A Place to Stay

There was no reason for me to put myself in this absurdly unsafe position. Stopping for the night at Elle's Inn, just off of the solitary road whose mountainous borders turned the area into a bowl full of darkness, struck me as an overzealous invitation for death. After hours of worsening mental numbness, my brain had finally reanimated with paranoid visions of the horrors that would greet me if I were to stay here. Maybe if I tried, I could convince myself that fearful adrenaline was a substitute for sleep and keep on driving, but the road was no safe haven either. I had two headlights and an aching wreck of a body on my side, pitted against the darkness, the ice, the scurrying animals, and the total absence of human beings.

Except, apparently, for Elle, and whatever guests she might have staying with her tonight.

As sketchy as Elle's Inn seemed - and its weathered front home and five stocky cabins were sketchy as all hell - it had also come through with divine timing. Just as my cognitive function was starting to fail, the dim lights on Elle's sign had miraculously flickered into view. As far as I knew, it could be miles and miles to the next rest stop, and my body could give out on me miles and miles before then.

The paltry light fell gray upon the snow. The serenity of the undisturbed ground gave way to an abrupt shatter as I jammed a clumsy limb through the masterpiece. From the moment my sole cracked the perfect crust of the snow, the atmosphere of the place seemed to shift into what could only be described as a scowl. My presence was an invasion. I could feel the unearthly glow glaring at me through the shuttered windows of the front office, but fatigue and freeze compelled me to ignore the warning and knock anyway. After a few minutes of waiting, I cautiously tested the knob.

"Hello?" I called, wavering between loud enough to be heard by someone who could help and low enough to avoid being heard by anyone else.

Even the wind didn't respond. A voice in the back of my head told me this was a sign - not just a sign, but a second chance at life. I could hop in the car and keep driving, driving far away from whatever Hell this place would reveal itself to be. Of course, while I might avoid a painful death at the hands of mountain-dwelling murderers, there was no guarantee that I would be any safer behind the wheel. All it would take would be a five second nap or an overlooked patch of ice, and I would wind up mangled in a tree or frozen in the river. Even if I did survive the inevitable wreck, I would end up at the mercy of whoever or whatever found me first.

Once my imagination started filling in the blanks, I crunched past the front office toward the five small cabins, identical in their simplicity and vacancy. Only one cabin, the one at the very end, had its outdoor light on, dangling above its splintering door. The windows offered nothing but a reflection that I didn't currently care to see. It could have been that the resident or residents were asleep, and if that were the case, then a stranger's knock at the door at this ungodly hour of the night would not be well-received. At that point though, with the cold crawling under my clothes and the darkness closing in on the meager lightbulb above my head, it seemed a small price to pay for survival. I rapped my knuckles against the door and followed with an ear to listen for a grunt, a snore, a rustle, any sign of a human being.

Even the wind didn't respond.

I leaned against the wall of the last barren cabin and stared out into the void. A small part of me - the optimism I typically repressed - had me dreaming of a warm room, a cozy bed, maybe even a hot shower if that existed in this forgotten part of the country. Disappointment reigned, joining up with the ice gnawing on my bones and the fatigue tugging at my muscles. I could hear my parts scraping grumpily as I peeled myself off the wall and clomped my way through the snow, once smooth but now scarred with footprints.

Not all of them were mine.

My eyes trailed after the deep imprints starting from the cabin door, headed in the direction of the entrance. I laid my own foot in the well - a full size larger than me, if not more - and pursued. The path seemed intent on leading me back the way I came, but soon the trail began to curve to the left toward a cluster of white trees, where it quickly disappeared into a lightning scar tangle of branches. Standing on the outskirts of the impenetrable forest, I wondered again why I put myself in absurdly unsafe positions.

Everything I feared about this place could be waiting in these woods: creatures and killers beneath the blessing of shadow, pulling me into their maw by way of an invisible tether tied to these stranger's prints. There was definitely a tether to them; something about their lingering energy bode me to follow, follow and be saved. I didn't know where these prints or their energy came from, whether the source was benevolent or malicious. It was fear versus faith, ankara2010.com both of them rooted in the unknown. Every muscle in my body twitched to turn and run, faith be damned in the name of fear, but the ones that mattered didn't twitch; those muscles overruled my legs and dragged my body forward, permitting the forest to swallow me whole.

