I tend to post stories in spoiler tags. . .instead of posting like five threads saying "Part 1" "Part 2" etc.
This story is about 20 pages on Word. Most of my "short" stories are around that length. So each entry might be a little long. Depends how I plan on separating them. I'll post more in this same thread once it looks like some people are interested.
I.
Spoiler! :
Children either loved storms or shuddered underneath their might. Nevertheless, they were always in awe. As Daddy drove through the billowing sheets of snow of the Nor’easter, little Sarah Marrison was definitely grinning. It started as a flurry of white pebbles at first. The road became congested as drivers began to slow down. Daddy made a sharp comment to Mommy; the two had been arguing since the beginning of the car ride and Sarah didn’t know why.
Going to Miami for the holidays was a tradition that Sarah loved and hated. If she were ever the driver, she would stop at every interesting place on the way there. The road was so much more exciting than the destination. Miami was hot . . . sticky . . . and sluggish with traffic. Her grandparent’s house reeked of Vick’s gel and aged clothes. Her grandparents then smothered her and imprinted their own image onto her from the moment she would step into the house. Bright girl. Smart girl. Beautiful girl. Go and meet Louis, the nice boy from across the street. That meant they wanted her to marry him when she was old enough. Adults never seemed to rid their desire for an arranged marriage.
Each year was always the same. When Sarah arrived there, when the car made its mundane halt in the driveway underneath the palm trees, it was always such a depressing feeling. The fun was over. She stalled time to greet her grandparents by offering to get the presents from the trunk.
Then a dozen old hands would grope her cheeks. At least, it felt like a dozen. There were too many people to remember; they all looked the same. Middle-aged women vainly trying to disguise their bulging stomachs with big belts and middle-aged men with slick gray hair and bushy mustaches. Sarah went back in time every Christmas. Her grandparents’ neighborhood was a different place, a different time period altogether. There was a trace of the sixties to even as low as the thirties. The black and white photos, the old boxes with old advertisements with more people who had bushy mustaches, faded and crisp magazines, televisions that still had antennas---
And then the tree – a pathetic, anorexic piece of plastic.
But all of those things that had been embedded in her mind since she first visited her grandparents faded with the passing snow. It was refreshing, much like cold air. She giggled and lowered the window slowly.
“Sarah, please, you’ll get a cold,” snapped Mommy.
Sarah rolled up the window again, but not without leaving it open for a few seconds to let in some drops of snow.
The snowstorm still didn’t stop for the next few hours. Sarah was enthralled, sitting in the back seat as they drove through a whirlwind that she could barely see. They must have been somewhere in North Carolina – she recognized the vast empty fields they passed by. That was the boring part of the ride she was glad to skip. She had asked once why there was “so much nothing”. Mommy said it was because there were farms. She looked outside and saw the cows and the barns in the distance.
Sarah had also spotted houses, rickety, dilapidated houses near the side of the highway. Who would live there? Why did they live there? It was such a strange place to settle down – in the middle of nowhere. When she asked who lived in those houses, Daddy said “hillbillies” lived there. She didn’t understand who or what they were, but her daddy made fun of them a lot with bad words. Mommy not so much - actually not at all. Mommy would get annoyed and start saying things about “watching your language” and “not in front of Sarah.”
Daddy began to say bad words the minute more snow billowed. They were heading into the heart of the snowstorm. Sarah smudged her face against the window – the excitement built up. The windshield wipers worked furiously to clear the view. It started out at a steady pace, and then Daddy had them go faster. Thump and thump and thump and—thump—thump—thump—thump—
Sarah shivered when she heard something like thunder. It was only the car in front of them who had swerved for several dire seconds before driving on track again. Still, the question hopped up and down in her head.
“Mom, does it thunder during a snowstorm?”
Her parents were arguing again and not listening. Mommy kept repeating to take the next exit or something like that. Daddy never liked to stop for anything. Mommy always wanted to stop at the first sign of trouble. Daddy replied by saying she had only two speeds – slow and reverse.
“Mom—Mom---MOM—does it thunder during a snowstorm?”
