(no subject)
(Reposting 21 September 2009.)
A New Front Page Sky
by whereupon
13000-ish words. R. Some Jo/Dean.
Jo, Sam, and Dean, and a haunted amusement park.
AU: wherein the Winchesters still came by the Roadhouse even after Bill Harvelle died.
The rim of the ruined Ferris wheel juts up over the park, thin spokes protruding at all angles, ragged and dark against the sky. Jo slams the trunk shut and shoulders her bag, shivers a little when the wind blows in around the edges of her jacket, winding its way around her, winding in through the thin places in her jeans.
Trees mark both sides of the entrance to the park, branches bare with winter stretching sharp and deadly, and scraggly ragged bushes twist around the bases of their trunks. The entrance itself is spanned by a wooden arch, the top of which widens to form a sign, to make room for painted letters.
Mr Circenses’ NEBRASKALAND, it says.
It might have said something else, too, a long time ago, but those words are worn away to shadow and dust.
There are lampposts scattered throughout the parking lot, but most of the lamps are broken, shards of glass glittering on the concrete where it fell, and the ones that remain don’t do much but cast small pools of sickly yellow light that only make the shadows deeper. As the edge of the asphalt, the weeds are already pushing their way in from the forest. The park will reopen in spring, maybe. The wheel burned last year, according to the newspaper, so it might stay closed for the next season, if not forever.
Her footsteps don’t make any noise, but her flashlight beam rises and falls with every step, a crazy, erratic light playing across the lot, illuminating fragments. Asphalt, a faded paper wrapper from a fast-food joint, a missing slat in the fence that surrounds the park.
In the distance, an engine rumbles. She hears somebody’s old car accelerating, the shift of gears. The highway is a few miles back, that’s all, and the night is quiet, sound carrying far and fast. All the same, she could swear the noise is getting closer, the crunch and crush of tires over gravel. She switches her flashlight off abruptly and wishes for better cover as headlights sweep into the lot. Wind rushing over her as the car spins past, spitting dust and rock and exhaust like breath against the black.
She shudders off the chill, and she takes a breath, and she stares. The sight of the Impala like a quickdrawn knife to skin, raw and blindsiding. She hasn’t seen it in almost four years now, sort of thought she maybe wouldn’t see it again.
The engine cuts out like a heartbeat and she clenches her fists, squares her shoulders.
Dean startles, nearly drops his keys when she raps her knuckles hard against the driver’s side window. She raises her eyebrows and steps back as he opens his door.
“You know you almost hit me,” she says. The first words she’s said to him in two years, in person for longer. They taste strange in her mouth, apple-tart and angry.
Dean works his jaw, exhales slowly. “Jesus Christ, Jo.”
She presses her tongue against her cheek, looks up at him. In the near-dark he looks older than she remembers, older than actual time passed should allow. His jaw bruised with stubble or shadow or both. She remembers him and his brother leaning against that big black car on brass summer days when their daddy was still inside, talking to her mom.
“The hell you standing in the dark for?” he asks. The engine ticks slowly behind him, cooling, and he crosses his arms, creases his forehead.
“Working a case,” she says. She switches her flashlight back on and he blinks. “You?”
He matches her expression, one raised eyebrow. “Same. You’re hunting now?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she says. There’s movement behind him; she looks down and Sam stares at her with wide startled eyes, raises his hand like he’s going to wave and then doesn’t. She moves her light away from his face, says, “I thought you left for school.”
He shrugs, a little. Mostly a shift and rustle of cloth in the dark. “I did.”
“It’s a long story,” Dean says, harsh and flat, drawing her gaze up. “And not that I don’t love a long story, but some other time, maybe.”
She grits her teeth. She’s known them - she knew them - for too long to let this go, to let him brush her off. “What, like the next time you almost hit me? Or the next time you stop by the Roadhouse?”
His mouth opens a little; his shoulders draw together. “We were gonna swing by sometime soon,” he says smoothly, which is how she knows he’s lying.
“Really,” she says, and he nods, shifts his weight.
“Anybody ever tell you you have your mom’s stare?” he asks, and his grin is real around the edges.
“Just you and your daddy,” she says, and his grin disappears too quickly. She swallows. “You here for the kid who died here last month?”
“That’s the one.”
She shrugs, says, “I got it.”
