The engine is idling, so he turns it off, and he is left with the rain drumming on the roof and the ticking of the car's components cooling down and contracting back into their original state. The orange streetlights cast a slanted, dull gloom into the interior and across the back of his hand. He frowns. Where is he?
All he can see is the curve of the road veering off into dark plains and the black clouds of night high above. Standing out in stark contrast to the night is the motel. The glare of it's neon pink sign above its entrance is hard to look at. "Roadside Motel" it reads. No company name. No slogan. Just Roadside Motel.
Was he asleep just now? Why does he feel like he's only just started paying attention. No, it's not sleep. He feels like he's walked through a door and forgotten what it is he's here to do. But he knows it involves that motel.
He gets out of the car and lets the door shut. He leaves it unlocked and huddles against the rain as he crosses a small path to the motel entrance.
He's soaked by the time he's passed through the glass double doors and stands at the reception desk. There's no one around. But it is late. So he rings the bell on the desk and waits.
The clock on the wall ticks. Three twenty three in the morning. What is he doing out at this time? He tries the bell again. No answer. 'Hello?' he calls out. His voice echoes down the corridors to the left and right of the reception.
Feeling slightly criminal, he bypasses the desk and pokes his head into the brightly lit room beyond. A staff room of sorts, with a kettle and sink one one end, a table and two chairs, and a row of lockers to the left. There's no coats on the rack. No people either.
He walks back out into the reception and muses briefly that he could raid the cash register and no one would be around to stop him. Not that he's ever stole anything in his life before.
He continues on into the right corridors, hoping to chance upon a cleaner or another member of staff. Or even a guest. What does he even plan to ask them? Why was I out in my car just now? What was I doing? As if they could answer any of those things. But they could at least tell him where he is.
One thing does press harder at the back of his mind than the others. That car isn't mine. So whose is it?
He turns a sharp corner and pauses. Stretching before him is a corridor with rows of doors on either side. It extends far. Too far. There must be at least a hundred or more doors between him and where the his vision drops of at an indeterminate vanishing point.
How large is this motel? This complex? Certainly larger than what it looked like on the outside?
Still no people.
His instinct is to recoil from that corridor. To go back to the reception, or the car, whatever is vaguely familiar. But there is a part of him that is pulled down that corridor. That call of the void that compels you to jump at the edge of a cliff.
He starts walking. Knocks on the third door down. Waits. Nothing. Tries the handle. Locked. He moves on. Next door. Knocks. Waits. Nothing. Locked. And so on. Ten doors he tries before the feeling he has about this place solidifies into a thought. It's empty. Absolutely empty.
Except for me.
He keeps walking. Surely this corridor has to end at some point? If it does, he doesn't see it in the first hour. He turns back, and sees that the stretch of corridor behind him is now identical to the one ahead of him, dark vanishing point and all. He realises then how easy it would be to get turned around in a linear space, as absurd as it appears in concept. He keeps faced one way, so he's sure he's progressing and not turning around on himself.
Is this progress, he thinks, as the hours dwindle by. Now and then he tries a door to an expected result. Then heads on. He feels tired. His body is telling him he's not slept for a long time. But going to sleep here feels wrong somehow. That fear about getting confused about which way is which is there, sure, but it's more than that. This place doesn't feel right.
Panic rises and fades in waves. Periods of time pass when he thinks he will be stuck in this corridor forever. What is he even doing here? What does this achieve? He feels monumentally stupid. Terrified. Then the panic subsides as faint glimmers of hope crop up. Surely just a few more steps and he'll see something? An end to this? If he turns back now, all this effort will have been for nothing.
He stumbles. Realises he's been drifting to sleep on foot. The rush of adrenaline sharpens him for a moment. Enough of this. It's ridiculous. He's not made any headway in hours. This corridor goes on forever. He takes a shaky sigh and turns around.
Back the way I came.
He starts walking, his vision of the space before him identical to the last few hours. No landmarks on the symmetrical hall to suggest he has turned around at all. But he has, right?
He keeps going. Sleep threatens his eyelids. Makes them heavy. But his legs keep pumping. Keep his body going. Step after step after step. Thoughts flicker across the front of his mind but he can't quite grasp them.
For a time he thinks he can hear another set of footsteps matching his. Good, but not perfect. Just a little delay. But it must be his fatigued imagination. There's no one behind him.
God, he's tired. He sits down for a moment. Only a moment.
A blink.
He's on the floor.
He sits up. Rubs his eyes. How long has he been asleep? He yawns, stretches. Then looks from side to side at the identical corridor. Oh no.
He cannot tell what is ahead and what is behind. All the doors are the same. All the wall lights, identical. How long was he walking? His heart begins to thump. He feels sick.
He gets up after crying for a long time. He starts to walk towards an indeterminate horizon. A dark vanishing point moving slowly, inexorably away from him.
Paddy Dobson
3rd May 2022