Obsidian Vow

The hallway stinks of bleach and piss.

It burns the back of my throat every time I breathe in, a sharp chemical reek tangled with mildew, stale cigarettes, shit soaked deep into carpet that should’ve been ripped out years ago. The kind of smell that never really leaves a place. It settles into the walls. Into your hair. Into your skin.

Into people.

Room 209 sits half-open in front of me while I kneel on the cracked linoleum outside it with a brush in one hand and a bucket of filthy gray water beside my knee. My jeans are already damp where they’re pressing into the floor. There’s a stain spread across the carpet inside the doorway, dark around the edges where somebody tried to scrub it before giving up halfway through.

Blood. Old now, turned brown because nobody bothered to touch it until my shift started.

I dip the brush back into the water and scrub harder, forcing my mind somewhere else while the overhead light flickers and hums loud enough to make my headache worse. Somewhere down the hall, a woman starts screaming at somebody to give her back her money. A man shouts back. Something crashes. Then laughter.

Same as every night.

The Bellmere Motel collects human wreckage the way drains collect hair. Men cheating on wives. Addicts with shaking hands. Dealers. Drunks. Men with wedding rings and dead eyes who look at me too long while I’m changing sheets.

I learned quickly that survival here means keeping my head down. Stay quiet and useful, never let men think you’ve got enough spirit left in you to fight.

A door opens behind me causing the shift in the air to crawl down my spine before I even hear him move.

"Hey, sweetheart." His voice is thick with alcohol.

I keep scrubbing.

"You ignored me yesterday too. That hurts my feelings."

Sticky boots drag closer across the carpet.I stare at the stain in front of me and focus on breathing evenly.

Please keep walking. Please.

"You know," he says, "I been watching you bend over these floors all week. Cute little ass on you. Shame you hide it under all this shit."

My stomach tightens, making the brush slip in my grip.

I finally glance over my shoulder.

Mid-forties maybe. Greasy hair. Sweating through his shirt. Eyes bloodshot and hungry in a way I recognize immediately.

Men like him always know how to find somebody alone.

"I’m working," I say quietly. "Can you move, please?"

He grins, rotten teeth on flash on full display.

"Damn, honey. You always this shy?"

His gaze drags over me slowly, lingering on my chest, my hips, my mouth. I can practically feel his hands before he even touches me. He crouches beside me way too close.

The hallway shrinks around us.

"C’mon," he mutters. "Don’t act all innocent. Girls like you don’t work places like this unless they’re looking for extra cash."

His hand lands on my lower back and I flinch so hard the bucket rattles.

"Please don’t touch me."

"What was that, honey?"

"I said don’t fucking touch me."

My tone surprises both of us.

His eyes narrow and his smile changes, it's absolutely not playful anymore.

"You should be careful with that mouth."

The hand on my back slides lower and something inside me snaps. I shove myself backward fast enough to slam into the wall. The bucket tips over, dirty water exploding across the hallway and soaking my shoes.

He catches my wrist before I can get away, pain shoots up my arm.

"Jesus Christ," I gasp, trying to twist free.

His fingers tighten until my bones grind together. 

"Stop fucking fighting me."

My pulse starts hammering so violently I can hear it. Nobody comes out of their rooms. Nobody ever does.

That’s the thing people don’t understand about places like this. Everybody hears everything. The screams. The crying. The sounds of furniture hitting walls at three in the morning. They just stop caring after a while.

Especially about girls like me.

Girls who learned young that fear has a smell and predators can always scent it. Girls with dead mothers and fathers better left buried. Girls who move from motel to motel carrying their whole life in trash bags because staying anywhere too long feels dangerous.

Girls who already know exactly how this ends.

His grip jerks me forward.

"Don’t make this difficult," he says, voice dropping low. "I’m trying to be nice here."

Nice? I almost laugh. Instead I stumble when he drags me toward the open motel room.

