The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [48]
He abandoned the young men and the dumpster to continue his endeavor on the lovely couple, who were now much further down the street, their sojourn interrupted by a kissful embrace. They vanished soon into the distant dark of a building’s sharp corner. He knew where they were headed. Together.
Up and across he went past the mouth of a narrow alley, splish-splashing shoe soles up and across drainage water, dodging a car’s gleaming headlights, over and onto the continuing walkway and patches of wet grass. In a careful rush he scurried past the stubble-white stucco of an old building and rounded the sharp turn in pursuit. Steering subtly through the thick shaded hues of the other side and its parking lot, he followed the lovely couple past the front entrance of a weathered motel.
***
Alice Bradshaw led her boyfriend down the walkway, past the quieted, gated swimming pool and a series of juniper bushes stretching out like a multitude of hands, mossy and splintery from digging upwards and out from the ground. They arrived at the lightless front doorstep of room 06.
She turned to her boyfriend and beckoned a pleasant second kiss and he obliged her, pinning her sleek-figured body gently but firmly against the door. The pressure loosened the number “6” plate from the metal “06”, knocking it onto the padded doormat below and making it room number 0.
“This is your bright, bargain motel room?” her boyfriend laughed.
“Ben,” she sighed, “it’s better on the inside. Besides, no churchy parents to hide from...you’re with a pastor’s daughter for Pete’s sake...and we don’t have to go all the way to your place now, do we?”
“No,” he said to her slyly, tilting them both into the failed front lighting. “But we can still go all the way....”
Alice playfully nudged him backwards. “Wait a sec, Ben, what if he’s watching?”
He pulled away smirking. Then, “Can you believe him? You think your dad sent him, you know, to watch us? You know how paranoid he gets over you....”
“He’s not my dad’s right-hand man, Ben. He’s only a handy-man. And he’s a cool friend.”
“A cool friend that follows us???”
“He helped us be able to come out here,” Alice told him. “He covered our asses...hell, he even told us about this thing tonight.”
“He told us about the concert, yeah, and he showed up to catch the show, which I think is great. But he’s following us!”
“Maybe out here, in this neighborhood, he’s looking out for us. And if he sees us go into the room, he won’t tell. He’ll maybe lecture us later....”
“I don’t think he’s there anymore.”
“You sure...?” Alice turned, looked past Ben.
“Don’t turn! Don’t look past me!”
Alice whipped her gaze back to him.
“Just close your eyes...,” Ben said to her and kissed her once more. She relaxed and accepted his passion and returned it.
A purse rose between them, breaking them apart. She dug into the purse, retrieved her room key. She had to jiggle the lock; she turned the knob and opened the door.
In an instant, an abrupt flash, a spectral blur and Ben had no time to react. Alice could not contain her senses long enough to scream. Something collided with her and she found herself crashing down into and past the opened door, through the shabby carpeted entranceway, against the table in the nearby kitchen abyss. There was a distant distortion of light cut to the quick and in it she caught a vague glimpse of the door as it slammed shut behind dancing blackness.
She reached in a desperate but feeble attempt to grasp for some stable support, her mind just as desperate to grasp reality. Blindness overtook that reality. . . she fought against it as though it took prominence over fighting for her life. . . and her hand fell onto the entranceway carpet. In abhorrent confusion