This is a hybrid SPASM, in which I wrote the first hundred words, Tim X wrote the second hundred, I wrote the third, and so on until I got to five hundred and stopped (the maximum for a SPASM). We’re still working on the other piece from this collaboration (which Tim started and I did the second hundred, etc.), but it should be up in the next couple days. Enjoy!

He came to stay at the hotel in May. It was the coldest summer we ever had. He wore his hair in long, lank locks, always looking as though he’d just come in out of the rain. He brought the sound of trains in the distance. The railroad hadn’t run through here in years. Sometimes, at night, when it was dark and stormy, he went outside the hotel and stood shivering in the downpour, staring into the lobby with a bleak expression on his face. He was a good guest because he was a quiet guest who paid his bills.

I could never shake the feeling that he was waiting for something, especially on those rain streaked nights. Whenever Iris, who used to work down at the old depot, catches sight of him she mumbles madly and walks the other way. I’ve never heard what she says, but Tony Ostero told me that she repeats “we buried him” over and over again. Our guest doesn’t seem to notice though, he just stares down the street and then, like clockwork, goes back up to his room. His silent room, the one on the seventh floor, five doors down, that we can never seem to rent out.

Some described a vague feeling of nausea whenever they chanced to be near him. I never felt that. He didn’t stink, though he always seemed damp. What I felt was something different, another sort of illness. Whenever he came to pay his bill or pick up his mail (not that he ever got any), the sense of melancholy was overwhelming. No. Not melancholy. Abject despair. It was like a sickness gripping him, eating away at his being, and utterly contagious. The lobby was once a sunny place, but that summer, it was cold and hollow. Lonely and empty. Like him.

It’s not that the lobby is completely dreary now. The sun still comes in. Though it’s not like it used to be, especially in that one corner, that one easy chair over there. That used to be the greatest spot to sit and read, or talk, or just…but now…well, that’s where it all happened. He had just come out of the rain. I was sitting in that chair, reading, tuning out what was going on around me. I didn’t hear it until he looked at me. The screaming. The screaming from outside. And I thought; this is it, this is why he’s here.

There they were, thousands, maybe, running down the streets toward the hotel. Screaming at a pitch I’d never heard. “They’re here for me, you know,” he said miserably. Suddenly faces appeared at the windows, pounding at the glass. One girl in front fainted and was trampled. Young women, tears streaking their faces. Young men struggling to open the doors.

Sadly, he turned to the elevators. He was here for a reason, all right. Ours is the only hotel with locked doors and bulletproof windows in Chicago. Anyway, that’s how I know Paul McCartney. He stays here whenever he’s in town.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly and Tim Mucci. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

It was always the same.

When he went to bed at ten-thirty, Les left his bedroom door open. When he got up at two-thirty to use the bathroom, he closed the door on his return to bed. At six in the morning, he’d get up, get dressed and open the door.

“I hate walking past you sleeping when I go to the bathroom at night,” his new roommate complained. “I’m always tiptoeing so I don’t wake you up. Why can’t you just close the door?”

“It’s how I’ve always done it,” he replied.

“Then why do you close it after half the night?”

Les shrugged. “I feel safer.”

“So why not close the door when you go to bed in the first place?”

“That’s just how I’ve always done it.”

And so the argument went, over and over.

Finally, one night Les’ roommate thought he’d teach him a lesson and left his own bedroom door open, so when Les came home from his date, he’d see how uncomfortable it was to have to sneak around quietly so as not to wake the sleeping person across the hall.

Les’ ex-girlfriend had no trouble sneaking around in the dark. She hadn’t been to Les’ new place before, but she had a gun, and she knew the open door would be his.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

“Hey, Freak, come look at this!” Snake announced from the bathroom.

“Not again. I dunno, man, that’s pretty fucked up,” Freaky John replied.

Snake appeared in the hallway. “Get your ass in here, dipshit, you gotta look at something.”

Freak lit a joint and took a nice deep hit. “Screw you. I’m not fuckin’ looking at your turds.”

Snake grabbed Freak’s arm and hauled him up from the couch. “Dude! It’s different this time. You gotta look at this.”

“Will you leave me the fuck alone? I don’t wanna see!”

“There’s no fuckin’ turds to look at!”

“There better not be. With all the shit and toilet paper and the color of the piss, it looked like fuckin’ won-ton soup that other time,” Freak counseled warningly.

“That was the whole point, stupid. It was like art, almost. But this is different. You’ll see.”

Freak assented dubiously. “All right, let’s get it over with.”

Snake held the bathroom door open and gestured toward the toilet. “See?”

“Hey! You didn’t get any on the floor! Very good.”

“Yeah, that is pretty cool,” Snake agreed, “but just look at it.”

“The toilet?”

“What’s in the toilet, shitbrain.”

“Piss.”

“Yeah. How does it make you feel?”

“Like flushing.”

“No, dude, I mean the color.”

“Yellow?”

“That shade. It’s, like, motherfucking tranquil or something.”

Freak cocked his head to one side and examined the liquid. “Yeah. Yeah, I see what you’re saying, it’s serene as fuck.”

“You said you were gonna paint the fuckin’ kitchen. Dude! What do you think?”

“Unbelievable. You’re right, man. Color’s perfect.”

“Too bad we don’t have one of those cards with paint swatches and shit, right?”

“I got better than that. Hang on.” Freak disappeared into the hallway and returned with a zip-lock baggie. “We’ll take it to Home Depot.”

Snake hesitated. “We’re gonna take a baggie full of piss to Home Depot?”

“They gotta. Their ads say they’ll match any color.”

“Yeah. They probably get this kind of thing all the time. Hey. They sell rolling papers?”

Freak shrugged. “It never hurts to ask.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

“I’ve only got eight toes,” he said casually.

The woman scrunched her eyebrows. “Really.”

“Yes. Anything interesting I should know about you?”

She sighed, glancing around the room. This party was the pits. “No, I don’t think so. Have you seen Evelyn around anywhere?”

“No. So there’s nothing interesting about you? Nothing at all?” he persisted. “Come on. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an RN.”

“Oh, you’re a nurse.”

“That’s right.” She sipped at her plastic cup of lousy punch and scanned the room again. She ought to leave, but what else was there to do? Sit home and paint her toenails? Which reminded her… “Eight, huh?”

“Eight what?”

“Didn’t you say you had eight toes?”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I was already thinking about something else. Yep, eight toes.”

“Was it an accident?”

“No, I was born this way. How about you? Any freak of nature stories about you?”

She shrugged. “I can wiggle my ears. I think that’s the extent of it.”

“Let’s have a look.”

She set down her cup and pulled her hair back to reveal her ears. “See?”

“Ha! That’s great.” He grinned down at her. “Very cute.”

She blushed. Maybe the punch was stronger than she thought.

She didn’t blush when they found an empty bedroom half an hour later.

Afterward, he lay back on the bed and she flipped on the light to find her clothes. “Wait a minute, you have ten.”

“Hmmm?”

She reached out and grabbed his foot. “You lied to me. You have ten toes.”

He raised himself on his elbows. “No, that’s eight.”

“Ten,” she counted, laughing, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!”

“You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken, I’m a nurse. I know these things!”

He shook his head. “Silly. The two big ones don’t count.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.