King Acid

8- PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE

Orders in Russian to shut him up had no effect anymore, and they hadn't since the pair fled. Between these narrow walls, surrounded by smells known and unknown floating in the hot air, bombarding his hypothalamus with a plethora of ancient instincts, words couldn't even scratch the surface of his canine subconscious.

Ace began again to bark and moan, to moan and bark, and she wondered why she hadn't taught him an order to put his head inside a toilet. For a moment, she cursed the day she gave that adorable puppy to Skyler as a present almost two years ago.

She ate another snack from the many she bought from the street vending machine to alleviate hunger derived from blood loss, her gaze riveted to the documents sprawled around her. She reread the letters and magazines hectically, jotting down on a white paper all the details that drew her attention. No, not even that; writing literally anything, from numbers to detailed reviews of each picture and footnote. The gradual decline of filters as the hours went by did nothing but remind her she was running out of time and patience. But no matter how hard she looked, nothing contained any cryptographic pattern whatsoever. It only remained for her to assess the last two possibilities: either she had picked up the wrong data, or Colt had lied about the existence of a code embedded in Atticus' correspondence to Skyler Landau.

Come to think of it, she had never heard Skyler speak of Atticus, let alone tell her he had been in contact with him. Landau had a talent that allowed him to decipher any secret, even when he didn't know in advance it was there, so assuming he hadn't figured out the code was less plausible than admitting there had never been any code at all. Whatever the answer might be, she was already doomed, and all that remained for her to do was resign herself to getting caught and sent to the gallows.

She sometimes wondered what horrid thoughts crossed the minds of the condemned, and she had tremendous respect for the prospect of getting under their skin during those moments of fear, nostalgia, and misanthropy. But to her great surprise, she found nothing like that in herself; just a feeling, not of peace, but rather an elegant relief, as subtle as silk, diluted in the infinite feeling of returning home. She took the Bible from the nightstand next to the bed and sat facing the door to await her fate. There was a pack of cigarettes in the table's drawer. It was perhaps too late to start smoking, but bailing on agnosticism and surrendering to Christianity was not so much a change of devotion as an attempt to shoot all her remaining bullets.

She had not yet begun Genesis when someone knocked violently at the door, under which she could see two small shadows skewing the thin line of light above the ground. Even knowing that those punches to the wood marked the end of her life as she knew it, she did not allow herself to panic. She dropped the book resolutely on the bed, walked to the door, grabbed the automatic pistol from the neighboring table, and put her hand on the knob.

Just before twisting it, her body froze for one second. She thought about the ocean. About it merging with the sky.

She couldn't help but thank all the heavens when she opened the door and saw the lady owner of the motel.

"Missy, I told you we don't accept animals here. I've gotten complaints from customers about barking coming from this room."

She raised an eyebrow in a stereotyped gesture to pretend to have a misunderstanding.

"From here? No, I...a dog here? I don't know what you mea—"

At that very moment, a Russian Ovcharka-shaped hurricane jumped on her back and tackled both women to the floor in a manic race toward infinity. She forgot about the landlady, about the sudden pain in her arm and the gun flying through the air, and embarked on an unwavering chase of the dog, obviating the curses at her back.