The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel)

by Max Booth III

“The hotel is swarmed, man. Fuckin’ swarmed.”

  “Swarmed with what?” Hobbs asks.

  And when she answers, she’s still looking at me, no one else:

  “Owls.”

  On the cell phone, the little league coach says, “You won’t fuckin’ believe who I just ran into in the lobby. You remember those assholes who ripped us off on those cleats? Yeah, the ones that fell apart during our first game. Yup, in the lobby. Right now. Looking at them as I speak. Uh-huh. You got it.”

  The little league coach slides the cell phone back in his pocket and stares at us, glowing. “Oh, you motherfuckers are in for it now. Think you can steal from a children’s baseball team? Ha, oh shit. You’re about to get fucked the fuck up, amigo.”

  “Shit,” the cowboy and his brother say in unison.

  “Owls,” their sister says. “Everywhere.”

  And the sound I’ve been hearing, the heartbeat rising in volume, the sheer panic consuming me, it’s real, it’s more real than anything anybody’s ever heard in the history of noise. That sound, it’s the sound of a million owls swarming the hotel. Pissed off. Hungry. Ready.

  The elevator dings.

  Then, three things happen.

  One: the woman who’d gotten stranded at the bar earlier runs out of the elevator, screaming something about dead bodies in her closet.

  Two: the cowboy pulls a pistol out from the back of his jeans and shoots the little league coach in the stomach.

  Three: every window in the hotel explodes, and owls drown the lobby.

  Part 29

  “Are those fucking owls?” Hobbs screams.

  The four of us leap to the floor and begin fighting off the birds from landing on us.

  “I told you!” Kia says, barely loud enough to travel over the sound of the owls’ wings flapping in the lobby. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  The little league coach remains standing by the front desk, legs shaking, hand holding his bleeding stomach. The gunshot and the sudden owl attack have sent him over the edge. Tears leak down his face. His mouth opens but I can’t hear what he says. Then a dozen or so owls cover his body and feast. His screams match the owls’ squeals of delight.

  And I’m on the floor listening to it all, heart pounding, everybody understandably freaking out, realizing if I don’t move right this second then I’m done, I’m dead, I’m owl-food. There’s no use trying to understand the situation when I’m at risk of being erased from it.

  Grinding my teeth, I rise into the cloud of owls. I reach down and find Kia’s hand and pull her up with me. I don’t care what she’s done, she’s still the love of my life. Owls bounce off my head as I drag her through the lobby, leaving her dirtbag brothers to fend for themselves.

  The cowboy starts shooting and I don’t know if he’s aiming at me or the owls.

  Down the hallway, a group of little league coaches rush toward us, armed and extremely pissed off. The owls attempt to attack them and they slap them away. One of the coaches—the one who had checked in—points a machine gun at me and shouts, “WHERE ARE THEY?” and I point behind me, back toward the lobby. I grip Kia’s hand harder and pull her along as we take a sharp corner in front of the elevator, running to the end of the side-hallway. At this point, three potential routes present themselves. We either go outside through the backdoor and battle who the hell knows how many owls flying freely in the night, hide in the exercise room which contains a large picture window that’s surely been shattered and infiltrated at this point, or flee into the Muzak room.

  The little league coaches run past us, toward the sound of the cowboy shooting off his pistol.

  I push Kia into the Muzak room and just as I’m closing the door behind us, a hand pokes through the opening. One of her brothers, presumably. I swat the hand away but it doesn’t surrender, continues trying to squeeze the rest of the body attached to it inside. The gap widens enough for the perpetrator to stick his head through.

  Not Hobbs and not his asshole brother, and not one of the little league coaches, either.

  The fucking cologne salesman.

  “C’mon bro, open the door, I’m gonna die out here.”

  If not for Kia, I would’ve just locked the door and left him out in the hallway to fulfill his destiny of digesting in various owls’ tiny stomachs.