Sam gets out of the car and she doesn’t remember him being that tall. Taller than Dean, now. “No offense, but the park’s pretty big,” he says. “We could take half, get it done faster.” Dean’s eyes narrow, just a little, go flint-edged and cold, and if she hadn’t been watching maybe she wouldn’t have noticed the change.
“Suit yourself,” she says.
There’s a trace of steel around Sam’s mouth that she does not recall, but his voice is still kind when he asks, “How’ve you been?” Dean’s glance flickers to him, flickers back to her.
“Okay,” she says. “You?”
He shrugs, ducks his head a little. Smudged look around his eyes and lines on his face that remind her of her mother, a very long time ago.
Dean clears his throat. “Okay,” he says. “Now that that’s out of the way.”
“Sorry,” Sam says, looking up. “It’s just been a long drive.”
She shrugs. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Dean shakes his head. “You two gonna talk all night or we gonna get this done?”
He turns on his heel, heads for the entrance without waiting to see if they’ll follow. Jo falls in next to Sam before she realizes what she’s doing, and it feels familiar, it feels like nothing’s changed. Trailing them both back into the Roadhouse when by rights she should have been in front; it was her home, after all.
They stop just inside the park, just past the entryway, next to a small booth with a faded sign reading TICKETS. Under the pallor of disrepair, it’s yellow and red, like it used to be cheerful, or at least gaudy. The highway noise sounds quieter, the world more far-off. Undoubtedly because of the fence surrounding the park. The only light comes from their flashlights, the only sound from their breath, from their footsteps crunching over the gravel and dirt and bits of broken glass.
To the left are the blackened skeletal remains of the Ferris wheel. To the right is a plaza, dark shapes of buildings huddled at the far end. The midway serves as the divider, row of what have to be small booths covered with striped tarpaulins for the season.
“So, what,” Jo says. “You guys go one way, I go the other?”
Dean clunks his bag down next to the ticket booth, starts digging through it. Sam takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, uses his hand to smooth it out. “If we do that, we should meet up between the carousel and something called the ‘House of Oddities,’” he says.
Dean tucks a sawed-off into his jacket. His knee cracks when he stands. “Try not to get lost,” he says.
“Where’s your dad?” Jo asks. “I remember you’re much less of an bastard when he’s around.” Though that’s not true, really.
Dean’s jaw twitches. Sam’s not looking at her. “Working his own thing,” Dean says. “Come on, Sam.”
He reaches down for his bag, strides forward into the dark. Sam follows, a half-step behind.
Jo watches them go for a moment, adjusts the weight of her bag, and takes the other path.
The Ferris wheel isn’t any less ominous up close. It creaks slightly in the wind, shivering at the edge of her vision like it’s threatening to collapse, and she can taste charcoal at the back of her throat, though surely it cannot be real.
She doesn’t remember how the fire started, but that’s not why she’s here.
Past the wheel is a row of newer, smaller structures, still-shiny metal glinting in the beam of her flashlight. Modern and intact, twisted heaps of metal rails and carts gone still for the winter.
If this kid had been the first, maybe she could have chalked it up to exposure like the police report said. But he wasn’t; there were two last year, and sometimes it’s easier for the cause of death to be exposure than for someone to take a closer look, to delve further into that which does not make sense.
She pauses, listens. She can’t hear anything at all, anymore. Like she’s the only person around for miles. If Sam and Dean are talking, it’s lost to the wind.
The roller coaster is next, peaks and valleys of wooden scaffolding. The kid was found somewhere around here, huddled on the ground, back to the midway and dirt beneath his fingernails.
She looks towards the midway and sees them.
She has no idea how long they’ve been there, watching her. The entire time, or maybe they’ve just now materialized, flickered into being. Children, two of them. Pale skin and big dark holes where their eyes should be and no expression on their small cold faces.
She touches the amulet that hangs on a cord around her neck. The metal is warm as blood against her palm and she wonders if it will be enough. Bobby gave it to her when he passed through last month, said it was blessed by some priestess in east Tennessee, and by the way, happy late birthday, girl.
She hasn’t had a chance to test it yet, and standing here, watching the ghosts, she’s not entirely sure that she wants to. A flutter of fear twisting up from her stomach to rest behind her eyelids when she thinks that these are her first ghosts, remembers the way her mama looked at her, one hip against the bar. The pause after she said, You be safe, Joanna Beth, like there was something else.
