One Cold Betrayal

The bathroom towels were cheap. The linens were cheap. The soap was cheap. Hell, the TV was cheap.

But none of that bothered me at the moment, because the carpet was cheap. Thin, I could feel the cold concrete floor below it, and it was rough against my cheek and tinged with the smell of mildew.

I tried to move, but was paralyzed with pain every time the thought so much as crossed my mind. First things first, ignoring the pain. It was only nine millimeters of lead. So small, ignore it.
The hole in my gut, might as well have been an ten ton anchor pinning me to the shady Chicago motel floor.
It felt like an iron spike through my body. I picture myself as a human shish kabob.
Yeah, now... while bleeding to death, now was clearly the time for jokes.

One little bullet, and here I was, wading in an ocean of red pain.
I let the tears flow for the first time in decades, giving thanks when they trickled down over my rug burnt cheeks. I must have hit the floor harder than I thought.

I twist my head towards the door, careful not to use any lead torn stomach muscles as I did.

No. It was just someone passing by the window. She wasn't coming back. She got what she came for.

How could I have trusted her? I muttered aloud, with the warm coppery taste of blood on my lips. The words hung in the cool air, waiting for an answer.
Easy, it was so easy to trust her. She was blindingly beguilingly beautiful.

Not just beautiful, but altogether agonizingly so.
I'd look at her, and the thought of her not being mine, was near maddening. Soul twisting.
To look at her, was to want her. The shyest soul would man up to buy this woman a drink.
She was worth any tongue lashing, she was worth the biggest bruiser boyfriend bouncing your head off the pavement out back.
She was worth it. You could taste it. She was worth it.

Well, I could be wrong.

She had left in such a hurry, the cold Chicago breeze snaked in the door, under the first bed and held my face in its icy hands. She had slammed the door too hard, it was open a good three inches.
In a matter of minutes, screaming for help would likely drift me off to a final sleep from exhaustion.

To my left - the hideous beige bedside table. The phone. Yes. If she wasn't so rushed to grab the twenty large and run, she would have cut the cord like a pro. She was no pro. She may have lied like one, but she was not a pro. Just a woman.
I bite my lip and begin to turn my body, the spike in my gut begins to twist. I nearly bite a piece of my lip clean off before gasping in more cool air.
I have a friend or two in the area, I use the term loosely but they could take me somewhere. To someone.
The hospital was out of the question. By now my face was plastered across town, like a dozen lost dogs.
I gripped my crimson stained nails into that cheap carpet and began to pull.
Three yards to the table. Three measly yards.

She sat, drink in hand, surrounded by every ass grabbing Tom, Dick and Harry, every Friday night downtown, gently brushing them off one after another. From the evening I laid my eyes on her, I couldn't help but watch her. She was like quicksand. It was only a matter of time, before I was the next fool.I kept still and sank slowly.
Every time her deep kind eyes ran over the crowd and simply passed mine, I sank deeper. In retrospect, I suppose I'd been dying for months.

The first time she spoke to me, she simply asked for a light. Right than, I might as well have just turned into a giant cartoon sucker, or at least a rabbit and ran. If there was one moment that tapped this bloody domino effect, it was that night. Not the night she kissed me with her perfect lips, but that night. She simply smiled and talked to me.

Before that moment, She was a unreachable dream, through that thick smoke. If only that smoke was thicker, maybe I wouldn't have stayed and seen her. I wouldn't be on deaths door.

Finally progress, I'm a yard closer. I reach out taking the cold steel leg of the bed into my palm and pulled again. I pushed the rumpled bed sheet laying on the floor, out of my way.
Hard to imagine nine hours prior, the two of us were wrapped in them. Together. Warm. Naked. Safe.
As I inch closer to the table, I wish that she, and the last three months together were a dream.

But dreams don't kill, not even the worst ones. You wake from them, and forget them.
But I couldn't forget her if I tried. The weeks were a blur, racing to see her face again.
A gorgeous face an angel would gladly kill for, and a body with the kinda curves that could take her anywhere in this lonely life.
But no, she had to tear through mine.

Concentrate, fight the urge to think of her now, or of last night. Thoughts of her would only jump my heart rate, thinking of her would pump my blood faster and faster...

...blood I couldn't afford to lose at this particular moment.

I stretch touching the cord. Almost.
It was time to make a choice.
Am I a lover or a fighter ?
She took the loot and ran, so I must not be much of a lover.

Apparently, I'm a fighter. I've bled this much and I'm still alive.

I grabbed the tan phone cord beside the table between the beds and pulled on it, once....twice, until the receiver fell to the rough thin mildew carpet.

She should have loved the lover, cause the fighter isn't going to be gentle, when he gets his hands on her.