“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Three-hundred fifty-six miles away, somewhere in the armpit of the Hudson Valley – more like a rat-hole, a stagnating dumpster on the edge of a bog – I’ve found myself rotting with corpses. Rolling with the macabre isn’t totally foreign to me.  I thought, if I couldn’t afford Ibiza, and haven’t been invited onto Leo DiCaprio’s yacht yet, I could at least go have lunch at the Hotel Chelsea. After the Chateau Marmont, after New Orleans, I needed to commune with the spirits of writers again. Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Tom Wolfe all lived at the Hotel Chelsea, among many others. 

I thought I was going to the Chelsea Hotel, but I wound up in Hell. 

I had another whole other story in medias res. ( That will come out soon, stay tuned). But this dark, cautionary tale is one of necessity. I didn’t go looking for this haunting experience, dear reader. It found me. Like a nocturnal witch looks for her next coffin-shaped manicure, tweaked-out on fossil fuels and searching for a scratching post, I too find myself driven by the desire to tell the tale of What Happened to Me in Newburgh. 

I get ill just typing that word – “Newburgh.” 

Once known as the “Queen City of the Hudson.” Newburgh was rated by “Neighborhood Scout” back in 2012 as the 10th worst place to live in the United States and more dangerous than 95% of U.S. cities based on FBI crime Data. according to the “Newburgh documentary” on Newburgh Actor Studio’s YouTube. A city destroyed by Urban Renewal in the 1970s;  a blighted waterfront as corrupt politicians lined their pockets.

This isn’t written by AI, FYI.

Driving, driving, and more driving,

I stop at Cold Spring Apothecary for a therapeutic blowout. (Did you know Anna Delvey and Kelly Cutrone are shacking up here as we speak?) Finally, my mid-2010s GPS says I’m a mere seven minutes away.  Sigh of relief.  There’s an airport in Newburgh, and the landing strip is right here across the street, ironically.  I drive some more through streetlights and cadre of insipid workers commuting home.

 This can’t be right. 

The parking lot is full, and I’m starved. Another homemade pizza slice with ricotta and artichoke later, and I’m getting my bags including my laptop from the trunk and hoisting them over my shoulder.  A family of 10-12 idles near their station wagon.   Surely, this is a posthumous joke from Eddie, that my hotel is run by Jehovah’s witnesses, the bastard.  At least it looks busy and clean with people in suits milling about. They can’t force me to become a Jehovah’s witness in order to stay here, can they?

“Beep.” I’m met with a sliding glass door, and it’s shut. 

“You can’t come in.” A smug boy with smoothed hair stares out from the lobby. He presses his speaker-buzzer with another guy in a suit sitting there on a laptop. Ahh. The wi-fi, the baristas, the bathrooms, yes, I can taste it all now –

“Isn’t this the Newburgh Inn?” I plead, puppy dog eyes fully engaged. 

“No, this isn’t a hotel.” That little smug fuck presses his speaker-buzzer shut.  In an inmate, no, an outmate – this can’t be right. Maybe the Newburgh Inn, used to be here, but moved. God I hope it’s close. 

I call the number in my cell from yesterday. I’d be lying if I said the anxiety wasn’t already setting in yesterday when I realized A) I’d never heard of the Newburgh Inn; and B) they got a 2.6-star Google rating.  I’d hardly vetted the place, except by location and proximity to the train station. A slight accent of Eastern Europe picks up dimly, elegantly, on the other end, in no rush at all.

“Newburgh Inn.” 

“Hi, I called yesterday, ” I’m crouched on the floor of the clammy vestibule, automatic doors swishing around me – “I’m trying to check in – and my GPS took me to a Jehovah’s Witness place!”

“Oh, yeah.  A lot of customers today been saying that.”

“What’s your address?!”

“It’s only 30 seconds away. Just take a right at 7-Eleven.” 

