Room twenty one
I’ve lost track of time. Days don’t mean much here.
A dingy motel with twentysome rooms. Room 21. A spring mattress on a rusted metal frame. A minifridge with a chalky white stain. Desk. Telephone. Toilet. The walls are yellowed and cracked like a tooth pulled too late. A dusty ceiling fan ticks when it spins. Cigarette burns dot the carpet. The air smells like the inside of an ashtray. I tried to imagine the room as it was when the motel first opened, but couldn’t. It had always been this way.
A portable typewriter sits on the desk—fresh ribbon, untouched.
The place is owned by a man and his wife. He has lizard skin—shriveled, sun-stained, covered in tattoos that look like regrets. He’s much older than her. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Clean. Not a tattoo on her.
Visitors never stay more than a night. A mix of drifters—young, old, mostly men. They check in with eyes like burnt-out bulbs. I don’t leave Room 21. I watch them come and go through a crack in the blinds. Their cars are falling apart. Their backpacks overstuffed. They move like they’re running from something. After a while, they all look the same—weathered, broken, burned out. I try to guess which ones will kill themselves.
The sun is always hot, and the AC is poor.
The motel squats beside the interstate. It’s surrounded by nothing. Tumbleweeds. A sea of sizzling sand. Some days, no one checks in. Some days, no one drives past. I watch the sun melt.
The owner beats his wife. They argue, shout, throw things. Sometimes I hear glass. I’ve seen her bruises. Sometimes she limps across the parking lot. She almost always wears a hat. Room 21 sits above the couple’s suite. At night, I leave the crack in the blinds and press my ear to the vent.
Through it, I hear their animal noises—moans, barks, yelps, groans. Rage and heat, wordless and wild. She doesn’t always scream. Sometimes she just whimpers, as if she’s learned how to take it.
Once I’ve heard enough, I’ll return to the crack. The nights are still. A fluorescent light at the truck stop flickers in the dark. It’s trying to talk to me. I wonder what it’s saying.
I sleep from 3 to 4 a.m. That’s all I need. The owners have forgotten about me. They don’t change the sheets. Don’t clean the room. I don’t leave Room 21. I watch them from the crack.
Today’s been exciting, in its own way. At 6 a.m., an eighteen-wheeler with a purple cab got a flat. At 8, a vulture picked at something in the street—might’ve been a cat. At 1, the wife dragged a cheap beach chair into the sun. It had stripes: blue, green, yellow, red.
Her legs were shaped well—smooth, a little sweaty. She wore a hat. I couldn’t see her face. I wanted to see her newest scars. I wondered what she was reading. I imagined it was hot, bothersome, sinful. The kind of book that makes you shift in your seat. I liked the idea of her getting bothered. I thought of her barks as I looked through the crack.
The fan ticked overhead. I walked to the typewriter. I kept it clean. Was it trying to talk to me too?
I typed one sentence:
I am invisible.
Then I sat back. The black ink, frozen on the page, stared back. I got uncomfortable and mad. I returned to the crack.
A sandblasted coupe pulls into the motel parking lot—one yellow-rimmed spare, dents in the rusted hood. A young man gets out. The engine sputters like it wants to die. A t-shirt hacked into a tank top. Ragged jean shorts. Oversized work boots that look two sizes too big. He’s already yelling into the car. Then he slams the door and stomps to the office like the gravel owes him money.
I think about my sentence:
I am invisible.
I glance back at the typewriter. The font’s too small to read from here, but I can see the shape of it. I smile—and get angry.
The guy comes out of the office, bangs on the hood, shouts something, waves his arms like a drunk coach. Then he stomps off toward one of the rooms.
The passenger door opens. Long legs step out. Golden blonde hair. Big sunglasses. Young—maybe nineteen. Younger than the owner’s wife. She steps out like she doesn’t belong to the heat or the dust. Like the sun parts for her. I imagine Monroe. A movie star. Out in the sand? With that boot-stomping, tank-topping twat?
There’s a strut in her walk, but it’s slow. Measured. Like she’s floating across the sunburnt concrete, and the ground’s too ashamed to touch her. Oh, how sacred.
She follows him into the room. A tote bag slung over one shoulder. Closes the door.
At 5 p.m., a plane crawled across the sky above the desert mountains—tiny, silver, distant. A passenger jet. Headed to Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. Filled with strippers and stalkers and snakes. Sinners, all the same. The flight attendant tops off the molester’s Malbec. Offers pedophiles pretzels. “Free soda for the sinners!” they announce over the speakers. Oh, how wicked. An even scale, but never equally weighed. What a shame.
I think about my sentence:
I am invisible.
By some force—or maybe just the need to feel something—I’m compelled to write another:
The plane crashed, never to be found.
It felt good. Final. Like a curse whispered into the wind.
I return to the crack. The plane’s gone now. Vanished. The sky’s still, as if nothing had passed through. Not a single cloud. All blue.
I imagine the plane falling. Drinks spilling, masks dropping. Screams. Silence. The old close their eyes. The young keep them open. Some grip the seat. Some faint. Some pray. Some cry. No one changes.
