by RB Stutz
The large green sign showed it was ‘sixty-four miles to Missoula.’ I considered it for a moment, looked at the clock and decided it was as good of a place to stop as any. Dawn was coming soon and I knew I shouldn’t try to go any further. I’d been driving all night, well at least since 12:30, when I finally was able to make my way out of Troy.
Troy had been only the latest stop on my endless self-inflicted wanderings through the Pacific Northwest. I was glad the business there was over and Hannah was safe. It had been hard to finally pin it on Ted and my head throbbed with the additional effort.
After leaving Ted’s house, it took a while to make it out of town. Since I’d been there for a week and a half, I was strapped for funds and wasn’t going to get far on a twenty dollar bill and near empty tank of gas. I needed more cash in order to be able to move on.
Getting cash when I needed it usually wasn’t a problem since I could teleport pretty much anywhere I wanted, just a simple in, out and away. This time however, I ran into a few minor glitches with the out and away part, probably due to stupidity under the influence of exhaustion, but I guess it couldn’t be easy every time. All that mattered was I had the cash I needed to move on.
I was used to being up all night, it was the schedule I knew, how I was forced to live. Night time was when I preferred to travel and usually I fit sleep in during the day. Since most of the time there wasn’t much I could do during the day, the schedule worked well for me. The last couple of days had been long though, and sleep seemed like a distant friend. The throbbing in my head was almost unbearable.
I yawned aloud to the empty vehicle as I pressed the palm of my right hand to my pounding temple. “Man, I need to get some sleep.” Each pulse carried through my cranium as if someone was beating it like a bass drum in a parade.
I reached over and opened the glove box to riffle through its contents, pulling out a few different prescription bottles before finding the one I wanted.
A few of the small pills fell into my mouth as I poured them straight from the bottle. I chewed with a bit of a grimace and swallowed down the bitter pieces. Without anything to chase the bits of pill down, several pieces got caught in my dry throat.
“Blah.”
I twisted the lid back on the container and tossed it into the open glove box. Fortunately, I was able to work up enough saliva to get all of the pieces down.
Next to me, on the passenger seat was a plastic grocery bag. Unfortunately the bag didn’t contain anything to drink. I did however have several bars of nourishment. The reason I say nourishment instead of food is because calling the bag’s contents food is an affront to anyone with functional taste buds. I reached in to pull out a protein energy bar. Choco-Explosion, it said on the wrapper.
Who were they kidding? It was the type of bar that was high in energy and protein, but equally low in taste and appetizing texture. The choco in Choco-Explosion was a chemical tasting attempt at chocolate without any of the things that made chocolate good.
The bars served their purpose, a lot of calories, a lot of energy and little money. I opened the wrapper and devoured the bar in three bites. Again, I struggled to get it down my dry throat. I reached over to grab another and ate it equally as fast. I needed to get something else to eat. I’d had way too many of the bars over the last couple weeks and they were almost unpalatable to start with. Plus, I was a growing young man; I needed more than that crap.
The music faded on the stereo until only static was left. I was very aware of the exhaustion overcoming me and decided what I needed was something a little more upbeat anyways.
I connected my phone to the black wire coming out from the front of the stereo. The music player was by default set at random and after a second the music started.
Punk music was an indulgence I stumbled across about six months prior. “I Wanna Be Sedated” had come on when I was in a small café one evening somewhere in Wyoming and I loved it the instant I heard it. At the time, the song had seemed somewhat familiar, but I didn’t know it. It wasn’t the type of thing I usually heard on the radio while driving at night.
After asking the waitress, I found out it was by the Ramones and sometime after that, I went online to listen to other Ramones songs and from there other suggested bands. I started downloading my favorites.
I started with the early days of punk with bands from the late 70’s/early 80’s and progressed into more modern bands and other rock derivatives from there. Early punk was still my favorite though. I love the Ramones and early Clash.
