Page 40 of Haunt Me

My mouth tastes like metal.

It takes me another minute to remember what town I'm in.

Not because I hit my head or drank enough to black out, though that probably didn't help, but because every motel room has started bleeding into the next.

Each place has the same faded wallpaper. The same coffee maker tucked into the corner beside packets of powdered creamer no one actually uses. The same scratchy blankets that never quite cover the mattress. Somewhere along the way, the towns blurred together until I stopped paying attention to the names on the highway exits.

It doesn't matter anyway.

As long as there's another garage looking for a mechanic and another liquor store within walking distance of wherever I'm sleeping, one town’s as good as the next.

I close my eyes for a moment, hoping the pounding in my head will ease if I just stay still long enough.

It doesn't.

It never does anymore.

I lift my head far enough to look at the digital clock.

Ten forty-seven.

“Shit.”

My voice sounds wrong, scraped raw from disuse and too much whiskey. The sound of it fills the room in a way that makes me painfully aware of how quiet everything else is.

The garage opens at seven.

Opened.

Three hours and forty-seven minutes ago.

I reach for my phone, knocking an empty miniature bottle onto the floor before my fingers close around it. The screen lights up with missed calls, voicemails, and more text messages than I’m willing to count.

Most of them are from Knox.

A few are from the garage.

One is from a number I don’t recognize.

I open the message from the manager first because that one requires less from me.

Mike (garage): Don’t bother coming back. I’ve covered your shift. I hope you get whatever’s going on figured out.

I stare at the words until they blur, then drop the phone onto the mattress beside me.

That makes three.

Three garages in almost as many weeks, though this one lasted longer than the others. I made it six days before I stopped arriving on time, five before someone smelled the whiskey, and four before I started taking lunch alone in my truck because listening to everyone else talk about their wives and children made me want to put my fist through something.

It shouldn’t matter.

None of it matters.

There’s always another town, another shop willing to hire a mechanic who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t ask too many questions. I can keep moving until no one remembers my name, until every person who once knew me stops checking their phone and hoping I’ll answer.

My stomach turns when I sit up. I plant both feet on the carpet and rest my elbows on my knees while I wait for the room to stop spinning.

The television flickers silently across from me. A smiling woman stands in a bright kitchen, holding up a container of something while a man wraps his arms around her from behind. They laugh at whatever they’re selling, their mouths moving without sound. The sight of them makes something ugly rise in my throat.