Dangle

He sits in the hotel room, and waits.

What he's waiting for, he couldn't tell you. Does he wait for a person? For an experience? For some confusing combination of the two? He doesn't know. What he does know is that the door is four feet from the foot of the bed. The bed is set in the middle of the wall. Above it hangs a landscape of a place that probably never even existed.

He knows there is a lamp on the right side of the bed- behind him to the left, since he's staring at the door. The lamp has one burned out bulb, but it still casts enough amber light to make him feel he's somehow stumbled into a photograph from his childhood.

Not that his childhood ever contained moments like this one. He hopes no one's did.

Is he waiting for more words? For more silence? A confession or a lie? He doesn't know. What he does know is the weight of the gun against his chest, comforting in its heaviness, like a heart much accustomed to pain. But a gun can be un-holstered, and put to work.

He sits in the hotel room, and waits.

(Dangle)