“Not right now, Sarah—“ Mommy half-screeched in the same tone she was arguing with.
Sarah shrank back. She retreated into her seat, snuggled amongst the luggage and bags.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben kept nibbling his cuticles in a nervous fit.
He gazed out the window into the parking lot. A few hours ago, the lines on the street were visible. Now they were covered with a thick sheet of snow. It was amazing how such small things could create such havoc when working together. More and more refugees from the storm took a last minute swerve off the highway to where the Royal Inn lay.
“Having some nice chicken fingers over there?”
Ben looked at his hand and cursed.
Behind the desk, his fellow co-worker Lauren was punching several figures into the computer. Ben turned and studied her. Last time he had missed his chance because he waited too long. Other times she was simply too busy for him to have a moment alone with her. That day was becoming hectic.
The Royal Inn was far from earning its title. The sign out in the parking lot could have been assembled by someone who had the arts-and-craft skills of a fourth grader. The hotel failed miserably to resemble the roof of a castle. There wasn’t even any theme. No efforts had been made to remotely dress the hotel like a medieval castle. It was the typical Motel 6, a place to sleep for one night only and never again,
The lobby made Ben claustrophobic. It was narrow and dim. The telephone booth was a relic of the seventies. The wooden chairs had been there longer than the current owner. There was something about antiquity that made him feel sick. To him, antiquity equated with rotting and broken things teeming with germs, greased by hands, covered in dust.
For the holidays, the manager had spent as little money as possible on decorations. They had a Talking Santa that lit up and moved its arms every time a person walked by. The radio besides the window gave a crackled rendition of “Last Christmas.”
But what always made him more uncomfortable was that the narrow space squeezed him closer to Lauren. She stood there out of place within the decaying world. There was always a strand or two of her black hair that dangled in front of her eyes; he was always tempted to reach out and put them aside. She was light, graceful, and unaware of her apparently tantalizing effect. Her fingers hardly pressed the touch-screen (which was about the only technologically advanced thing about the entire hotel) yet the strokes were strong enough to go through.
He thought of hanging mistletoe once. Immediately after thinking about it, he had an urge to gag. So cliché, so drab. It was poisonous after all. Still, there was mystery behind it and its Norse legends. It was a parasite too. Ben didn’t want his feelings represented that way. There was nothing parasitic about love, so he believed. He stood very well on his own. No, he had to find something better. Something magical and billowing. That had been the reason for his constant hesitation. He could never conjure up the perfect recipe to express himself.
“They’re each having an affair,” she said.
Ben looked over to the front door. A richly dressed couple had entered and walked alongside each other. Each step was in unison. The wife pulled down the hood of her white, mink coat and let her golden hair run free. Her husband performed a similar ritual of greeting the warmth by removing his gloves and taking off his fedora, which revealed a finely combed lawn of brown hair.
“How can you tell?” Ben whispered.
“It’s written all over them. How often do you see people of that age vainly trying to look good? They’re not saying anything to each other, not even looking. Their view on love is as business-like as their manners.”
She then donned her fake smile and faced them.
Ben grinned. That had been another thing he tried to grasp – her remarkable knowledge of people. He loved to be there with her as she stripped down every single person to the barest sentiments. With his luck, she probably had done the same to him already in her mind. She most likely knew his feelings. Ben couldn’t tell at all, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Her eyes were all he needed to communicate with her. Some days she’d be flighty, saying goodbye at the end of the day with a haphazard glance over the shoulder. Other days she’d be terribly talkative and spewed word vomit.
His feelings for her settled on his lap and waited for his decision. He knew he wasn’t being ignored; he was being tested for his effort like every other obstacle in his life.
Ben sighed. He stood alone on his end of the desk while forced to have an angel on his other side he could neither touch nor look upon for too long.
He caught something beyond the window, in the piling snow, that had made him irrevocably happy. It had happened in an instant. Seeing the little girl out there wasn’t enough. The combined elements that illustrated her personality were what made him smile.
