The Windswept Dunes Hotel: Room 237

She watched without fear as the ceiling shivered and then disappeared, the roof ripped from the hotel, receding upwards and away from her into a dark green sky with stars so bright that they shone through the roiling clouds. Her grandmother leaned down next to her ear and whispered not to worry, that the wind couldn’t get down into the room. Right when she started remembering that her grandmother had died years ago, her history professor started banging on a chalkboard and asking her why she was always so late to class.

Collin sat on the next bed and watched Adrienne mumbling to herself in a fitful, illness-induced sleep. As he got up to go wet another washcloth for her forehead, he swore to himself he would never let her eat at a seafood buffet again.

The Windswept Dunes Hotel: Room 114

Pastor Bryan Sullivan took nearly two minutes getting his keycard to work in the door. It was another in a series of inauspicious events on this trip. For a man of less-Christian superstitions, they could have been considered omens, when taking into account the bizarre assignment that had sent him halfway across the country. But Pastor Bryan saw the creator’s warnings instead. The conclusion was the same: trouble brewing.

He was a man of God, young and full of vigor, but also a low man on the totem pole within the central administration of his denomination. So when so many of its flock in this part of the country began reporting strange things, the higher-ups had to send someone to investigate before issuing any official opinion on the subject. Pastor Bryan represented their due diligence.

As he laid his case on the king-size hotel bed, he couldn’t help but think about how in the movies, the catholic priests were always sent to large suburban homes to look into reports of demonic possession. But Pastor Bryan had to go interview trailer park denizens and far-flung homesteaders about strange lights in the desert.

He sighed and took off his shoes, and began thinking about what he might do for dinner.

just write something, self

I sit here at my computer, forcing myself to write. Been telling myself for a while now that I need not have an amazing story idea to get started. Just sit down and write. That I should tune into my feelings for inspiration. Use the little frustrations of life as a source, I say. But good lord, those things are boring. No one wants to read a story about how I feel like I am going nowhere in life, about how I obsess too much over the girl I am in love with and turn petty and jealous when I don’t get to see her. How I am ridiculously overqualified for my job at a shitty sign company? How my boss is a right-wing nut job? How I even have to weave fiction into this autobiographical listing of my issues, just to make those issues seem even slightly more interesting? How I don’t even work at a sign company? How I make things up all the time? How I am pretty sure I saw an alien standing on the side of the road when I was 16, but I don’t tell anyone because they would think I am making it up?

So maybe I do need a story. Or at least a setting. Or an idea to start with. I will think about it…