The Metric Issue 08 - Literary Magazine

of elation near. In the past, whenever that happened, it was always an omen of either A) misfortune B) disappointment or C) a miraculous screw-up on my part.

Time would prove it to be D) All of the above, in the great multiple choice test of Life.

We had agreed to meet at midnight but I, predictably, was there early. The hotel was easily found and one look at the place proved conclusively that there was nothing ironic about its moniker. Cheap Hotel was exactly what it sounded like: an inexpensive hotel of the shabbiest grade. The place seemed to have been built by either the most half-assed construction crew in the county, or a pack of well-trained bums, not quite at the shantytown level but not too far off either. It was a ratty building, with the second story added as an afterthought to the first. The walls were painted a tired dark green, and the brass railings stood alongside the walkways feebly. The sun was starting to droop, and it cast an ill brown-orange on the chewedup construct. Intermingling with the air was a tang, an aura of desperation and failure–partly borne from the knowledge that people successful, happy, or fulfilled had never been within a ten-mile radius of the place.

The walkways were empty and the rooms themselves showed no sign of habitation, adding to the vile mys55