The girl stared up at the clouded sky with an outstretched tongue. She hopped every now and then when she failed to catch a snowflake. She proceeded to make faces, spin around with open arms, and have no desire to act coherent in any way, shape or form.
Her parents were in the background, having parked minutes before and were now arguing over the luggage. The mother put a hand up to signal the end of the fight. The father turned away and tugged the girl, who still tried to catch snowflakes and was in no way affected by her parents’ hasty attitude.
“And these next two. . .” began Lauren once the little girl’s parents approached, “probably haven’t screwed in ages. . .”
“Mommmmmmmmy! Can it thunder during a snowstorm?”
The girl swayed her father’s arm back and forth. Ben had never seen a child with such perseverance to remain fidgeting.
“Dad—dad, dad, dad, dad—can it thunder during—“
“One room please, for one night,” the father said in between her daughter’s ramblings.
“Which floor would you like?”
“The ground floor—“ the mother snapped. The father gave her a look as if saying, “You didn’t let me decide.” She said with unflinching eyes, “It’s easier to carry the luggage. . . dear.”
Clearly they had been fighting. Lauren smirked but tried to act as if she were doing something important on the computer.
The father hastily handed over his credit card. He could have been pointing a gun. Ben eyed the card as he swiped it – Gregory Morrison.
“Ok then . . . one-fifteen is your room. Would you like someone to take your bags?”
“No,” Greg snapped.
“Have a pleasant. . .” Ben trailed off as the parents pulled the girl away from the desk and hustled into the hallway. The girl wasn’t letting them do so very easily. “But you didn’t answer me! I’ve been asking and asking—“
“Yes,” Ben said.
Greg and his wife turned wondering what he was he referring to.
Lauren looked up from her screen.
Ben repeated himself, this time focusing on the girl. “It can thunder during a snowstorm.”
The girl gasped with beady eyes.
“Well, technically it wouldn’t be entirely a snowstorm. It would be a rare form called thundersnow. It’s a phenomenon in which you have moist air over the cold air and. . . .um . . .” Ben lost his thoughts in Greg’s unenthusiastic stare. “Have a great stay, sir.”
They left without saying anything. The girl remained obsessively talkative and began to wonder if what was going on outside was thundersnow.
Ben turned back to the empty lobby. He had noticed that Lauren was looking at him the entire time. She gave a thoughtful smile, lost in some surprised reaction. For that moment Ben had witnessed her become completely vulnerable. She broke the glance before he could dig any deeper, and suddenly she transformed back into the graceful, independent woman she was.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“It’s a nice room,” said Whitney.
Greg tossed the bags to the side and turned on the lights. He muttered something along the lines of, “Piece of shit. . . .”
Whitney pretended not to hear it. She let Sarah in and reminded her about a million things not to do. Sarah went about turning on all the lights, pulling aside the curtains to check the view, and most importantly checking to see if the television had the right plug-ins for the video games.
Greg went over to the window. He stared for a long time before bringing up the argument again. “We could have clearly continued going—"
“Greg, stop it, just stop it. Ok? We’re here now and we’re fine.”
“Now we’re here spending money on this shitty place.”
“Greg!”
Sarah didn’t seem to hear. She was too busy rummaging through her bags to plug in the Super Nintendo.
Greg pulled out his laptop from his backpack and settled on one of the beds. That always signaled the end of the argument – going back to his own world with his friends at work and his side of the family.
The tradition of visiting Greg’s parents was a terrible ordeal; Whitney had to admit it.
Greg’s mother was a tiny little critter that somehow had more energy at the age of eighty-something than him and Sarah together. She talked about the people next door. About that one relative who got kicked out of the family. About the cashier girl in the grocery, the hairdresser, the mailman---
The husband was a loathsome oaf. He reminded Whitney of one of those strange creatures in one of those Star Wars movies Sarah loved to watch, the green, vile slug that did nothing but lavish in his palace.
It was becoming increasingly stressful having to endure his parents bickering and feeling like the outsider of the family. She did it for Sarah really, who was too young to understand most of what was going on and loved to play with her cousins. But someday she too would realize. When that time comes, Whitney would openly tell her that she wouldn’t have to go if she didn’t want to.
