Black and White Snow

We were all strangers, thrown together by chance, all living in the same world but each a citizen of his own reality. None of them knew why I was there or what I planned to do. For my part, I only thought I knew. I remember dancing in the black and white

    I pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn, the first hotel I saw. I sat in my truck for a few minutes staring into nothing, breathing steamy clouds; I was lost in a memory of the past, contemplating shattered dreams, facing out at the road on which drivers raced their cars up and down to places where they wanted to go or had to go and in the direction of people they loved or thought they loved or thought they could some day love. I thought about all those people and their separate lives, all brought together by the road; I thought of their dreams and their dreams of fulfilling their dreams. I thought of their smiling faces and their muscles tired from smiling. I thought of their teary eyes, teary goodbyes, teary reunions to come, and their furrowed brows. Each driver was cursing another to speed up, get out of the way, get off the road, learn how to drive because each one’s destination was more important, each one’s drive more urgent than those of the drivers in front of them. I thought of their confusion about where they were going and why; I thought of their passion for life that could dry up in an instant like a shallow lake in a desert. The more I thought of those people driving by in their cars the more I hated them. With no one to call and no friend whose face I could conjure up to comfort me, my loneliness started to scare me. I was shivering, too. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was because I knew what I planned to do and I knew that no one would stop me.
    The man at the front desk seemed like he belonged in some biker bar rather than a Holiday Inn. His long greasy pony tail needed to be washed. His long sleeved white button-up shirt barely covered his tattooed arms. His red and black checkered tie was off-center and looked like he’d tied it in the dark. The tone of his voice and his impeccable grammar and surprising hospitality, however, made him perfect for the job of checking in random strangers who wanted to be treated gently, called sir or madam, and ultimately wanted to get into their room as quickly as possible.
    When he asked me if I was a triple-A member, I lied and said, “Yes; isn’t everyone these days?” He smiled, chuckled under his breath, nodding his head in agreement as he typed, and informed me that I’d get a twenty dollar discount. He never asked to see my triple-A member card.
    “Room 468,” he said. “You got the king size bed and the Jacuzzi tub. It’s really my favorite room in the hotel. I’ve spent a few nights there myself.” And he winked at me, or so it seemed. Maybe he had Tourette’s. Maybe, like other people who wink at others to seem friendly and immediately familiar and trustworthy, he thought I’d respond favorably to the gesture. Maybe he wanted me to invite him to my room for the night so he could get on all fours on the king-size bed and beg me to pull his greasy ponytail while I plowed him from behind. Whatever his motive for winking, I was ready to extricate myself from the situation and escape his goofy grin and strange arched-eyebrow stare and get into my room as quickly as possible.
    “You think you’ll be staying more than one night?” he said. Again it seemed he had ulterior motives for asking.
    “Probably so,” I told him. “I drove sixteen hours today and my body aches like I‘ve been pummeled by a group of gypsy children. I need to catch up on some serious sleep.” Which wasn’t a lie but was indeed a half-truth. The whole truth was that I had a bottle of sleeping pills and a liter of Jack Daniels in the bag over my shoulder, and I intended to check-in and never check-out, if you know what I mean. But I couldn’t tell him that. Hell no! He’d have me arrested or put in a hospital or something worse, maybe thrown out in the snow, bound and gagged, where his biker boyfriends would assault and molest me and leave me for dead. If he knew my plan, he might even sneak into my room later that night and try to rape my corpse.
    “I tell you what,” he said as he typed away on his keyboard  maintaining his gaze at me. “I’m going to go ahead and book you for a second night and that way you’ll get to take advantage of our multiple night package. Tomorrow, if you decide to leave, I can just cancel one night because of, let’s say, a family emergency, and you’ll still get the discount. How does that sound?” He smiled widely at me with his one arched eyebrow and, I’ll be damned, he winked at me again, obviously proud of himself.
    “That’s fine. How much will I save?” I asked, feigning interest to return his cordiality when all I could think of, honestly, was slapping him, cutting off his ponytail and slitting his throat.
    “Nine dollars,” he said as though he’d just announced that he’d cured me of some disease I didn’t know I had.
    Did I really look that cheap, that poor, that saving nine dollars was something for which I’d fall on my knees and pay obeisance to this cretin behind the counter? Ah, I thought, I probably did.
    Fingering the cigarette pack in my pocket, I thanked him graciously like I imagined a soccer mom would thank a clerk at Wal-Mart and then for the hell of it I asked if he knew of any good gay bars close to the hotel, subtly expressing my desire to ‘blow off’ some steam. I quickly added that I was lonely, which was true, and knew no one in this town off the interstate, which was also true, and that I could really profit from a good time tonight, putting special emphasis on the words ‘good time’.
    His face went blank for a moment as I assumed he pondered his great fortune. I bet he could feel his heart beating in his little shriveled prick. His eyes narrowed and he casually licked his upper lip. “Um,” he started, looking around for his coworkers. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in like he was telling me a secret. “I know of a real fun place close by. Here’s my cell number. You can call me later if you want me to show you around town.” He slid me the hotel’s business card on the back of which he’d hastily scribbled his number. “I get off at ten,” he added, putting special emphasis on the words “get off”.
    My room was on the fourth floor. 468. All the way at the end of the hall. Inside was a king-size bed, neatly made, sheets tucked under tightly enough to cut off circulation to the guest’s legs, and where the comforter was pulled back to reveal white sheets there was a little card that read, ‘Go ahead. Put a dent in the pillow.’ Not yet, I thought, but definitely later. And I’ll go so far as to leave a body to decompose there in the bed with its head firmly propped up and covering the dent in that pillow. I took the ice bucket down the hall to fill it at the machine. When I got back I slammed the door, locked and bolted it, and poured whiskey into one of those plastic Holiday Inn cups, after tearing off the plastic wrapper, and I added a few ice cubes.
    The room was a meat locker. My body wouldn’t decompose very quickly in these arctic conditions, I mused. I wondered when the last guest had checked out. If it had been earlier in the day it was safe to assume, although the hotel had a strict no pet policy, that the guest had snuck a polar bear in the back door and had set the air conditioning low enough to make the bear feel at home. Well, I was used to Florida summers and mild winters which were like Canadian summers, and I was used to running the AC on full blast in hotel rooms where I had a strict policy of getting my money’s worth-- think of long hot showers, running water while I shave and brush my teeth, leaving on as many lights as possible and letting the television flash the faces and lives of strangers onto the wall toward which I turn it to avoid its distraction while I read or write or masturbate furiously-- and so I adjusted the heater to the setting closest to hellfire. Once the heater exhaled a warm draft, I stripped down, throwing my clothes around the room, and then regrettably I caught a glimpse of my naked body in the full-length mirror on the wall which was put there as a ploy by the hotel manager no doubt to make the guests feel ashamed of their bodies and their lives and ultimately make them kill themselves in which case they’d never be able to check out and their credit cards would continue being charged for the occupied room until the end of time. I hadn’t seen myself, truly seen myself, naked in ages. The sight sickened me. I shook my head in disbelief at my flabby stomach, my drooping a*s cheeks, my budding manboobs. I won’t miss this body a bit, I thought.

