Night Terrors

Pursued by forces beyond understanding I wait for dawn in an old seaside hotel.

Heavy grey clouds filled the sky, leaving only a sickly half-light to barley illuminate the abandoned skyscrapers, and the boarded up houses which kept them company. This was once a booming vacation spot with the best waves around, but then the tides shifted and the town became a quick pit stop on the way to better places. The only life left in the town seemed to come from and old worn down hotel in which I found myself a reluctant guest.

I stumbled into the room carrying a few meager possessions, fighting to keep my body moving. Immediately I crossed the room to the windows closing and locking them tightly. I pulled them with all my might, making sure that they would stay closed. I threw the deadbolt on the door and locked the chain, checking and double checking that that too was as secure as it could be.

I looked around at the room that I was trusting to keep me safe and it seemed painfully inadequate. The walls were cheap plaster, covered over by peeling wallpaper and the carpet held hidden lumps that I suspected were rotten spots that had been hastily repaired. I briefly considered trying to find another place to spend the night but I knew I’d fall asleep at the wheel before I made it to another hotel that was worth staying at.

  I began to pace, trying to stay awake, but before long the walls began to move as if caught in a breeze only they could feel. The floor began to swell like the far off waves. I reached out to steady myself but the TV stand moved, rolling away as the floor began to swell and ebb. I slammed to the floor, hard fighting against the blackness that sought to take me but the battle was already lost and I began and uneasy slumber.

In my dreams I watched as my hotel burned down around me. Flames embraced the building, burning tendrils of fire licked the wood, the flames running their greedy lips over the brittle surface of the once proud structure, gagging on the rain slicked roof. Smoke raced towards the heavens, a hungry beast, eager to meet the sky and extinguish the stars.

I felt the flames slide across my flesh like a lover. I felt them tickle my lips, run through my hair, and flicker down to my jeans. There the flames lingered, burning away, ripping me of my clothes, leaving me burning; naked and alone. My thighs began to melt, the fat slipping from my bones to fall still sizzling to the hotel bed.

In the dream the fire didn’t hurt. I knew it should, I knew it like I knew my mothers name, but still it didn’t burn. I felt the fire wash over me again and again, I felt it flicker up to nibble at my ear, melting it away, but still it did not hurt. I reached out and put my hand into the fire and it filled my palm, soft like a woman. I felt every curve of the flames, every flicker of the breeze that blew in through the open window.

I began to laugh, caught in the sensation of dancing not just in the fire, but with it. I began to move my body, bucking my hips and lifting myself up, holding the fire, caressing the blaze upon me. I felt the flames ravage through my body, consuming me in a way that I’ve never been consumed before. I bucked my hips one last time and screamed out to the night yelling with all my might before falling back to the mattress spent and burning.

When the dawn finally found me I was alone in an empty hotel room, lying naked on a wet mattress with tears in my eye.

It had happened again.

I got dressed quickly, forgoing the luxury of a shower so that I could get onto the road once more. Time was my greatest foe now, even more so then the thing that had visited me last night, I needed to keep moving, and hopefully one day it wouldn’t find me.

I grabbed what little I had brought with me into the room and ran out towards my jeep, slamming the door closed on the hotel room. Never pausing to look back at the open windows or the forgotten town.

Reviews

I was enthralled up to the part where you woke up. The end felt a bit like a let down from the descriteness of the rest of the poem.