Whitney looked up from one of her many tourism books. It was dark outside and the weather was unforgiving. Greg was still in the same clothes watching television.
“We should eat now,” she said quietly.
Greg replied with a nod and a grunt.
“Where’s—"
Sarah was asleep on the other bed. She had taken out almost every single toy and video game and left them scattered. Greg approached her but Whitney said, “No, don’t. She had a long day. We’ll bring up something for her.”
Greg didn’t give any opinion and turned to the door.
Before leaving, Whitney made sure Sarah was tucked well. She moved aside some of the toys to create a more organized chaos. Frankly, she would have liked it better if Sarah were going with them. Greg hardly argued when Sarah was around.
A strong gust shook the window. Whitney checked it out to make sure it was tightly shut.
“Come on, we’re wasting time,” said Greg.
Whitney looked outside one last time. Every car in the lot was topped with snow. The street lights shivered.
And somewhere, very faintly, she could hear thunder.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben heard it too.
As the sky darkened, more travelers piled into the lobby. The commotion rose with each new voice. The whole world seemed to seek refuge. Ben began to nibble his cuticles. They might have a problem at some point with vacancy. Even Lauren started to twitch with uneasiness. Whenever she had too much on her hands, more and more strands of hair fell out of place. It was as if her head were growing with more and more things to remember and keep track of.
The waves of people diminished. They were granted a period of grace. Lauren fled at some point without excusing herself; she had probably been dying to go to the bathroom.
Ben hated being alone in the dingy lobby.
He straightened when he saw two figures beyond the front door. He wished Lauren were there to give her quick and witty overview of them. They stood there for some time. Ben couldn’t make out what they looked like. The snow obscured his sight.
They opened the door and Ben suddenly had a terrible feeling, the feeling one got before bracing for impact. The chill weakened him. The wind deafened him. He had never felt a colder touch of ice. He shut his eyes and turned away.
The storm broke in and almost tore apart the lobby apart. The plants were stripped of their leaves. The chairs overturned. The snow tried to pile in but the two tall figures acted as a wall.
The front door then slammed shut and the hellish swirl ended. A set of heavy, metallic footsteps followed.
Cling, clang, clunk--
They stopped right at the desk.
A voice cleared itself before speaking.
“Excuse me sir, but we’d like a room for two nights.”
Going to Miami for the holidays was a tradition that Sarah loved and hated. If she were ever the driver, she would stop at every interesting place on the way there. The road was so much more exciting than the destination. Miami was hot . . . sticky . . . and sluggish with traffic. Her grandparent’s house reeked of Vick’s gel and aged clothes. Her grandparents then smothered her and imprinted their own image onto her from the moment she would step into the house. Bright girl. Smart girl. Beautiful girl. Go and meet Louis, the nice boy from across the street. That meant they wanted her to marry him when she was old enough. Adults never seemed to rid their desire for an arranged marriage.
Each year was always the same. When Sarah arrived there, when the car made its mundane halt in the driveway underneath the palm trees, it was always such a depressing feeling. The fun was over. She stalled time to greet her grandparents by offering to get the presents from the trunk.
Then a dozen old hands would grope her cheeks. At least, it felt like a dozen. There were too many people to remember; they all looked the same. Middle-aged women vainly trying to disguise their bulging stomachs with big belts and middle-aged men with slick gray hair and bushy mustaches. Sarah went back in time every Christmas. Her grandparents’ neighborhood was a different place, a different time period altogether. There was a trace of the sixties to even as low as the thirties. The black and white photos, the old boxes with old advertisements with more people who had bushy mustaches, faded and crisp magazines, televisions that still had antennas---
And then the tree – a pathetic, anorexic piece of plastic.
But all of those things that had been embedded in her mind since she first visited her grandparents faded with the passing snow. It was refreshing, much like cold air. She giggled and lowered the window slowly.
“Sarah, please, you’ll get a cold,” snapped Mommy.
Sarah rolled up the window again, but not without leaving it open for a few seconds to let in some drops of snow.
