A Short Story: HUNGER

The drive was monotonous and boring.  The night drizzled a heavy mist that was enough to engage the use of the windshield wipers but not enough to keep them set on their lowest setting.  So every minute or so, the driver had to manually turn the handle for the wipers to swoosh a clear path across the windshield.  This annoyed him severely.

The streets were wet and empty with only the shadows of street lights to fill them in this early morning hour.  Even the radio was having a hard time keeping a signal; the static was erratic on every station.  He had gone through his presets over the last ten minutes to find a clear station and landed on the one with the less static going on-- it just happened to be some hardcore metal station of some kind.  The song screamed something angry.  He couldn't understand the words.  This also annoyed him.  Where was the good music?  The Doors, Creedence, some Motown... He craved for something to calm his drive home.  He flicked the wipers with annoyance and cleared the mist from the windshield.

He felt an unease tonight; a weight that he could not place anywhere else but deep in the middle of his shoulders.

He turned onto a more industrial part of town as always to short cut about five minutes off his way home.  The buildings were mostly abandoned and falling apart.  The whole area had been reclaimed by the city to be fixed up and used as a restaurant and shopping district but no ground had been broken just yet.  It was still a mess.  The rain had gathered enough again and he flicked the wipers once more, this time with a grunt of disgust.

Another song came on the radio (at least he thought is was another song, they all sounded the same to him) and the static increased noticeably.   He took a calming breath in and closed his eyes just briefly to quell his complete agitation with this night and this drive home.  He wanted to scream as loud as he could and thought about it for just one second...

His tire blew, sounding like a shotgun blast.  A huge chunk of the rubber flew off, smacking hard against the underside of the car.  The rim caught the pavement and pulled him hard to the right and into an already damaged curb.  He slammed hard on his brakes and stopped just shy of a brick building and a set of dark windows.  His car sat half off the road and half on the sidewalk in front.  He gripped his steering wheel hard, choking the life out of it, and holding his breath with a welling anger, he chose to scream as hard as he could.  He was pissed, shaking and pounding his fists against the seat beside him and the steering wheel, cursing the whole time.  He could not believe this night was so frustratingly bad.

After he was done screaming, the radio was still on.  He couldn't tell if it was the same song or not, but the static was gone-- just his luck.  He pulled his foot up off the brake and smashed his heel several times into the power knob.  It cracked off, bouncing to the floor boards somewhere on the passenger side and he stopped.

He leaned back into the seat, his face buried deep in his hands, pressed and sliding down the front of his face, trying to calm down.  He took a long, deep breath.  He looked around to see where he was.  The windshield was too wet to see anything clearly so he begrudgingly but calmly clicked for the wipers again.  They swooshed across the windshield and he saw that he had stopped in front of the only building on the block.  It looked like the others had been already torn down in preparation of the city's rebuild but he didn't remember reading about anything starting yet.  There was a decrepit sign hanging askew just above some dark colored double doors.  It said HOTEL.  It was a smaller building and not the grandiose structure one would equate with a hotel by today's standards but this area was established close to the turn of the century.  Everything was smaller then.

He pulled his cell phone out from his pocket, thinking he would call a tow truck or maybe a friend to come get him and they could take care of his car later in the day.  He slid his finger across the security screen and unlocked it.  No signal and a battery with eight percent juice left.  Of course, he thought to himself and put the phone back in his pocket. 

I guess I'm walking home.

He popped his coat collar up and pulled the door handle open.  The heavy mist was cold and hit him hard.  He buried his face deeper in his coat against the wet and kept it tight.  He shuddered and closed the door, then turned walking past the hotel.

He passed the door under the broken sign and heard a very audible and deep groan.  He not only heard it, he felt it.  It stopped him in mid-step and he slowly turned toward the dark colored double doors of the hotel.  His eyes widened and focused in on the dark.  The doors slowly opened and something rumbled the ground-- something groaned again.  He took a careful step back and a high pitched whirring started coming from the opening.  The breeze picked up, blowing from behind him toward the doors.  It became stronger.  He saw the heavy mist not blowing but being sucked in through the doors.  He tried another step but before he could pull his leg all the way back, it was thrust forward.  The whirring became louder and more rhythmic, pulsing.  It was like the hotel was breathing.  

He turned trying to thrust himself into a run but the wind-- the breathing-- intensified and pulled him back, dragging him by the soles of his shoes across the pavement.  He dropped down to his knees, clawing for leverage and anything to grip and pull himself away.  Closer and closer, he was pulled toward the door with every streaming breath.  And then, with a final deep pull, he shot through the darkness of the doorway and was gone.  The breathing slowed.  And stopped.  The dark colored double doors closed with a disturbing silence.

A few days later, a tow truck was called out  by the local police to load up the abandoned car with the blown out tire.  The driver pulled the car back out into the road and chained it up appropriately, locking it onto the back of his truck.  He walked briskly back to the cab against the cool morning air.  He opened the door to get in and he heard a deep groan.  A moment later he heard it again and walked around to the front of his tow truck.  The dark colored double doors slowly opened.  A breeze started to pick up as he took a step forward and looked deep past the doors and into the dark.