Rendezvous at the Equinox

      There will be no confession. There’s nothing to explain. Nor anyone to scapegoat and certainly no one to cast shame upon.

           That’s my two cents.

           I’ve been sole owner of the Equinox for over a decade now. I fought for the lion’s share, and I’ll be damned if some half-witted pig is gonna take it from me.

           A waste of time, that’s what this was. A three-ring rouse. Half my day, gone. Depositions and interrogations. The assholes thought I could give them some answers. To what?

           What guests do in the rooms that they pay for is their own business!

           These pigs think they can waltz right on in and steamroll anyone…And lots of folk placate ‘em. That’s the problem with the younger generations – they got no spine! They let the authorities walk all over them and wait to complain until after and…

           Still…

           One sympathizes for those families. Whoever they are.

           “No one can figure it out.” He says to me. “As the owner, you must have a clue as to what was going on here. Just point us in the right direction. Their loved ones deserve to know.”

           Maybe they do – and I don’t deserve the blame!

           Think they can guilt me into a confession, huh?

           The Equinox always has and always will respect the privacy of its guests first and foremost. That’s one thing I didn’t change when I bought this place out from Mr. Heartkin all those years ago. Revamped everything else – replaced every floorboard, painted every wall, removed all the shag carpet, tossed out the stained mattresses…But the philosophy? The foundation of this institution? I could never.

           I feel for their families, I do.

           Nothing in life came easy before everything went to pot, and it’s certainly not any easier now. That much is certain. Losing a loved one never gets any easier, even after the apocalypse.

           But I can’t be blamed for what two consenting adults choose to do in their free time! Or three. Or ten.

           There were plenty of others, I’m sure. Hell, I know so. They all gathered here a few times a year. And plenty more will be back, soon enough. And then the cops can gather all those hooligans up and detain ‘em and take all the depositions to their hearts’ content. But not from me. Not again. I’m far too busy. Far too busy…

           And they act like I’m not traumatized by what happened!

           Fucking pigs make me sick.

           It was such a grim sight, the night I walked in. Etched into the back of my eyes like a long gaze into the sun.

           A ruckus at the Equinox isn’t unusual. Far from it. Roughhousing or a one night stand. It’s not my place to assume. Things happen. Vases break and furniture flips over. Sheets get stained. And I clean it up, all the same.

           That night was louder than usual, though…

           “Didn’t you check the rooms? After?” The cop has the audacity to ask me.

           No, I did not. You walk in on one horrifying site and that’s enough, I say. I was so taken aback that I didn’t even think to barge in on anyone else. It was unconscionable. Hard to stomach it happening more than once in one night.

           They can’t begin to understand…They think the corpse sitting in that body bag was mortifying? Just imagine seeing that thing alive…Floundering about the motel bed, struggling to breath and pleading for help. It was a mercy, is what I did.

           Frankly, it’s a miracle the Equinox lasted this long without an incident, all things considered.

           One of the last standing motels in the state. Cash only. No questions asked. And not a single mishap over the course a decade. We should be commended for withstanding annihilation for this long!

            But I should’ve known, some day or another, the modern world of sin would catch up to us. You can only appease the degenerates for so long.

           I don’t keep tabs on who comes back or why. I just assume they like my prices and the smell of the fabric softener here. The most I ever interfered was when I brought one of that lot some acetaminophen for a nasty migraine they were fighting. You could see it on their face, their veins red and bulging over their skull.

           Terrible business, Entanglement addiction. Nasty stuff.

           We all must feel it, don’t we? A little bit? You can’t escape it nowadays. Not around these parts. Poor souls…

           They said it was messing with their heads. Every time reality slipped away – the atoms in their bones would shimmy and their skin cells would vibrate. Their whole existence would become distorted, if only for a brief instant, and then rematerialize.

           Each time, a little more agony. A little less human. Worn down. Consumed. 

           And eventually, I realized, they became a little more aroused.

           Sometime after the world went downhill, I started clocking an influx at the motel.

           We always had passersby – vagabonds and nomads of all persuasions.

           I damn near struggled to keep up with the revolving door of customers. More and more, people migrated: looking to start again somewhere quiet. Somewhere inconspicuous. The Equinox was the perfect safehouse before the next chapter of their lives.

           Or so I thought.

           I thought folks wanted a place to stay. A place to clear their heads and get some rest before moving onward and upward.

           But so many stayed.

           Days on end, they would squat and never leave their rooms. They’d leave cash under the doors and just ask to be left alone. I’d offer them food, but most refused.

           And without so much as a goodbye, they’d all disappear. No checking out.

           Only once a door was left unlocked would I know it was time to change the sheets and clean up.

           And each time, the job got worse. Stains were getting harder to clean out and more furniture would need to be replaced. Some clothes would get left behind – too shredded and soiled to be packed into a suitcase, I suspect.

