One Trick Pony

For the last fifteen or so years I've been living with a bunch of dead guys at a motel in West Texas. Like the characters in my stories, I'd really like to move on, see the world, go places. But I'm just like them. Anchored by love, worn down by circumstances and fascinated by how much there really is underneath it all. So I keep writing their stories and tell myself that someday, when I've got this all out of my system, I'll write deep, meaningful literature about... something else. In the meantime, this is a place for the short attention spanned. I'm making a commitment to keep it small here. Flash fiction and scenes from the life inspired by, The Bella Vista Motel.

Thanks for reading.

Pamila

Friday, January 16, 2009

The Guest Book - 5

Romeo could hear the dogs sniffing around somewhere behind him, the orchestra of birdsong and lazy wind through the trees high above, interrupted by the occasional rude cackle of crows. He opened the guest book and scanned the names, frowning at the blank spaces that held faint impressions of fake monikers he'd inserted in the first book to round things out, and guys like Geo Caletti and Mo Ragola who seemed to come and go without incident. Only the dead men had left their marks clearly, indelibly, the signatures unique to each in deep, rusty brown ink. The first name, right at the top still caused a sick feeling in the pit of Romeo's stomach, the smell of burned flesh coming to mind as clearly as the image of Jack... taking a head-first dive into the white hot incinerator. Every name had its own story, some as bad or worse in their own way as Jack's, and as Romeo's gaze fell on Dicky Two-Times, he tried to remember the sequence of events, wondering if somehow he could have prevented the outcome. A cold chill ran up the back of Romeo's neck, but he knew not to turn around, not to look for the man in the gray suit, the man with the rainwater eyes, the man he'd shot dead two years earlier – he knew Agent Ramiel could only be seen out the corner of his eyes unless he was asleep and dreaming, and then, he was all too clear.

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