Cheap yellow hotel light feels like it’s heating my scalp as I stare at the digital characters on the ATM. Money drops down and feels fuzzy in my hand. I look at it and actual fuzzy ridges grow out of the face and undulate like purple grasses blowing in the wind. I put the bill into my metal wallet and slam it shut, producing a puff of purple smoke that makes me laugh. Then I look up at a little plastic doll sitting on the edge of the ATM. Plastic pink and blue skirt, huge, staring eyes. Plastic arms reaching out. I glance around- who could have just put this there? Marble hotel floors reflect yellow lights, pillars, a hotel valet in a light blue suit far at the other end crosses.

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It made him jump again. 4:45 in the morning, not officially awake, steps slurring together on a half-sleepwalk to the bathroom something black right outside the frost-covered window. Some kind of bird but it looked too evil for closer inspection. Shower first.

He couldn’t get it off his mind in the steamy shower, kept looking over the curtain to make sure it hadn’t somehow phased through the glass into the house. Nothing out there but steam and towels, sleep-shirt in a pile on the tile floor. Washing his hair he had to check again. Still no bird in the bathroom. Stop checking. He tried reading the directions on the shampoo bottle to get his mind off it. The tongue-in-cheek stylized writing did not help. Still spooked, paranoid. Let’s get out of the shower. Hate being trapped in a small room.

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Blood positively gushed down Ray’s upside-down head and he could barely see. He unhooked his seat-belt but didn’t drop down: he was wedged in there. He spun his head around and flailed his arms, blood spattering in all directions. Then he just hung there. It was his legs. They were caught up in the folded steel. He swung this way and that, trying to free himself. Nothing. More blood came down. He strained against the metal, pushing with bloody hands. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter fell down from his pocket. He reached for them and got a blood-smeared cigarette into his mouth. He just got hold of the lighter when he threw it down again, thinking better of lighting up. Blood was pulsing in his temples and thumping in his brain. He twisted around. Then he reached over and turned the radio knob- would the radio still work?

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