     I picked up the phone and hit the zero.

     The clerk's tired voice answered. "Front desk."

     "Yeah, hi, it's me, room 468."

     "Hey, man. What can I do for you?"

     "Listen, I might be staying a little longer than I'd expected, and, um, maybe you could just charge the days as they come, okay? Can you do that?"

     "You mean charge your card if you don't check out?"

     "Exactly." The guy was no brain surgeon. "Money's really no problem for me, and I need a place to store my things. I might leave and come back, but whatever happens you just keep charging the card until I come up and say differently."

      "Mmm-okay. Will do."

     "Thanks a lot, babe," I said. Yeah, I'll be nice and bloated and rotten by the time someone comes to check on the wealthy guest in 468 and the stench he puts off. Were it not for the smell, perhaps the card would be charged until it finally maxed out. That would give me plenty of time to find my way to the Gates of Hell.
    Having turned on all the lamps in the room, having smashed the mirror to shards, I pushed the curtains aside and stood before the long window, hoping the family unloading from their car in the parking lot would look up and see me, a naked monster, as they made their way through the falling snow towards the hotel lobby. I wanted to be a ghastly sight they would never forget. I hoped it would ruined their lives forever. I waved desperately, jumping up and down to get their attention, but they kept walking with their heads down against the wind like they were going sullenly to a funeral until they were safely out of sight. The parking lot was blanketed with white snow and the family’s footprints were the only indications that I wasn’t alone at this hotel with its parking lot with ten or twelve abandoned cars all slowly turning white. Soon those footprints would disappear, covered again, and with the help of whiskey I’d be able to forget I’d ever seen them at all.
    I drank straight from the bottle this time, tasting nothing but the sadness lumped in the back of my throat which had left me speechless for the past hour or so.
    The city was alive outside the window. Its lights were a thousand shining eyes staring at me and through me, reinforcing my loneliness  and my hatred for the world. I was in a city where no one knew my name or the shame of my past. To the inhabitants of this city I was just another scowling stranger fed up with life rather than a man whose body was full of cancer, whose heart was a barren wasteland, whose soul was resigned to its fate, whose family and friends had long since abandoned him, whose life was like a book too sad to read and not worthy of anything but destruction.
    8:30. The darkness outside nearly rivaled the darkness in my mind. Everything I've done since finding out I was going to die has been completely selfish. No one knows where I am except the Devil. I wonder if he will welcome me with open arms.
    The bottle of whiskey was more than half drained. I was more than half drunk. The bottle of sleeping pills, sitting silently on the bedside table, was more than half full; but I intended to change that. I thought the whiskey would give me courage and strength but it made me weepy and disconsolate. I was a sentimental drunk sometimes and an angry drunk sometimes. Tonight nostalgia was winning the tug of war.
    I sat there by the window thinking of the past. I thought of my lost love whom I’d shunned to save her from my rapid decline in health. I thought of my dead brother. Will he be waiting for me somewhere? I thought of family and friends whom I‘d never see again. I thought of all the people I’ve hurt, bad things I’ve said and could never take back, promises I’ve made and broken, and almost everything that has ever gone wrong, all that in mere seconds. I even thought of you, dear reader, who will find this journal on the bedside table and will read it again and again for clues as to why, why, why… I assume you’ll be a housekeeper who comes in to change the towels and bed sheets and  I know you’ll probably steal the money from my wallet in the pants on the floor. I hope you’re an illegal immigrant who hasn't learned to read English. I hope you use the rest of the money from my bank account which is in that wallet to help yourself and your family live an easier life.
    Honestly, though, I hope no one ever reads this. I hope no one wonders why. That’s why I’m all the way out in the middle of nowhere. I hope no one finds me. I hope that if you are reading this you stop reading now, put it down, cut my body into little pieces and throw me in a dumpster somewhere without any identification. Take out my teeth and give them to some child to use in fooling the Tooth Fairy. Cut off my fingers and go commit burglaries and leave my prints everywhere, further defaming my name and my legacy.
    Suddenly I wondered how many people have felt like this in this very room. How many people have in fact die here, have wanted to die, have planned to die? How many people couldn’t follow through? How stained with blood and cum were these carpets and these hotel mattresses? How many murders have been planned here? How many wives and husbands have been betrayed on these very beds and floors and standing up in these showers?
    Then I started thinking about how sick the world is and how depraved are all its inhabitants. All are just pretenders, living lies and denying truths, and none of them, none of us truly deserves to live. But that’s another story altogether. I can’t go around playing God, can I? Sometimes, though, I wish I could.
