Protecting Dallas

DALLAS

Maddox was right; it was a shitty place. A shitty room in a shitty strip of a shit motel, in the shittiest part of—

“Here, go get ice.”

He handed me a thin plastic bucket with a crack down one side. I laughed in his face.

“Alright,” he sighed, taking back the bucket. “I’ll get the ice.”

The moment he left the room I flopped onto the bed. We were in one of those theme motels. The room we’d taken was one of the last two left: the ‘Hawaiian Getaway’.

I stared up at myself in the mirrored ceiling, then turned my head to see the rest of the amenities. The walls were wallpapered with beautiful beach scenes and ocean horizons. Or at least they were beautiful… about twenty years ago. Now they were faded with time and peeling at the edges.

Hawaiian getaway, I laughed to myself. Holy shit.

There was a poorly-made Tiki bar at one end of the room. A fake palm tree standing in the far corner. It was so plastic and ratty-looking I didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or wrinkle my nose up at all the dust.

Hey. At least you’ll be safe here.

That much I was fairly sure of. The Hawaiian room of the Fantasy Eighteen was probably the last place on Earth anyone would ever hope to find us, including ourselves. If the bad guys could somehow track us here, they deserved to have us.

“Ice machine’s broken,” Maddox announced, letting himself back in. He closed the door and engaged the deadbolt. “Vending machine stuff is cold, though.”

He held up a pair of bottled waters and half a dozen little bags of pretzels and chips. Shit, it was better than nothing.

“Thanks.”

We divided the spoils. Filled our bellies. Ten minutes later we were laying on our backs, staring at ourselves in the mirrored ceiling. We caught each other’s eye… and both broke out laughing at the same time.

“We’re really fucked, aren’t we?” I asked eventually.

“Sure looks that way.”

I sighed, grateful for the honesty. “Well at least we’re in paradise.”

It was a stress breaker. A mood changer. Between this, and the fifteen-minute walk we’d just endured, I was feeling somewhat good again.

“This is hands down the best Hawaiian Getaway room I’ve ever been in,” Maddox quipped. He coughed. “The cleanest too.”

I turned to him and giggled. “Yeah, well you haven’t seen the bedding yet.”

“Oh?”

I nodded. “Even the stains have stains.”

He laughed again. “That’s fucking disgusting.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

He kept on going, unable to control himself. I watching him laugh until tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “Shit, I don’t even know.”

The whole thing became infectious, and soon we were giggling together like teenagers. In a way it was cathartic. A release of emotions and adrenaline, at the end of a very long, really strange day. He was doing it to cheer me up. To make me feel safe again, despite the horrendous shit I’d just been through.

And it was working.

Eventually Maddox propped himself up on one elbow. The laughter died away, and he looked at me with grim seriousness from his side of the bed.

“Look, Dallas. I want you to know I’m sorry.”