Fiction: I Lost Myself at the Super 8

By James Callan

 

My long-term girlfriend left me for a woman named Chris, which is my own name, and somehow made things worse. Had it been another man, I’d probably be angry. As it was, the other Chris a woman, I simply felt inadequate, the wrong type of me.

Lisa told me it wasn’t about me being a man, the other Chris being a woman. It was about how Chris --the other Chris-- listened to her when she talked, laughed at all her jokes, treated her well, and knew just where to touch her to make her go absolutely, out-of-her-mind, insane with pleasure.

“What about that thing I do with my--” Lisa held out her palm to silence me. “It doesn’t measure up, Chris,” she told me. “It doesn't even compare.” Then she started swooning as she got into her car. “The way Chris does it…” She giggled, slammed the door of the Taurus, and drove away.

I watched the brake lights to our shared car flicker as Lisa more or less rolled through a stop sign and sped off to the new and upgraded Chris in the affluent neighborhood on the other side of town. Chris drove a new, fancy truck. A big, red Dodge Ram with hubcaps that spun funny and scaffolding extending here and there for bikes and kayaks. Her wolfish dog was always riding in the back, barking and growling at me, panting at anyone else.

I wondered why Lisa needed the Taurus now that she had Chris and her fancy, souped-up truck. I thought of our old car sitting unused under a tarp, hidden from the collection of expensive SUVs that lined outside the neat, emerald lawns of her sparkly, new neighborhood. I thought of the sheen of the cherry-red Ram, always as if fresh from the car wash, the muddy bikes in the summer that suggested an adventurous life, the skis that hinted at a certain sporty sophistication. Lisa loved camping, hiking, water sports, and the outdoors. She had often begged me to go skiing after we were hit with fresh snow. I was more of the Netflix and gaming type. I would always whine about how maybe it would be better to stay indoors, to binge watch Tiger King or Squid Game, to get high and veg out until Monday loomed to become a stark reality.

It wouldn’t have killed me to go camping just once. To appease Lisa from time to time. Skiing could have been fun, festive, nice. I realize now I had nothing on the other Chris, except male parts, which evidently were overrated.

Feeling low, I wished to punish myself. I had let Lisa walk out of my life without a fight. I had squandered seven years living with a fine woman to play Call of Duty and get stoned. I had said no to the prospect of a dog, a wolfish one that was all white, like snow, and told her maybe a cat, but ultimately said no to the feline that was all black, like the night sky, saying it would bring bad luck. I said no to camping each time summer rolled around. I don’t even recall my excuses.

Often, we’d order pizza and she’d pass out drunk on the couch and talk in her sleep. In the final year of our relationship, comatose with vodka, she started saying my name while sprawled out over my lap as I executed sniper headshots on teenagers across the country, perhaps the globe. I thought she was dreaming of me. She’d be smiling, sometimes moaning. Now I know. She had been calling out to the other Chris.

Lisa was gone and now I was all alone. I had lost her, with no one to blame but myself. Chris --the upscaled Chris-- had all the makings for being the best Chris for Lisa. I had had my chance, my seven-year stint, and came up short. Now, the Xbox seemed to lose its luster. The library of shows on my streaming services were dominated by dating shows and docos about weird cults and unsolved murders. Everything made me feel more lonely, more scared and depressed. This apartment, which was now mine, which had recently been ours, offered me nothing anymore. I needed to leave. What’s more, I needed to punish myself.

I rented a car. A Ford Taurus--for old times sake, for familiarity. I pawned my Xbox and games, my big screen and blown-glass bong, all the things that distracted me from Lisa when she had been in my life. With the money I was given for trading in all the things that diverted my attention from the girl of my dreams, I’d have enough to cover the rental, the gas, fast food meals and gas station fare. I’d traded in my boyish devices for a decent road trip. I’d have just enough for accommodation, sleeping in my car on warmer nights to pad my expenses, splurging on cheap motels when things get chilly. Having Googled the worst motels in America, I was off to the Super 8 in Chaste, Wyoming. As I said, I felt the need to punish myself.

*

That whole notion of spreading out my finances by sleeping in my car went completely out the window. There hadn’t been a night warm enough during my travels that I didn’t see my breath as I attempted to dose off, bundled up in ridiculous layers of hooded sweatshirts and coats, spare blankets --and most desperate of all-- copious napkins from various Taco Bells and Mickey D’s.

The first night I gave up around midnight. I had kept turning the car on for lengthy stints to pump out the heat. Each twenty-minute blast of warm air lasted about five minutes after the ignition had been killed. In my car, I was wasting more money on gas while failing to keep warm than I would have on dirt-cheap motels, snug on a mattress, stained or otherwise. So in the end I stayed in one motel after the next, each one 600 miles apart and shittier than the last.