It was the closest thing I had to a hobby, besides crime fighting, and I allowed myself time here and there to discover new music to add to my growing collection. I was up to twenty gigabytes of music. It’s not like I didn’t have the time. I was pretty much always alone, leaving myself plenty of time to search for and listen to music, read and watch the endless catalog of movies I’d never seen. Anything I could do to occupy my thoughts was better than being left alone with them.
Something by the Clash began to play; I couldn’t remember the name without looking down at the phone, which was no surprise. I was bad at names, but knew the words. I sang along to each song, belting out the lyrics as I continued on.
On the outskirts of Missoula, I decided to pull off the freeway and fill up my almost empty gas tank and past empty stomach. There was a large truck stop right off the exit, marked with yellow and red neon lights glowing in the still pre-morning darkness. I pulled in and up to one of the empty fuel pumps and got out to fill the tank of my beautiful 1986 Land Cruiser.
The truck had several dents and what was once white paint was now barely visible through the layer of dust. So okay, it wasn’t exactly beautiful, but it ran well and I liked it. That’s all that mattered. It had inner beauty.
There aren’t many places that let cash customers fill before paying anymore. That was a bit annoying since I was always a cash only customer. Luckily, the place seemed to be an exception as it let me start pumping before presenting any form of payment.
As I pumped, I looked on towards the slightly brightening clear sky and felt a cool breeze blowing through the pump area. The combined aroma of petroleum and fried food filled my senses as the wind carried the scents through the breezeway between vehicles. It wasn’t the most pleasant of combinations, but the greasy food reminded my stomach again it wanted something real. It had Choco-Exploded one too many times over the past several days.
When I was through filling up, I went into the store. I used the facilities first before browsing for something to eat and drink, hoping maybe caffeine and something consumed other than those protein bars would help with my throbbing head. The truck stop wasn’t very busy so early in the morning; there were only a few other customers in the store. I ended up grabbing a large bottle of water, an energy drink and three packaged sandwiches, taking my glorious bounty to the front of the store to pay.
“Mornin',” said a small man with pinched eyes behind the counter in a monotone voice.
“Good morning,” I said back in an annoying cheerful manner, responding to his lack of cheerfulness.
The gas and food cost $47.59. I gave the clerk a fifty from my pocket and he handed back the change and a bag to fill with my purchases. “Thanks,” I said and left the store.
As I was walking back to my truck, I noticed the sky seemed much brighter than when I had gone inside only five minutes earlier. It was getting time to find a motel for the day.
I opened the door to the truck and was about to get in when I heard a cheerful “hello” coming from the pump next to me.
“Hello,” I said and turned to the girl I hadn’t noticed. I guess maybe I should have. She was striking.
She looked older than me, but not by much. Maybe nineteen? Her shoulder-length chocolate hair blew with the breeze. Her jeans fit snug over her athletic but slim legs and she wore a light blue ski jacket that seemed tailored to be worn by only her.
She was filling the tank of a black SUV. I couldn’t t
ell what make or model it was, but it was definitely newer and leaps and bounds nicer than my piece of crap, probably made within the last couple of years rather than the last couple decades.
“It’s supposed to be a beautiful day,” she said conversationally.
I nodded. “It looks like it just might be.”
“Are you staying in the area or just passing through?” Her voice was confident, but pleasant.
“Just passing through.”
“Me too, although seeing the beautiful morning sky sure makes me want to find an excuse to stay.”
“I have to get going but it was nice to meet you,” I said as I got back into the truck, cutting the conversation short.
Did I mention I wasn’t very good at small talk with girls or really people in general? I wasn’t shy, though a pretty face was likely to fumble my words some and her face was undoubtedly pretty. I’d just had a lot of practice at avoiding people. Small talk led to questions I didn’t want to answer, also daybreak was closing in and I needed to get going.
The girl smiled, not showing any annoyance at my rudeness. “You too.”
