Hospitality Inn Page #8

• Short story

								

     Although it was two hours past showing time, Sheli started the movie, but the five soon lost interest in it and engaged themselves in conversation. Mark asked for a bottle of wine, and Sheli brought a bottle of red and a tray of hors-d’œuvres. She wondered how she would situate the tray on the table among the girls’ handbags and the cellphones. She stood holding it for some minutes until Natalie laughed.
     Hannah muttered, “We’re really not hungry.”
     As Sheli discretely took the tray back to the old cabin, she could hear Mark laughingly suggesting that the cabin was Sheli’s home.
     Sheli tossed the hors-d’œuvres into the forest and waited for a cat to come and eat them. None came.
     When she came back to the canopy, Mark said he wanted to listen to some music, so Sheli commanded the movie off and the music menu up. 
     “That’s amazing!” said Mark, mockingly.
     Sheli commanded the yellow lights off and the floor lights on.
     He mocked again. “Ah… Ooo...”
     After another drink, Mark and Bruce moved the table and chairs off onto the ground, and after agreeing upon a track, the five danced in the colored lights. Sheli stood watching them for a while, and then, when she heard the song she liked, she hesitatingly joined in. She was shy at first but soon became enraptured in the beat and got into rhythm with Bruce. For a while, it was as if there had never been any bitterness, but then, Natalie took Bruce’s hand, and the five formed a circle that did not include Sheli.
     Sheli walked off the floor and sat under the eucalyptus and watched the colored bodies spin round and round in a circle that ignored the dance instructions on the TV screen. Amid the garish spots of frenzied colored lights, the locked hands of the circle rose and fell and rose and fell. 
     Then, suddenly, she saw something on the TV screen that no one else noticed: Nancy’s giant face. Sheli peered at it. Nancy was looking right at her and talking to her. The music was far too loud for Sheli to hear, but she could read her lips. Nancy was saying “Give it up… Give it up… It’s too much for your brain… Give it up…”
     Sheli stood up and stared expressionlessly. She looked at her control dial. It was certainly not, under any circumstances, a time to even think of the control dial, and above all, not a time to even think of even touching the control dial for any reason. There were people underneath.
     But did she touch the dial? Yes, she touched the dial. Did she turn the dial to Setting -1? No, she didn’t turn the dial to Setting -1. Did she turn the dial to Setting -2? No, she didn’t turn the dial to Setting -2. Did she turn the dial to Setting -3? No, she didn’t turn the dial to Setting -3. 
     She turned the dial to Setting -4 – NEGATIVE FOUR NEGATIVE FOUR NEGATIVE FOUR NEGATIVE FOUR…
     With that, the whole B&B smacked down to the floor underneath, a loud bang. Windows shattered. A wall cracked.
     There was no music anymore; there was only faint clanking and grinding mixed with some soft sounds of the natural surroundings of the night. Sheli stood like a statue with a blank face and arms down to the side.
     A narrow stream of blood trickled out from under the structure and flowed downhill. Inside the common area, blood spurted up through the floor tiles. Natalie’s head had cracked one of them but remained mostly sandwiched in between the two floors. In total darkness, Mark’s mangled body was folded over backwards. A metal rod had pierced Hannah’s chest, and blood poured out of her mouth. Ryan was disemboweled. And Bruce’s neck was broken. A dripping sound went unheard.
     The giant TV screen had fallen backwards and gone black.
 
Camera C: disabled reception.
 
Sheli held her cellphone tightly and looked down at the stream of blood. She then stepped over it as if stepping over into another age of mankind. She took off her pumps, cast them aside, and headed into the forest. Only the light of her cellphone guided her along the path leading to the convent. A twig from a dead branch got caught in her hair. As she crossed the train tracks, she cut her foot on broken glass. 
     When she arrived, she saw a light over the side door of the convent. All of the windows were dark. She did not see or hear any person or white horse anywhere. She knocked loudly on the front doors and then on the side door. All was quiet. She shouted, “Anybody here? Anybody here? Katherine?” Her voice echoed.
She tried to contact Katherine on her cellphone, but there was no reply. She threw gravel at the windows of the floor above, but still nothing. She waited a while and then returned towards Walnut Meadow. Feral cats hissed at her along the way. A blackberry bush tore her dress and exposed her.
     She stopped at the train tracks. A frog croaked. She saw the light of a train in the distance. She waited as the sounds intensified. A jagged stone poked up into her wounded foot. She thought, “A train in a forest – how could something so massive and so alien to its environment enter and leave so quickly? It’s like a small part of a town has strayed far, far from its home and anything familiar. A train is like a B&B, a B&B that can move. I will soon be very close to those people on that train, so close but so far. And then I will soon be, in every sense, far away from them again. Their environment is clean and safe. It’s also noisy; mine is not. I have privacy. They? Not so much. Or else, their sense of privacy is different. Are they free? Are the people on board that train freer than I am? Whether they’re freer or not, I don’t care. At this moment, I would like to be on the dining car of that train. I’ll bet, at this moment, some passengers are having a late dinner, and the waiter is setting down dinner rolls and butter kni…”
     Katherine jumped out from behind a bush, pushed her onto the train tracks, and the train cut her in half. 
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