The snowstorm still didn’t stop for the next few hours. Sarah was enthralled, sitting in the back seat as they drove through a whirlwind that she could barely see. They must have been somewhere in North Carolina – she recognized the vast empty fields they passed by. That was the boring part of the ride she was glad to skip. She had asked once why there was “so much nothing”. Mommy said it was because there were farms. She looked outside and saw the cows and the barns in the distance.
Sarah had also spotted houses, rickety, dilapidated houses near the side of the highway. Who would live there? Why did they live there? It was such a strange place to settle down – in the middle of nowhere. When she asked who lived in those houses, Daddy said “hillbillies” lived there. She didn’t understand who or what they were, but her daddy made fun of them a lot with bad words. Mommy not so much - actually not at all. Mommy would get annoyed and start saying things about “watching your language” and “not in front of Sarah.”
Daddy began to say bad words the minute more snow billowed. They were heading into the heart of the snowstorm. Sarah smudged her face against the window – the excitement built up. The windshield wipers worked furiously to clear the view. It started out at a steady pace, and then Daddy had them go faster. Thump and thump and thump and—thump—thump—thump—thump—
Sarah shivered when she heard something like thunder. It was only the car in front of them who had swerved for several dire seconds before driving on track again. Still, the question hopped up and down in her head.
“Mom, does it thunder during a snowstorm?”
Her parents were arguing again and not listening. Mommy kept repeating to take the next exit or something like that. Daddy never liked to stop for anything. Mommy always wanted to stop at the first sign of trouble. Daddy replied by saying she had only two speeds – slow and reverse.
“Mom—Mom---MOM—does it thunder during a snowstorm?”
“Not right now, Sarah—“ Mommy half-screeched in the same tone she was arguing with.
Sarah shrank back. She retreated into her seat, snuggled amongst the luggage and bags.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben kept nibbling his cuticles in a nervous fit.
He gazed out the window into the parking lot. A few hours ago, the lines on the street were visible. Now they were covered with a thick sheet of snow. It was amazing how such small things could create such havoc when working together. More and more refugees from the storm took a last minute swerve off the highway to where the Royal Inn lay.
“Having some nice chicken fingers over there?”
Ben looked at his hand and cursed.
Behind the desk, his fellow co-worker Lauren was punching several figures into the computer. Ben turned and studied her. Last time he had missed his chance because he waited too long. Other times she was simply too busy for him to have a moment alone with her. That day was becoming hectic.
The Royal Inn was far from earning its title. The sign out in the parking lot could have been assembled by someone who had the arts-and-craft skills of a fourth grader. The hotel failed miserably to resemble the roof of a castle. There wasn’t even any theme. No efforts had been made to remotely dress the hotel like a medieval castle. It was the typical Motel 6, a place to sleep for one night only and never again,
The lobby made Ben claustrophobic. It was narrow and dim. The telephone booth was a relic of the seventies. The wooden chairs had been there longer than the current owner. There was something about antiquity that made him feel sick. To him, antiquity equated with rotting and broken things teeming with germs, greased by hands, covered in dust.
For the holidays, the manager had spent as little money as possible on decorations. They had a Talking Santa that lit up and moved its arms every time a person walked by. The radio besides the window gave a crackled rendition of “Last Christmas.”
But what always made him more uncomfortable was that the narrow space squeezed him closer to Lauren. She stood there out of place within the decaying world. There was always a strand or two of her black hair that dangled in front of her eyes; he was always tempted to reach out and put them aside. She was light, graceful, and unaware of her apparently tantalizing effect. Her fingers hardly pressed the touch-screen (which was about the only technologically advanced thing about the entire hotel) yet the strokes were strong enough to go through.
He thought of hanging mistletoe once. Immediately after thinking about it, he had an urge to gag. So cliché, so drab. It was poisonous after all. Still, there was mystery behind it and its Norse legends. It was a parasite too. Ben didn’t want his feelings represented that way. There was nothing parasitic about love, so he believed. He stood very well on his own. No, he had to find something better. Something magical and billowing. That had been the reason for his constant hesitation. He could never conjure up the perfect recipe to express himself.