Once in the truck, I got back on the highway for a couple of miles and took an exit advertising the Rocky Ridge Inn. It looked old and out of the way, my kind of place.
I pulled up to the inn which advertised free HBO and rates from $29 a night.
I laughed. “They had me at the free HBO.”
The inn looked ancient and neglected. It was a one-story, pull up to the door of the room crap hole with a chipped paint wood exterior. I was familiar with the type of place. It provided all I was looking for, ambiguity, a shower and a place to sleep.
After parking, I walked into the front office of. A tired looking middle-aged woman was sitting at the desk with a cigarette in one hand and a novel displaying some bare-chested, long-haired man on the cover in the other. The room had a strong odor of tobacco smoke accompanied with an underlying musty smell and something else not discernible, but unpleasant. It was kind of a sour rot and something I didn’t want to dwell too much on.
Apparently dressing up the reception area had never been in the inn’s budget. It was a plain white room adorned with years of neglect and a single smoke stained framed cross-stitch of a brown owl. There was a cluttered desk with only a small area to stand in front of it.
The woman looked up as I let the door close behind me.
“May I help you?” she asked, her deep husky voice revealing she probably started smoking right out of the womb.
“I wanted to see if I could get a room.”
“Ok. Will you be staying past 11:00?”
“Yes.”
“If you’ll be staying past 11:00, I’ll need to charge you for two nights,” she said.
“That’s fine.” I didn’t really care; that wasn’t uncommon due to the hours I kept.
“Well, the only rooms I have left are the two honeymoon suites.”
No big surprise. It wasn’t exactly a prime honeymoon get away location.
“I’ll take one.”
She said it would be $45 per night and I pulled out the bundle of cash from my pocket to give her two $50 bills. She gave me back the change and a room key. The key had a large red heart keychain with a large “ten” painted silver on it.
“Room ten,” she said.
“Thanks.” I headed back outside.
Now that I had my heart-shaped key in hand, I pulled the truck in front of my room. It was even brighter now outside.
I grabbed the small plastic bag containing my recent truck stop purchase as well as the large duffle I had in the back of the truck. I used the key to unlock the door to my honeymoon suite. The room had the same smoky-musty smell, but maybe with a little less smoke and without the sour rot.
Their definition of honeymoon suite was a room furnished with a heart shaped bed and a lot of red. When I turned on the light I was bombarded with red everything, curtains, carpet, bed, etc… Maybe it was the fact I was there alone, but the sight didn’t bring up emotions of love and passion, but more of kitschy sadness. Of course I’d lost the only one I ever remembered loving. I had only an empty space left where those feeling once resided.
I walked over to the bed and set my bags down, took off my jacket and put it on the back of the desk chair on my way to the bathroom.
In the dingy little bathroom, I took a second to look at myself in the mirror. As I ran my hand up and down the three or four days of scraggly beard growth, I couldn’t remember which it was, I noticed how worn out I looked. My small blue eyes looked distant and exhausted.
“Smoky blue? Maybe?”
I turned on the faucet, splashed the cool water on my face and patted it dry with the hand towel folded next to the sink. The water was incredibly refreshing.
On my way back to the bed, I closed the faded, dusty red curtains over the faint traces of daylight that were starting to creep in. There was an old TV in the corner and I walked over to turn it on, stopping at the first news program I came across.
“Today the high will be 65 and the low 45 degrees. Wind will be blowing out of the northwest at fifteen miles per hour,” the meteorologist said as I turned to the station.
Settling down on the edge of the bed, I grabbed one of the sandwiches and the bottle of water out of the plastic bag. I took a long pull from it. The water was still cold, so refreshing as it flowed down my dry throat. I put the cap back on the bottle, set it back on the bed and opened one of the sandwich packages. It was ham with swiss on wheat. The sandwiches weren’t ideal fare, but were the best the small store had to offer.
