Rachel Domanchich

Extract from Almost-Hell Motel

Chapter 1

Val would’ve imagined that Limbo or Purgatory or Whatever would resemble a packed, ER-style waiting room, staffed by plain-looking angels or demons who pop their chewing gum and gaze apathetically upon their subjects. She would’ve imagined a sort of divine triage process, where each “patient” would take a number and file through one by one, their hearts being weighed against the feather of Ma’at before they were ushered to the appropriate department—or in this case, the appropriate afterlife. 

But Val would’ve been wrong.

She doesn’t expect to wake up in a dingy, 70s-era motel room, complete with worn not-quite-wood paneling, a faded floral bedspread, and pillows that look like they haven’t been replaced since the dawn of time.

Beams of sunlight pass through the mothball-scented, off-white lace curtains, catching on the particles of dust floating aimlessly in the air and landing in blurry, skewed rectangles on the tan, over-worn shag carpet. It’s the first thing Val sees when she comes to, thus engraving the image into her memory.

Just moments after she first opens her eyes—before she even has the chance to react—she receives an ominously well-timed call on the phone next to her bed. A pre-recorded message from an overly-chipper voice plays over the soft static.

“Hello, resident 52M8J6L! This is a courtesy call to inform you that you are currently awaiting passage to the afterlife. We will alert you when it is your time. Thank you for your patience.”

Before she can voice her many questions, the line goes dead.

Dead.

Dead? How did I—

Oh. Right. Christ. And this is where the ‘bright light’ leads? A motel?

Taking stock of her person, Val finds herself wearing the same outfit that she died in, sans the fatal damage—her clothes and skin and bones all appearing intact in the nearby mirror. Still, even after death, the characteristic bags under her eyes remain. 

You know that saying, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead?’ Guess not.

Outside the window, Val can make out a few other morose, dazed ‘residents’ wandering around the motel’s exterior like zombies. They wouldn’t look out of place at a standard department store on a weekday morning: shuffling about with no real destination in mind, vacuous and devoid of emotion, unsure of what exactly they’re looking for. The parking lot is vacant (save for the errant roaming corpse), the sun-bleached blacktop riddled with potholes and grassy cracks. Across the street, there’s a saloon-style bar, which sits beside an eerily empty playground. The road itself stretches about the length of a single football field, and at the edges, the image abruptly turns to fog and fades into white.

On that first day, Val tries to walk to the end of the street, through the fog, but just finds herself transported back down to the other end of the road. She isn’t sure where she’d hoped it would lead, but she’s disappointed nonetheless. Maybe this should faze her, but she simply keeps going. She walks back down to the far end and passes through the fog again, re-emerging on the other end of the road. She walks like that for hours, until the morning arches and wanes into the late afternoon and the sky grows dark. She ignores the repetitive scenery as she contemplates her fate, her legacy, and everything she left behind when she died (namely, her cat).

Oh, shit. Who’s gonna take care of Marcy? I hope it’s my cousin, or even my landlord. 

Anyone but my mother. 

Perhaps it’s unusual how quickly Val accepts her situation. Perhaps she should be more devastated. Perhaps she should mourn for herself. But she doesn’t.

***

The saloon across the street looks like the kind that you’d see in a stereotypical western film, swinging doors and all. 

That evening, Val wanders in—and later, in hindsight, she’d realize that she must have looked just as disoriented as the other residents at the motel: her brows fixed in a permanent scowl, her steps timid, her hands clenched into fists at her sides to keep from fidgeting.

The bartender sticks out from the themed décor, dressed in his plain jeans and white v-neck tee shirt with cuffed sleeves. His black pompadour is coiffed to perfection, his long-stubble-slash-almost-beard kempt as neatly as suburban hedges. When the man looks up at her from his busy work, Val is struck by how penetrating his dark brown eyes are—and by the fact that he’s the first person to make eye contact with her in this forsaken place.

“Alright there, newbie?” the man calls out across the bar, his voice deep and thick with some sort of English accent. Even with the sharp disruption in the otherwise quiet atmosphere, none of the other half dozen patrons are startled. A few heads tip in Val’s direction, but they all quickly resume drowning their idle stares into their respective drinks. Val herself is startled; his is the only human voice she’s heard all day. 

