sharkemoji

He wakes to the world spinning. 

The walls move counterclockwise. They circle around where he lies on his back in the middle of the bed, sheets surrounding him, holding him against the mattress. Above him, the ceiling light doesn’t move, just flickers on and off with every turn. 

Behind his eyes, something digs into his skull, sharp and dull and painful. He gasps at the soreness but when he tries to lift his arms to rub his eyes, they’re frozen. He can’t lift them off the bed. He’s forced to resign himself to sink deeper and deeper into it, becoming one with the soft sheets. 

The room keeps spinning. It doesn’t stop, even as the sun begins to set and the lightbulb overhead finally dies. Plummeting into darkness feels less startling when you’re being stalked by the walls. It circles him like a vulture circling roadkill, or a hawk searching for fresh meat. The walls growl and bite at him and he thinks the bed must be doing him a favor, holding him hostage like that. 

He lays there for hours, watching the walls turn. The silky feeling of his pajamas against his skin is the only thing reminding him that he chose to get into this bed at one point. He lets the revolutions lull him to sleep, drifts off as they whirl around him. As he slips back into slumber he thinks he must be the eye of the storm. 

Outside, a bell tolls. 

He opens his eyes again and the walls have stopped twirling. He’s greeted with the room he had checked into—when had he checked in? It must not have been too long or else someone would have come to vacate the room. Right? (He tells himself they wouldn’t leave a dead body for too long. Checks his watch but the hands are stuck. He counts to ten and tells himself it’s fine. Time has a funny way of doing things sometimes.) 

There is a balcony at the back of the room. It steps out into the open blue nothingness. Going outside is a bad idea, but he is full of them so he slides open the door and puts his bare feet on the ice-cold concrete ground. Across from him, there is nothing. It's exactly what he expected. Looking to his left and right, he sees the same balconies stretching down down down as far as he can see. 

Somewhere behind him, a crow caws but he does not turn around, just turns his head enough to see the side of the motel out of the corner of his eye.

The walls are stained red and he pretends he does not know why. 

His silk pajamas brush against his toes and he looks down. The cream fabric looks strange, foreign. Unnatural, even. He shrugs and goes back inside. There is nothing out there for him. 

He changes in the middle of the room, as close to the bed as he can. The mattress makes him feel safer. The walls aren’t threatening him anymore, but they still make him nervous. He folds up his nightwear carefully, tucks it away for safekeeping. The rough touch of denim against his legs makes him uncomfortable, but he pulls himself together and digs his fingernails into his palms. He leaves his bag on the bed to wash his face. He debates closing the bathroom door but decides against it. He doesn't trust the walls that much. They drip drool out of their mouths as he leans down to splash the water in his face. The faucet drips down slow and cold and the light flickers. He does not linger. 

While he checks out, he considers asking the man at the desk about the walls. He doesn't. It’s better that he doesn’t know. He does ask how long he has been here. The man looks up bored. 

“A few days,” the owner says, casually, like he hadn't checked in for a single night. “Maybe a week. Not long enough for anything treacherous.” 

He nods in response. Nothing treacherous. 

The watch on his wrist ticks back to life finally, so he does his best to match it to the clock on the wall. It’s unreliable but he takes what he can get. He bids the man goodbye and steps out into the late morning sun. It beats down on him and the dry desert. In the place where his car should be, there is nothing. Nothing treacherous does not mean nothing. It is what it is. There is no road anyways. He steps off the pavement and into the sand. 

A bell tolls again.

The motel fades into the emptiness and he doesn’t look back. That’s always the rule, keep facing forwards. He is usually pretty good at it, at ignoring the temptation, at throwing away the sentimentality. It’s easy when you convince yourself there is nothing to hold on to. 

And there is nothing to hold on to, just vast open space and an ever-changing world. He treks on, as he always does. There is nothing to leave behind when there is nothing behind him, he thinks. He’s right. Even if he were to peak over his shoulder there wouldn’t be anything there for him to catch a glimpse of. Walking off into the desert has always been his best bet. 

