Pisaries Creator

The raging fire outside could’ve been thousands of miles away. We hadn’t smelled the smoke but soon it would fill our nostrils. We would struggle to breath. The smoke might as well have been a snake sucking the oxygen out of us. We are prey to them. Countless thoughts can cross the minds of men when they only have a handful of breaths left. When a man’s chest is being squeezed to death, the culprit doing the squeezing is usually the female once attached to the man. The relationship between man and woman has always been complicated from the beginning of Christian time. This isn’t a Christian man with Christian problems. This isn’t a man riddled with evil bullets or sharply wicked knives.

Life for him didn’t start the beginning and his death won’t be the true marking of the end. In fact, the man wasn’t sure if he was a man worth any substance. There were snippets of past memories locked in between the ridges in his brain. The only name he recognized as he wrote each letter on a piece of paper when the motel clerk asked him for his identification.

N O A H

His half tongue moved in his mouth to try to formulate words. He knew Noah wasn’t his given name. There was no way he would be associated with this name. Writing the name would take days from his life and that is why he had not said God, Lord, or Jesus when he had a functioning tongue. To say any of these words was forbidden.

The motel clerk took pity on him and gave him a room even though he was short on cash by a dollar. She flashed her pearly white teeth while reaching into her pocket. In her hand was a dollar bill. She placed it on top of the bills he had laid on the counter. She patted the bills with her palm and picked up the cash.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said. “Shit, nothing exciting happens here and I want to keep it that way. I don’t need any rebel like person staying. You’re not a killer of any kind, are you?”

He looked at her and shook his head before turning around and walking in the direction of his room. The motel clerk had her finger pointed in the air when he glanced back. She brought her hand down a few centimeters, raised it higher, and waved.

Noah inserted his key into the hole. He twisted with force and turned the handle. An odor of mildew and stale flatulence entered his nose. He didn’t want to think of the dried fluids and dead skin cells remained on the clean sheets. This never bothered him as it did most people. He was happy to be sleeping on a pillow instead of resting his head on a concrete slab. This night he would rest like a royal, nothing could get in the way except those hunting him. His enemies only wanted to capture him and exterminate him like a cockroach. This disruption to his sleep wouldn’t happen until later.

He was good at what he was trained to do even if he didn’t remember his true name. His strength was in his ability to successfully move quietly without detection. Noah took the time to clean himself and remove as much dirt from his fingers and toes. There was no time to take a shower, that would be done after he filled his stomach. He reached into his tiny bag and removed the near empty knock off brand of cologne and sprayed one pump under each armpit. He gave two pumps at his crotch area. He combed his hair with his fingers and pulled his greasy hair back into a ponytail.

Finding dinner would the easiest part of the night even though restaurants had become stingy with their free handouts. They weren’t willing to offer leftover dinners in Styrofoam containers, but all of them got rid of their food waste at the end of the night. He easily found half eaten sandwiches and salads. Sometimes fully filled high end drinks and barely nibbled on dinners were thrown out by wannabe rich servers. This night he would feast on Italian food complete with bread and ginger ale to wash it down. He held tight on the container and walked away as if he was never there.

Before he got to his room, Noah had shoveled the pasta into his mouth. The quicker he swallowed this discovery, the quicker he could figure out the next step to take. But first he had to take a shower and maybe try to convince the motel clerk to help him.