Around the block, past Applebee’s and Marshalls, he wasn’t lying. A big roadside sign bearing Gothic font stares out with “NEWBURGH INN” in curlicue letters, and Valu Home Center letters pasted haphazardly underneath spelling out the words “N E W R O O M S”

I drive up a winding, potholed-riddled driveway, crunching over gravel, around a doomed cul-de-sac sadly without a valet, and traipse, wearily, through a big, dusty rose lobby, a shade that in a hazy stupor could be confused for millennial pink.  There’s a round sofa in the middle and no one else around. All is quiet. I clutch my duffel bag, laptop, and shuffle up to the front desk. Behind the desk are a Mediterranean-looking man with gelled, black curls and a tan complexion leaning against the wall. Next to him, holding onto a landline phone with tangled cord, is a lackluster office manager, who lost her fight with a dismal flight attendant-style necktie which hangs limply around her neck. 

“I booked the room online,” I tell them, pulling out my ID and Visa. Outside, the clouds fuse together and decide in unison to suddenly downpour, pummeling the front glass floor-to-ceiling windows. Wind blows the monsoon to-and-fro.  Cars in the lot become obscured by the fountain. My electric blue Scion is just a mirage, what Boss Ross would describe as a “happy blur” on the waterfall landscape.

“Whoa. I’m lucky I got here when I did.”

“You should try one of our new rooms,” says the weary-eyed manager.

“Isn’t that what I booked?” 

“No,” she says, “we are renovating room by room.” 

“Are they the same price?”

No. $135 more,” says the Mediterranean man

“Oh. No thanks.”

I’m sure the room is fine.  not to state the obvious, but I’m a writer. I’ve stayed at all kinds of wayward roadside motels: the Red-Carpet Inn in Albany, America’s Best in Lakewood, Ohio, Meadow Court Inn in Ithaca, Windsor Motel in Philipsburg that I rolled into on a lark when visiting an incarcerated pen-pal, and of course, the infamous Towpath Motel in Rochester – all the motels I’ve known and loved. Surely, the Newburgh Inn will become an addition to the list.

“$309.95,” she says, and after a pause. “We have to put on $100 for incidentals.” 

“Oh, right.” I’m already signing the waiver with my own pen. “Here you go.” 

“We have a night club here,” the Mediterranean man with gelled curls intones. “No food, just drinks. And a DJ.”  

“Really, a DJ? Nice.”

“On Fridays and Saturdays only,” says the office manager.

But sadly, it’s only Wednesday. 

“OK, well, I’m ready to see my room.”  

The Mediterranean man unfolds an umbrella and slowly walks alongside me, under a decomposing green awning growing along the periphery of motel rooms like moss. The monsoon has subsided, but it’s still raining, drops plopping onto the ground.   Grass shoots through cracks in the sidewalk. A stagnant pool full of ribbiting frogs anchors the courtyard. Eventually the seemingly hospitable proprietor unlocks room 103. 

Inside, it’s a normal motel room with gray walls, flatscreen tv, and a really hard, uncomfortable-looking bed. Well gosh, it will certainly do. 

“So, this is it?” I’m setting my duffel bag and other crap on the chairs by a round, wooden table. 

“No, this is the new room,” he says.  Outside, rain washes the windows, clean and effervescent.  A short pause. 

“Ok, this is all very nice..” I trail off, “I’d like to see my room now.” 

 The time is after 8 p.m. 

We leave the building outlining the periphery of the stagnating pool and walk underneath a tunnel with another emerald green awning plagued by holes, totally in shreds and  deteriorating, cloth still bearing the expired promise of “Restaurant and Lounge,” leftover from some honeymoon destination this place once was, before this place was bought by new owners for the purposes of “renovation.” 

Little did I know that such renovations weren’t complete. 