“They’re each having an affair,” she said.
Ben looked over to the front door. A richly dressed couple had entered and walked alongside each other. Each step was in unison. The wife pulled down the hood of her white, mink coat and let her golden hair run free. Her husband performed a similar ritual of greeting the warmth by removing his gloves and taking off his fedora, which revealed a finely combed lawn of brown hair.
“How can you tell?” Ben whispered.
“It’s written all over them. How often do you see people of that age vainly trying to look good? They’re not saying anything to each other, not even looking. Their view on love is as business-like as their manners.”
She then donned her fake smile and faced them.
Ben grinned. That had been another thing he tried to grasp – her remarkable knowledge of people. He loved to be there with her as she stripped down every single person to the barest sentiments. With his luck, she probably had done the same to him already in her mind. She most likely knew his feelings. Ben couldn’t tell at all, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Her eyes were all he needed to communicate with her. Some days she’d be flighty, saying goodbye at the end of the day with a haphazard glance over the shoulder. Other days she’d be terribly talkative and spewed word vomit.
His feelings for her settled on his lap and waited for his decision. He knew he wasn’t being ignored; he was being tested for his effort like every other obstacle in his life.
Ben sighed. He stood alone on his end of the desk while forced to have an angel on his other side he could neither touch nor look upon for too long.
He caught something beyond the window, in the piling snow, that had made him irrevocably happy. It had happened in an instant. Seeing the little girl out there wasn’t enough. The combined elements that illustrated her personality were what made him smile.
The girl stared up at the clouded sky with an outstretched tongue. She hopped every now and then when she failed to catch a snowflake. She proceeded to make faces, spin around with open arms, and have no desire to act coherent in any way, shape or form.
Her parents were in the background, having parked minutes before and were now arguing over the luggage. The mother put a hand up to signal the end of the fight. The father turned away and tugged the girl, who still tried to catch snowflakes and was in no way affected by her parents’ hasty attitude.
“And these next two. . .” began Lauren once the little girl’s parents approached, “probably haven’t screwed in ages. . .”
“Mommmmmmmmy! Can it thunder during a snowstorm?”
The girl swayed her father’s arm back and forth. Ben had never seen a child with such perseverance to remain fidgeting.
“Dad—dad, dad, dad, dad—can it thunder during—“
“One room please, for one night,” the father said in between her daughter’s ramblings.
“Which floor would you like?”
“The ground floor—“ the mother snapped. The father gave her a look as if saying, “You didn’t let me decide.” She said with unflinching eyes, “It’s easier to carry the luggage. . . dear.”
Clearly they had been fighting. Lauren smirked but tried to act as if she were doing something important on the computer.
The father hastily handed over his credit card. He could have been pointing a gun. Ben eyed the card as he swiped it – Gregory Morrison.
“Ok then . . . one-fifteen is your room. Would you like someone to take your bags?”
“No,” Greg snapped.
“Have a pleasant. . .” Ben trailed off as the parents pulled the girl away from the desk and hustled into the hallway. The girl wasn’t letting them do so very easily. “But you didn’t answer me! I’ve been asking and asking—“
“Yes,” Ben said.
Greg and his wife turned wondering what he was he referring to.
Lauren looked up from her screen.
Ben repeated himself, this time focusing on the girl. “It can thunder during a snowstorm.”
The girl gasped with beady eyes.
“Well, technically it wouldn’t be entirely a snowstorm. It would be a rare form called thundersnow. It’s a phenomenon in which you have moist air over the cold air and. . . .um . . .” Ben lost his thoughts in Greg’s unenthusiastic stare. “Have a great stay, sir.”
They left without saying anything. The girl remained obsessively talkative and began to wonder if what was going on outside was thundersnow.
Ben turned back to the empty lobby. He had noticed that Lauren was looking at him the entire time. She gave a thoughtful smile, lost in some surprised reaction. For that moment Ben had witnessed her become completely vulnerable. She broke the glance before he could dig any deeper, and suddenly she transformed back into the graceful, independent woman she was.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“It’s a nice room,” said Whitney.
