Holes...it was the best way to describe the past...a place ridded with holes.  Gwendolyn looked down at the page of the empty book and shook her head.  No more holes.  She couldn't do anything about the past...but the present...the future...she could hopefully do something to aid herself in ensureing that no more was lost.  Her mind drifted back to Cola...

Take it.  Get out of here...things will be okay there.  
I'm afraid.
Trust me.
Isn't that what you said before...
No.  I never asked...
Are you asking now?
Take it.

Trust.  Such a diffacult thing to extend willingly in any direction anymore...or maybe she was just making it more diffacult than it had to be.  Trust no one.  Trust everyone.  Did it matter?  All too often she felt as if she were a creature tossed back and forth on the torrents of the universes whims.  She couldn't fight the whole universe...not all at once.  Little bits at a time?  Maybe.  There was nothing more or less sure than that to say for sure.  I'm insane.  No...not insane, just confused...insane people don't realize that they are such...do they?

Eyes drifted back to the page again, or perhaps it had just found it's way back into her awareness....

Write something.
What?
Something...anything...you have to start if you're going to do it...
Fine.

Pen moved to the page...she'd thought about pencil...but was secretly afraid that the nightmares would find a way to take that away too...erasing words as if they'd never happened...adding more holes and confusion to things...No deep breath, no moment of renewed resolve before she began...

I'm afraid.

I shouldn't be.  I know I'm going to find a way to destroy them, it's just a matter of time before I figure out something...but I will do it...I will.  They won't leave me alone.  Cola told me I shouldn't worry so much about them before I left...but, I couldn't help but wonder if they'd gotten to him too.  They seem to get to everyone eventually.  I thought about seeing a therapist to try to force them to leave...but I think I would just end up in an institution...and honestly, with all the other factors to take into consideration...it would kill me before they could.

I'm waiting to hear back from the Prince as to whether or not my...presence here in Sanfield will be tolerated, or if I'll have to hunt them without permission.  I realize that attempting such could mean certain death...but what sort of life can I pretend to have while they still run free through the nights and days...doing the same things to others that they've done to me?  I truely hope that it doesn't come to that...with all there is inside me.  They have to stop.  Figments of ones imagination should not have the independence of thought or action that these particular ones do.  If only I could figure on how they came to be...maybe I would be able to figure on how to undo them.  For now...I suppose I have no choice but to do what I must.

She folded the book shut, looked at the disposable cell phone...still nothing.  A shake of the head,  and she climbed out of the car.  Please don't be wrong...  No...this is too important for him to have been wrong about this being the place to be.  Someone will call...or come...or something.  They have to.  Finally she silenced herself against her fears...the disquieted moments within rumbling through her thoughts shut away for a few moments as she shut the door...and headed to the craptastic motel's office.

Gwendolyn Shay did not belong in a place like this.  The 6'1" woman was almost timid as she approached the desk...her clothing was...outdated...ill fitting, like someone else had chosen it rather hastily for her, and there was little time or reason to perseverate on the high and low points of fashion at the time.  An oversized button down flannel T-shirt, green, grey and black in color...tan colored slacks that were a bit too small sporting holes in the knees from perhaps a time when the previous owner had tripped and fallen...or maybe they were on purpose...who really knew when it came to the fashion sense other people tended to have.  Flip flops...not exactly suited for this time of year...but they would do well enough for her...her frame was...lithe...almost meeting the standards of underfed...but not quite...eyes almost a light and foamy shade of green..straw colored hair tied up into a ponytail, hastily pulled away from her face.  Eyes drifted down to her fingers, and she used her thumbnail to dig some dirt out from underneath it...

"I need a room...please."

The motel office is a cramped and stifling place. It smells damp, the roof appears to be leaking in places from the stretch of rain lately. Seated behind the cheap desk is a younger man with an acne scarred face. He chews on a cigarette and watches something on a small, flickering screen before him. He barely looks up when Gwen walks in, just long enough to tilt his nameplate [Benny Commons with JR scratched on at the end] in her direction.

'Fer jus You?'

He asks, his yellowed teeth have bits of tobacco stuck to them. He wont even really listen to her answer, just shoves a clipboard with the listed rates toward her. Cheap is obviously the operative word around here.

At least she didn't have to worry about catching anything from a place like this...Maybe I won't be here long...  She could only hope.  She took in the sights...the smell...the feel of the motel, dirty.  It made her feel the sort of dirt and grime that weighed on the soul within rather than what touched the surface...Don't think about it...  "Yessir...just for me please."  

Her eyes went over the page with the rates for different rooms and stays and what not.  She would of course go with the cheapest thing they had availible...as if she had to be here a while it would be helpful not to run out of the...limited funds she had availible at this juncture in time.  

