The TV sparks and glows. Its fraying pixels send light flickering and dancing along the flat, lifeless walls of the motel room. The air is musty and cold. The beds are perfectly made. Stiff, impersonal; no promises of loving comforts at the end of the day and no bodies to warm them. The carpet is harsh against bare feet, but still better than cold hardwood. It's scent clinging in your nose is similar to people musk and cleaning products - a mask over its filth, alighting and burning to the senses. Curling wallpaper clings in shades of dusty sixties pink. The door hinges are rusty, the sink echoingly dry. Even the shower's death rattle is audible. There is a phone between the beds, on an old bed stand that's been battered but never used. A Bible sleeps within. No matter what angle you see it in, only to a child escaping from reality could make a half-home here. You could stand in one spot of this place for years without a glimpse of the world beyond and never, never imagine anything full enough to touch every wall of this room. But seeing it is an entirely different manner.
Light spills through the protesting door. The bed gives under the weight of a tossed duffel bag, made of scratchy canvas as boots stamp their impressions in the ancient rug. Bodies penetrate the eeriness in the air and push it, wave it aside, placing themselves there instead. The shadows vanish. The darkness pulls back and withers down the sink drain. The curtains cough dust as they're pushed back, and hands beat at them and tie them up. Fresh breeze touches the cheeks of the room as the window is yanked up and the dead taste is consumed, chased out. A frail table groans in enjoyment as paper bags and boxes alike are settled onto her dinged polished surface. Chairs scrape back and gasp from under the soft jackets tossed over their backs. Laughter and words penetrate the silence. Needing hands grab the doorknobs and push them open. Thanking squeaking meets them as joints long unused stretch their legs and shiver. When the rumble of the car dies outside and the door is finally closing in the new life, and boots are pushed aside and sockets hold plugs between their teeth; when hands shove at the air in avid gesture, and the heat of a running laptop lulls them into a content silence; when the sun goes down and the curtains are closed again; the sink of the bodies into the mattresses is a finality. A newfound calm. A perfection in its own. And the room's loneliness is forgotten again, for at least a few hours.
The room is silent when a figure appears at the foot of one of the motel beds. He's dark, his brow frowning, but his eyes were bright and blue as they observe the sleeping bodies. His gaze softens; whether by affection or otherwise it is unknown, but his trench coat billows around his legs as he glides over to the window. Reaching out a finger, head canting to the side, he pushes the heavy drape back and his pale face is basked in moonlight. The stubble on his cheeks is defined by the silvery glow as he squints out over the parking lot. The town is quiet. It lays in wait for morning, languish as it prepares for the next day. Sluggish energy clings to everything. The boys are safe, for now.