She was the sort of girl who would have bitten her nails, had the situation been different, but as it was, she was fearful. She was sitting there on borrowed time and it was clear to see she would not get much longer of it, not, at least, if she didn’t know how to tell her story properly. The master could not be bothered for a bad story. So, she resisted her habit and sat, docile, with her hands in her lap.

‘My father always said he’d kill me one day,’ she began, but she began wrong, for in the master’s eye, she could already see the boredom settle, like a thin layer of dust around his retina. Yet another abuse story, to be laid to rest beside the million he’d heard already.

‘He said that about my brother, too, plenty of times, but I know he never meant it. Jack was the apple of dad’s eye, you see, and whenever he’d say stuff like that, it was just ‘cause I’d gotten him all riled up. And Jacky, he never knew when to let go, always trying to protect me. I suppose it was a big sister thing.’

She watched, as the master arched one singular eyebrow in her direction and shook his head, ever so slightly, but just enough for a warning to get through – change the story or get out. This one, I’ve already heard and this one, I will not hear again.

‘But my father wasn’t there the day we died, I just thought it was…a weird coincidence. We were on a road trip. Jack and I, we used to love going on road trips.’

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Here, the bleach-blonde’s voice choked up, only a tiny bit, as was customary. In truth, she’d long since cried all the tears she was capable of and if you were to hold up a picture of her defunct Jack, right before he died, she probably wouldn’t shed a single tear. She’d cried them all and she’d be damned if she’d spend another minute crying here. And if she failed, it wouldn’t be a minute, it would be millions. If she failed, her best hope would be that the master forgot her quickly, for as long as your story lingered fresh in the master’s mind, you would not be allowed back in, to plead your case in. There were some who hadn’t been seen to for hundreds of years. They didn’t so much as mourn, nowadays, they just… stood. Always sort of leaning against the air, as if they might fall at any given moment. But they never did, and to her, that was the saddest thing of all.

‘We weren’t going somewhere in particular, just driving. But then we stopped at the motel. We should’ve never stopped by that motel.’

Just then, something seemed to flicker inside the master’s eye, something almost akin to interest.

She sat up a little straighter on her bench. She knew she should go on, grab this flitting interest while she still hadn’t, but somehow, she couldn’t find her words. It was as if everything, the whole length of the story in her mind seemed to pale and shiver in the face of that one motel, whose image was so clear now in her mind – the dirty front, the sign, only slightly falling off the side of the building, the rooms that seemed like something out of a ‘60s family movie. Gather up, children, it’s vacation time.

She could see herself, walking without so much as a care in the world, toward the door. Number 9, except a screw had fallen loose, and now it seemed to say number 6, and by the looks of it, this wasn’t the only place in the area that had more than one door marked six.

Most of the trip, come to think of it, looked wrong – not like a place where people ought to stop, under any circumstance. Like something unreal.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t.’ The master’s voice was steady, but his gaze betrayed him. She guessed, or at least, she thought she could guess the slightest trace of playfulness behind his eyes. He was testing her, toying with her story, as if it were made of cardboard, except it wasn’t. Not anymore.

‘But that’s the thing, it was. And that’s where my brother died.’

to be continued

Image: Pixabay