           But I didn’t ask. I never wanted to know.

           And then the ‘Collective’ started coming around.

           Like a pack of hounds, they marked their territory round about seven years ago, and they would return at least three or four times each year – occupying all twelve rooms. Dozens of ‘em, spread across the motel. Not leaving for weeks on end. No food or water needed. No one ever caught lounging in the lobby or getting some fresh air…

           But the chaos inside those rooms was immeasurable.

           Once or twice, I thought about burning the place down. Not for the insurance, but for the sake of a quicker cleanup. Relieving us all of the debauchery the Collective had unleashed upon every last of those inch of fabric in those rooms for so long.

           The irresistible urge. To never have to scrub those floors again.

           Woe betide those plagued by Entanglement, I tell you. For it is a foul disease. The worst kind.

        These people, they glitch. It’s like a fidget. Some kind of uncontrollable, obsessive-compulsion. Those plagued by it would claim that a world unseen is causing this to happen to them, but psychologists insists the Entangled are just doing it to themselves. Over and over. Begging for attention.

           They blip in and out of existence in the blink of an eye. Like when watching a movie, and a single frame is cut from the reel. But when they come back – they’re not the same. The Entangled person changes. Not in appearance, no, not usually. But in demeanor. Something in them snaps. Their insides shift.

           And I think all of the Collective suffer from this affliction. I think every last one of them is deeply Entangled.

           It must make you sick, being like that all the time. It garbles up your insides. In that one microsecond, your organs move up to your chest and your heart falls out of your ass. Your brain spins inside your skill and your bones are hollowed out. You rematerialize, yes, but it can’t feel good.

           Or at least, that’s what I thought.

           But then the Collective showed me a different side.

           If they’re all consenting adults, who am I to stop them?

           Was I frustrated by the mess left in every room when they were here? Absolutely. Did I think they were miscreants, and I’d have been better off burning the place down? Of course.

           But I’m a simple man. I’m pleased by the ordinary. And I do my business like most ordinary folks do. So I feel bad even considering casting judgment on those with a finer taste for the complexities of pleasure than I in a harrowing world such as this. 

          But I will say it now as a point of fact barring personal judgment: the Collective – in my opinion – were bona fide freaks. Flat out horndogs.

           There can’t be any question about it. The things I heard, going on in my motel? The shit I cleaned up? You can’t tell me they weren’t. And I wish I wasn’t one to kink-shame. I truly wish.

         But this was obscene, I tell you. We’re talking half a dozen people in one tiny motel room sometimes. Together. For days. Weeks, even. With no food or water or fresh air.

           Now, add Entanglement into all that.

           Think of the insanity.

           At first, one imagines they would have to avoid each other. No touching, despite the spatial limitations of a single queen-sized bedroom. They wouldn’t dare Entangle with one another, would they?

           What that pig wants to ask me about…What I found in Cabin Nine last night…It leads me to imagine the impossible.

            Half a dozen eyes, scattered across a single face like pimples. Darting about with no coordination, as if the motor cortex couldn’t make sense of being pulled in every direction. A nose bifurcated in three spots, with too many tiny holes, gasping for oxygen. Hair in all the wrong places, sprouting, shedding, and resprouting again in an instant. One mouth, thankfully, but with rows of teeth like a shark and no discernible tongue. Its fatty lips flapped about, releasing spurts of drool across the room, but it couldn’t articulate with words. I don’t know how many limbs…I saw only one foot stretched across three legs, and fingers fused to its spine like dorsal fins.

           It was begging for mercy, I swear. I didn’t know what else to make of it. It couldn’t walk and it couldn’t speak. It could barely breathe. It would’ve died of natural causes sooner rather than later…

           At least six people walked into Cabin Nine at the start of that stay, I remember that much. That’s what they paid for.

But only one body was wheeled out.

           “You didn’t keep a log of your guests’ names?” The cop barks at me.

           I believe I tell him to go fuck himself. The anxiety building up in this tiny interrogation room nearly kills me.

           They had performed an autopsy in the time between my discovery and my deposition.

           One lung, they said. Not nearly enough for a creature of that size.

‘Creature’ was their word, not mine. Although my mind scrambles to think of a better one.

           It had multiple hearts, but no connecting arteries. Its blood would’ve been pumping wildly in and out of all the wrong spots at an alarming rate. A few too many stomachs and intestines, all plugged into one another like an backwards sewage system. 

           This thing was in pain, there’s no denying it. Whatever it was trying to say with those fumbling lips must’ve been something akin to “help me.”

           And so I did.

           And it ought not be a crime, to do the right thing in times of duress! Who wouldn’t put a dog down once the scales lean more towards suffering than joy? Once its body is cancer-ridden and unable to walk or bark? Who wouldn’t think it best to end the agony as soon as possible?