    Personally, I’m tired of pretending that life is beautiful, that love is real, that money isn’t important, that God is great, that everything will be all right, that the world is my oyster, that cliches are adequate substitutions for real conversation.
    Why should I cease to exist. I wonder, when it’s everyone else that’s content with this dream/nightmare? Why now that I’ve emerged from the fog must I be condemned for it?
     I just realized what I had to do.
    I put on my clothes and jacket and boots and left the room. I took the elevator to the lobby and went outside into the cold night. At the gas station across the highway I bought a five gallon gas can and filled it to the brim. Smiling, I strode across the road, weaving between honking cars until I made it into the parking lot. I went in through the side door and ran upstairs to the fourth floor.
    As I splashed the gasoline onto the walls and carpet in the hallway and onto every individual door, I pictured all the trapped guests jumping from windows down to the ground. I imagined all the heavy sleepers snoring while the blaze crept to their beds and ate them alive. I knew the flames would disregard the ‘Do not Disturb’ signs hanging from doorknobs. Neither would Death.
    Without a second thought I lit the match and dropped it to the floor. It took only a moment for the fire to race down the hall. God it was beautiful.
    I wanted to walk back to my room and lock myself inside. I wanted to sleep and wait for the eternal soothing darkness of death. But those steps were difficult and the room seemed far. If I fail at this, I thought, then I am the ultimate failure, for suicide should be the easiest thing in the world.  Anyone claiming to have attempted suicide lacks determination. With that in mind, I ran back to my room, dodging the flames that lined the hallway walls, jumping right through the inferno when there was nowhere to cross.
    In the room I collapsed on the bed. I grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills, poured some in my mouth and chomped them like they were breath mints and I was ready for the kiss of Death. It wouldn’t be long now. Finally I will win. I’ll leave this masquerade.
    Why couldn’t there have been a blurry Monet print on the wall or a Bosch depiction of Hell or even a painting of Christ in his final moments of pain when he questioned whether he wanted to die.  I would finally be able to relate to him, his pain, his doubt. God has forsaken me, too, Mr. Jesus, so in a way you and I are alike. I just wanted anything to stare at while my eyelids drooped and I went unconscious. I’m just not a lucky man, I guess. What my gaze found was a poster whose heading read in bold red letters: What to do in case of fire.
    I jumped up from the bed intending to rip the poster to shreds but what I saw when I looked closer made me pause. I laughed uproariously. Cartoon figures straight out of Peanuts ran down a hallway without moving in one scene. In the next they found the stairs. They they bolted outside. A father carried his daughter. The daughter carried her doll. The mother carried a bag, probably filled with her makeup and d****s. Their blank expressions showed no fear, but somehow they looked more alive than normal people, more alive than anyone I’d seen lately.
    I threw open the door and burst into the hallway with a hand towel held over my mouth. I stood in the smoke, surrounded by the flames, and I screamed as loud as I could, even though I couldn’t hear myself, to warn the others, the heavy sleepers, the couples f*****g in their beds, the lazy men and women drooling in front of televisions. Everything was a bright, flashing blur. I finally heard smoke detectors blare their warnings. People were running all around me, trying to get to the stairs. A man grabbed my arm and pulled me along, shouting something incomprehensible, and then I was down the stairs and outside.
    Everyone was already outside. The parking lot was full of half-dressed people. Kids were spinning around with arms outstretched to catch the black and white snow falling from the sky. I heard laughter and many voices whispering and shouting. Standing off to the side, trying desperately but failing to efface himself, was the hotel clerk dressed in leather bondage gear with holes for his genitals, clips on his n*****s, a metal choker around his neck, and lipstick and makeup on his face.
    I stood there shivering, alone but in a crowd, and I watched with all the rest as the fire spread through the hotel and up onto the roof. First response vehicles screamed in the distance, men and women approaching to do their job.
    I was alive, God damn it all to Hell. Unless this was the dream that comes right before death.  I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to scream at all the people out there and tell them how close to death they had come, how close to death they are every day of their lives. I wanted to shake them and make them see that they were still alive, more alive than ever before. Why is it, I wanted to scream, that it takes daily reminders of mortality on the television and in the newspapers for us to believe that we may not be here tomorrow. Why must we see Death’s fingerprints on the bodies of our loved ones before we realize that it does and will happen to us? Why must we first suffer through a tragedy to enjoy completely the comedy of life?
    In the end, I was glad to feel alive, standing there in the black and white snow. I didn’t know yet how I felt about actually being alive. I thought of my wife and my child and managed a smile. Maybe I was the tragedy they needed.
    I decided then to call home.
       

