Spotted Traveler, again.
All the Stranger ever wrote about me in his book, granted, he wrote it more than once. I study my shadow, draped in the carpet of a grim hotel. It stares back through a single glowing eye- the red-orange switch of a surge protector. I shift and the shadow’s head is forced under a shelf.
Better.
I didn’t recognize my expectations regarding the Stranger’s written accounts of our meetings until they were abruptly unmet. Hurried, sometimes, and regularly discreet, I thought my own recollections of the man were brief.
There’s more than length to a dick-measuring contest.
A joke he would make.
I crawl onto the bed- crawl out again to retrieve the small pouch of nickels on the table. A truck rumbles past the window and my shadow looms, suddenly, to peer over my shoulder. I shake the bag of change- noise wards off evil spirits and intrusive thoughts alike. The traffic passes and the room returns to the predictable sort of dark I prefer.
I slip between the sheets again, toss my clothes to the floor, and press a nickel into a slot on the headboard. The world goes quiet- dreadfully so. It’s the quiet of a power outage in the middle of the night, the sudden non-ticking of the fridge or the silence of a bedside fan. It’s the sound of an absence and, after a moment, I trace the absence to myself. My own body is silent, as though the blood has stopped in my veins. There is quiet, even within me. It’s frightening, at first, and then the world returns and the noise of it is so disturbing that I run coins into the headboard until the pouch is emptied.
Already I am afraid to hear that sound return. I’m just as afraid of the blessed silence, that it has so quickly become a balm. I breathe (silently) and remind myself why I limited the nickels to a handful- the same reason I prefer twine to chalk on the occasion that Shitholes leads me into a cave. The twine is a logical limit and the chalk, well, one piece has the potential for so many arrows.
Re-adjusted to the silence (and resigned to its inevitable end), I pick up the Stranger’s book and endeavor to understand the path to his strange demise.
‘For those seeking respite from the myriad stimuli of everyday life, one might call ahead to the local motel-by-the-hour and inquire about the make and model of their beds. The long-defunct ‘Tectonics’ line of vibrating mattress frame wears in such a way that, after a few years of heavy use, the motor maintains a frequency quite opposite the music of the spheres, creating a state of absolute stillness.
As with much of what happens in motels with vibrating beds, addiction is common and side-effects are the norm. Dizziness follows long use of the ‘Tectonics’ line, as do migraines. Random internal ruptures have been reported, though witnesses of such events are unreliable, hiding either deep inebriation or motive for murder.’
-traveler
