Hidden Gifts

Twenty-one

Once again, life was put on slow motion as Carter and Talia fell and just keep falling.

Suddenly time stops.. or is it just them?

They no longer feel the sensation of falling. They just... Stopped. It felt like there was an invisible force that was opposing gravity keeping Carter from falling flat on the pavement and Talia from landing head first.

The force felt like air from the ground pushing them at a particular point that they neither flew up into the sky nor landed on the pavement. The force of gravity and whatever this was cancelled each other out and both of them just stayed there. Suspended in air.

The air slowly reduced and Carter and Talia landed, not so softly on the ground.

"W- what the fuck just happened? Did you do that?" Carter asks Talia still lying on the ground.

"No. It was me." Kim steps out of the shadows and Carter gets up, ready to punch him but Talia holds him back.

"What are you doing here?" Talia asks, she hated being the sensible one; it wasn't her thing but she had too because Kim had just saved them and she needed to know why.

"Devon sent me to track you down, kill him-" he points to Carter "-and bring you back to him." He points to Talia.

"But you didn't do that."

"I couldn't. You guys don't seem like you deserve to die.. at least, not by my hands but he said if I didn't he would do something drastic. I have a wife and two kids back at the sanctuary, we lived in peace before he kidnapped us. I am the protector but I failed. I won't let anything or anyone harm them again and I know if I don't do as he says.. he'll kill them." Kim says.

"What do you suggest we do?" Carter asks.

"I have no fucking clue. I've helped you to my best capability but you can go rent a motel then get the hell out of this town in the morning, I don't think it's safe for you to wander outside at night. It's not like anywhere else is safe because there are different sanctuaries around the country. I'll just tell him I didn't see you guys so move fast before he finds you himself." Kim signals them to get the hell out of her and they run... Again.

"I-" she tries to catch her breath and Carter laughs at her lack of endurance. "-think I see a motel two buildings down." She points at a shabby building with motel written in neon red lights but the letter o flicked on and off as it hung loose, about to fall.

"Well.. it doesn't look like we would be paying too much for it though." Carter shrugs and turns to her with a weary smile.

"Hello welcome to The Nutcracker Motel. A place that you can call home. Yay!" A very bored looking woman with bushy blonde hair and thick red glasses says in a high pitched nasal voice.

"Um.. hi. I'm- fuck!" Talia says as she squashes a cockroach that was crawling up her leg.

"Oh, cockroaches. You'll get used to 'em soon." She says as a cockroach crawls across her face as if on cue.

"We need a room." Carter says.

"A room cost five dollars a night." She says and smacks her gum loudly.

"We'll take it." He hands her the money and she groans before she gets up.

"Let me show you to your room." She has a hunch back which reminds Talia of that assistant in Frankenstein.

"This is the dining area, don't eat the food unless you want to kill yourself." She says as we pass through a room with dim lights and a rusty iron tables and a utensils covered in spiderwebs.

"This is the swimming pool. I wouldn't recommend you go in it unless you want to get pink eye." Carter gagged as he saw what looked like human faeces floating freely on the surface.

"This is your room. Enjoy. Don't sleep on the bed, the bed bugs are as big as cockroaches." She leaves and seems to disappear into the shadows, either that or just bad lighting.

It's a small room with one bed that can contain only one person. It has only one medium sized window so the room is very stuffy and stinky. The bathroom was even worse as poop and blood stains the seat, the walls and.. the roof?

"You can have the bed." Carter offers with a shrug and Talia sees a family of cockroaches hide under the pillow.

This was their home.

"Never mind. The floor looks more welcoming." She says and he chuckles.

"I'm going to get something to eat. You ate all the food I was saving for the next two weeks but it doesn't matter because we'll never be able to show our faces in town again."

"Me not you. I don't want to ruin you life because I was being careless. This is my fault, you can always go back in town if you want to I just don't want you to feel like I'm your responsibility. You don't have to-"

"Talia.. shut up. Every decision I've made was all my choice and I don't feel like you're my responsibility. You're my friend and I'm not leaving you. I am dying of hunger right now so I'm going to go find something to eat." He says.

"In the dining area?" She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow at him.

"Do you want me to die." He chuckles. "Look, I'm going to be gone so we need some sort of passcode in case anyone else other than me tries to come in. If it's me at the door I'll knock once, only once then you open the door. People usually knock twice or three times so it should be easy to decipher."

"Okay." She says and he salutes her with two fingers before closing the door behind him.

Why did she suddenly feel afraid? Because there were a million insects in this place and she constantly felt like there was something crawling up her back.

In what felt like only ten seconds she heard a knock on the door.

It was only one knock.

"That was fast." She says before fully opening the door.

All the air was knocked out of her lungs and her heart dropped to her stomach.