The phantoms of mountain-dwelling murderers still lingered close behind, the fear of them thumping in my chest. I tread careful and slow after the stranger, praying to find them with arms outstretched, ready to receive a refugee from the cold night. The color seemed sucked out of the world, leaving nothing spare for the shocked white of snow and bark and the black void that filled the spaces in between. The footprints never wavered in their confident sashay between the trunks. Paranoia pulled at me to break from the siren's song, but before I could stop to reconsider, the forest began to thin. Soon, I found myself at the edge of a clearing; just ahead, the end loomed tall and rusted.

I longed for the cover of wind to quiet the crashing of my approach. The bus was in a state of disrepair: tires rotted, windows smashed in, ugly gray peeling off the corroded frame. I couldn't tell whether it had been left there due to choice or catastrophe, but the incident must have happened years ago. Nature had welcomed the forsaken structure since then, playing mother once more to mankind's garbage.

Something in the bus was glowing. The faint gold dripped out from the windows in the back, just visible enough to betray some human presence. When I was close enough to read the faded letters stenciled on the side - consonant jumbles and the sole intact word, "MOOSE" - I stopped to listen. I waited for the shuffle of movement, for the creak of a reluctant seat, but heard nothing.

Finally, I called, "is anyone there?"

The silent vacuum tensed. Out of a broken window, a long bowie knife emerged in glimmers.

"Could be."

If the dangling blade wasn't enough of a warning, the guttural rasp in their voice should have sent me sprinting back through their footprints. It was the voice of someone who had been disturbed, someone whose friendliness I had likely overestimated. For all I knew, it could have been the voice of the very phantoms I had been running from.

"You don't need that," I assured the occupant. "I'm just trying to spend the night here, you're the first person I've found since I pulled in."

They took their time crafting their reply. The mutual caution was strangely comforting.

"It's passed Elle's bedtime."

"Yeah, mine too."

It was strange to hear the gruff voice chuckle, a stubby breathing that sounded more like a cough. The knife retreated back inside. A few moments later, a lantern extended out of the same window. Behind the light, a weathered face crinkled its eyes to see me. The lantern and the smoldering end of her cigar illuminated the sun-bitten color of her skin, pushing the shadows to pool in the creases by her eyes.

She blew me a cloud that said, "you look as desperate as you sound."

"I can't dispute that," I admitted. "I've been driving for hours, I think I'd die if I got back behind the wheel now."

"How about just the backseat?"

She nodded toward the door before pulling the light back inside. I hurried around the bent front of the bus to where the stranger was standing at the top of the stairs. Her gloved hand stayed clenched on the hilt of her knife, holstered to her hip, while her other hand braced against the ceiling just inches above her head. I could see some of the more unruly tendrils of her short burgundy hair brushing the tetanus off of the metal. I climbed inside to the stair just beneath her and still hadn't reached her neck.

She took her hand off her knife and lifted my chin.

"Poor little thing," she murmured.

There was a bald spot of seats just before the back two rows; in their place on the driver's side rested a small table where the lantern glowed, the cigar rested, and a journal lay open with ink still drying. The stranger walked ahead of me and tossed the journal to a different seat before sliding into her original place. The seat was draped with a heavy red quilt, welcoming against my weary body as I lowered myself onto the edge. Her broad arm reached for the far corner and brought it and me against herself.

I could feel the heat swelling in her lungs as she took another drag; I greedily sapped whatever ember of warmth I could get. She released another cloud, and this time I was close enough to tell that her cigar wasn't filled with tobacco.

"What's your name, little thing?" she asked.

I told her my name was Elliot.

"Lola."

She granted me a pull of her blunt, and I held the warm smoke inside as long as I could to keep my blood from freezing. The arm around me tightened, bundling me deeper in Lola's crux and into the comforting haze that quickly set upon me. The snow was melting outside.

"You don't sleep in this bus, do you?" I asked.

