Prompt: “…checking in proved to be…”
A dried-out hotel lobby. Wooden fan blades stirring burnt air, grey photographs from a lost and glorious past. Noises on the wind outside, distant alien sounds: a thump, a crackle of munitions. The world ending. A boy with bone-white eyes on a cracked plastic chair. Green shorts, white vest, skin the colour of dust.
Reservation mister?
I’m looking for someone. A blonde woman. European.
Five dollars.
A folded bill, a smile all of teeth.
Upstairs mister, room three.
Stairs, a knock on wood, a blue eye in the crack of a door.
You.
Checking in proved to be her salvation.
Simon John Cox 