key rested on the floor near his foot. He shuffled outside where he found an old pickup truck parked near the entrance �" the driver’s door opened. Joseph glanced around and shouted for someone. When there was no response, he slid behind the wheel of the truck and sped onto the highway.

Through the desert, he traveled under a canopy of stars and regret. An endless stretch of desolate highway �" destination unknown. Up ahead, a hitchhiker. He pulled to the shoulder of the road. “Where to?”

Joseph drove into the night and through the next day. He listened without a word to the man’s story. “There’s an Inn up ahead,” Joseph said, “I’m sure they’ll give you a bed for the night.”

The hitchhiker stood in the street and read the license plate as the truck drove away �" AWISH4U.

THE END

Author's Note

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. I love to hear good critiques. I have thick skin, so please don't hold back. my goal is to improve where I need.