“I’m David,” the man tells me, exhaling from a long cigarette.  David  leads me to another separate building in the very back of the premises and unlocks the door of room 154. Taupe drapes vaguely conceal the interior of 154, with a giant picture window and air conditioner and little end table next to the bed. The rug is red, blood red. There’s no other cars parked outside of it. Just a dark dumpster swathed in black, burbling potholes and sewer grates alongside the outdoor-facing motel rooms. 

As I enter room no. 154 behind David, I’m hit with the smell of something sour, something smoky, something dead. 

Other motels where I stayed didn’t have this smell. It’s as if someone mopped the floor with formaldehyde. It’s the scent equivalent of a Cramps album. Maybe it’s as if there’s a closet full of jars of eyeballs somewhere. 

There’s the distinct hint of old gym towels, yes, laced with really, really wet bathing suits left in the trunk of a car, alongside a dead body on incinerated, bloodstained upholstery.

“If you need anything, call the front desk,” David is heading out into the damp, starless night. “We’re here til midnight.” 

With a creak, the door shuts behind him. Alone again.  I shuffle across the thinly-carpeted concrete floor in my socks – is that a crack etched across the entire tile? – to lock the door behind him. It locks with a single bolt, as well as a flimsy chain.

 I go outside to get more stuff from my car, and stupidly realize I locked my only keycard inside the room. Ugh! I drive around to the front desk. 

“I’m sorry, I locked myself out.” 

It’s rainy, I’m wired, yet weary. “Cell phone…”

David stares back at me like an owl, mouth slightly agape.

“Don’t let it touch your cell phone.” 

I examine the white card in my hand, “Oh. right.” 

Back at Camp Termite the room is really dim. After doing a cursory examination, I realize this must be because all I have is a low-hanging lamp with one flickering, dusty bulb.  It’s cold in here, the AC is cranking in Camp Termite, propelling a chronically chemical smell into the air. Outside, it’s deathly quiet –not even traffic, or ambulances, or police sirens or — David knocks on my door and brings forth a single lightbulb. 

“Do you have the wi-fi password?”

I’m booting up my laptop on the round, wooden table. Thank God it still works and didn’t get rained on – to connect and share my plight with the outside world on Facebook. Alas! I’m safe! Right? After the Jehovah’s Witnesses, surely my trip is on the up-and-up. 

It’s nights like this that I should pray to whatever is out there – God, my sponsor, the deathly darkness. It’s so quiet here in the room that isn’t quite a room – it’s just then I notice there’s blood on the lampshade. I wish I were kidding. 

The time is a little past 10. I take my phone outside to do some urban exploring by the pool. As I walk up the narrow sidewalk, behind me, an Afroed girl of about forty is outlined by the shadows. 

“You OK?” She’s looking out for me. Concerned. 

“Oh yeah. I’m just going to take a picture to send to my boyfriend.” 

“There’s nothing round here to look at girl,” she says.

“I wanted to sleep on the new side, but the manager wouldn’t let me,” I tell her. 

 I turn my head, but she evaporates into a misty cloud. Poof. 

Why am I here? Down-and-out with nowhere to run? 

Back in the room, the milky stucco walls close around me like a cocoon. It’s time to turn in for the night.  The tiny bathroom is horrifically frightening, with cigarette burns around the tub. The bathroom door doesn’t close; it’s totally pulled back against the wall with some kind of giant rubber band and secured by an angry ghost to not allow for any privacy, from myself. The sink drain is completely open – exposing the dark, far-reaching depths of the earth.  Same with the tub: no plug. Not to mention, the ceiling seems to be collapsing in on me as we speak. 

Click. Time to get some shut-eye, like Uncle Ky-Ky used to my say to me, my neighbor friend, oh how I miss him, and all my other friends back home – I hope they will be able to hear my screams. I’m sitting upright with my arms folded on top of the sheet.  There’s no blanket, and I’m freezing.   I better charge my phone.

Padding across the tissue-thin carpet on the concrete floor, again, I reach out for my phone charger in the dark, plugged into the outlet above the sink. My hand brushes against something soft. It falls to the floor, brown and wiggly, and I turn on the light and a cockroach scurries into the bathroom!