They’re not coming any closer, but then, maybe they’re not trying. Standing absolutely still, instead. Not even a parody of breathing, the rise and fall of their little chests.
The shotgun loaded with rocksalt is at her side, weighing down her bag, and she rests her hand on the cold barrel. They haven’t touched her yet, though. Haven’t come near her. And it’s stupid, incredibly stupid, but she has the feeling that if she fired, Sam and Dean would come running to her rescue like she needed it.
She takes a step forward. The ghosts turn their heads slightly to follow her progress, but they remain otherwise still.
She takes a step, and then another, and she does not take her eyes off of them. Except then they’re gone, and she would swear she didn’t blink. She swallows, glances to her left, and there they are, watching her from beneath the coaster.
Something creaks in front of her. When she looks away, looks forward, the carousel is moving slowly in the wind, dirty gilt-edged horses beginning to spin.
She does not look at the carousel as she passes it. She doesn’t want to know what might be riding it.
That’s not what her daddy would do, though, and she knows it. She stops. Forces herself to turn her head, and there is nothing.
Just the horses, their blank painted eyes staring at nothing as they circle, circle again.
She swallows and keeps moving.
A windowless building up ahead, its big doors secured with a padlock and chain. The House of Oddities, and Sam and Dean are coming towards her.
She lets out a breath and wishes she didn’t feel so relieved. “Find anything?” she asks, and wishes she sounded more nonchalant.
“It’s a ghost,” Sam says. “Two, at least.”
“Make that four,” she says. She turns around, but the children are gone, and the carousel is still. A shiver skitters up her spine and she turns back to Sam and Dean. “Guess they took off.” She pauses. Her palms are sweaty and her heart still pounds desperate and frightened, rattling against her ribs. “I didn’t hear any gunshots from your side.”
Sam glances at Dean, who shrugs. “They kept their hands to themselves,” he says.
She nods. “Mine, too.” She licks her lips. “You wanna head out of here before they give it another try?”
If the ghosts watch them as they head towards the parking lot, they do it from far back in the shadows, because Jo does not see them again.
When they near the ticket booth, Dean coughs and looks at Sam, who sighs, takes a deep breath and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something. Jo shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans, rests her thumb against the place where the denim’s wearing through, and speaks before he does.
“There’re more than I expected,” she says. “I mean, I can still handle it, but it’ll take longer. You, um. You wanna maybe work this one together?” She doesn’t look at them when she says it.
“Sure,” Dean says and she looks up quickly in surprise, because she hadn’t expected anything so simple and she sure as hell hadn’t expected it from him. Sam looks at her like he knows exactly what she’s thinking and she feels the heat of a blush creeping across her skin, ducks her head so her hair falls across her face.
The wind is angrier in the parking lot, searing so that her eyes water, chapping her hands, turning her skin rough and tight. She unlocks her car, drops her bag into the trunk and turns to face them. Realizing that they’ve walked her to her car and she doubts they would have done that if they were hunting with anybody but her. “Where you staying?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. Against the chill.
“Some place off the interstate,” Dean says. “Sun-something.”
“Sunrise Motor-Inn,” Sam says.
“Me too,” she says. She takes a step forward and they move aside, out of her way. “So I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Guess so,” Dean says, his eyebrows raised.
“You do this one without me, I’ll kick your asses,” she says, looking at them over the roof of the car.
“We’ll wait,” Sam says. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders drawn against the chill.
She nods once. “Okay then.”
She doesn’t look at them when she pulls out of the lot. Their headlights flash and glint in her rearview, though, when she’s heading towards the highway.
The Sunrise Motor-Inn is a two-story grey building constructed around a mostly-empty parking lot, its flashing neon VACANCY sign visible from the highway. She parks in front of her room and spends more time than she needs to getting out of her car, gathering her things and then locking her door, but they don’t pull in behind her.
Their car still isn’t there when she looks again before going to bed. The parking lot is lit with an aqueous chill by the ancient vending machine advertising New! Coke on the opposite side of the complex. There’s no one in the lot, two cars other than hers. Even the highway is quiet.
She checks the lock on the door and the salt in the window, draws the covers up around her neck and listens to the building creak around her, to the water dripping from the shower faucet.
It’s a long time before she falls asleep.
When she wakes sometime in the very early hours of morning and checks the salt again, checks for their car, it’s there.