Stepping into the city comes quickly like it always does. His shoes meet concrete and suddenly he is surrounded by skyscrapers. They extend for miles behind him and in front of him and on either side, completely enveloping him. Arriving is always a little disorienting, but he doesn’t let it distract him as he makes his way down the street. 

The streets, like most streets, are barren, save a few stragglers making their way in between buildings. He doesn’t stick out in this city, not like he did the last one. It feels more familiar, not quite a place his body already knows but close. It’s a good change from the last metropolis he stumbled upon. At least here the buildings are all upright. 

A beacon invites him down an alleyway, red and charming. It feels right, so he follows it. It glows red like the walls way back in the motel. He pretends again. 

The door opens into a Chinese restaurant. It feels like a familiar scene but he knows he hasn't been here before because he has never turned back. For once, when he enters a room, he isn't alone. A man is sitting at a table on the left side of the room. He is facing the door but he doesn't look up when it chimes. The stranger just keeps looking down at his menu. A dark black cowboy hat sits on the table next to him, and a matching dark jacket is hanging off of the chair. Dark hair falls in his eyes and disguises his identity. 

He feels like he knows him and he can't turn back, so he walks over and sits in the seat across from the man. As he sits, the stranger looks up and smiles shortly, before turning his attention back to the menu. Before he gets the chance to ask, the other man pushes an extra menu towards him. They sit in silence as they flip through pages. The words swim around in front of him like leaves caught up in a breeze. A waiter approaches. 

The man orders first, something he has never heard of before and when the attention turns to him, he hesitates. He lets out a sound of uncertainty and before he can fall, the man sweeps in, still looking at his menu. The waiter nods at whatever he says and takes their menus away. He feels his face burn red. He sinks into his seat and before he can slip away entirely, the man reaches out. 

"Hello," he says. His voice is deep and rough and unfamiliar like denim. "It's been a while." 

"Have we met?" he asks. The digging pain begins again, directing behind his eyes. His vision blurs, he doesn't see the man's frown. The stranger is silent as he pushes his knuckles into his eyes. He just watches as he tries to rub away the pain. When he pulls his hands away, the man is sitting up straight and looking directly at him. The image is blurred by his teary eyes, but he can just make out the feeling of stares on him. If he didn't know better, he would think he was searching. He wonders if there is something behind him. He doesn't ask. 

The moment ends as the waiter returns with what can only be their food. They place down a bowl of what he thinks is soup in front of him and walk away. 

They eat in silence. He does his best not to watch the man, but something is making it hard to look away. Still, he forces his eyes down, trains them on the warm broth in front of him. It isn't until they have finished their meal that the man with the cowboy hat speaks again. 

"No," he says, eyes boring into his face. "No, I suppose we have not met yet. My name is Youngho in this city. You can call me Youngho." 

He doesn't get the chance to respond before he is falling out of his chair. His head hits the ground and as he looks up at the ceiling, Youngho's face looming over him, full of fear and terror—the room begins to spin. He thinks he hears Youngho speaking to someone, maybe him, but he can't make out the words. His head hurts. The room circles him, like it is trying to close in on him and the only thing stopping it is this man with a cowboy hat. As his eyes fall shut, he feels a hand slide underneath his head, fingers carding into his hair. 

Somewhere, in the distance, the bell tolls. 

-

The rain burns his face, hot and acidic. It falls from the open sky and kisses his cheeks as he stirs. The sky above him is clear and blue and the rain falls from nowhere as it travels down to land on him. It stings. 

He gets up slowly, stretching his arms above his head until he feels them pop, then, he stretches his legs and toes and finally, his back. Getting to his feet takes a little longer. He cracks his neck and his knuckles and rolls his shoulders. When he looks around, he is alone, as usual. The emptiness stretches for miles. 

He is wearing the clothes he remembers, the same scratchy jeans and the plain t-shirt he had pulled on. Everything seems to be in order. Except. His bag is missing. 

It shouldn’t be a major loss really, but for some reason it’s unsettling. He’s uneasy with the idea of losing it. His knees are shaky and he stumbles. He feels so much more disoriented than he usually does when he wakes up. The sunstorm soaks him entirely, drenches his clothes and hair and bare skin. 

It should burn but it doesn’t.