Lostar

ɪ☀ɪ

two DAYS ago

hotel BROWNWOOD

A nudge in my appendix that had awoken me several times already in the night led to a paroxysm. I struggled on the bed as I held back a scream of pain. Or a scream for help since I lived alone in this ratty motel. I moved the blankets off me feeling too hot, then laid them back on me after feeling too cold. I wouldn't be able to sleep no more after this. And I was right, so I got up and went to the bathroom mirror cabinet. Mold ate away at the reflection and I swung it on its rusty pivot but not before I copped a look of myself. I hated seeing myself. I look like I am in the mind of a prowling panther. With my narrow, brown eyes and short gunmetal-gray hair.

I reached for my antidepressants which were prescribed for my panic attacks. I scrolled my top up and stared at where it hurt. I had to tell myself that there was no bruise there anymore. I had been punched by a beast in the third round of the Pittsburgh contest. It had formed into an internal injury festering at night and these worries had my heart rate turning into panic attacks.

I popped the doc's meds into my mouth and crushed them down into bitter grains. I washed it down with water by bringing my face down to the tap. Hopefully I would be feeling better; nothing a smoke wouldn't do. I hated medicine. It was society's artificial remedy to sterilize themselves, to make themselves numb to the world and not believe that death finds a way, so it is easier for the charlatans to rule people. Man is not by any means immortal and humans should embrace mortality and fatality as predictability.

The room was still messy from two nights ago. The only thing intact was the safe that I kept behind the wall which was filled with my prize money. What can I say, I'm too old fashioned to be keeping bank accounts. Approximately $1,000 still sat in that safe.

I was on the base level of the motel and I liked to have my pick-up truck parked right in front of the room. I was back in Texas. More importantly, it was night when the streetlights reflected on rain-slicked streets and the coyotes came out to play. There were a few of them tracking the edge of the property. I had a Glock under my gilded championship belt at the cargo bed of the truck, but I doubted that slinging it off and plunking a coyote would be a wise whim in the dead of night to be hearing, especially if I wanted to stay at this fine residence.

I watched the coyotes pick at the garbage bins from across the motel and lit a smoke to my mouth, careful of the wind blowing the lighter flame against my fingers instead of the cigarette. My predilection was always having a pack of smokes on me.

Hotel Brownwood was just off Highway 67. They advertised cheap prices and since I was dwindling my prize money on anything, I took room 1. The room numbers snaked from the middle, which was the lobby or manager's office. The motel was shaped like a 3-sided square with the missing side being the entrance and exit to the highway. The center was inhabited by the carpark. Since there were a second floor of guests, there were more parking spots on the outskirts of the motel. My room was the closest to the lobby if I exclude room 40. So, the left side-ground floor were rooms 1-10, the second level consisted of rooms 11-30 and right side of the ground floor were rooms 31-40.

I breathed a puff of smoke through my nose that was battered by the rain. The second floor provided shelter. I leaned against the wall next to my door and looked up. That perv was still spying on that girl. Usually, I know everyone who comes to the motel, but I didn't know who these people were. The perv was an old man who sat on a chair pretending to stargaze with his binoculars but everyone would be able to tell what he was doing if people woke up at night like I did. He resembled Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but he was no captain of the Enterprise.