It’s the day before St. Paddy’s day 2018 and I only know one thing: I wanna get shitfaced, and I don’t want to do it at home. Voila the following idea was born, we’re going to Abington, VA and doing it there. We’ll stay the night in a hotel so we don’t have to drive home drunk. So this psycho grabs his traveling companion and books the hotel. We drive there rather uneventfully, and on the way we go grab some booze for after the outing. We check into the Red Roof Inn, smoking room of course. On first thought, it’s hotel average, strong smell of ash in the wall, but overall pretty decent. That was until I took a shower. I grab my shit and hop in turn the water on and its hot, which is really about all I require, but I’m getting clean, eyes are closed, and something doesn’t smell right. I smell Nickel I tell myself, get the soap out of my eyes, and look down at my rag, it’s covered in blood. Of course my very first thought is, of course, did I forget to get all the blood off of me from last time? Then I think, no that was a dream I’ve not had any victims yet. So what else could it be. I look further down and I’m standing ankle fucking deep in blood. What the Fuck? But it smells like blood, looks like blood… I taste it. Definitely blood, I taste the nickel. I examine my body from toes to penis to as far up me as I can see, and it’s not sticking to me. So fuck it, I get the soap off and get out. I dry and get dressed, tell my companion it’s his turn, then I wait. The motherfucker screamed when he saw it. I laughed.
“I wonder how that got there?” I ask him.
“What the rust?” he replies.
“Oh, so that’s what it is?” I say, felling myself crushing on the inside.
So finally we both get dressed, and we begin the walk towards down town, and on the way we stop at Dollar General to pick up some cigarettes. I ask the store clerk where she would recommend us go for dinner and drinks. She tells us of two places, The Tavern and Bone Fire Grill. We make our purchase, grab our change, and make our way out of there. As we continue walking we come across a small flower garden with a concrete bench in the middle. It’d be nice for a rest, I’m thinking as I make my way towards it. I set down and at first it’s all hunky fucking dory, and I’m relaxed. Then the ground underneath me gave up it’s ghost and in the process, the bench fell throwing me to the ground. If I had already been drunk at this point I would have just laughed about it, but as I was all I could think was: What the fuck does this mean? Is the journey doomed to fail? Will I even get laid? Fuck, I don’t know. We get the bench stood back up and move on.
“Hello, would you like to see a show? There’s plenty of open seats!” Says the doorman at Barter Theatre as we’re walking by. And damn it I really want to see the show that’s on it. It’s written by the great Steve Martin, (Yes the funny guy) after all. But I know we don’t have time, we have an agenda. I do go in though and buy the soundtrack. It’s pretty damn good. We move on.
“Holy shit, that smells good!” My travel companion says to me.
“Yes it does, this is it, this is where we’re eating.” We walk in, and the wait is going to be about 15 minutes, but from the smell we could tell it’d be worth it. It was to, but there’s more to tell. We get sat on the top floor but what I have to say is the most lovely Waitress I’ve laid eyes on. Her beauty was immaculate, and I can hardly speak, lucky for me, she didn’t have any trouble doing so!
“What can I get you to drink?” She asks me.
“Well I want a good beer from the tap, what do you recommend?”
“The wolfs head is quite nice, It’s got got a hint of honey in it!” I can’t help but notice her eyes flashing to the bar downstairs. Such lovely eyes. (“All the better to see you with my dear.”)
“Sounds perfect.” My traveling companion agrees and orders the same. She writes it down, lovely hands, lengthy fingers, the kind of hands you’d see in a watch catalog for classy ladies. All I can think is, I’d like to take her digits home. (You know, so I could call her later?)
She takes off down the stairs and I watch her as she goes, and the view was quite nice. She gets the drinks and comes back up, jiggling from the climb, if you catch my drift, and I like what I see.
“Do you know what you want to eat?” She asks.
“How are your wings?” I ask
“Very good, they are smoked for 8 hours before we fry them so the flavor is very good. We have 8 different sauces, but most people take ’em plain. But we can do it however you’d like.”
“What flavors do you have?”
As she lists the 8 different flavors they serve my mind drifts. I see the blood to my ankles again, I see her giving me those digits, and l feel a smile come to my face. If only these were more then just a rusty fantasy. I could see her and I going the distance man! But she explains a sauce that pulls me back to, it’s a Carolinian sauce that has bbq with some added punch and heat.
“That one.” I say, “I’ll take that one!”
“And I think I’d like to try your brisket.” Mr. Companion says.
“Absolutely, we’ll have it right up!”
