16

They weren't staying in the 4-star hotel anymore. They were in the zoo itself, in a two-bed “guest room” with innards pale yellow and rosebud pink and hauntingly lonely.

She woke up and thought she was somewhere else, because the yelping was of an animal, and it was in the room. The glacier-- the automaton-- his whimpering was of a puppy bleeding out. She was curled up around her pillow, and she didn't know what to do, whether she should wake him up or pretend she hadn't heard.

He woke himself up and saw the whites of her eyes in the dimness of the dying light strips outside. His throat was sore and his head was hurting again, especially his temples and the hollows behind his eyes.

Sleep had blindfolded him, and he was a person, and his composure was back in another 30 seconds and he was behind a wall again. Myra missed the other man he had been, the young one. He'd looked nice.

“I have nightmares sometimes,” he said impassively, before lying down again in perfect anatomical position, like the pictures of angels in medieval art.

“What are they about?” But he wouldn't answer, would he? she rolled over and hugged her pillow.

Coughing, Emmet mouthed, with the silhouette of the blinds segmenting his face.

The next morning Myra ran down the corridor till she was dizzy and looked into all the little alcoves on her left. The one with the sofas and board games also had in it a sink, a jar of cookies so stale it was amusing, and a couple fish tanks full of twigs and leaves. What sort of fish would you put that in with? but of course the ruffage must have gotten in later, somehow, when the fish were already somewhere else.

Another place had stuffed animals in glass cases, the type that displays jewelry. There was something-- Oh! They were all real, real dead preserved animals. Taxidermy, the lost art; she marveled at the skill it must have taken to make them. It was a long niche, all open to the hall, and she followed them and read the placards till the marbles in their faces gave her the creeps and she ran again.

There was one where flowers were pinned on white cardstock. There were names under them and colors within them.

“Autumn Crocus,” she read. “Eremuras.” “Dandelion.” They seemed to be scattered in no particular order. “Chrysantheum.” She wandered into the adjoining antechambers. “Gladiolus.” “Alstroemeria.” “Kangaroo Paw”-- that one made her laugh. “Baby's Breath.” And then a sweet pink flower read, “Myra.”

She sat on the ground and cried shamelessly, and vowed not to hate pink anymore.

Eventually she jumped up and went to explore a new maze of coral and seashells and fish that stared at her as she walked by. When she resurfaced into the hallway, the door across from her was open, so she went in.

Her shoes slipped on sand to pebbles to jagged stones as big as her wrist. Water rushed in and out, echoing eerily. The walls were painted almost entirely blue, with faraway bluffs.

She bit her lip and thought back to her books, to picnics on blue summer days or moody scenes with salt-water wailing. She noticed a painted lighthouse on the wall and realized where she was and raced back without closing the door behind her.

Emmet woke up at nine o-clock and got up after noon. The ceiling had a small crack near the corner and he was wondering if this was a sign of an imminent cave-in. It wasn't, he knew. He could see the building fall in on itself, the ground fall on the building, the sky fall on the ground...

A bug crawled out of the crack and loitered near the top of the wall, staring at him with a nasty, beady look to it's irisless eyes. Emmet stuck his tongue out at it and said, “Shoo!” in a low, owl-like ripple that made the bug scurry back a bit.

He stretched like a cat as he sat up, rolling his shoulders back. His hair was sticking up in three different places.

In the shower he tried to count the square-inch tiles. He'd almost succeeded when the water turned cold.

He grabbed some mousse and went dripping wet to the bedroom mirror to do his hair.

He was very particular about his hair, more than about any other aspect of his appearance. He always combed it into a bit of an angle to set off his cheekbones and the line of his jaw. It was so blond, and his eyes so dark, he looked almost like a deranged checkerboard.

Still, it was useful to be attractive, and to be strikingly so-- and to be tall, which he also was-- and to be well-dressed, which was a pain. He shaved and went to his suitcase and put on dark blue jeans and brown loafers and a bottle green button-up shirt with sleeves he rolled up to the elbow.

He sat down and Myra came bursting in.

“The beach!”

Author's Note

Again, not really edited. Also, I don't' know what's up with the font, I'm too tired to fix it.

Reviews

[John Byrd]

A lot of imagery and detail. Really makes me want ti read more of the story! I normally am too lazy to read this much, but this definitely was worth every second :)