Greg tossed the bags to the side and turned on the lights. He muttered something along the lines of, “Piece of shit. . . .”
Whitney pretended not to hear it. She let Sarah in and reminded her about a million things not to do. Sarah went about turning on all the lights, pulling aside the curtains to check the view, and most importantly checking to see if the television had the right plug-ins for the video games.
Greg went over to the window. He stared for a long time before bringing up the argument again. “We could have clearly continued going—"
“Greg, stop it, just stop it. Ok? We’re here now and we’re fine.”
“Now we’re here spending money on this shitty place.”
“Greg!”
Sarah didn’t seem to hear. She was too busy rummaging through her bags to plug in the Super Nintendo.
Greg pulled out his laptop from his backpack and settled on one of the beds. That always signaled the end of the argument – going back to his own world with his friends at work and his side of the family.
The tradition of visiting Greg’s parents was a terrible ordeal; Whitney had to admit it.
Greg’s mother was a tiny little critter that somehow had more energy at the age of eighty-something than him and Sarah together. She talked about the people next door. About that one relative who got kicked out of the family. About the cashier girl in the grocery, the hairdresser, the mailman---
The husband was a loathsome oaf. He reminded Whitney of one of those strange creatures in one of those Star Wars movies Sarah loved to watch, the green, vile slug that did nothing but lavish in his palace.
It was becoming increasingly stressful having to endure his parents bickering and feeling like the outsider of the family. She did it for Sarah really, who was too young to understand most of what was going on and loved to play with her cousins. But someday she too would realize. When that time comes, Whitney would openly tell her that she wouldn’t have to go if she didn’t want to.
Whitney looked up from one of her many tourism books. It was dark outside and the weather was unforgiving. Greg was still in the same clothes watching television.
“We should eat now,” she said quietly.
Greg replied with a nod and a grunt.
“Where’s—"
Sarah was asleep on the other bed. She had taken out almost every single toy and video game and left them scattered. Greg approached her but Whitney said, “No, don’t. She had a long day. We’ll bring up something for her.”
Greg didn’t give any opinion and turned to the door.
Before leaving, Whitney made sure Sarah was tucked well. She moved aside some of the toys to create a more organized chaos. Frankly, she would have liked it better if Sarah were going with them. Greg hardly argued when Sarah was around.
A strong gust shook the window. Whitney checked it out to make sure it was tightly shut.
“Come on, we’re wasting time,” said Greg.
Whitney looked outside one last time. Every car in the lot was topped with snow. The street lights shivered.
And somewhere, very faintly, she could hear thunder.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben heard it too.
As the sky darkened, more travelers piled into the lobby. The commotion rose with each new voice. The whole world seemed to seek refuge. Ben began to nibble his cuticles. They might have a problem at some point with vacancy. Even Lauren started to twitch with uneasiness. Whenever she had too much on her hands, more and more strands of hair fell out of place. It was as if her head were growing with more and more things to remember and keep track of.
The waves of people diminished. They were granted a period of grace. Lauren fled at some point without excusing herself; she had probably been dying to go to the bathroom.
Ben hated being alone in the dingy lobby.
He straightened when he saw two figures beyond the front door. He wished Lauren were there to give her quick and witty overview of them. They stood there for some time. Ben couldn’t make out what they looked like. The snow obscured his sight.
They opened the door and Ben suddenly had a terrible feeling, the feeling one got before bracing for impact. The chill weakened him. The wind deafened him. He had never felt a colder touch of ice. He shut his eyes and turned away.
The storm broke in and almost tore apart the lobby apart. The plants were stripped of their leaves. The chairs overturned. The snow tried to pile in but the two tall figures acted as a wall.
The front door then slammed shut and the hellish swirl ended. A set of heavy, metallic footsteps followed.
Cling, clang, clunk--
They stopped right at the desk.
A voice cleared itself before speaking.
“Excuse me sir, but we’d like a room for two nights.”
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