The carpet catches under my boots while panic climbs my throat in hot, choking waves. Room 209 smells even worse inside than it does from the hallway. Sweat. Cigarettes. Beer. Cheap cologne sprayed over rot.

The curtains are closed, but the lamp beside the bed glows yellow casting the space in a sickly glow.

My brain disconnects before the door even shuts. It’s automatic now, a survival trick long since learned to leave myself behind before anybody else can destroy what’s left.

My body keeps moving but my mind pulls somewhere high and far away, floating uselessly near the ceiling while he talks at me with one hand still locked around my wrist.

I can’t even understand his words anymore. The room is thick and muffled. I stare at the ugly floral bedspread while he laughs under his breath and tells me to relax.

My mother used to say some men could smell weakness the same way wolves smell blood.

Then she married one.

Then she died. I stopped believing anybody was coming to save me after that.

The man pushes me backward toward the mattress.

I let him.

That’s the ugly truth. I let him because survival sometimes means becoming soft enough to survive the damage.

My body goes limp. My breathing shallow. My eyes unfocused.

If I stay calm maybe he won’t hurt me worse. If I don’t fight maybe I’ll still be able to walk afterward.

The door explodes inward. The sound so violent it pulls me out of my haze and I jerk hard enough to hit the wall.

Wood cracks against plaster and the rotten man spins around to face the somebody else now standing in the doorway. For one strange second my brain refuses to process him properly.

All I see is black. Black suit. Black shirt stretched across extremely broad shoulders. Black tattoos crawling up a thick throat.

My vision finally sharpens and the somebody else comes into full view, Jesus Christ he's enormous, not just tall, dangerously big.

Dark hair pushed back from a brutal face. Sharp cheekbones. Hard mouth. Expensive watch glinting beneath tattooed wrists. Ink spills from beneath the collar of his shirt and disappears beneath his sleeves, black lines twisting over powerful hands that look capable of breaking bones without effort.

A death’s-head moth stretches across his throat, its wings spread wide over muscle and vein. It’s beautiful and terrifying.

His eyes land on the man touching me and the room goes completely silent as the creep beside me finally releases my wrist.

"Hey, man," he starts nervously. "This ain’t what it looks like."

The stranger steps forward once. My skin prickles.

"You put your hands on her," he says softly.

That voice is deep enough to feel in my stomach.

The man laughs weakly. "She works here. We were just having fun."

The stranger glances at me then, only for a second but it feels unbearable. His gaze drags over my wet jeans, my shaking hands, my face. Something cold flashes in his expression.

When he looks back at the other man, the temperature in the room seems to drop.

"You touched something that belongs to me," he says quietly.

What?

The drunk laughs again, louder this time because fear is making him stupid.

"Belongs to you? I never seen her with you before."

The stranger tilts his head slightly and smiles. It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

"That’s because you won’t live long enough to see her again."

The man lunges and he never even gets close. The stranger catches him by the throat with one hand and slams him backward into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. The sound that leaves the man’s mouth barely sounds human.

The stranger doesn’t even look strained.

One tattooed hand wrapped around the bastard’s neck while he pins him there effortlessly, expensive suit immaculate despite the violence unfolding inches from me.

"You know what I hate most about men like you?" he murmurs. "The confidence. The way you think women exist for your entertainment because nobody ever taught you fear."

The drunk claws uselessly at his wrist.

"Please," he chokes.

"Too late for that."

The stranger finally looks at me again, those cold eyes move slowly over my face, over the bruises forming on my wrist, over my still trembling body and something savage settles into his expression.

"Did he scare you, Bunny?"

I can’t answer, because nobody has ever looked at me the way this man does, he wants to kill the world for touching me. As my entire being is screaming at me to stay still, don’t even breathe, I fight against it and instead, make a choice. I nod.

The stranger smiles again, then he tightens his grip around the man’s throat.

"Touch her again," he says softly, "and I’ll rip your fucking hands off and feed them to you."