She sleeps a little better after that.
part two
A New Front Page Sky
by whereupon
13000-ish words. R. Some Jo/Dean.
Jo, Sam, and Dean, and a haunted amusement park.
AU: wherein the Winchesters still came by the Roadhouse even after Bill Harvelle died.
The rim of the ruined Ferris wheel juts up over the park, thin spokes protruding at all angles, ragged and dark against the sky. Jo slams the trunk shut and shoulders her bag, shivers a little when the wind blows in around the edges of her jacket, winding its way around her, winding in through the thin places in her jeans.
Trees mark both sides of the entrance to the park, branches bare with winter stretching sharp and deadly, and scraggly ragged bushes twist around the bases of their trunks. The entrance itself is spanned by a wooden arch, the top of which widens to form a sign, to make room for painted letters.
Mr Circenses’ NEBRASKALAND, it says.
It might have said something else, too, a long time ago, but those words are worn away to shadow and dust.
There are lampposts scattered throughout the parking lot, but most of the lamps are broken, shards of glass glittering on the concrete where it fell, and the ones that remain don’t do much but cast small pools of sickly yellow light that only make the shadows deeper. As the edge of the asphalt, the weeds are already pushing their way in from the forest. The park will reopen in spring, maybe. The wheel burned last year, according to the newspaper, so it might stay closed for the next season, if not forever.
Her footsteps don’t make any noise, but her flashlight beam rises and falls with every step, a crazy, erratic light playing across the lot, illuminating fragments. Asphalt, a faded paper wrapper from a fast-food joint, a missing slat in the fence that surrounds the park.
In the distance, an engine rumbles. She hears somebody’s old car accelerating, the shift of gears. The highway is a few miles back, that’s all, and the night is quiet, sound carrying far and fast. All the same, she could swear the noise is getting closer, the crunch and crush of tires over gravel. She switches her flashlight off abruptly and wishes for better cover as headlights sweep into the lot. Wind rushing over her as the car spins past, spitting dust and rock and exhaust like breath against the black.
She shudders off the chill, and she takes a breath, and she stares. The sight of the Impala like a quickdrawn knife to skin, raw and blindsiding. She hasn’t seen it in almost four years now, sort of thought she maybe wouldn’t see it again.
The engine cuts out like a heartbeat and she clenches her fists, squares her shoulders.
Dean startles, nearly drops his keys when she raps her knuckles hard against the driver’s side window. She raises her eyebrows and steps back as he opens his door.
“You know you almost hit me,” she says. The first words she’s said to him in two years, in person for longer. They taste strange in her mouth, apple-tart and angry.
Dean works his jaw, exhales slowly. “Jesus Christ, Jo.”
She presses her tongue against her cheek, looks up at him. In the near-dark he looks older than she remembers, older than actual time passed should allow. His jaw bruised with stubble or shadow or both. She remembers him and his brother leaning against that big black car on brass summer days when their daddy was still inside, talking to her mom.
“The hell you standing in the dark for?” he asks. The engine ticks slowly behind him, cooling, and he crosses his arms, creases his forehead.
“Working a case,” she says. She switches her flashlight back on and he blinks. “You?”
He matches her expression, one raised eyebrow. “Same. You’re hunting now?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she says. There’s movement behind him; she looks down and Sam stares at her with wide startled eyes, raises his hand like he’s going to wave and then doesn’t. She moves her light away from his face, says, “I thought you left for school.”
He shrugs, a little. Mostly a shift and rustle of cloth in the dark. “I did.”
“It’s a long story,” Dean says, harsh and flat, drawing her gaze up. “And not that I don’t love a long story, but some other time, maybe.”
She grits her teeth. She’s known them - she knew them - for too long to let this go, to let him brush her off. “What, like the next time you almost hit me? Or the next time you stop by the Roadhouse?”
His mouth opens a little; his shoulders draw together. “We were gonna swing by sometime soon,” he says smoothly, which is how she knows he’s lying.
“Really,” she says, and he nods, shifts his weight.
“Anybody ever tell you you have your mom’s stare?” he asks, and his grin is real around the edges.
“Just you and your daddy,” she says, and his grin disappears too quickly. She swallows. “You here for the kid who died here last month?”
“That’s the one.”
She shrugs, says, “I got it.”
