motel pool

I'm laying in the motel pool and it's one of those days those meterologists let you dream about.
Ice cold beer and a sun making you sweat, salty tears on your body, the taste of paradise. I'm sitting in a chair that floats and it has one of those beer drink holders as you float and tan. Paradise. I let my sunglasses talk for my eyes. A black eye last night from a bar fight, but let's not get into that right away, lets just float.

I came here looking for answers, to find myself and find a whole lotta cash to get me there. And all I've found was a pack of cigarettes and a 12 pack. It's okay, I abandoned my car about 10 miles from here. No gas. How could I be so stupid? Adolescent behaviour in my thirties. Hold on a sec, gotta grab another beer.

This pool is as big as the ten miles I walked to get here. Gargantuan, huge, massive. I see something moving beneath me, a shadow 20 feet below. I splash around, maybe it was just the sun or the concussion from last night. Either/or something is fishy. I see a fin appear above water. Fuck, the salt wasn't from my forehead. The fin is heading towards me now at a speed I cannot comprehend, so I ditch the chair, the beer and my sunglasses and pressure swim to the side stairs. This thing is hunting me. I climb out of the pool and look back. No fin, no fish, nothing hunting me.

I walk into the quaint, almost empty lobby in my piss soaked bathing suit.

"There's something in the water," I declared, "it's hunting people."

"Oh you mean Lino. Hell, I caught that sonabitch great white 30 years ago," says the manager.

"It was there and I know it. I FELT it," I said.

"No, looky. I got his head right there. Right above when yous walked in," says the manager.

Above the door, a chalky white skull. Bones of a great white. Teeth as sharp as obsidian. The mouth gapes open for one last scream. I feel delusion, scared, sick, tired and the piss in my bathing suit is beginning to smell.

"I reckon you sleep it off, friend. Whatever you boys did last night, hell, don't matter to me, but I know as hell you've been hallucinating on a 30 year old dead fish," says the manager.

Fuck, he's probably right. The absinthe, rum, vodka, wine, beer, funnels, kegstands. Goddamn first year college bullshit. By myself. Looking for my lady in the night. Any lady. Someone to help me find myself. Better off relax in the room and sleep off some of this hangover.

I look over at the pool and the chair is gone, nowhere in sight. It can't be the shark. It couldn't. I fall asleep and I dream of the shark. Waking up in more piss and then I light a cigarette.

Definitely shouldn't have gotten drunk last night.