Room Seven is both the cheapest and the farthest from the office. It doesnt sound any different from the other rooms. Its a single bed and claims to have a tv and air conditioning.

Junior will slide her a key on a chipped plastic tag and point for her to sign on the form that management is not responsible for lost items and all that typical stuff.

'Ice machine is out back. The pool is out of order. No pets.'

Junior rattles off, his greasy eyes inspecting Gwen in a very unprofessional manner.

'Will that be cash or charge?'

Cheapest....and farthest away from this darling peach of a man...the universe was looking out for her for once...maybe.  Her faith in the universe's grand designs was a bit shaken at this juncture in time...but the little things gave her a moment to try to touch upon hope in some way or another...

"Won't be any bother..."  she said quietly, not terribly concerned with how he was looking at her...she knew she didn't look like the most put together girl in the world right now....nothing to be done about it.

She pulled the prepaid credit card that Cola had given her out of her pocket...and slid it over, "and...charge please."  Then took a moment to sign and initial what she needed to, before pocketing her key...

Junior slides the card through a device attached to his telephone and hands it back to her without so much as looking at the name.

'Enjoy your evenin Miss.'

Junior rasps before turning his eyes back to the flickering tv set on his desk. Gwen will be left to her own devices, Junior is still busy watching the young thing in room 4...

Gwen had...well no inclination to remain and attempt to get more...personal with the creepy acne covered man...and so she took back her card, and headed out of the office...She shook her head a little...murmuring to herself..."This is only temporary...nothing long term...just have to make it through a few nights here..."  She shuddered inwardly at the thought of staying here even that long though...cheeks puffed out as a stream of air escaped through lips...

Maybe they won't find me here.
Who are you kidding?  They're everywhere...
I can hope...can't I?
For all the good that does...

She put her key into the door, and pushed it open...she proceeded to go through the room and flip on all the lights, the television...she didn't want it quiet...not that deathly sort of things that go bump in the night sort of quiet.  After she was satisfied with the volume of the room she headed out to her car...grabbed the few things she had...and headed back inside...

She tossed the book on the bed...a small backpack with a few other random odds and ends...road maps, that sort of thing...into a corner, and shook her head as she settled in...Relax...you just got here...

The room is better than the office at least. It smells of pine-sol and mold. The walls are an odd green that might have been sea-foam in the seventies. The bed is dusty, the blankets are thin and one of the pillows is missing. The bathroom smells of bleach and the shower is claustrophobically small and warns that the hot water rarely last more than 15 minutes.

Before she can get too settled Gwen will recieve a text message from an unknown number that simply reads: thirty minutes.  

--Last edited by Radiation on 2009-01-28 17:28:40 --

Her eyes moved down to the vibrating in her pocket...she pulled it out and looked at it.  A frown tugged at the corners of her cheeks when she looked at the number.  30 minutes?  Thirty minutes for what?  Had they found her already?

Paranoia started to creep through her body as she snapped the phone shut and began looking around the room.  No....nonono...over-reacting.  Definately.  Breathe in...hold it...force it out.  Dear god, that smell...that putrid horribly offesnive smell...no more breathing in here.

It's going to be fine.  She started pacing...not wanting to touch the filthy matress...She thought about hiding in the closet...but no...no someone would check there...especially if it was them.  

Gwen will be in for an agonizing thirty minute wait. As she paces she will hear every little creak of the building. The roof shudders with every gust of wind. Something scratches under the floor and the bed in the room next door keeps rythmically creaking in five minute spurts.

In exactly twenty eight minutes the thin curtains over her double window will go white from headlights and she will hear a fine tuned engine idling outside.

Agonizing was putting it mildly...she found herself jumping and stuttering back a scream at every little sound that hit her ears...at one point in time she was ready to go next door and ask them to just move the bed, but was ultimately too embarassed and afraid to leave her room.

When the lights shone through the front window two things went through her mind as she squeeled and locked herself in the bathroom; First...she was going to sleep in the tiny ass closet or the bathtub tonight.  Second...someone was here.  She checked the clock again, and closed her eyes...maybe they would leave.  On time.

The car does not leave. That fine engine hums away for the next two minutes and as near to exactly on time as one can really get Gwen will hear the car door open and close. Heavy footsteps approach her door and after a drawn out seconds hesitation; someone knocks three times.

The shriek resonated off the tile at the sound of the knock...and her mind went back to the cell phone.  "Right down to the minute..."  she whispered...no, she didn't hold her breath.  Holding her breath would mean she would have some sort of inclination to suck in breath...and that would mean choking on the stenches of pine sol, urine and bleach mingled with whatever the hell else there was in here...