I watch her jiggle back down the stairs and take a sip of my beer. It is good, very good. I conversate with the companion, but not much of importance is said. Nothing worth repeating here anyway. Finally she comes back with the food, and asks if i’ll have a refill on the whites head. Of course I want one, she brings it. I drink it with my food. Then a band hits the stage. They were good musically but they needed more sound check as you couldn’t hear the singer over the instruments. The waitress comes back to check on us, she clears the empty plates, and asks if we’d like dessert.
“Yes please, I’d love some banana pudding.” I say.
“Anything else?”
“P.B.R. if you have one?”
“As long as you’re okay with a bottle?”
“I am,” I say smiling.
She smiles back and asks my companion if he’d like anything else, he declines. And she rushes back down the stairs, I of course enjoy her jiggle. I wait watching the stairs for her to come back up. She does.
“High or low?” She says to me?
“I’m not sure I take your meaning.” I reply.
“The bottle caps on the P.B.R. have playing cards on them, High or Low.”
“If I guess right do I get you number,” I think to myself, probably blushing a little. Out loud all I say is, “High.”
She reveals the cap, “Sorry, it’s low!” She says laughing. I hear her in my mind saying, “But you can still have my number.”
Ah if only. If only I wasn’t so damn shy, I could have said such things. I take a sip of the P.B.R. and watch that damn jiggle again. That jiggles gonna haunt my dreams I think. I take a bite of my pudding, and everything else in my mind vanishes, the words Hot and Damn flash brilliantly on a background of white. All I can say is “This is the best pudding I’ve ever had the pleasure of shoveling into my mouth.” I devour the rest, wanting to savor it slowly but I can’t, it’s just so damn good, I can’t control myself. I finish it and am stuffed. We take our check. I pay for my meal and drop 15 bucks on the table for a tip, pocket the P.B.R. lid (if I can’t have the digits, I might as well keep some memento), and we begin our look walk back to the hotel.
When we arrive back to the Red Roof Inn there is some amount of activity around a closed door. The door is for room #110. I think about what’s going on, mind already agog with the possibilties. Victim of Suicide? Gone with out checking out? Or maybe just maybe this is the explanation of that ankle deep blood? Nah, it can’t be that, but I listen in anyway.
“Has anyone heard form the tenett in 110?”
“No, he never checked out, but we can’t go in can we?”
“The do not disturb sign is up, so no.”
“What if somethings happened to him?”
“I hope not, we will check it when we can.”
I walk past quickly and enter our room and am greeted by the smell of stale smoke, Ah, my old friend. I grab a beer from the fridge and set on the bed sipping. My mind drifts back to Room 110. What would I have done to warrant that response. Here’s my scenario.
The oven is on and the smell of cooking meat is overwhelming, the floor is covered with plastic, so are the walls, the shades are drawn and Mr. Noname is bound and gagged on the bed. He’s asleep for now thanks to the heavy amount of Ketamine in his system. There’s blood soaking the bed from his lower calf, where it appears there’s a slice of muscle removed. Now see me over the sink with a portable hotplate and pan flipping a piece of what looks like bacon, but is it really? Remember that missing piece? I have been curious after all. I finish frying the meat of noname, and cut it in half. I walk back towards the bed. I wake Mr. Noname and feed him half the slice and take the other for myself.
“Mmmm…” I say, “Longpork, there’s nothing like it.”
He starts to argue the point but doesn’t get far as the blade of a hatchet interrupts his thoughts. I walk out and hang the do not disturb sign up. Go back to my bed and lie down to a dreamless and pleasant sleep.
Is that scenario what happened? Obviously not, or you would have heard about it. I, in fact, had nothing to do with what happened in room 110, however unfortunate. But I lay down smiling anyway and drift to sleep.
The next morning I wake up and go to the checkout desk to ask about the breakfast. She tells me it’s on the counter in the back and I go. I have a hard-boiled egg and toasted wheat bread with mixed fruit jelly. I look around at the tables around me and see everyone is in running clothes and a rather fit lady appearing around 40 years of age ask me, “Are you here for the marathon?”
“No, we’re checking out today.”
“Ah, okay.” And we both go back to our meals.
I finish eating and get back to the hotel room and start packing our leftover beer. I wake the companion, and he gets up, gets dressed and goes out to start the car. I think he’ll start it and come back to help me carry the shit out.
He doesn’t.
He leaves me to pack everything.
He leaves me to carry everything.
He leaves me to clean everything.
He just sits in the fucking car doing nothing.
So I end this with one final thought:
“Lazy fucking travel partner… perhaps you need to visit room #110.”
Traveling Pyscho 