Sometimes it was bedbugs. Other times it was shouting or fucking or both, loud and graphic screams erupting from the adjacent room. From behind the paper-thin walls that divided my room from two or more strangers, I unavoidably heard each heavy breath, grunt, slap, and slur that accompanied whatever salacious affair or dubious misconduct played out on the other side of my head as it lay on deflated, sweat-stained pillows. Once, I heard several gunshots nearby. Another time, another motel, there was a fat man lying naked on a flotation device in the pool with a skyward erection. He held his balls and drank beers, which floated beside him on the water. At some shithole in Northern Missouri, I stopped counting the cockroaches when I got to one-hundred. I told myself it was just like counting sheep, except sheep don’t hiss and scurry over your lips as you try to doze off.

I wondered how Lisa and Chris were faring in their crisp, clean, king-size bed that I assumed they slept on together. I thought of the two of them making love, which at first made me feel jealous, but ultimately made me horny. Remembering Lisa’s report of Chris’ ability to apply her well-practiced knowledge to make a woman melt, I thought about what they might do to each other, how they may execute it. I ignored the cockroaches copulating on the headboard and masturbated on the side of the bed I had allocated for vacancy.

On the road, I’d always have nightmares in these dingy motels peppered across middle America. Dreams of fang-bearing, snow-white wolves or hissing black cats. Sometimes I’d wake in a cold sweat, sheets soaked, after having a night terror. I’d shoo away whatever critters had emerged in the stillness and the dark as I paged through a catalogue of repeating images in my mind: skiing accidents, camp fires gone out of control, kayaks upended in raging rapids or big, fancy Dodge Rams running me over in my own driveway, slowly, deliberately, one Chris crushing the other.

Whatever the motel, I rarely slept well, even if I was warm. Apart from my unsettled sleep, the only other thing dependable about the motels was that they always seemed expensive no matter how little they had cost. Truly, they were simply that bad. Yet however gross those hole-in-the-wall motels turned out to be, nothing compared to, nor prepared me for, the low-bar depravity of the Super 8 at the end of my journey in Chaste, Wyoming.

*

The manager’s name was Chris. A third Chris; just what I fucking needed. He was a complete dickhead from the get go, throwing the keys to the room at me while I wasn’t looking, signing in. They hit me, hard, on the temple, and I shot back and glared, totally taken aback. “What the fuck?” I said while rubbing the side of my head.

His face betrayed no expression. But his tone was blunt, bitter, and mean. “Do me a favor and spare me the tears, will you? Last thing I need is to look after a baby. You’re not a baby, are you?”

“I’ll show you a baby.” I later said to no one, alone in my room. “I’ll show you a baby when I feed that vending machine a dollar and take out the Baby Ruth and stick it right up your ass.” I paced my room and punched a pillow, which belched out a cloud of dust in protest. Angry, I recalled what I had actually said to the third Chris: “No. I am not a baby.” My reply had been so lame and inadequate it left me ashamed to hear it echo in my memory.

“Good,” the motel manager had told me. “Coffee’s free,” he nodded at the water-stained jug and stack of polystyrene cups by the door. “Just don’t burn your lily lips. Pussy.” Admittedly, his last word may have been something I had imagined. But maybe not. He had turned his back and started to cough, spitting yellow phlegm into the carpet before retreating through his office door. It was hard to understand him through all that wet hacking. Either way, I definitely heard him laughing as I ignored the day-old, lukewarm coffee and left the reception to throw a hot-blooded tantrum in my room.

If I hadn't been so angry I may have taken notice of the fresh vomit stain near the bed that soaked the carpet in the vague shape of the USA. And I did, eventually, about a half hour later when I had finally calmed down. There were partially-digested carrots cut into half coins resting on Florida, New Mexico, and New York. Strangely, there was a chewed up LEGO man too. It wore a cowboy hat and a smile, and lay prostrate right over Chaste, Wyoming. It was bizarre and completely disgusting. I couldn’t fathom how the cleaning staff had missed it. I had to ask myself: does this hellhole even have a cleaning staff?

When the sun started to creep behind the flat horizon I marveled at the featureless plain stretched out before me, a barren nothing bathed in a warm, marmalade glow. It was bland to the point of beauty, like a clean slate, which was exactly what I needed. A fresh start.

I watched, mesmerized, until the sun slipped behind the unbroken, flat line miles and miles away. I continued to gaze, doped up on simple, natural beauty. The deep orange that first captivated me went dark pink, like raw steak, then a rich purple, almost black, like a big, ugly bruise. Suddenly, I had become aware of how long I had been standing there staring, dreamlike, totally vacant. Twenty minutes at least. Probably more. It was almost as if I had entered another dimension. In this new reality, loneliness was palpable.

I turned away from the small window streaked with grime and faced my dismal lodgings. In the dark, I edged towards the bedside lamp and stepped in something cold and soggy, something small and hard. When I turned on the light I groaned in misery. My white sock had turned yellow-brown on the balls of my feet. I could feel the cold vomit between my toes and a soft carrot that had been mashed into my heel. The LEGO man did not break my skin, but it left a red scratch. I peeled off my sock to deposit in the wastebasket, which had not been emptied, which was full of used tissues and empty bottles of cheap whiskey.