"You're being silly..."  
But not really
"They couldn't know..."
Couldn't they?
"Stoppit Gwen...this is...gah..."

She clenched her fists together and wrang her hands over one another before she poked...just her head out of the door...calling..."Ummm...ummm...who is it?"

No sooner does Gwen get her words out does she hear a loud slam against the door. Dust particles fall from the cieling with the force of the blow and one of the doors hindges sits about a half inch higher in its slot than it did just a moment ago.

Eeep! It was the sound she made as she pulled the bathrooom door shut, and sat against the door...if there was a lock, she would lock it.  If there wasn't well then she obviously wouldn't.  She rocked back and forth...They did find me.  Chewing on her fingers nervously...why did she have to chose the place to hide that didn't have another exit?

"Stupid Gwen...real stupid..."  she muttered to herself before she clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to be really still.  She forced her eyes shut and pushed all her weight against the bathroom door...had she still been able, she probably would have wet herself.

Gwen will hear a gently clicking like her door swiftly being picked. In a second there will be a jagged beam of light from half of one of the headlights cutting across the room and falling on the door. The half inch slit against the grey carpet cuts right under the door casting an odd illumination on the floor around Gwen.

She will hear footsteps in the room that strangely dont interfere with the casting of the light. They dont approach the bathroom door, but she will hear her backpack being emptied onto the floor...

Cower...cower some more...stay still.  Maybe they'll leave...Eyes were held shut...Count to five...get yourself together...1...2...3...4...  Was that her stuff they were going through?

No.  NoNoNoNoNo.

They must have found out about the book she'd started.  How?  How didn't matter...they were figments...they weren't real.  Don't be afraid...her voice a whisper..."Don't be afraid...they can't..."  No, they could hurt her...

She didn't bother to be quiet...they weren't going to take away what she had left.  She stood up...and pulled the shower curtain off the wall...place like this, it was probably just one of those lil twistie deals anyway.  Holding onto it with one hand, like a baseball bat or a club she was ready to swing, she ripped open the door.  Other hand clenched the other side of the pole like it was all that would save her.

"You're not taking anything else from me!  Get the hell away from my stuff!"

Gwen will experience a sensation similar to all the air being suddenly and violently sucked from the room, for a hanging second she exists in a vacuum, no sound, no movement. She will see her bag in mid-air, her possessions spilling all over the floor and a shadowed figure easily six feet tall with no discernable features save for his bright, white face holding the bag. The silence is numbing, she could have heard a pin drop and suddenly its over.

Her bag falls to the floor and she feels as if time burped and she was thrown forward. There will be a thin sheen of blood-sweat all over her body and her possessions will all be layed out on the floor. Most notably is her map of the city unfolded and laid out carefully with her pencil stabbed clean through and into the carpet.

There is no light, there is no shadowed man, there is no car idling out front. She is alone with just the normal sounds of hte motel... If she checks her phone again it is just about forty minutes after she first recieved the strange text message.

Dieing.  This is what it feels like to die...that moment of limbo before the world comes screaming back and all the pain of life and existance overwhelms.    The figure...the face.  How perfect...how terribly perfect and frightening all at once.  The thought seemed to stretch on for hours...the second seemingly as eternal as the prospect of living forever...


Hands moved up as the forgotton shower curtain rod fell unceremoneously to the floor.  Wet.  It wasn't warm like it was after she'd fed...no...cold, like she'd just stepped out of an icly shower.  Everything came jolting foreward in that instant....but there was nothing between.  More holes.  She wanted to weep at that...all her planning...struggling to keep the holes from continueing to crop up...for nothing.

She moved over to her things...hurrying, as if any bit of hesitation would make it all slip away.  She did indeed check her cell phone for the time, though it was little more than a passing glance to confirm that the holes were in fact there.  She carefully gathered her things...put them all into the backpack...pausing at the map.  She didn't bother to try to retrieve the pencil...she didn't need the walls mocking her strength...not right now.  She did however take the map up noting the location on it...

She went to her book, if it was still there...and wrote three miniscule sentances.  

More holes.  Ten Minutes.  I think I'm supposed to go somewhere.

Folding it shut, she returned it to her backpack...she went into the bathroom still holding the map and checked herself over in the mirror.  She toweled herself off as best she could so that she wasn't trapseing about town with dried blood spattered all over her, looking like something out of Gesthemane...and then grabbed her things and headed out to the car...

Keys found the ignition...I'm comming for you...but you know that...don't you?  She checked the map once more, and put the car into gear.  Cola had been right...this is where she was meant to be.