Author's Note

Some of this story is true, some is false, some is exaggerated. Names have been changed to protect the living, the dead, and the insane.

Reviews

[Kasey]

This was really, really great. And it was so real. The Holiday Inn clerk was unexpected in a way that can only happen in reality. The same goes for the poster in the room. Real with that ironic sort of twist... The thing that makes this amazing is that it's relatable. It could've been anyone in room 468.

There was a lot of good, realistic dialogue. I loved the narrator's response to the clerk. It just highlighted character traits that would otherwise go unmentioned or unnoticed. I also think the main character was, simply put... beautifully flawed.

Bravo.

[Raef C. Boylan]

You flip between present and past tense a few times throughout this:

"I guess tomorrow I'd charge a month's stay on my credit card to ensure no one would find me until I was nice and bloated and rotten" [if it's a continuation of his internal dialogue, then I think it should be "i'll charge" and "no one will"; if it's part of the story-telling, I think "I guess tomorrow" needs re-wording. Plus, wasn't he planning to kill himself that night? How was he going to charge his card the next day?]

"Everything I've done since I found out I was going to die was completely selfish." [I've done?]

Just a few minor ones like that. Maybe give it a read-through when you come to edit it.

LOL - I only noticed the clerk in the parking lot on the second read...like an extra treat for trying to help edit. Thanks. Small incidents, like our narrator's interaction with the clerk, are what help make stories especially memorable, even though they aren't the main point.

Overall, a very good story. We were right in this guy's head with him, in his turmoil of thoughts and revelations. If I haven't yet said it, you're a gifted writer.
Thanks for posting this.

[Hedra Helix]

this is awesome;)

having said that mind if I go line by line?
I could sense how some of this was real btw;)




I (just//re?) pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn, the first hotel I saw. I sat in my truck for a few minutes staring into nothing, breathing steamy clouds; (

[Inda Lauryn]

This is beautifully written and criminally engaging. The story never goes where one might expect and the twists are both tragic and fun. Still, as much as we learn about the narrator, he remains a mystery to the end. I won't be forgetting this story for some time.