I was starting to regret my choice to stay at the Super 8 in Chaste, Wyoming. But I guess this was the point; to elect to suffer; to willingly be punished. I went to take a shower, but abandoned the notion when I saw the mildew colonizing the avenues of grout between the tiles, the tuft of wiry hairs erupting from the drain. I looked in the cracked mirror and saw my drawn, sad face looking back at me, and something else too. Beyond my own miserable visage was something hovering over my shoulder from within the main room.

Slowly, I turned, afraid not to see what I was seeing in the mirror, like a vampire or a ghost which casts no reflection yet is visible otherwise, or in this case, vice versa. I don’t know how I had missed it before, but there it was, as large as a man, though oddly in the detailed shape of a beautiful woman: a wretched, black scar branded over the dirty eggshell wallpaper. At first, I thought it might be some portal into hell itself. But as I stepped nearer and into the light, I saw it for what it was.

Black mold.

It peeled and crisped at the edges, like char from a fire. I’m probably wrong, or had been going crazy, but I swear it pulsated, almost as if the dark mass had been breathing, as if it had a beating heart. How and why it took the shape of a woman was uncanny, but there it was: a silhouette of a true beauty. The stark, pitch outline of a Hollywood actress.

I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to look back to the LEGO man sprawled out in that yellow lake of congealed bile by the bed. Perhaps it had been my attempt to share this unlikely moment with someone, to reach out to anyone other than myself to validate the eldritch horror that I witnessed, to determine that it wasn’t merely a figment of my own delusion. I was desperate, I think, to authenticate the reality of this strange phenomenon of a woman-shaped, black mold mass in my motel room. But just as the lady in black had appeared from out of nowhere, the LEGO man had up and vanished. He was no longer spread-eagled in cold puke on the carpet. He was nowhere in the room, nowhere in sight. Little more than a memory, his tiny figure had been deleted from this world. His infinitesimal legacy, forgotten.

I remembered that black mold can be detrimental to your health. I recalled hearing that breathing it in can be bad for your lungs, that long-term exposure can have a serious impact on your well-being, that the airborne spores can sap your vitality, steal your vigor, eat away at your life force. I wondered, confused, how the hell such a big and ugly thing like black mold could go disregarded in an establishment people paid to stay in. I wondered also, even more perplexed, how such a big and ugly thing like black mold could take the form of an enticing female, how some dirty fungus could look so fine.

I don’t recall crossing the room to take a closer look, but suddenly I was face to face with a midnight figure etched across the filthy wall. A chilly draft exhaled into the room through the water-damaged window which was warped and would not fully shut no matter how hard I shoved down its rotten frame. The icy current unsettled the shredded lace curtains and drifted across the room, causing me to shiver --or was that my nerves turning to ice as I watched the long hair of a woman tattooed on the wallpaper move in the breeze?

Much as I had been bewitched by the blood-red sunset that offered a certain brevity of life to the desolate landscape of Chaste, Wyoming, so too was I held enchanted by the black mold that seemed to fester at my heartstrings. I took baby steps, closer and closer, toward the inky mass that I knew was bad for my health. I inched across the grimy carpet, micro strides no larger than the ginger steps of a bitty LEGO man. I looked into a set of unblinking eyes, two eggshell spheres where the mold had not taken root. I leaned in and kissed black lips, took in a long, black tongue, and my heart skipped a beat. It fluttered. In truth, I think it may have stopped.

I thought of Lisa across the country with her new and improved Chris. I thought of the man I couldn’t be for her, the woman who is exactly who she deserves in her life and now has. I thought of snow-white dogs, big and shaggy like wolves. I thought of black cats, coats as slick and shimmering as oil, dark omens as colorless as black mold. I considered my missed opportunities, my many fuck ups. Then I stopped thinking. I simply gave up, much as I always had before. 

I leaned against the moldering wall of a Super 8 in Chaste, Wyoming, the worst motel in America. I swayed forward, penetrating the decaying partition. I wiggled like a worm as deep as I could manage, the better to burrow within the thin foundation between my room and the next. As if wrapped in a protective cocoon, an ink-black, onyx chrysalis or a gaping, ebony womb, I allowed the dark tendrils of mildew to cradle me, to urge me inward, to spread open so I may enter the wide maw to be engulfed by its featureless, Stygian cavity.

Infiltrating the deep hollow that beckoned, warm and inviting, I smiled, knowing I’d soon become a part of something other than myself. I stepped through the crumbling arches of a gateway to a dark world where I knew I was wanted, or in the very least, tolerated. I allowed myself to be taken, to be gobbled down. I wept with release and purified joy as I was willingly consumed and digested by the cheap, thin walls of the nation’s worst Super 8 Motel. Nestled within, I pulled the ragged opening closed behind me. I drew the two sides taut, like two dark lips pressed together.

As if I was never here at all, there is one less Chris in this world. I am swallowed alive.

 

 

 

 

 

James Callan is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.