  I grab his shirt and drag him inside, then close the door. The lock clicks into place. The Muzak room is nearly soundproof and the owls’ hooting and hollering decrease to mere muffles. We are immediately violated with an intense humidity. The Muzak room is not designed as a room to linger in, but to enter, adjust the Muzak volume, and exit. It is also where our Internet modem resides, as well as the first-floor breaker boxes.

  Only seconds pass and we’re drenched in sweat, panting, unable to comprehend what had just happened in the lobby. There are no answers. We can dig all night and the only substance we’ll hit is dirt. So the hotel has been attacked by owls. Okay. So what. These things happen. Sometimes other things happen, but right now this is the thing that is happening.

  It doesn’t have to make sense.

  I pound my skull against the door until my brain loosens.

  It doesn’t have to make sense.

  Kia’s crying and so am I.

  It doesn’t have to make sense.

  “Were those…were those owls?” the cologne salesman asks, and I strike him in his fucking face.

  It is the second time I’ve punched someone, but the first time I’ve punched someone and not killed them as a result.

  “Ow,” the cologne salesman says, rubbing his cheek. “Ow.”

  “What are you even still doing here?”

  “Calm down, bro. I was just waiting for you to come back down, thought maybe you might want to buy a few bottles of my sweet-smelling goodness to keep me from blabbing to anybody about that dead chick you showed me.”

  Kia clears her throat, wipes tears from her face. “What dead chick?”

  “Oh, just the cop your brother murdered at my apartment.”

  “John killed a cop?”

  “No, the one with the dumb cowboy hat.”

  “Daaamn.” She actually seems impressed. “Wait, why’d you show this guy?” She sticks her thumb at the kid.

  “He was trying to sell me cologne.”

  “Ah.” She pauses, considering it. “Where’s she at now?”

  “The dead cop?”

  “Who else?”

  “She’s in your brother’s room. Well, what used to be your brother’s room. Now some other lady’s staying there.”

  “I see. And what was the dead cop doing in what had once been my brother’s room?”

  “It wasn’t just the dead cop. There was also my best friend, whom I killed, and a guest, whom the owls killed.”

  “Okay. So. What were three dead bodies doing in what had once been my brother’s room?”

  “I was trying to frame him.”

  “For what?”

  “Murder?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “Well, he’s my brother.”

  “Exactly.”

  “STOP!” the cologne salesman shouts, and we both look at him like he’s some goddamn dog scratching at the backdoor needing to take a piss. “Shouldn’t we be more worried about the…the…the fucking owls outside this door? What is even going on?”

  “It seems pretty straightforward, dude,” Kia says. “Some owls are trying to kill us. It’s not that complicated.”

  “It’s a little complicated,” the cologne salesman says.

  Kia shrugs, turns back to me. “I can’t believe you were trying to set up my brother.”

  “Why do you suddenly give a shit? You’re the one who said he forced you to mug me, to manipulate me into being intimate. Fuck him, right? Unless you were bullshitting me about that, too, of course.”

  “What are you talking about, Isaac?”

  “I’m talking about maybe you hadn’t bee
n so honest with me last night. Which wouldn’t exactly be out of character for you, right? I mean, it’s sort of your whole schtick.”

  The expression on her face isn’t apologetic. It’s more guilty. The kind of face someone makes when caught in the act, but more irritated someone had the gull to confront them than they are for doing something wrong.

  “Isaac, this is not the time to be discussing this.”

  “What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be back in your shed, watching your baby?”

  Kia’s expression evolves from irritation to horror. “Oh shit, Saturn.”

  “What, you forget to change her diaper before abandoning her in the woods?”

  “No, you fucking asshole. She’s in the backseat of Billy’s truck.”

  This hits me harder than anything else. “You were skipping town with them? You were…you were leaving me?” After everything we’d gone through, I’d hoped we still had some sort of chance, however small. But it’d been bullshit. If they hadn’t noticed my car tonight, I would have never laid eyes on her again. She wasn’t even going to say goodbye.

