Page 71 of Hellbound

They see, came a cruel voice from a part of her that she thought she’d locked away. They all know what you are. A murderer. A monster, just like those you serve.

“Shut up,” she whispered to herself as she pulled her hat back on and headed for the nearest door outside. “Shut the fuck up.”

She’d take her chances with the bus.

Somewhere between Huntington Park and East Compton, Marian pulled herself together. With every corner the bus turned, she feared she’d paint the windows with the contents of her stomach. But her constitution proved stronger than the nausea, and Marian kept her free breakfast down. She still had one connection to go.

The last bus dumped her out five blocks south of A Page Apart as her guts settled, and a mind-numbing malaise set in. The hours spent fighting the urge to throw up had left her spent, but the thought of getting on another bus home turned her green.

She couldn’t give up now; she’d spent all that fare to get out there. She had to make it count. Never mind that every step on the sunbaked sidewalk made her want to keel over.

But stringing a single thought together proved to be a monumental task as she shuffled down the street. All her focus went to making sure she put one foot in front of the other instead of one over the other.

Why was she so goddamn tired all of a sudden? Utterly drained. As if her body had sprung a leak from which her fucking soul was slowly slipping away.

Marian finally looked up from her shoes to find she’d taken a wrong turn. Should she have gone left instead of right? No, that seemed wrong. But there was no strip mall here; the buildings on this block were unfamiliar. All except for one.

A two-story motel.

All the rooms had yellow doors and rusted sconces beside them. A blue and red neon vacancy sign hung in the window of the sixties vintage front office with its crumbling stone facade. The awning drapes flapped in the wind.

Atop the office stood a massive blue sign with a name spelled out in neon-lined blue painted letters.

Lakewood Inn.

There were few cars in the parking lot, and most sported expired tags or taped-up cardboard windows.

When the coast was clear, she walked briskly across the street and up the driveway feeding into the Lakewood Inn guest parking lot.

Marian stopped in her tracks beside the empty front office as a woman in a pale purple sweat suit emerged from a door on the south end of the building, a soda can peeking out of her sweatshirt pocket. The woman’s hood was drawn tight over her head, concealing her face from view. She walked with her shoulders hunched; her dark-skinned nose pointed at the ground.

The woman sneezed as she walked, jerking forward violently enough that a tuft of springy black curls escaped out from under the hood.

When Marian’s shock finally subsided, anger swelled inside her. She charged across the lot to Tori Lawson. Right in front of room five.

The traveler looked up and froze, her brown eyes widening in fear as they locked on Marian prowling toward her.

“Tori,” Marian said, leaping over the curb as a stunned Tori backed into the wall. “What the fuck?”

WELCOME TO HELL > SPECULATION Make it make sense.

iseedeadpeopleTraveler—CerritosI found the teeth room that everyone keeps talking about. No one mentioned the bodies on the ground. They were stone or something, all weird and gray. They didn’t look human. When I left and came back to that room, the teeth were still there, but the bodies weren’t.I heard heartbeats, too. Pounding and pounding. Then they stopped and started again. I swear, this place feels alive sometimes. But that doesn’t make any sense. If this really is Hell, then I don’t have high hopes for heaven.

Hotgreg69USER PERMABANNEDYour mom saw heaven when I banged her last night. lol

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tori’s stricken look confirmed to Marian that the traveler didn’t want to be found. Tori also hadn’t bolted at the sight of her. The puffy bags under the traveler’s bloodshot eyes stood stark on her bare face, and the laces of one of her white Sambas were untied.

Tori gasped. “No.”

Raw fury surged through Marian.

“You better start talking right fucking now.”

The traveler cast a furtive glance over her shoulder before shifting her attention back to Marian. Tori’s expression cycled rapidly through confusion, fear, anguish, then grim determination. She grabbed Marian by the wrist of her uninjured arm and jerked her toward the door to room number five. Marian’s eyebrows shot sky high as Tori shoved the key in the lock and dragged Marian inside.

“Come on,” said Tori.