Lola chuckled again, "naw, it's where I take my smoke breaks. Elle doesn't like it in her place of business, but she turns a blind eye to this hunk of scrap. Let's me smoke to my heart's content."

She gestured the nefarious drug in the air as if thanking Elle's feigned ignorance.

"That's nice of her," I remarked.

"You're probably the first person in the world to ever describe her that way," Lola said. "I can tell y'all haven't met. There's a reason she keeps her livelihood as far from human civilization as she can, you know."

"The same reason she sleeps through knocks at her door?"

"Oh, don't take it personal, sweet pea. Her hearing ain't hot even when she's awake."

Lola sucked on the shortening blunt and gazed out the window.

"Though sometimes I think she's faking it," she mused.

The leather in her coat was saturated with the stench of tobacco. She told me it was an occupational hazard: Lola had inherited a cigar store from her father after his death.

"I don't smoke cigars," she clarified. "I just use the wrappings."

The store lay west of the mountains, where I was headed, but Lola was going east to visit her only living family: an older sister named Pauline. It was a trip she made often; each time she did, she stopped halfway at Elle's Inn to spend the night. Her continued patronage over several years informed Elle that she wouldn't be able to scare her off the way she did most people, and so she had begrudgingly agreed to befriend her.

"Elle keeps that last cabin reserved for me. I've managed to make a second home there," she boasted.

I felt a finger brush against the nape of my neck.

"It would make a lovely home for you tonight, sweet pea," she whispered into the crevice she kept me in.

There must have been some part of my mind that gawked at the fact that my venture into the wilderness had led me not to grisly murder, but instead to a benevolent stranger willing to host me. If that part of my mind did exist, though, I never heard it speak up. All I heard was the buzzing of my warm heart, and Lola. Lola, whom I'd never met before but whose arm curled into a shape that was made just for me. Somehow, I had known the tracks would lead to her. She had never been a stranger to me; I just hadn't found her until now.

I pleaded softly, "just tell me what you want from me."

"All I want," she said as her hand closed snug on my shoulder. "...is to see you safe and sound. That pretty face of yours just tugs on my heart strings."

I lifted my face for her. She kissed my forehead, breathing a laugh on my skin when the shiver down my spine vibrated against her.

"Wandering alone in the dark doesn't suit a soft critter like yourself. You need lookin' out."

Tentatively, I placed my hand against her stomach. When it was clear that she didn't mind, I let it roam. I walked up her sides and tiptoed along her thighs; quiet sighing brought me tranquility that I hadn't felt since a past life. Lola held me like she'd known me forever. Her grip on me was solid, but she wasn't keeping me captive; she was keeping me safe. The phantoms never felt further than they did when I was curled around her iron frame, listening to her exhales play the wind of the night.

The black abyss outside of the bus devoured the glowing butt as it sailed through the window with a careless flick. Lola watched it go, and I watched Lola.

"Lord forgive me if I give Your beasts a drug habit."

Her attention shifted to me. Her expression was neutral as she combed through my hair with her fingers; I couldn't tell whether she was lost in thought or not thinking at all. I gazed up into the details of her: the age that hung off her dark brown eyes, the pale pink lips cracked slightly from the cold, the fine angular shape of her jawline and the way it oscillated while she observed me, deep in or out of thought.

"I'm gonna take you home," she decided finally.

I stepped out from the warm pocket between the blanket and her body. Some time had passed since the cold had plagued me, but it had been patient while Lola attended to me. I fought against my shivers as she tossed her journal into the ratty rucksack at her feet and slung it over her shoulder. She scooped up the lantern and led the way off of the bus. Her heavy boots laid new tracks in the snow; once more, I was compelled to follow them.

Although the cold still stung, the journey back to the cabin was not marred with the same dread as before. The mountain-dwelling murderers would stay far away from us when Lola's light bounded off of the white ground and the glistening silver blade peeking out from her holster. Every now and then, she would glance over her shoulder to make sure I kept pace. Her legs were long and burly and demanded hustle out of me, but that was the least I could do for her. She was quicker through the tangle than I had been, and soon, the light dangling from the cabin's entrance rushed out to meet us.