  Hobbs hadn’t been messing with me. Kia orchestrated everything. This whole time her brothers have merely been the marionettes, and her the puppeteer. She’d been responsible for it all. Yates, Garcia—hell, even George. If she hadn’t walked into my life, things wouldn’t be great, but they wouldn’t be as horrible. I would still have a friend to talk to on nights when I get lonely.

  At this point, it wouldn’t even matter if I killed her. It’d just be adding another corpse to the closet. Is four really that different than three?

  “You asshole,” Kia says, “I mean Saturn’s in the truck, outside the hotel, where the goddamn owls are going nuts. If they broke the lobby windows…”

  And all murderous thoughts vanish, replaced with concern for the baby trapped in the midst of an orgy.

  Fuck.

  “We have to go back out there,” Kia says. “Those fucking things are gonna eat my baby.”

  “Is this a dildo?” the cologne salesman says.

  Our heads slowly turn to the side, remembering the kid exists. He’s standing next to the Muzak station, holding a strap-on. A dildo hangs from it, staring at us menacingly.

  “This hotel is fucking weird, man,” Kia says.

  The platinum guest’s forgotten personal item. I hadn’t seen it since Javier opened up the trash bag I left on his desk. Why didn’t they throw it away?

  “I got an idea,” I say, and pry the dildo from the harness.

  “I uh, I don’t think this is the time, Isaac. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’m saying? Unlock the door. Let me through.”

  “Just…just wait.” I nod at the cologne salesman. “Give me a bottle of that shit you’re peddling in your backpack.”

  The kid brightens up and unzips his bag. “I knew you’d come around.”

  I loosen my necktie and pull it off, then wrap it around the head of the rubber cock in my hands. I grab the first bottle of cheap bootleg cologne the kid takes out of the bag and pour the liquid on the tie.

  “Hey!” the kid says. “That bottle costs fifty dollars.”

  “Wise to give up on that dream early.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Kia asks.

  I hold out my free hand to her. “Give me your lighter.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  It takes a few seconds, but the flame eventually takes to the tie and they hit it off like two lovers in a dumpster. I hold the dildo up by its base and it wobbles left and right. The flame stays. Silicone melts down and burns my hand but I don’t give it any attention. Let the pain fuel me forward.

  “Okay.” I open the door. “Let’s go save a baby.”

  Part 30

  If anything, the owls have increased in numbers during our brief intermission in the Muzak room. The parliament grows stronger! The parliament rises! The parliament annihilates all who resist! There’s no use in attempting to further converse our plans. The dildo torch will only stay flamed for so many more seconds, and then we might as well hang signs over our necks that read OPEN BUFFET. I rush forward through the hallway now filled from floor to ceiling with frantic, screeching owls flying in every direction. Like bats emerging from their cave. This is a new world and they intend on exploring every square inch.

  The lobby is a bloodbath, a near-perfect reenactment of Kill Bill’s Crazy 88 scene.

  The floor is covered in corpses. Little league coaches and parents torn open and devoured. Guts and gore sprinkled through the lobby like last-minute Christmas decorations. Owls dip and dive into the carcasses, snagging bits and pieces to munch on as they continue their aimless flight through this strange and majestic building of dreams.

  I can barely hear the fire alarm over the sound of their flying.

  I wave the wobbly dildo torch at any owl ballsy enough to swoop down on us. The flame sends them back, tells them who’s the boss here. But we all know the score. Once that flame dies, there’s gonna be a drastic change in management.

  The floor is too slick with blood to run through. We move with caution toward the shattered entrance. Little league coaches aren’t the only corpses littering the land. I step over the lady who’d taken over Hobbs’s room. Her eyeballs are missing and her stomach is opened up like a trap door with a broken hinge.

  It doesn’t have to make sense.

  Walk.

  Walk.

  Walk.

  The cowboy sits on a lobby chair. We find his straw Stetson five feet behind him, next to the entrance. His head is still inside it.