Sam gets out of the car and she doesn’t remember him being that tall. Taller than Dean, now. “No offense, but the park’s pretty big,” he says. “We could take half, get it done faster.” Dean’s eyes narrow, just a little, go flint-edged and cold, and if she hadn’t been watching maybe she wouldn’t have noticed the change.
“Suit yourself,” she says.
There’s a trace of steel around Sam’s mouth that she does not recall, but his voice is still kind when he asks, “How’ve you been?” Dean’s glance flickers to him, flickers back to her.
“Okay,” she says. “You?”
He shrugs, ducks his head a little. Smudged look around his eyes and lines on his face that remind her of her mother, a very long time ago.
Dean clears his throat. “Okay,” he says. “Now that that’s out of the way.”
“Sorry,” Sam says, looking up. “It’s just been a long drive.”
She shrugs. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Dean shakes his head. “You two gonna talk all night or we gonna get this done?”
He turns on his heel, heads for the entrance without waiting to see if they’ll follow. Jo falls in next to Sam before she realizes what she’s doing, and it feels familiar, it feels like nothing’s changed. Trailing them both back into the Roadhouse when by rights she should have been in front; it was her home, after all.
They stop just inside the park, just past the entryway, next to a small booth with a faded sign reading TICKETS. Under the pallor of disrepair, it’s yellow and red, like it used to be cheerful, or at least gaudy. The highway noise sounds quieter, the world more far-off. Undoubtedly because of the fence surrounding the park. The only light comes from their flashlights, the only sound from their breath, from their footsteps crunching over the gravel and dirt and bits of broken glass.
To the left are the blackened skeletal remains of the Ferris wheel. To the right is a plaza, dark shapes of buildings huddled at the far end. The midway serves as the divider, row of what have to be small booths covered with striped tarpaulins for the season.
“So, what,” Jo says. “You guys go one way, I go the other?”
Dean clunks his bag down next to the ticket booth, starts digging through it. Sam takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, uses his hand to smooth it out. “If we do that, we should meet up between the carousel and something called the ‘House of Oddities,’” he says.
Dean tucks a sawed-off into his jacket. His knee cracks when he stands. “Try not to get lost,” he says.
“Where’s your dad?” Jo asks. “I remember you’re much less of an bastard when he’s around.” Though that’s not true, really.
Dean’s jaw twitches. Sam’s not looking at her. “Working his own thing,” Dean says. “Come on, Sam.”
He reaches down for his bag, strides forward into the dark. Sam follows, a half-step behind.
Jo watches them go for a moment, adjusts the weight of her bag, and takes the other path.
The Ferris wheel isn’t any less ominous up close. It creaks slightly in the wind, shivering at the edge of her vision like it’s threatening to collapse, and she can taste charcoal at the back of her throat, though surely it cannot be real.
She doesn’t remember how the fire started, but that’s not why she’s here.
Past the wheel is a row of newer, smaller structures, still-shiny metal glinting in the beam of her flashlight. Modern and intact, twisted heaps of metal rails and carts gone still for the winter.
If this kid had been the first, maybe she could have chalked it up to exposure like the police report said. But he wasn’t; there were two last year, and sometimes it’s easier for the cause of death to be exposure than for someone to take a closer look, to delve further into that which does not make sense.
She pauses, listens. She can’t hear anything at all, anymore. Like she’s the only person around for miles. If Sam and Dean are talking, it’s lost to the wind.
The roller coaster is next, peaks and valleys of wooden scaffolding. The kid was found somewhere around here, huddled on the ground, back to the midway and dirt beneath his fingernails.
She looks towards the midway and sees them.
She has no idea how long they’ve been there, watching her. The entire time, or maybe they’ve just now materialized, flickered into being. Children, two of them. Pale skin and big dark holes where their eyes should be and no expression on their small cold faces.
She touches the amulet that hangs on a cord around her neck. The metal is warm as blood against her palm and she wonders if it will be enough. Bobby gave it to her when he passed through last month, said it was blessed by some priestess in east Tennessee, and by the way, happy late birthday, girl.
She hasn’t had a chance to test it yet, and standing here, watching the ghosts, she’s not entirely sure that she wants to. A flutter of fear twisting up from her stomach to rest behind her eyelids when she thinks that these are her first ghosts, remembers the way her mama looked at her, one hip against the bar. The pause after she said, You be safe, Joanna Beth, like there was something else.