“AHHH!” I scream, grab my duffel bag and laptop and toss everything into my car again.

“David, David it’s me –” I’m shaking, sobbing into my cell as I drive around to the front desk in my PJ boxers.   “You have to help me. There – there was a cockroach in my room.” 

The time is about 11:45, and I just reached the front desk in time. 

“Please, please I need the new room,” I sputter and shake. 

David stays calm and leads me back to the condemnable structure at the very back of the premises.  David takes me three doors down to Room 151.

“But I — but — but what if —” I’m looking over my shoulder at 154, at whatever shreds of sanity I’ve left behind. 

“Let me give you my cell phone,” David says, as I scribble his number in my agenda book. And before I can continue to protest, he walks off into the night, leaving a smoke trail behind him from his long cigarette. 

Room 151 isn’t any better than the other one, I quickly realize. Pacing back and forth outside didn’t help. Afro girl from earlier is cozy down by the dumpster, soft glow of a TV flickering. Two young guys peel into the lot in a pickup, head in and out of the room just as quick.  I go inside and turn off the AC and decide to keep the bathroom light on all night and the light over the sink.  I stuff a crusty bath towel into the sink drain, and into the bathtub’s drain, too. 

Sometime around 2:00 a.m., I am still up and grinding my teeth in the freezing room. A dim bulb hangs beside me theatrically.  The blanket is as thin as the edge of a razorblade, and about as comfortable, so I just sit on the bed with my clothes on with a blanket pulled up to my chin.

I checked “Starbucks near me” and am relieved to discover it’s less than a half mile away and opens at 5 a.m. Just three more hours….I pass out from terror.

My eyes snap open sometime around 5 or 6, so I head out to my car to smoke a butt. You know what to do, my inner voice leads. Remember when Pete would sleep in his car and shower at the truck stop? You got this. 

 I throw my toothbrush, clean underwear, and Victoria’s Secret mist into my tote and try to fake a cheery smile.

“Hey, good morning,” I’ve recently taken to wishing everyone good morning. “Shaken oat milk espresso please.” 

It’s freezing in Starbucks as well, with metal rectangular chairs that scrape across the floor with a screech.  Normal, normal, it’s all so normal. I boot up my laptop to shoot off another missive.

Not even 24 hours away from home and it’s all condemned…there was a roach in my room and  I need a friend…vamanos…la cucaracha…anybody out there? But I don’t expect a response. I don’t expect anyone to be out there at this hour, in the too early morning when the insane haven’t slept and the sane haven’t waked and I’m crouched on the curb like a bug. 

The sun is too bright already and my skin is dry. My mouth has that tragically too familiar mothball sensation of not having slept a wink.  Why the hell am I sleep deprived and destitute — and dehydrated, too. Now here I sit, in the castoff glare, shut out of society.

“Please David, I need help,” I begin to sob, ugly crying on the inhospitable patio outside Starbucks. “It’s worse than ever — gag, snot, hiccup. I really need my money back.”

“Meet me at the desk at 8am,” says David. I hang up the phone. 

A ray of sunshine lazers in on my face, baking in the sun as I crunch through the cul-de-sac. My heeled boots stick into the muck. 

“Hi, good morning,” I’m noticing a trend here. “Is David here? There’s a problem with the room.”

A Latine lady with kind eyes is on the other side of the desk where the night managers once stood only a few hours ago. She’s petite and welcoming.  

“There was a cockroach in my room,” I spill, “and so David gave me a new room, but it was just as scary, I swear – nobody should be living or staying in those rooms.”

Her eyes are big; round; watery. Looking at me with sympathy. I crumple onto the dusty rose banquette, sobbing. 

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” she implores. “We can just cancel on Expedia.” 

“OK, sure, I can just log in…”

“I’ll call the owner.” 

“Is David the owner?”

