El Idioma del Diablo

my longest piece yet...reviews? comments? advice? thanks

 

Even as the fat, bearded man with the shaggy black hair waddled down to the front desk to turn in his room key, Esperanza was already in his former room, vacuuming. Such was her efficiency. There was nothing in her job description which required her to leap into action so quickly, since the standards at most of Tampa’s airport hotels were significantly more lax, but Esperanza was never one to care about anyone else’s standards. She kept her own standards, and many a fellow maid had failed to meet them.

            The hotel itself did not quite meet her standards, for that matter. Esperanza’s two room apartment downtown was by no means elegant, but it was decorated as tastefully as she could afford and always, always impeccable. Nothing like these rooms. Only after she had spent a great deal of quality time surgically removing the filth and grime from the unkempt guests would she deem the room passable to sleep in, and even then the décor repulsed her. The carpets were thick brown shag, which looked and felt filthy. The walls were no better, with their water stains and nauseating yellow wallpaper. The two lamps did not adequately light the place, and they looked like they were older than Esperanza to boot. It was no wonder the rooms were always so filthy when the guests left. They felt no obligation to treat the hotel with any respect, since it hadn’t earned any. Esperanza grimaced and resumed her vacuuming, although suction could not remove that awful stain by the closet. How you could stain brown shag, she would never know.

            Then there was a sound. She ignored it, but there had definitely been a sound. She continued vacuuming, but warily now. This neighborhood was not about to win any awards for congeniality, and Esperanza was not a big woman. Then the sound came again, louder this time. She switched off the vacuum. The silence made her skin tingle electrically. Outside, the sun was shining sickeningly brightly, and the occasional zoom of cars from out on the freeway offered some reassurance that she was in public, but in the room itself it was dark and silent. The open door offered a window to a mere illusion of protection. The parking lot was quiet, the sidewalks were empty, and the passing cars did not take a second look at the one star hotel which sat amongst the strip malls, as if a lighthouse for those seeking prostitutes. Esperanza could see them, but in reality she terribly alone here.

            The sound interrupted her paranoia and interjected terror. Her heart raced, and she whipped her head from corner to corner, turning the room into a blur. Then another sound. She finally realized what it reminded her of: an old movie she saw once, while she was dating Rodrigo, where the sound had come from coffins before living-dead mummies emerged to tear their victims apart with their bare hands. It was muffled, as if from beyond the grave. Esperanza was not superstitious, but she crossed herself three times anyway, as she moved cautiously to the door.

            Then another sound: a loud banging, fierce and persistent. The closet door was shaking so violently that it looked like it was about to burst off its tracks. Esperanza screamed, but before she could recover and run the doors broke apart, revealing the legs which had kicked them out.

            Terrified though she was, Esperanza stopped. She wasn’t superstitious, no way, but the knowledge that what was in the closet was human made her less afraid than whatever it was she had imagined. She took the mop out of her cleaning cart and approached the closet, careful as could be.

The sight which greeted her was gruesome. It was a boy, about 16 or so, wearing a white t-shirt and boxers, and a blindfold, and metal handcuffs hooked to the pole of the in-closet wall-mounted ironing board. His shirt was stained dark red and brown all over, and there was a pair of black handled scissors sticking out of his chest just below the right collar bone. An entire softball had been forced into his mouth as a gag. He was weakly kicking at the carpet and shuddering, but did not appear to have enough energy to do anything else.

Esperanza removed the blindfold, but instantly wished she hadn’t. The boy’s eyes were bruised around the edges, and they were so bloodshot that everything except the black pupils appeared maroon. He barely glanced at her before closing them again and weakly crumbling, as if a great weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders. She fumbled briefly with the handcuffs, but without the key she couldn’t do anything, and the boy’s sudden moan reminded her to take out the makeshift gag. After something of a struggle, during which the boy remained disturbingly complacent, she forced the softball out. She was disgusted to see that it was covered in blood, as were the boy’s lips. He breathed heavily, but his inhales were too powerful and his exhales were too quick and forced. Esperanza knew that breathing pattern: he was in bad shape. 

He looked back up at his savior, and after spitting out some of the sticky blood that had built up in his throat he gasped, “Please help me, his name is Gary Klein…he has my girlfriend in his trunk…please help me…” After he spoke, it seemed that all his resolve left him at once. Weeks without adequate food or water, days and nights spent in steamer trunks and cold basements, wounds received and healed and inflected again, and the stress of many lifetimes all came upon him at once, though he had long fought them off. And with that his eyes flickered closed, and his body collapsed over itself with a pained groan.

As the fat, bearded man with the shaggy black hair pulled out of the parking lot, with the heat on full blast for reasons known only to himself, he tossed the receipt from his stay out the window along with the credit card he had used. Later, a Good Samaritan jogging past would find the card and contact Ronald Grueller, the man whose name was printed on it, who was very grateful to have his card returned. In the meantime, Esperanza sat on the floor of a poorly appointed room in a Tampa airport hotel of ill repute, crying over the body of a boy whom she had until that day never met, wishing more than ever that she spoke English.

Reviews

[Clay]

this is an extremely disturbing story. I absolutly loved/hated the discription of the boy locked in the closet. Great horror writers use seemingly meaningless details to create a feeling of dread within their reader. The softball was perfect in that regard. the only critique i have, would be to allow the story to develop on its own, slowly, and driven by the characters you have created. The maid was a great character, you really drew me into her mindset. it took me back to the days when i cleaned hotel rooms for minimum wage. but allow that character to grow within the plot, not as a spectator to it. (forgive my spelling, im a highschool dropout, and am useless without a spell check.) this is a great piece of writing, expand upon it. dont be in such a hurry. youve mastered some of the intangibles, all thats left is some of the disciplines.
ps thanks for your review. it was encouraging.

[Here No More]

OH, the irony! This is a fabulous quick read and the revelation about Esperanza at the end was cynical, perfect surprise.

[Dreki]

That was good, nice touch with the ending.