Seven

Out from the darkness of the sky, a rage of raindrops assaulted a small Buick POS, flying alone down the barely traveled highway. The wheels so low on air, every little bump caused the body to scrape against the road, and furious sparks soared out on either side of the vehicle. The frazzled driver tried to read the road, which had recently begun to twist and turn violently. A single headlight shone, dimly, giving her a vague idea of what lied before her.

Anyone would have pulled over by this time, but instead, she pushed the gas pedal down further, sending the car into convulsions as the speedometer’s skeletal finger wrapped around the half circle of digits, reaching 85 miles per hour, then 90. The road could not be put behind her fast enough. The distance would never be enough.

There was no exit in sight, and the blackness ahead seemed to only spew a yellow line down the middle of the road. Continuing her mad rush through the storm, the driver whisked the car right by the only other person on the road at that time, a police officer, hidden in the stormy shadows, behind a Lucky Seven's billboard.

It was only a few seconds before the young woman saw the flashing red and blue lights in her slanted review mirror. Hanging her head and growling into the wheel, she reluctantly pulled to the shoulder of the road and waited in silence. A few moments and the sloshing footsteps of the cop could be heard as he reached the driver’s side of the vehicle and knocked on the window, shining, seemingly, the world’s brightest flashlight right into her unprepared eyes.

The usual dialogue took place, and she was asked to relinquish her driver’s license, the picture of her was normally never pretty. However, it looked different this time. She focused on the woman's wide smile as it beamed a forgotten happiness and then up at the mangled mess of sorrow staring back at her from the review mirror. Having to use a little effort to pry the license from the woman’s transfixed grip, the officer walked back to his car in the fury of the storm and the sinking puddles of mud.

In her side mirror, she watched and waited for the officer to finish his business, listening to the force of the rain pelt the car’s canopy. She glanced back into the side mirror and she sighted the blue and white stripes on the police car, the name of the town in which he served was unfamiliar to her. Lightning lit up the road again and there it was, in deep blue writing-the number: 7. A roar from the sky vibrated her dash board and she turned her eyes away from the number in the mirror with a sneering disgust. Sighing heavily she flopped her head back onto the headrest.

The rain began to leak through, and, plummeting to her face, it re-hydrated the dried river of tears on her cheeks. Lightning flashed outside but the light could barely penetrate the dark crevices of the worn canopy. A vertical and horizontal crack that met at a single point were the only few large enough for the light of the searing bolts to shine through. Her eyes fell agape at the sight of the two flashing cracks in her car’s canopy. A raindrop crashed into her pupil, causing her to squint hard and sit back up.

A second knock on the window came and the cop handed her a ticket. Tipping his raincoat hood to her, he headed back to his car and drove off into the night.

Have a nice day?

Laughing out loud, she tossed the ticket into the passenger’s seat, without even a glance at the fine. She forced the gear shift into drive and sped off once again into the night. Unrelenting, the rain continued its rampage across the windshield of the car, the brittle arms of the windshield wipers too old and tired from overuse to effectively clear away the massing flood of water that distorted the woman’s vision of the road before her.

The dark clouds bellowed a deafening boom that rattled everything in the car, including the Lucky 7’s key chain that dangled in the review mirror. The glimmering red 7 twisted back and forth on its suspended chain, taunting and flashing its metallic edges at her. In a single motion, she ripped the chain from the review mirror, along with the mirror, but she did not care. There was no looking back, now. Furiously rolling her window down with a metallic lever, she tossed the keychain out into the rain and darkness.

After she rolled the window back up, something caught her eye in the distance…a green exit sign materialized from the shadows: Exit 10, and another sign next to it advertised a humble hotel three exits further down the road. The dim bluish-green digits on her radio clock, read: 7:00 and a yawn escaped her as she sighted the hotel sign passing by.

The car spat and sputtered as it pushed through the merciless storm. Forceful winds swept across the road, ramming the tiny car and shrieking through the many cracks of the worn body. Growing in ferocity, the stormy winds nudged the car back and forth down the road, causing the driver to hold the tiger-skinned steering wheel cover tighter until the whites of her knuckles showed.

Soon, the road began to cease twisting and turning and great hills began popping up and growing in size, but still the old Buick took no caution and barreled over each and every one of them. Struggling to climb the incline, the car’s body grinded against the road before the brief zenith of the hill led to a rapid decline and right on into an even greater hill than the last. Finally, after scaling the greatest hill, the road split apart into two opposite directions and leveled out. A little further on and another exit sign came into focus- it was Exit 9, and another advertisement of the hotel, reading “Two exits to hotel”.

It was not very long before the hotel’s exit was visible and the little car pulled off the road and down an unkempt back road. Traveling down the slippery street, the cement eventually turned to gravel and then straight mud, before a blinking “vacancy” advertisement shown from under a small, dimly lit hotel sign: “Septa Inn” on the side of the road.

Pulling into the hotel, the driver parked in a ghostly parking lot and prepared to make a dash for the front office. Grabbing her luggage from the backseat, she opened the car door and dashed out into the downpour, keeping her head down as if a bull charging. The blinding flashes of light illuminated the many puddles on the ground, but she took little care in avoiding them. By the time she had reached the front door, her entire body from head to toe was soaked.