One can’t forget that face. That goddamned face. Those eyes – the two that stared back at me. Pale blue ones that appeared to be weeping, even without eyelids.

           I knew them. I knew those baby blues. The blonde from Cabin Nine. She paid for the whole group. Cash. No name.

The face was unforgettable. She had been here many times before. Once, she even invited me in.    God help me, I lusted. I acquiesced. I gave in and let her guide me into that cabin. Once and once only.

           I hadn’t been in Cabin Nine. Cabin Five – the one with the larger bathroom. Two years back now, at least.

           It was just her and her betrothed at that time. A real gentleman. Offered me a bottle of water from his backpack and a chance to use the toilet ‘before things started.’

           I’ve never felt so unprepared in all my life.

           I thought they wanted to show me something. A busted pipe or a faulty wire. Maybe they needed more pillows.

           But then it happened.

           The gentlemen glitched out of existence for an instant. Disappeared then reappeared.

           Still the same, but different. Entangled, and bringing back with him a feeling most primal – carnal.

           His face…Something about it. Tortured, sickly, yet…Delighted. Excited. He looked as though someone grabbed his gears and turned them just enough.

           Then she looked at me. She wanted to know how I’d react. And I don’t think I did. Not much. I remember staring. My hazy hazels unable to blink. I felt my jaw open and that skeevy, musty motel air linger on my tongue. 

           And then she did it. Blipped off and back on again. The same face. Torture and ecstasy simultaneously.

           There was no hesitation. They went after each other like ravenous wolves, tearing their clothes off. Moans and grunts. Kisses on the neck and beyond.

I never knew – did they want me to join? Or just to watch?

Maybe they thought me Entangled as well. Who can say?

And so I watched. And I kept watching. And I never felt anything. Uncomfortable, no doubt. Worried for their safety. But never excited.

They did it two or three more times. Took a few steps back from each other, bits wobbling about in the air conditioning. Heads pounding as they went at it again.

I bowed out after the third time. An ole Irish Goodbye before they could clock me mid-coitous. I shuffled back to the front desk and did everything I could to put it out of my mind.

Each time since, they’ve not dared to show their face in the lobby. Someone else checks them in, and I watched them scurry to their room – hidden.

Until this last stay. When she paid for it all again, in cash. She was smiling. I thought she winked at me with those pale blue beauties…

It was her, I know it was her. You never forget eyes like that. Who knows if she and the lad ever got married. Had kids…God forbid.

I haven’t cleaned up Cabin Nine yet. Not properly.

I only ask the pigs one thing – if they identified any victims yet…All I got in return was a look. A look that said no person in Hell or on Earth would be able to translate the DNA or fingerprints from that corpse.

“Guests?” They ask me. “As in, plural?”

How will the families be notified?

Someday, some worried mother will file a missing persons report. She’ll say her daughter was elegantly shaped and blue eyed, with the fairest blonde hair…And some sap at the police station will have to suggest this mother pay a visit to the coroner’s office. And she’ll have to look at that thing and see her daughter’s eyes, laced between someone else’s. Her fingers, interwoven with a man’s hands and fused to an unfamiliar spine. Her luscious lips, struggling to contain dozens of serrated teeth. Her belly, bursting at the seams with several extra organs.

“Who did this?” The mother will ask. “Who killed my baby?”

And even if I know the truth, no one will believe me. So I’ll say nothing.

The pigs will say the owner of the Equinox Motel was the last person to see her alive. And he’s not cooperating. Even if they can’t prove I killed her, they’ll know I know something. And they’ll tell everyone. And that mother will arrive in the lobby, waiting for me.

           “How could I have known?” I might tell her. Blockading the memories.

           “I didn’t touch her.” Would bring them no comfort. And may prove incriminating, should the coroner ever get the notion to perform a full CT scan of the creature’s head…

           The guilt weighs heavily as the night passes. The cops insist on seeing me again tomorrow, for further questioning. I have nothing left to say. Nothing that will help. Nothing that will bring them clarity.

         I still have the rifle mounted over the front desk. I have at least one buckshot left. The other round may never be found, God willing. I left the bullet on the creature’s bedside to do with it what fate will. No entry or exit wound to be found. I can’t be held responsible, surely.

          The end to my own story won’t be so gracious. My single brain will leave quite the mess. And no one will be around to clean up afterwards. Not for quite some time.

           The closer the thought gets to becoming a reality; the more my mind stews on the site of Cabin Nine and the hypothetical mother at my doorstep…The more I feel something. There’s a strange sensation working its way up my thigh, causing it to shake nervously. I can feel myself getting excited over something that I can’t quite express.

           And then I remember.

           I remember that I woke up with a headache this morning.