  If Kia notices, she doesn’t show it. Her determination’s narrowed in on the pickup truck parked outside. Once we make it into the foyer, she sprints outside. The truck’s windows are miraculously still intact. Saturn looks up at us, smiling. She’s having the time of her life. Kia doesn’t open the door, just waves at the baby through the glass. The baby waves back.

  The sky is black. I’m sure there’s a moon somewhere, but it’s covered by a sheet of owls circling the hotel. They’re attracted to the building like it’s a magnet pulling them in. Every window on the front-side of the hotel is shattered. Guests scream and claw the window frames as owls drag them out feet-first. They carry the guests high up into the cloud of owls above the building and release them. The guests rain down and splatter against the parking lot. Bodies explode like meat balloons. The awning above the pickup truck shields us from falling guests. The owls empty the hotel, claiming it for their own.

  The dildo torch has melted down to the base. Pain hits like a bee sting. I drop the ashy sex toy to the ground and stomp on it.

  “Please tell me you’re gonna pay for that bottle, bro,” the cologne salesman says. “My boss will have my ass.”

  I pull out the wad of cash I stole from the little league coach and hand him two hundred dollar bills. “Get as far away as you can. Don’t give this to your boss. Just go. The owls have your scent now.”

  The cologne salesman grabs the money and sprints through the parking lot, barely dodging the rain of screaming guests.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Kia says, leaning her face against the window and smiling at her baby.

  “Are you still leaving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I come with?”

  “Oh, Isaac.”

  “Yes?”

  “No. You can’t come with.”

  “Oh.”

  The keys dangle from the ignition. Before she leaves, she pats me on the shoulder and offers a faint smile. Then she gets in the pickup truck and drives away. The owls don’t follow. They don’t want her. And she doesn’t want the one who does want her.

  Somewhere, a fire engine screams into the night.

  Defeated, I walk back into the hotel.

  Arms wide, head up.

  Offering myself to the owls.

  Some of them land on my shoulders, perched.
/>   But they don’t bite.

  They don’t view me as an enemy. They don’t view me as food.

  The owls are here to protect me.

  What would Mandy 2 say if she could see me now?

  I step over dead bodies and punch in the code to enter the front desk door. Hobbs sits on the carpet, hiding in the shadows. Must have leaped over the counter during the battle. He holds a chunk of his own guts, breathing hard and fast.

  His dirty, bloodstained eyes widen at the sight of me.

  “Eye…Sick…what the…fuck…is…going…on?”

  I shrug. There’s no answer here. If there is, I certainly don’t know it. I reach into the front desk drawer and pull out Detective Garcia’s pistol, then aim it at Hobbs. I consider pulling the trigger. I consider a lot of things. I can’t. I lower the pistol and Hobbs mouths his thanks, then coughs out something thick and wet.

  The front desk phone rings.

  I raise the pistol and shoot it and it explodes and it is the most beautiful thing.

  I drop the pistol in Hobbs’s lap and he stares at it, confused.

  I want to say a clever goodbye line, something like, “Here’s your final receipt,” but my mouth won’t listen to my brain, so I walk out of the hotel and get in my car without saying anything.

  Flames consume the hotel.

  Fire engine sirens blare from around the corner.

  The owls fly above me as I drive down the highway. Some of them are on fire, but that doesn’t seem to slow them down. In the passenger seat, Chowls and Owlbert applaud. I don’t know how they applaud. They just do.

  “That was one hell of an ending,” Owlbert says.

  “Yeah,” Chowls says. “Extremely satisfying.”

  “Kind of an deus ex machina, though.”

  “Hmm. Yeah. A little bit of a deus ex machina.”

  I pull over in the emergency lane and open the passenger door and push them both out.

  “Hey!” Owlbert screeches.

  “Fuck you too, asshole!” Chowls screams as I drive away, leaving them on the side of the road.

  They don’t follow.

  Eventually, the owls above me also grow bored and venture off to stalk some other basket-case.

  And once again I am blissfully alone.