\u2014What\u2019s all over you? James asks me.<\/p>\n
\u2014Me?<\/p>\n
\u2014Yeah. It looks like you have blood all over your shirt and hair.<\/p>\n
\u2014Is it mine? I ask him, worried, wanting his help.<\/p>\n
\u2014You better put some ice on it, he says, like it is a chore I forgot to do.<\/p>\n
\u2014On what? I ask, and I check my nose with both hands. It is dry and cold like the rest of my face.<\/p>\n
\u2014To stop the bleeding, he tells me, like it\u2019s the most obvious thing in the world.<\/p>\n
\u2014Does this hotel even have ice?<\/p>\n
\u2014There\u2019s ice in the bucket. On the dresser.<\/p>\n
I grab the ice bucket from the dresser, but there\u2019s a thumb in there, so I don\u2019t want to use it. I check my hands to see if it\u2019s my thumb, but it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u2014Who put this in here? he asks me.<\/p>\n
\u2014I didn\u2019t do it, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014Tell them you fell against the bathtub, he suggests.<\/p>\n
\u2014Who?<\/p>\n
\u2014Whoever is asking about the blood.<\/p>\n
\u2014Has anyone been asking?<\/p>\n
\u2014Not yet, he says, but you never know.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s lying to me or not.<\/p>\n
\u2014How did all that blood get on the ceiling? he says.<\/p>\n
I know better than to look up. That\u2019s how they get you.<\/p>\n
\u2014It was like that when we got the place, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014Was it? he asks, looking like he is genuinely trying to remember.<\/p>\n
I tell him that when we got the room he had said, “This place is covered in blood. What did they do? Murder someone in here?”<\/p>\n
\u2014That\u2019s not how I talk, he says.<\/p>\n
I go in the bathroom and I try to throw up but I can tell if I do, I will start shitting blood. The ice cream comes out of my nose. It is sweet and cool on my tongue.<\/p>\n
\u2014Did we order room service? I ask him, the toilet bowl amplifying my voice, making it echo all porcelain.<\/p>\n
\u2014Yeah, he says from the other room. Yeah, maybe.<\/p>\n
\u2014I ate too much, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014You are so fat, he tells me even though you can see my ribs.<\/p>\n
In the bathtub there is somebody.<\/p>\n
\u2014There is somebody in here, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014Does he know who got all this blood in the room?<\/p>\n
\u2014He\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n
\u2014Oh. Well, does he have all his fingers?<\/p>\n
\u2014I can\u2019t see his hands, I say.<\/p>\n
The body is letting farts rip, like they sometimes do. Gas redistributing in a system that no longer works.<\/p>\n
\u2014Does he have any cigarettes? James wants to know.<\/p>\n
\u2014He\u2019s naked, I tell him, trying not to breathe the egg farts through my nose.<\/p>\n
\u2014You fucking homo, he says, and he comes in the bathroom to look at the naked dead guy whose hands we can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n
\u2014There\u2019s a lot of blood, he says.<\/p>\n
\u2014There\u2019s a lot of blood everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u2014Is this the guy we kidnapped? He asks me.<\/p>\n
\u2014This guy is Mexican.<\/p>\n
\u2014I didn\u2019t know you were into Mexican dudes anymore. After Paco.<\/p>\n
\u2014Don\u2019t talk about Paco, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014Is that his blood on you? James asks me, but I don\u2019t answer because I am worried that it is.<\/p>\n
\u2014We gotta get out of here, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014We can\u2019t. There are cops out front.<\/p>\n
\u2014Are they looking for us? Are they here about the dead guy?<\/p>\n
\u2014I don\u2019t know, he says, screwing up his face. Could be.<\/p>\n
The cop who comes to our door is young. Uniformed. Clean shaven. He tells us to stay in our rooms. Says there is a police response team on the street in front of the hotel.<\/p>\n
\u2014He\u2019s got blood on him, James says to the cop and points at me, laughing.<\/p>\n
\u2014Shut up, I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u2014Maybe get him to the hospital?<\/p>\n
\u2014I am not going to the hospital. I am fine.<\/p>\n
\u2014Just stay in your room for now, he says, and moves on to the next room.<\/p>\n
We hear him knock on the door of the next room, identify himself, and explain the same thing to them.<\/p>\n
\u2014Must be a shooting, James says as I close the door. Probably the same maniac who killed the Mexican.<\/p>\n
I think about the guy in the bathtub farting out the last of his gasses, and I wonder which one of us is guilty.<\/p>\n
\u2014I am not going to the hospital, I tell him again.<\/p>\n
\u2014Fine, he says.<\/p>\n
\u2014Then where are we going?<\/p>\n
I know we aren\u2019t going to the hospital, because we never go to the hospital, but I know we are going somewhere. We will sneak out of this hotel room, and move on to some other place, leaving the dead guy to his fate. Or I guess he already met his fate. Leaving him to something anyway.<\/p>\n
\u2014We can go anywhere, James says to me. We can go wherever we want, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I grab the ice bucket from the dresser, but there\u2019s a thumb in there, so I don\u2019t want to use it. I check my hands to see if it\u2019s my thumb, but it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4624,1582,4623],"class_list":["post-23991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-bizarro","tag-grit-lit","tag-transgressive","writer-matthew-thomas-meade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24945,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23991\/revisions\/24945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}