“No…” 

I retreat to a musky-floral armchair. 

“She is panicking…” she puts her hand over the receiver, and I go back to my phone. Of course I can’t cancel; I’m already here. I’m already checked into the House of Horrors. 

Behind me, a bathroom swathed in funereal candlelight. Inside, it’s a musty relic of time, bitter, dusty, and decrepit. I take full advantage of the selfie mode in the wide mirror taking up the whole wall: Motley Crue sawed-off tee, Starbucks cup melting on the rose vanity in the stagnating powder room. I feel like I’m hiding away from a wedding reception in 1977. Where’s the powder puffs and gold lighters? 

Back in the lobby, the kind girl beckons me over. 

“The owner says you can have the new room, and won’t charge you anything more, or you can get a refund.” 

I contemplate my options. Sure, I could clear out. I don’t have a backup plan, but there’s gotta be another place around here somewhere. But what if it’s even worse than the Newburgh? If there’s one thing I know, it’s that what goes up must come down, and on the off chance you wind up totally down and out with nowhere to run, getting up again can be a challenge, what, with a slew of bad luck and apparent homelessness and charged $400 to be here at this point. The kind lady takes me back to room 103. 

In the early morning light, room 103 looks amazing, even better than last night. The room doesn’t reek of death, the walls aren’t damp, and the bathroom is new with a functioning shower and plugs in the sink and no burn holes from beyond the grave. Yes, I’ll take it! 

“We booked this room for $200 before,” she tells me, “This weekend’s all booked.” 

I sit on the bed. Ahh. The cool, clean air from the AC blows on my face, chilling my tears away. Opening the drapes across the huge front picture window, the fluorescent sunshine makes the mossy pool key lime. Finally, I take a shower.  

“Isn’t there a beach around here?”  I run into the Latina lady along the exterior corridor, coming out of a side room that upon looking over her shoulder, is filled with piles of dirty, rose-colored bedding covering the floor in heaps. A chihuahua runs out of the room.  She empties his water bowl onto the lawn. 

“No. I don’t know.” 

“I read about one half-an-hour away, I inform her. “In Stony Point.” 

“Oh really? Have fun,” she says.

I cover my laptop and duffel bag with a sheet from the room, because people can see right in through a slot in the curtains. I actually put my samples from Detox Market and Sephora around the sink, cute mini peppermint Dr. Bronner’s too. I’ll be back here later. Let’s just take it one step at a time. One foot in front of the other.  I disseminate another message to back home – everything’s fine, found a new pad, but why do I get the sensation that I’m going mad?

The drive to Stony Point turns out to be through Bear Mountain State Park, past a graffitied, disenfranchised state hospital for the mentally insane, West Point Academy training barracks, up steep hills, and through a forest with incredibly fresh verdant air, purified. The wood isn’t the only thing petrified. When I spot the “Tuxedo Motel,” I clock it as a backup.

But it looks just as junkie and just as funky, and when I finally reach Lake Welch Beach, parking is only $10.00 for the day including re-entry. The mercury rose to above 90 degrees, without much shade or solace, but the water is free. There’s even vending machines and a beachside boutique schilling $20 Hawaiian Tropic. But I just park my booty on the sand and swim with the Spanish-speaking locals, read a mag, and contemplate life back at Camp Termite. Am I safe? Can I stay the night? 

I’m hungry and have to eat (I haven’t since yesterday). So I maneuver downhill to someplace close – Lynch’s on the Green.  It’s a swanky spot on a golf course, burgers and carnivorous options aplenty. My tummy growls.  In the parking lot, a sign reads “Park at your own risk” due to flying balls presumably, but I’ve been parking at my own risk for a long as I can remember. If my sawed-off Motley Crue tee and sateen ruffle shorts do not scare everyone away, there might be a chicken sandwich in my future. 