They’re not coming any closer, but then, maybe they’re not trying. Standing absolutely still, instead. Not even a parody of breathing, the rise and fall of their little chests.
The shotgun loaded with rocksalt is at her side, weighing down her bag, and she rests her hand on the cold barrel. They haven’t touched her yet, though. Haven’t come near her. And it’s stupid, incredibly stupid, but she has the feeling that if she fired, Sam and Dean would come running to her rescue like she needed it.
She takes a step forward. The ghosts turn their heads slightly to follow her progress, but they remain otherwise still.
She takes a step, and then another, and she does not take her eyes off of them. Except then they’re gone, and she would swear she didn’t blink. She swallows, glances to her left, and there they are, watching her from beneath the coaster.
Something creaks in front of her. When she looks away, looks forward, the carousel is moving slowly in the wind, dirty gilt-edged horses beginning to spin.
She does not look at the carousel as she passes it. She doesn’t want to know what might be riding it.
That’s not what her daddy would do, though, and she knows it. She stops. Forces herself to turn her head, and there is nothing.
Just the horses, their blank painted eyes staring at nothing as they circle, circle again.
She swallows and keeps moving.
A windowless building up ahead, its big doors secured with a padlock and chain. The House of Oddities, and Sam and Dean are coming towards her.
She lets out a breath and wishes she didn’t feel so relieved. “Find anything?” she asks, and wishes she sounded more nonchalant.
“It’s a ghost,” Sam says. “Two, at least.”
“Make that four,” she says. She turns around, but the children are gone, and the carousel is still. A shiver skitters up her spine and she turns back to Sam and Dean. “Guess they took off.” She pauses. Her palms are sweaty and her heart still pounds desperate and frightened, rattling against her ribs. “I didn’t hear any gunshots from your side.”
Sam glances at Dean, who shrugs. “They kept their hands to themselves,” he says.
She nods. “Mine, too.” She licks her lips. “You wanna head out of here before they give it another try?”
If the ghosts watch them as they head towards the parking lot, they do it from far back in the shadows, because Jo does not see them again.
When they near the ticket booth, Dean coughs and looks at Sam, who sighs, takes a deep breath and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something. Jo shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans, rests her thumb against the place where the denim’s wearing through, and speaks before he does.
“There’re more than I expected,” she says. “I mean, I can still handle it, but it’ll take longer. You, um. You wanna maybe work this one together?” She doesn’t look at them when she says it.
“Sure,” Dean says and she looks up quickly in surprise, because she hadn’t expected anything so simple and she sure as hell hadn’t expected it from him. Sam looks at her like he knows exactly what she’s thinking and she feels the heat of a blush creeping across her skin, ducks her head so her hair falls across her face.
The wind is angrier in the parking lot, searing so that her eyes water, chapping her hands, turning her skin rough and tight. She unlocks her car, drops her bag into the trunk and turns to face them. Realizing that they’ve walked her to her car and she doubts they would have done that if they were hunting with anybody but her. “Where you staying?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. Against the chill.
“Some place off the interstate,” Dean says. “Sun-something.”
“Sunrise Motor-Inn,” Sam says.
“Me too,” she says. She takes a step forward and they move aside, out of her way. “So I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Guess so,” Dean says, his eyebrows raised.
“You do this one without me, I’ll kick your asses,” she says, looking at them over the roof of the car.
“We’ll wait,” Sam says. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders drawn against the chill.
She nods once. “Okay then.”
She doesn’t look at them when she pulls out of the lot. Their headlights flash and glint in her rearview, though, when she’s heading towards the highway.
The Sunrise Motor-Inn is a two-story grey building constructed around a mostly-empty parking lot, its flashing neon VACANCY sign visible from the highway. She parks in front of her room and spends more time than she needs to getting out of her car, gathering her things and then locking her door, but they don’t pull in behind her.
Their car still isn’t there when she looks again before going to bed. The parking lot is lit with an aqueous chill by the ancient vending machine advertising New! Coke on the opposite side of the complex. There’s no one in the lot, two cars other than hers. Even the highway is quiet.
She checks the lock on the door and the salt in the window, draws the covers up around her neck and listens to the building creak around her, to the water dripping from the shower faucet.
It’s a long time before she falls asleep.
When she wakes sometime in the very early hours of morning and checks the salt again, checks for their car, it’s there.
She sleeps a little better after that.
part two