There's a lot to be said about knowing a person. True, I didn't know Dolly for very long, but I was generally under the notion that this entire time, we'd both been honest with each other and on level ground. She was the apprentice journalist, I was the master and together we would become rich, famous, better looking and have a cult-base of worshiping fans at our disposal.
I didn't want to feel let down, but I was.
Extremely.
"So… this whole time…working for Kinsely, on our story…" I couldn't find the words to express what I felt. But in a sense, I was almost relieved. I had stumbled around Dolly, waiting for the roof to cave in and it finally had. The weight was finally off my shoulders.
"Well, not on our story, James. I was only suppose to get in, see if I could find any incriminating files on David and the others and get out. I honestly didn't intend for all this to happen," she said, her voice soft and methodical. "I'm so sorry."
I felt the anger rising. The rage I had felt with David welling in my heart, but I couldn't bring up, into my voice.
"I am too," I said, a hint of sorrow in my tone. "All this time.. I was writing the story for your perspective as well as mine. I thought I had gotten it right but it looks like I was dead off on everything."
I waited until her eyes looked up and into mine.
"I thought I knew you."
David rolled his eyes. By this time, the rest of demented crew had showed up and stood in the doorway, idly watching the conversation between me and Dolly, each with confused looks on their faces.
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. So what the fuck David, she was with you this entire time?" Paul asked, an angry scowl coming to his face.
David grinned and wrapped an arm around Dolly's shoulders, hugging the flinching girl close. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was left in the dark when it came to this little arrangement.
Pun intended, of course.
"What the fuck! You fucking forced me to stay in the cave for three fucking days just so you didn't have to admit you were having some fucking tail on the side? That's low, man!" snarled Paul as he stormed past his leader and back out into the living room.
Dwayne looked equally pissed, eyes glancing from Dolly to David and finally to me before he too, took off for the living room, breaking things as he passed. The only one who didn't seemed fazed was the golden-haired kid who was smirking and leaning back against the doorframe, watching his comrades in amusement as they likely started taking their anger out on my furniture and valuables.
"Jesus, you'd think they'd figure it out after awhile," David muttered as the arm released Dolly and he moved out for the living room, still displaying that scalding smirk.
Dolly made no movement to follow. Her eyes were still glued to the floor but slowly starting to track their way back up to mine. I guess I should have been happy in some sense. She could have told me nothing and I would have found out the hard way or no at all. At least, in the end, there was honesty, but it still felt like the cold bite of a vampire, straight in my heart.
I couldn't resist one last snap, to save some meager part of my dignity. "I guess it's a good thing I didn't finish this story. Your future as a writer would be looking pretty shit by this point."
And with that, I turned away and Dolly walked out the door.
Lone City.
2:50 a.m.
I didn't count the hours when I was driving so it might have been anywhere from two to six by the time I reached the shitty hotel in a dumpy town that I had never heard of before. The weight of the world was on my shoulders as I stood, slumped, at the front desk, eyes glazed and fingers tapping the desk anxiously for the hefty woman to return with my credit card recite and the key.
Watching her step back out from the dingy, neon office, I watched the way the floral print of her hideous nightgown, moved with each staggering step. She was half-sober, half-sane and I trusted this woman and her hotel, in a sense, with my life.
The room itself was fairly decent. Organized in sections, there was a single bed in the middle of the cubic floor, a carpet beneath it stretching out just enough so that bare feet wouldn't have to touch the frigid, wooden floor before finding one's slippers. The ancient tv was set upon a dresser, three channels with semi-clear reception, if one caressed the antenna's just right. There was a second dresser to my left, a desk to my right with a small lamp. A bathroom, a single bar of soap set atop a stack of towels and washcloths and a hideous print of the same floral design the woman was wearing outside, stretching around the top of the walls.
For the moment, it was my new home.
I could only imagine what had happened after I took off back in Santa Carla. Likely they started my house on fire, maybe threw in a body like they had with Paul's home and the police were so goddamn lazy, they would believe it was me.
Then again, I wasn't going to play along with their whole "James is dead" scheme by shredding up every form of ID I had and starting over with an assumed name, different haircut, plastic surgery---
Christ!
What the hell did they really expect me to do?
I succumbed to numbness for most of the trip through the desert and into the blinking night. As though his example in the car weren't enough, David and the rest of the boys had given me a "farewell scare" all the way back to my truck at the police station.
Nothing like running through alleyways with the sound of wings and bat-screams at your back to cut down on a few carobs.
Despite this, the reality of my situation began to set in and each passing moment I sat on the bed, watching the blurry images on the television and going over the events in my mind, the more I began to loose my self control.
Ten years I was a journalist in Santa Carla. I had respectable pay, a respectable job, a respectable home and---well, I guess one advantage was that I no longer had to answer to Kinsely. And if I knew the man as I did, he would likely send out either a search party or a mob hit, depending on the mood he was in when he heard the news of my skipping town.
I could only hope the rat bastard the best now that I was gone and Molly, if she wasn't already a vampire, was the next best thing he could get to a real writer. Or if nothing else, a photographer.
Thinking of Dolly caused an image of the woman to appear in my mind. The night that we'd dressed up, attempting to lure the vampires into a conversation and a couple of pictures. She'd been so beautiful in her see-through mesh shirt and black corset. Brown eyes full of mischief gazing out from the dark curls that fell around her daunting cheeks---
The sound of the fist slamming against the door was enough to wake me from my fantasy. My eyes were strangely sore and watery--probably from the smell of smoke that was imbedded within the supposedly clean, white sheets.
Walking up to the door, I stared through the scratched eyehole and was able to make out the same floral print dress that had so disturbed me at the beginning of the night. With a sigh, I opened the door to the large woman with the sour-face, thrusting a package into my hands without so much as single word.
I watched in silence as she staggered her way back down the hall before closing my door and moving to sit back upon my bed. The package was heavy and had I been in my right mind, I would have known instantly what it was. Being exhausted with depression and numbness, however, I turned the object over and over in my hands before finally locating the flap and tearing it open.
Out fell my story, typed sheets of paper fluttering to the ground along with several pictures, the tape recorder and the police record that we stole.
My reaction was delayed as a cool sensation traveled through my body, causing hairs to rise up on end while my hands shook and my eyes blinked over and over, expecting the mess to suddenly vanish and simply be gone.
While part of me wanted to leap up in joy, the other part knew that there was only one way that my story could have gotten back to me.
Standing up, I set the folder aside. And after a couple of deep breaths with my eyes closed….
….I turned around.
