The third and final night:

• A young woman was taken away this morning in a stretcher, by ambulance.
  • She looked to be in her late teens. She was staying with another young woman that dressed and smoked and looked just like her in the room next to mine. They checked in a few days before me. Quiet neighbors, I never had cause for concern.
    • How someone smokes is something I pay special attention to. The first time I saw these two young women they were smoking outside of their room, as was I. We exchanged mumbled greetings and polite nods. Each of them preferred to rest their cigarette on their lip for seconds longer than most, letting the smoke going in and out form a cloud around their faces. They also let ash build-up and fall naturally. I prefer to flick at the filter and the sight of excessive ash sickens me just a little.
  • It was fully light outside once the paramedics left. I went back into my room and slept decently for several more hours.
• I woke up starving. There is a vending machine here behind the clerk’s desk. The night clerk makes you hand her your crumbled dollar bills and announce what you’ll have. She vends your items for you. Some of the guests might consider this a gesture of service. I do not like someone to know what I am having to eat. I prefer the day clerk. The day clerk hardly wakes up from her chair. She lets you go behind the desk and vend your own items.
  • I get two packages of honeybuns and a Moon Pie, chocolate.
  • I drink coffee.
  • I call Mom.
    • “Please just tell me where you are at, honey.”
    • No.
    • “We’re really very close to calling the police and letting them sort this out.”
    • The police don’t care. I’m 20 years old. Police don’t consider a 20-year-old to be a missing person.
    • “Before you left you were waving that silly pocket-knife in Eddie’s face. We could report you armed and dangerous.”
    • Tell your husband he’s a bitch.
      • Eddie is her husband. I laughed and hung up on her.
  • I watched Law & Order SVU until it was dark out.
    • Finally, it was dark out.
• The first one walked by wearing clear heels. I didn’t bother to look at the rest of her plumage. The clear heels were tacky.
• The second one then the third one then the next one and I stopped counting and they all looked the same, poorly-lit and bored acting.
  • I went inside and masturbated into the sink so I could gather my senses.
    • I like standing up and masturbating. I look at myself in the mirror and I look like James Deen getting a blowjob and not caring at all.
    • I also like watching what happens to my cum after it leaves me. I’m not supposed to like these things. I am supposed to learn a trade. I am supposed to like drinking beer and fishing or golf or college football or a thousand other things that aren’t just me standing in front of a mirror in a motel room pretending I am a porn star.
• I have fifty dollars. I want to spend it.

The phone rings. It’s Eddie. Your mother is scared. She’s out of her mind over here. You’ve got to knock it off.

Moms always get boyfriends named Eddie or Carl who suppose they’re tough just because they’re dumb enough to work all fucking day. They want to teach their girlfriends’ grown-ass kids a lesson or two about r-e-a-l-i-t-y and whose gonna pay the light bill smart-ass? They think they’re teaching the world a lesson but it’s the other way around.

The lesson is get fucked. Bye. I hang up.

I start in on the thing. Chewing my fingers, right around the nails, until they bleed. I store all the little white pieces of skin, chewed and wet, in my mouth until my mouth is filled with my skin and all of my fingers are blood fingers. The banging on the door, and the threats of force. They are getting louder.

I remember so clearly being in a car accident when I was four or five, but my mom swears this never happened and no one can remember that far back besides. So, I have to accept this phantom memory but knowing something isn’t real has never dulled the edges for me. I am in the backseat. A man I don’t know yet is driving. The car is white. The next thing is metal piercing my little kid skin and groaning from the front seat, from the man I do not know. He turns to look at me. He turns like he is checking on me but instead of checking on me his face is contorted and mean and he sees I’m scared but breathing and his face is contorted and disappointed and he reaches his long arms, and those huge pawing hands that my sister says are always tearing her body apart, and tries to get at me but I’m quick. I’m real quick.

• A young man was taken away this evening in a stretcher, by ambulance.
• They are monitoring the situation.
• You could almost see his bones he bit so much skin off his fingers.
• He wishes he wasn’t born here; or
  • He wishes he wasn’t born to these people; and
    • He wonders if he could roam the town and find new people, his people. He could start with the other motels. Then the diners and all-night restaurants. The music clubs. There must still be music clubs. If there’s nothing to this town then he could roam the entire countryside. Surely his people are out there. Staying awake at night. Emptying themselves out here in America.
• He would stop biting so hard.
• He would stop biting altogether.
• He would stop biting himself if they would just drop him off anyplace else but here.

They won’t. He won’t. His mom is waiting outside the hospital room. Eddie has that ancient white Buick, dents and all, double-parked by the entrance, gassed up and running, waiting for them to get their asses in. He’s got to work in the morning. Someone has to. The hell of it isn’t that there’s one go-round then we’re all shut down for good. It’s that we don’t pick where we start.