Then I think of all the planes falling—one after another—dropping out of the sky like little flies. Then I think about the sky itself, coming down in pieces.
I stayed at the crack all afternoon. Time slows to a crawl. The heat pulses.
I think about how cruel I am. What a shame.
I think about everyone who’s to blame. What a pity.
I think about my sentences.
I return to the typewriter and read:
I am invisible.
The plane crashed, never to be found.
I sit with that. Then I write another:
I am invisible.
The plane crashed, never to be found.
The coupe washed, never to start again.
I look out the crack. At the car in the lot. A shitbox. Sand-caked. Duct tape held the mirrors on. Out-of-date tags. The tires sag like they’ve given up. I feel disgusted.
I think about the twat behind the wheel. Smoking cigarettes. Singing along to shitty songs he thinks sound better loud. He puts his cigarettes out on Monroe. A movie star. Cigarette burns dot her arms and thighs. Why are you here?
She hates his shitty songs. He’s unemployed. A druggie. A methhead. He doses her to keep her soft. Keeps her high so she forgets she’s a prisoner. Maybe she knows. Maybe she likes it that way.
Oh, how wicked.
I write again:
I am invisible.
The plane crashed, never to be found.
The coupe washed, never to start again.
An afternoon overdose.
I thought about the lizard-skinned owner.
Arizona native. Petty criminal. Been living in shit towns his whole life. Father used to beat him—black eyes, belt buckle, burned hands. That made him hate the world. He hates himself because he is his father. Just not brave enough to end it himself. Ask his dead wife. Ask her brother. The lizard man offed them both, then ran off with their kid sister. Took her hostage. Married her.
He brought her here. He’d leave her in the desert for days.
“You’re free to go,” he’d say. Then he’d drive off.
It was never more than a few hours before she crawled back to the trailer. Sunburned. Barefoot. Begging to be taken back.
I wrote again:
I am invisible.
The plane crashed, never to be found.
The coupe washed, never to start again.
An afternoon overdose.
An office ablaze.
I smiled. Oh, how cruel. We are all so cruel. I am invisible. They are inflicting. An infection. Wicked. What a shame.
I laugh to no one.
Then I sleep.
A heavy sleep. The kind that wraps around you. The kind you don’t earn. Harder than I’ve slept in years.
When I wake, the digital clock by the crack reads 10:04. Ten hours gone. I jolt upright, panicked by what I might’ve missed.
I crawl to the window. The morning sun is there. The sand is there. The depthless sky. The distant mountains. And yes—that twat’s shitbox, still in the lot.
I smile.
At 9 a.m., a truck stopped for gas. When the driver opened the door, a bag of fast food spilled out onto the pavement. He was hefty. A belly bulge pressed against his buttons like a water balloon on the verge. I imagined his stench. An unfathomable human.
At 10, the tank-top twat emerged. Same clothes. Same stomp. He walked like he was crushing ant piles with every step. Oh, how wicked. Those big boots toppling colonies. Entire empires have fallen beneath the soles of a soulless revenant.
What a shame.
He got in the car. Then quickly got out. Kicked the door. Shouted. Got back in.
This is great! Oh, how exciting.
He got in. Got out. Kicked it. Got in. Got out. Kicked it. Pulled his hair. Again. Again. Again.
Then he stomped back to the motel room, hollering the whole time. A full tantrum. A toddler in work boots.
By 5 p.m., the day had been still. No trucks. No vultures. No sweaty legs.
Then it happened.
BOOM.
An explosion shakes the room. Dust rains from the ceiling. My ears ring. I stumble back from the crack, arms over my head.
The roof of the office is gone.
Flames lick through shattered wood and stucco. Black smoke bleeds into the sky like bad ink.
Gas leak? A grenade? A drone strike? What a treat!
It’s on fire.
The fire moves like a monster. It eats the office, inch by inch. No one in sight. No shouting. No screaming.
I watch. The monster keeps eating. No fire trucks. No sirens. No help.
Just one man at the truck stop. He lights a cigarette, watches for a minute, then gets in his rig and drives away.
The flames keep going. I stay at the crack. I don’t move. It’s beautiful.
The twat and the movie star hadn’t stirred.
Did they get caught in the blast?
Did they cause it?
Oh, how cruel.
No sign of the brainwashed prisoner-in-law.
Was she on the run?
Had she broken the spell?
Had she blasted black boots?
Oh, how wicked.
The fire danced and spread.
I stayed at the crack, watching the flames eat and grow.
Eat and grow.
Soon it got hot.
Hotter than the sun.
Smoke slipped under the door and filled the room.
I smiled and looked at the typewriter—blurry little lines of black:
I am invisible.
The plane crashed, never to be found.
The coupe washed, never to start again.
An afternoon overdose.
An office ablaze.
I left the crack.
Would I ever return?
Inspired, all on my own—no alien, no force, no wish, no push—I sat to write one more sentence.
It was hot.
Sweat dripped off me. It puddled on the floor.
My fingers touched the keys. The metal burned.
I smiled and typed:
I was never born.
The fire filled the room—first the curtains, then the sheets, then the chair, the table.
The roof collapsed.
I wasn’t there.