I was working my way through the second sandwich when the story I’d been hoping to catch came on.
The search for a missing Idaho girl ends last night with an anonymous call and the arrest of a monster.
Hannah Summers, a fourteen year-old girl from Troy Idaho was found still alive last night after having been missing for close to three weeks. Local authorities said she was found after receiving an anonymous call to the address of Ted Samuels, a well-known business owner and long-time resident of Troy. When the authorities arrived, the girl was found in the house and Mr. Samuels was unconscious and bound in the basement. Not much is known at this time about Hannah’s ordeal but what we do know is Mr. Samuels held Hannah against her will in his home for the three weeks she was missing.
Hannah has told the authorities last night a man wearing a dark ski mask came to the house. The man was able to overpower Mr. Samuels and free her. She said he never removed the mask and she didn’t recognize his voice. This stranger was the one who phoned the authorities. When the police arrived on the scene, the masked man was gone. Right now the authorities have no leads to who this mystery masked man was.
She didn’t give them my description.
When the police found Mr. Samuels bound in the basement of his house, there was a note attached to his shirt. We haven’t seen the note ourselves, but what we’ve been told is it said “I am a sick bastard. I have done this before. The others are in the backyard. I deserve to be castrated and ...” We can’t read what the rest of the note said on live television.
This note led authorities to start an immediate search of the backyard of Mr. Samuels’s house. So far the searchers have found two bodies buried in the yard. The bodies appear to have been there for some time, and there is no way yet to identify who these other victims were. There is speculation one could belong to Lindsey Parker, another young Troy resident who went missing two years ago and was never found.
Mr. Samuels is being held without bail and we’ve been told he hasn’t said a word since he was apprehended. In this quiet town, it is a day of celebration and horror.
We’ll continue to bring you more as the story develops. Hannah is lucky to be alive and that there was a hero in town last night. This is Sonia Kim reporting.
I thought the note was a nice touch.
I’d seen my share of horrific things over the past year, but the things he had done to h
er… That one definitely left a mark on me. He was a vile puddle of slime and as far as I was concerned deserved to first have his man hood removed and then hit by a train after a few hours suffering.
Once the story was over, I got up and turned off the TV. With a groan I stretched my sore back side to side. It cracked with both motions and I did the same to my neck.
I sat back on the bed, bent down to unlace my boots and pulled off each. The freaking headache would not go away and the motion caused an increase to the pain. After scooting up further on the bed, I fell back onto the mattress. The large heart was a cloud of cotton and marshmallows. My sore tired body melted into it. I closed my eyes and was asleep.
CHAPTER 3
“She’s ready to see you now,” a pleasant woman’s voice said.
I jerked my gaze up in response. I hadn’t seen her approach. My full attention had been fixed on the zigzag pattern of the dingy industrial carpet in the waiting area. I took a deep breath and rose from the seat. My legs were lead as I tried to force them to follow the round middle-aged woman in green scrubs. I was terrified.
“Are you coming?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Sorry.”
I followed her down a grey sterile hall, around a few corners and through a couple doors. The walk was a blur of motion through a nondescript space, passing people and things I didn’t take notice of. The woman stopped and opened the door to a room. She stuck her head in and after few seconds passed she turned back to me.
“She’ll be ready for you in just a minute.”
I waited for what seemed an infinite amount of time. I didn’t want to go in that room. That room scared the hell out of me. At the same time though, I wanted it to be over with. My heart pounded faster and harder with each passing second.
“Are you okay? You don’t look well?” the woman asked.
I didn’t feel well. “I’m fine,” I lied.
The door opened and a man and woman came into the hall. They were both middle-aged and well dressed. The man had dark hair peppered with grey. His face and arms showed evidence of many hours in the sun, probably on the golf course. The woman’s platinum hair framed a smooth lean face. The crow’s feet near her eyes gave a hint at her real age and I knew her buxomness was a new addition to attempted youthful preservation.