The lobby was not exactly a palace as the tiled floor was grimy and sticky with unknown contents never bothered to have been cleaned up. The innkeeper came from behind the backdoor and checked her in quickly. Emptying her pockets and purse, she handed him a crinkled 50 and two 10 dollar bills for the room.

Quietly dragging her luggage behind her, she walked down the short hallway to her room, the strange odor of old cleaning supplies wafted from an underused janitor closet. Her fast walk began to slow to a crawl as she passed the doors on either side of her, starting with the number: 1. As each door went by, they seemed to look more and more decrepit and worn from lack of maintenance. Finally reaching the last door at the end of the hallway, as instructed by the innkeeper, she looked to see that her key fit into the room 7. Hesitating at first, she eventually turned the key.

The neglected hinges screeched as she opened the door of the hotel room. The heavy odor of old cigarette smoke stung her eyes, already dripping black tears. Slamming the door behind her, she tossed her half-zipped, bulky suitcase, clothes haphazardly stuffed inside, onto the small bed, the rusty springs whining under the pressure.

The room was tattered and torn, the walls stained with years of gunk that was never cleaned up, never dealt with. Everything harbored an outline of hazy white dust from who knew how many years of neglect. Now looking at it, the room was as sty…too filthy and too stained to salvage.

A single, small, curtainless window across the room framed the unstoppable storm still rampaging against the world. Rain leaked through the improperly sealed cracks of the window and dripped down the wall, and following the path of a large, brown water stain.

The lights flickered every time a bolt of lightning streaked through the blackness of the sky. This seemed to have knocked out the functioning of any other electric appliance in the room as well. The television set gave off only snowy static, other than a hazy reception of a weather report on channel 7. Quickly shutting the TV off, she meandered over to what was supposed to be the bathroom, but should have been more appropriately labeled, “The Hellhole”. The cracked mirror of the bathroom and water stained sink were barely visible as the overhead light was dimmer than the main light in the living room.

Wiping off the toilet seat, she used the facilities, having to adjust her weight, as the cracks in the seat would scratch her skin and pinch her. Every time she rose to shift around, she could see the sea of roach corpses in their watery grave of the incompletely drained bathtub.

Finishing her business, she washed her hands in the filthy sink with contaminated, sulfur-drenched tap water that smelled of rotten eggs before leaving the nasty bathroom. Stepping over a couple dead cockroaches on her way to the bed, she pulled her giant suitcase down off of the covers and opened it. A rolled up nightgown flopped out, unveiling many balled-up shirts and unfolded socks and underwear, which filled the case with a distinguishing chaos.

Pushing back the shirts, the worst one at the bottom of the suitcase, with the most holes and tears was a yellow-tinted t-shirt with the logo, “Lucky 7’s Casino, Bar, and Grill-Come on Down and Get LUCKY!” Viciously scrunching the shirt into as tiny of a ball as it would go, she tossed it into the nearby trashcan, which must have been the cleanest, least used appliance in the entire room.

Looking back into the suitcase, there was a small, white, half-opened envelope and a box of Marlboro cigarettes. Picking both items up out of the suitcase, she extracted the contents from the envelope. A brightly colored, festive card read in great, mocking gold letters, “Happy 7th Anniversary!” In a single motion, she tore the card in half and tossed it into the trashcan along with the shirt.

Sitting down onto the small bed, she flipped open the top of her cigarette box and sighed heavily as one lone cigarette leaned against the empty walls of its paper home. Pulling it out, she shakingly lit it with a Lucky 7’s lighter which was shaped in such a way that the flame would often tilt back towards the trigger, scalding the woman’s thumb. Taking a large and deep puff, she exhaled a cloud straight up into the air before settling herself. When the white smoke cleared away, she continued to stare, hypnotized at the cracked and stained ceiling, graffiti covering it with an exchange of profanities. The words seem to do battle with one another, separated by a great rend in the, what used to be white, plaster of the ceiling. Growing in cruelty and savageness, the profane words were scattered and jumbled upon the ceiling, but for some reason…only to her…there was a pattern, and the longer she stared, the more prevalent the pattern became to her. It was the group of the most profane words that really caught her eye, as they bordered a combination of cracks and tears that resembled a misshapen heart, another rend running straight down the middle of it.

Fixed on the image overhead, she did not hear the phone ring the first time. Tearing herself from the ceiling’s spell, she glanced hesitantly towards the phone as it rang again. In a fury, she reached for the cord and yanked it from the wall.

Inattentive to the cigarette still in her hand, it sizzled down the shaft more and more until the red hot embers licked her fingers. Throwing the cigarette down from her grasp and onto the floor, she stomped it out and kept stomping, the ashes successfully smothered the first time. Stomping and stomping in the same place, the cigarette was driven into the unswept carpet, not looking out of place in the slightest…just one more mess that would never be cleaned, one more stain that would become a scar of this room.

The rage of the stomping slowly subsided and before very long, it had stopped completely. A brief silence took over the room, as the woman sat staring down onto the filth beneath her feet. Flashes of lightning shone through the tiny window, and soon enough, the tiny, dim bulb could no longer hold out against the storm outside. Following a roar of thunder and a serpent bolt of electricity, the lights went out and darkness swallowed everything. The rain could be heard pounding against the roof and window for a few more moments before the woman burst into sobs and lay back, where she buried her face into the cruddy-yellow pillow of her single bed.