Inside Lynch’s, its two snowy guys with pinot grigios talking balls and holes and whatever golfers talk about. A kind down-to-earth lady is at the end of small little bar with a coffee pot. There’s cute wood signs and shamrock wallpaper and the Paris Olympics on TV.  I sit down at the bar, feeling calm. “Can I charge my phone?” Eating will do me good, I haven’t since that wilted lettuce at Applebee’s. I just need some juice in my trusty Samsung.

Turns out, the chicken sandwich was a fine choice. It’s reminiscent of a torta with a pressed bun and creamy coleslaw. To my left, an elegant Japanese couple; they share a steak sandwich and a beer. The jovial owner, Lynch himself, sits down next to me and tells me all about his life as if we are old friends. He reminds me from the toy store guy from Home Alone II – then he leaves me alone with my fries; the crispiest.

After a while, and with my phone at a cool 75%, I head back into the scalding sun, and zoom downhill, to assess my lodging conditions. 

“How was the beach?” the Latina lady comes out of the room with the rose-colored sheets encapsulating the floor. 

“Oh, it was nice,” I say. “I’m going to go across the street.”

Across the street, a quaint white-paneled house with “Adult Outlet” painted in pink cursive. A “Cannabus” is parked in next to it. Cars zoom by at 50 mph across the two-lane highway I run across into the front concrete stoop of Adult Outlet. A sign says “Use the back door,” and once through the back door, the store smells of rubberized lube. So, after picking up a pre-roll at the Cannabus and a Celsius, I creep across the street through the overgrown lawn of the Newburgh Inn.

Around the roundabout, parked in the cul-de-sac is a pickup truck full of Venezuelan day laborers, blankets and bags and bodies in a heap. 

In room 103, the AC is cranked at capacity as the pool moss shimmers. Turns out there is bitchin’ cable TV, with Amelie just beginning on one station and Teddy Swims music videos on the next. AC and TV, opiates of the masses. They are an artificial panacea. I refresh my skin and change into my white/pink Lily Pulitzer skort – just perfect for this heat. 

Out to Beacon we go. I visited it so long ago, in the Before Time. Before things got weird. That was like, 2018. I wonder what’s new in Beacon since I got asked to leave that vegan/sober Airbnb in Cold Spring?

It’s 10 minutes to Beacon from Newburgh, including over a bridge crossing the Hudson River, near Fishkill. It’s mildly terrifying, but I’m getting used to it. Terror, that is.

Beacon’s main strip, from what I remember, is slanted and downhill, a mix of bars and restaurants and artsy shops. I park on an inclined side street alongside a designer eyewear boutique. 

It’s not as posh as I remember; there’s no air-conditioned hotel bar or French bistro on my path this time. I stop at an M&T atm conveniently across the street, and notice my account is way less than it should be. In fact there’s another $99.99 charge to my card. I can’t shake the feeling that once again the Stockholm Syndrome sets in in Beacon.  

“Didn’t they already charge my card $100 when I checked in?” I’m on the phone with my bank after-hours; I just can’t shake the anxiety and relax enough to shop around with the plague of the Newburgh Inn cursing my every step. 

“If they put anything more on your card, we can just dispute it,” the banker boy says. 

“Oh yeah, true,” I say. “There’s a rancid smell – and I just don’t trust them.” 

A woman in the vestibule tells me there’s an awesome Jamaican joint down the block, but I don’t find it. There’s a library, and Beacon is still pretty trendy, with an art gallery and wine bars, dusty old bookshop, and community kitchen. A crisp chill salad and mocktail sounds great. The Vinyl Room stands out to me. It’s a record store and bar in one, with velour couches in little VIP areas. 

I get a radiant-orange mocktail, something to calm my nerves. Something I think Jimmy Carter would order on a golf course. The bearded bartender in a tiki shirt doesn’t ask why I’m traveling, or why I’m tired. Everyone else seems to be on their cell except for the couple next to me on a date- which is probably a phone date, an app date, IRL, or maybe they’re just here to generate content.  I slurp down the fruit drink, incurably thirsty, and poke around a cobb salad.