Once inside, Lola placed the lantern on the table to the side of the door, then laid her holstered knife beside it. She kept her balance against the wall to unfasten the laces of her crystal-crusted boots, which drizzled across the floor as she carried them to a tray beside the woodfire stove. While Lola filled the stove, I took my own shoes off and placed them beside hers.

Without looking my way, she instructed, "when this fire is roaring, you can slip out of those clothes."

The lantern - still glowing - and the blossoming flames offered me the clearest view of the interior. The bed dominated the tight room, large enough for two people, maybe a dog at the foot. The heavy blanket was patterned after brown cow skin, but Lola assured me she didn't kill a cow to get it. She hung her leather coat up on a rack on the wall next to a row of leather belts, and I wondered why the distinction mattered.

The far right corner was sectioned off with walls, implying a bathroom and, God-willing, a shower. A square table fit into the opposite corner, and two chairs slid in underneath it. If Lola ever had company, she must have kept attendance numbers low. The black cast iron stove sat between the bathroom and the table, its belly starting to roar. Lola crossed the room in three strides and killed the lantern, then turned back to me with firelight dancing across her face. It only took one stride for her to pin me between her flowy flannel top and the wooden frame of the bed.

"Feeling warmer, sweet pea?" she asked, her grin only half-illuminated now.

I nodded, and the zipper dove down the length of my jacket. Lola helped it off of my shoulders and brought it to the rack, removing one of her belts to make room. She twisted the belt around her hands back and forth as she watched me hang my shirt on the bedpost. The heat of the stove wafted across my tummy and tried to push its way under my pants. Eyes wide on my host, I let the warmth have its way.

Lola's approach eclipsed the flickering flames. For the first time, I felt her bare hand on my bare skin, starting from my cheek and falling down my neck, the center of my chest, the light row of hair below my belly button, beyond. She showed an unexpectedly gentle touch to my most sensitive nerves, but I melted nonetheless. When I started gnawing on my knuckle, Lola pulled the clenched fist from my mouth and kissed the indentations of my teeth. She unraveled the belt from her hand and fit it around my throat.

It was natural in its place, comfortably tight as Elle pulled me forward to be silent against her neck. Every moan, encouraged with every soft stroke, became a salivary hum on her skin. Lola sighed but remained still, while I trembled and wriggled in her grasp. My love for her was blatant to the touch, to the eye. She laughed when she quickened her pace and felt my jaw lock down on a mouthful of flesh.

"You can nibble on me, I don't mind."

So I continued. I nibbled to keep from calling out, my stifled hollers rebelling against the leather around my vocal cords. The more they struggled, the more antsy I became. My hips began to move in the rhythm she had set, yearning for more caress. I needed to cry out for her. I needed her to know how much I needed her.

"I-"

Lola pulled the belt taut, and the words of love stayed trapped as expired air in my lungs. Her hand came up from below, replaced with hips forced against me. Her power nearly crushed me against the edge of the bed; the leather constricting my throat made my eyes bulge up at her. I knew she was godlike in her strength, but now I was cowering before the reality of it. My body felt tiny, breakable. The trapped air screamed to be free in the form of a plea for peace.

She wiped the drool away with her thumb and held my cheek like it belonged to a ghost.

"There you go, tugging on my heartstrings again."

The belt slipped from her grasp, and I collapsed into her arms. Buried in the deep valley of her chest, I felt the quaking of her laughter but heard only the faint echo of a murmur. It would have been a comfortable place to die, but I wasn't permitted to linger; Lola quickly scooped my legs up and cradled me as if she were carrying me over the threshold. She carried me instead to the side of the bed and dangled me above the brown cow not-skin blanket.

"Do you believe in the kindness of strangers?" she asked me.

When I told her I did, she dropped me with a plop.

"Can't imagine why you'd be here otherwise," she mused. "It'd be a bold leap for anyone to come marching up to that bus in the dark the way you did."

I sat up in the bed and brought my knees to my chest. Spare for the belt still around my neck, I was naked, and Lola's display of power reminded me what a vulnerable feeling that was. She smirked at my newfound modesty and reached for the buckle of her own belt.

"I'd like to think your faith's been rewarded. You've got a warm fire, a soft bed, and a roof over your head, don't ya?"