The alarm clock buzzed at 6:00 AM, on August 29. Arnold groggily reached over and punched the snooze button. He got off of the bed and went to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror, and groaned in displeasure. Not sleeping for over two days tore his face apart: the deep violet bags under his eyes drooping with fatigue, his eyes bloodshot and sunken, his face showing evidence of worry and stubble, his cheekbones prominent, his hair matted and oily. Looking back at him was not a former detective on vacation; it was a man afraid to eat, sleep, or shower.
Arnold yawned and sighed, peeking around the corner to his perfectly neat bed. Even though he had switched room two days ago, he still had this nagging, paranoid feeling that they managed to bug every room in the motel, just in case. He was afraid to sleep, in case they burst through the door without his knowing; he was afraid to eat, in case anything that came to his room was poisoned; he was afraid to shower, in case the water was hydrochloric acid, or someone entered his room while he was his most vulnerable.
Now, looking at his disheveled self in the mirror, a new set of worries bombarded him: what if he had reached the point of sleep deprivation where one starts hallucinating? The idea of poison in his food seems preposterous, while at the same time entirely feasible. How easy is it for a spy to be working at a pizza joint and poison the pizza while delivering it? It was so simple that Arnold started to scare himself at an entirely new level: what if everything he had eaten since getting the text message had been poisoned and he had no idea if there was an antidote? That would mean his Cognac, any fast food he ordered, anything he prepared himself, and anything out of the vending machine at the station—anything was fair game at this point.
Arnold glanced at the clock. 6:12 AM—exactly seven days, twelve hours, and forty-eight minutes left on his life. Maybe that’s what’s meant by the text message: you only have eleven days to live because I made you ingest a slow acting poison that will gradually deteriorate you from the inside out, making you hideous and repulsive, so much so that even if you’re given the antidote and you just need someone to inject it into you, no one will want to help you, because your skin is falling off of your face, or you’re reduced to nothing but bones thinly enveloped with skin.
He was safe nowhere. He had never been able to trust anyone after declaring his disbelief in God, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to trust anyone with his life on the line. He pulled a dime out of his pocket and started to unscrew the cover to the air vent on the far wall. He threw the cover down, and peered inside with his flashlight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew that there was something inside of this vent. He found no hidden cameras, no microphones, and nobody crouched inside. He jumped off the chair he was standing on, and started to pull apart the air conditioning unit in the corner, looking for cameras, microphones, or midgets holding either of them. In the back of his mind, he knew it as impossible, but a mixture of paranoia and sleep deprivation told him otherwise. The air conditioning was safe as well, so he moved on to the floor vents, flashing his light everywhere—twice—just to be safe. He even went so far as to check all of the drains, outlets, sockets, wires, doorknobs, and drawer handles—everything, in case they were able to access state of the art surveillance equipment.
Arnold stared at the clock. 6:15 AM—seven days, twelve hours, and forty-five minutes left of his life. The room started to spin around him—the beds looked like they were underwater, ripples flowing from the pillows out across the sheets and down to the floor; neon splotches of light flickered on the walls in patterns he couldn’t describe; the lamp jumped from the nightstand onto the floor and ran around in circles. Arnold couldn’t believe what he was seeing—the television behind him seemed to be mumbling in Aramaic or Hebrew or some other foreign language; the drawers on the nightstand gently shifted colors from its dull brown to a vibrant orange back to a muted forest green—but he couldn’t take his eyes off of the alarm clock. Slowly the minutes ticked by, and the alarm clock looked more menacing every time Arnold blinked. But even when he tried to keep his eyes open, the alarm clock seemed to grow fiercer as time passed. Arnold shrieked out loud when the alarm clock sprouted arms and legs, and ripped the plug holding it back right out of the socket.
“So, Arnold, you yellow bastard,” said the demon alarm clock from Hell. “Hiding out here in this shitty motel room, huh? I knew you wouldn’t last.”
Arnold blinked. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” said the alarm clock. “You knew your whole life that you’d never make it in the real world. Hell, your father told you that you wouldn’t make it. But you decided to go on a little ego trip after he was killed. Kind of a ‘Fuck you, Dad, watch me prove you wrong’ sort of thing. But where did it get you? In a dead end!” The alarm clock cackled at its own joke. “Get it? A dead end! Because you’re gonna die, shitbag!”
Arnold’s face turned a deep shade of purple. “Take it back,” he said. “You know that’s not true, take it back!”
“Oooh, I’m so scared!” The alarm clock started dancing around, jumping from bed to bed, taunting Arnold in a sing-song voice. “Take it back!” it shouted mockingly. “Take it back! Take it back!”
Arnold lunged at the alarm clock and grabbed it by the throat. The clock coughed and sputtered. “Let me go!” it choked out.
“Let me go! Let me go!” Arnold mocked. “Listen here, you piece of crap, there’s no way you’re going to make me freak out on you. I know this isn’t real, I know this is just some freaky trip I’m on, and I know that choking you to death isn’t going to solve anything. You take back everything you said about me and about my father, and I promise that you won’t be a big steaming pile of electronic shit. Understand?!”
The alarm clock stopped choking and grinned. “Everything is a hallucination?” it asked.
“Yeah, everything. Now take back what you said!”
“Oh, I wish I could, but I regret to inform you that not everything is as trippy as it seems.”
Arnold cocked an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Well, just take a look outside.”
Arnold dropped the alarm clock and peeked out of his blinds. Parked out in front of his previous motel room were three sleek black cars, and six men in black suits stood facing the door, with a seventh man kneeling down at the window, setting up what looked like a VCR. Suddenly, the kneeling man jumped up and shouted something, and every man piled into the three cars and sped off. Arnold turned to say something to the alarm clock, but saw that it was still sitting in its place on the nightstand, which remained a steady dull brown color. The walls were their normal dingy yellow, the television remained silent, and the beds were once again solid.
At 6:23 AM, on August 29, a charge detonated under the window of room 153. Had Arnold still been in that room, he would have jumped between the two beds in his room, curled up in the fetal position, and hoped like hell that the glass didn’t maim or kill him or that he wasn’t trapped in a burning motel room.
However, Arnold was moved to room 120 and was in no immediate danger. Nevertheless, he burst out of his motel room and sprinted down the highway toward Lorendo. It was over 100 miles back to town, but this sudden burst of adrenaline overtook his fatigue, and he knew he could make it back by nightfall. He had no choice—he was safe nowhere.
