An Empath In India

Chapter 2 - Motel' Der'Mo

Josh Pierce awoke at the sound of a door near him opening.  Before he even got so far as opening his eyes, he could hear someone breathing heavily.   The sound made Josh’s head pound, which was only worse when the person started screaming at him in Russian.

As Josh opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was how bright it was.  The sun poured in the room with the strength of a laser.  Between the headache and the pain in his eyes, he only vaguely noticed the pain the rest of his body was in.  He put his hand down to try and pick himself up off the ground, and accidentally placed it in a giant bucket of what, he hoped, was water.  He pulled out his soaking wet hand and shook his arm to try and get it dry.  He placed his hand on the ground, this time looking first, and picked himself up.  He let out a soft moan as his head hit a shelf, causing a loud bang.

He again noticed the incessant ramblings of the lady at the door.  She was an older lady, but not ancient by any means, wearing a flower print dress that stopped mid-calf.  Her black sneakers were clearly intended for comfort, not appearance.  She had curly grey hair and one of the largest noses Josh had ever seen.  He assumed the a bright red of her skin wasn’t her natural color and was in fact a side effect of her evident irritation.

Even though Josh didn’t speak Russian, he could clearly tell she was annoyed.  His immediate reaction was to be annoyed in return.  She’s the one that barged into my room, he thought, indignantly.  He had ended up at the Motel’ Der’mo late last night, and paid for a room, after another fruitless day of waiting.  As he looked around the room though, he was quickly able to discover why the old lady at the door was so irritated by his presence (and why there was a bucket of dirty water on the ground and his arm).

He wasn’t in his room.  In fact, he wasn’t in a room as much as a broom closet.  Somehow this piece of information made perfect sense to Josh, and as if it poked a hole in a dam, the memories of last night came flooding into his mind.

He had indeed arrived here late last night after a long night of drinking.  He had come to Siberia to follow a lead, an email from a friend in India who had intercepted a strange satellite image.  The image showed an odd mass headed toward Earth.  Back-tracking through other satellites that Josh had access to (more or less legally), he had found that the object had adjusted its flight path over that last 6 months to avoid the farther planets of the solar system, but maintained a more-or-less straight path to intercept Venus.

It had been a lot of work, and the information from any one satellite wouldn't have been enough to raise alarms.  In fact, it wasn't until Josh had pulled the images from four different satellites with different types of imaging (infrared, radar, optic and X-Ray) that even he was willing to get his hopes up.

That was three months ago, and the path of the UFO (which, despite the connotation was the only description that made sense for what was truly an unidentified flying object) had remained unaltered.  Then, about a month ago, the UFO was hit by a meteorite, causing it to veer off course slightly, which, in the immensity of space, was more than enough for its destination to be entirely changed.

Josh had done all the proper calculations and determined that the mass would land 20 miles outside the city of Yakutsk, Russia.  He had monitored the object for another two weeks before purchasing his ticket, but eventually he made his way to the landing site, sure that he was going to be the first person seen by an alien spaceship.

That was almost a week ago, and so far, Josh had spent a large number of hours in a field.  By himself.  His travel fund was now exhausted, and that meant it was time to go home.  He had bought his plane ticket home last night and then found a bar, and the bottom of a glass.  And another.  And another.  And still another.  After that, things got a little, shall we say “fuzzy” for Josh.

He vaguely remembered stumbling across the street, paying someone for a room, and making it to said room.  Clearly, that last part did not go as well as he remembered.  He must have walked into the first door he thought was his room, which actually turned out to be a broom closet.

Were he not so undeniably, and painfully, hung over he might have taken a moment to ponder if it was a sign of bad life choices that he woke up in the broom closet of a crappy motel in Siberia.  Instead, as he was terribly hung over, he found the mop bucket again and proceeded to throw up into it.  And again.  And again.

His head buried in the bucket, he didn’t notice that the screaming woman had left until his stomach was thoroughly emptied.  He walked out of the broom closet, shielding his eyes from the painful glare of the sun, and looked around.  He was indeed at a run-down motel.  The paint on the walls was chipped and faded where it was even present.  The walls were full of holes that to Josh looked like they were made by bullets.  Many of the rooms had what were clearly not the original doors, and some weren’t even doors at all, just unfinished sheets of plywood mounted to hinges.  The vast majority of the windows he could see were at least cracked, and many were simply plastic sheeting duct-taped over gaping wounds in the decrepit building.

He dug in his pockets, hoping to find a key with a room number so that he could at least take a shower.  He found one, and was able to make out a “3” on the worn plastic keychain attached to it.  He looked at the wall of doors in front of him and found the one with a hastily painted “3” on the top.  Of course it would be one of the planks of plywood, he thought.

He opened the “door” and stepped inside.  As he looked around, rubbing his sore back with his hand, he realized that the broom closet he slept in probably wasn’t much worse than the room he had actually paid for.  At least the broom closet had the materials available to make it clean, he thought with a sarcastic laugh.

He took a quick shower, in cold water since there didn’t seem to be any hot water to be had, and was toweling himself off before he realized he didn’t have any clean clothes with him.  With little other option, especially since he wasn’t entirely sure where his car was, let alone his suitcase, he put the clothes he had been wearing back on.  Sadly, despite the fact that he had slept in a broom closet and thrown up again after getting to his actual room, his clothes still smelled better than the towel he had just dried off with.

As he zipped up the cheap leather jacket over his “It’s A Trap” T-shirt, he tried to remember where he had parked his car last night.  All he could remember was he had gone to a bar with some Russian name, which was not terribly helpful since he was in Russia.  He knew that it couldn’t be far though because he walked here last night, so he went into the parking lot of the Motel’ Der’mo to try and find a bar nearby, and hopefully his car.  Luckily, there was a bar directly across the street, and he could even see his car in its parking lot.

As he sat in the driver’s seat of the rental car, his phone rang.  After quickly trying to rub away the pounding the sound caused in his head, he looked at the phone to see who was calling.  It was his friend Nevin Hofstra, the same friend who lead him to Siberia in the first place.  He let the call go to voicemail, not only because he didn’t want to talk to Nevin, but also because he couldn’t afford the international call.  I’ll check the voicemail when I get home, he thought as he drove off to the airport.  How important can it be?

Of course, as is always the case in such obviously setup plot moments, Josh couldn’t have been more wrong.