After meandering in the dense, humid dusk, I take off back uphill as the sun sets over the Hudson. 

Inside 103, the AC is chill. Crickets chirp around the pool. Ok, this is it. I brush my teeth, take out my contacts, and slide into some sateen fuchsia shorties.

I click off the light – save for one above the bathroom sink – and immediately see a horrific creature scurry across the room! 

It flickers across the floor and heads underneath the TV, but not before I chase it down and crouch down and with all my concentration snap a glamor shot of the beast.

“Hello, yes, HELLO,” now I’m pissed, throwing my possessions into my trunk once again, for the final time, hanging onto my phone in the crook of my shoulder. “There is a ROACH in my room.”

On the other end: dead air.  I can picture the glazed-over office manager, fingertips tangled inside the rotary phone cord. 

“Do you want my husband to go in the room and look around?”

“Look around?” I’m standing in the middle of the decrepit, dusty rose lobby again, this time in a blinding fluorescent spotlight glare straining my eyeballs. 

“I don’t sleep with roaches. Sorry.” I toss the white keycard onto the banquette. The conspicuously heroin-addled office manager now, in the fluorescent glare, has a sickly gray complexion.  

“Can I at least fill my water bottle?” I’m so wired and sleep deprived, I feel like I’m on drugs.

The office manager shrugs looking nauseated.  My water bottle doesn’t fit under the tap in the sink of the dusty rose powder room, in hopefully what will be the last insult from this mockery of hospitality. 

“I just hate for you to drive all that way,” she mutters as I run, “I thought we got rid of them all.” 

I throw my car in drive and it lurches forward with screening tires, barreling out of the doomed cul-de-sac. The time is 10:12 p.m.

The first gas station is closed, but around the corner, there’s one that’s open and I stick in my Visa at the pump, fill my tank, and miraculously, my mid-2010s GPS says my apartment on Richmond Ave. is a straight shot up the NYS Thruway this time instead of meandering through the Catskills. Estimated time of arrival: 4:30 a.m. 

My adrenaline pumping is enough to gets me to the halfway point, or what I presume to be halfway sometime around 1:30 a.m. My butt: numb. On the radio: nothing but static. So it’s my Candlebox CD over and over on repeat, and it soothes me.

There’s an itching sensation on my skin, crawling under my clothes that I don’t know is real or faux. My mind is reeling- crunching, scratching, blurring, spinning —

I pull over at an empty rest stop. I slurp a few drops of water from the fountain. Bending down, my back is stiff and pained. Driving home, shapes come off the Thruway, ghost-visions literally float off the neon markers and float towards the windshield at me. Lights from Giant semi trucks carrying cargo guide my path, but my GPS keeps adding on ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes. The arrival time gradually expands from 5:30 a.m. to what ends up being 6:30 a.m., and I wind up on Millersport Highway to some Richmond over there, so I drive up Bailey to Main to Delevan to Richmond and by then, the sun is coming up. Misty rain/tears of relief fog up my glasses.

I’m strung out, but I’m home.

Today, I contemplated driving 188 miles for a lipstick.  I started taking my pills. Today, they snagged a Peruvian drug leader in Endicott.  I reconnected with my social butterfly friend Maurice. He says he went out but it wasn’t the same.

In the end of the horror movie version, 10 years later, when I’m in my 40s in the 2030s, a package shows up at the end.  Inside, my Bare Minerals Bronzer filled with bedbugs, mold, and heroin. It’s been lying here, left unclaimed, at the old apartment on Richmond, which I have since left. 

THE END

Night of Terror Playlist

Drive- Assemblage 23

I’m Only Stronger- Terror

Lullaby – the cure

Miles – Sponge

That Smell- Lynyrd Skynyrd

I’m Overdriven – Dope Stars Inc.

Haunted House – Ryan Adams