“Uh,” she begins, her voice hoarse and scratchy. She clears her throat and tries again. “H—Hi.”

The man grins a wide, genuine smile, clapping his hands together into a prayer gesture before calling up toward the ceiling, “Oh, yes! Thank you! We have a talker!” Val quirks an eyebrow at him as she reluctantly approaches the bar. “You’re a talker, yeah?”

“I—I guess?”

“Fantastic. It’s been ages since the last time I had an actual conversation.”

Val looks around at the other patrons in the bar, each one appearing out of place in the already anachronistic saloon. 

“They don’t talk?”

“Almost never. I don’t know what it is that makes them this way. It’s like they’re empty.”

“Then how do you know what drinks to serve them?”

His face twists in confusion for a split second, the question taking him by surprise. A gentle smile then tugs at his lips.

“You can tell just by looking,” he says, leaning forward over the bar and lowering his voice just slightly (and Val finds this odd, considering that a moment ago, he’d called them all ‘empty’). “See that older gentleman—the one who looks like he’s supposed to plow the fields today?” He points to the man at the end of the bar. “Bottled beer. Mister Fancy Lawyer Guy over there? Manhattan. Lady in the far corner, with the dress too short for her age—looks like she’s late to a New Year’s Eve party? Vodka Cranberry.”

“And what about me?”

He squints at her, taking a step back and playfully stroking his chin in thought.

“Honestly, I don’t have to worry too much about getting it right with this lot. They’ll drink anything. It’s not like they’re gonna protest.” The corners of his mouth pull his lips taut across his face. “So you’re putting me on the spot right now. I’m gonna guess…whiskey?”

“Yeah, almost. Jack and Coke. But I, uh… I don’t have money. At least I don’t think I do.”

“You’re dead,” he replies with a shrug. “Nothing comes with you.”

Val nods at his subtly profound sentiment. “So, everything’s free, then?”

“Everything but our souls, I suppose.”

Val exhales a sardonic laugh. “In that case, yeah. I’ll have a drink.” 

“Brilliant.”

Val’s present musings begin to stray as the sheer absurdity of her situation suddenly occurs to her. 

I died today. 

I died, and now I’m just casually ordering my usual drink at an Epcot-level-cliché saloon in what I can only deduce to be a weird rest stop for wayward truckers on the road to the afterlife—whatever said ‘afterlife’ might entail.

***

“Jesus, seriously?” Val glares down at the fresh coffee stain on her blouse, fruitlessly wiping at it with a nearby dish rag. 

Great. Now I have to change. The clock reads 8:42. I’m gonna be late. I can’t be late again. Lori will have my head.

At her feet, Val’s cat rubs along her calves and vocalizes loudly, indicating that the dry food in her bowl is reaching critical levels. “Okay, okay. I’ve got you, Marcy. Don’t worry, you’re not gonna starve.” Uncaring of her owner’s predicament, Marcy stares up at Val with her bright green eyes, cocking her head and waving her fluffy orange tail in the air.

Miraculously, Val manages to feed Marcy, swap blouses, get her shoes on, down what’s left of her coffee, and haul her bicycle outside in four minutes flat.

Her ride to work is a race. I’ve trained for this, she tells herself (or, rather, lies to herself). She’s zooming down traffic-ridden streets, swooping through alleyways, avoiding red lights—all while chanting a pep talk to herself internally. 

You got this. Two more blocks, past the pizza place, through the traffic circle, turn—

It doesn’t hurt. Not on impact, at least. When the truck—she assumes it’s a truck, though she doesn’t really have a chance to look—collides with her from the right-hand side, everything happens in an instant. But to Val, time slows. 

She hears a series of sickening cracking sounds coming from inside of her body as an electric jolt of something unnatural flares through every single nerve ending, stemming from her lower back to her fingertips in a split second. After that, she can’t feel anything. Her eyes are closed instinctively, but in that moment, she knows that she’s soaring through the air like a ragdoll. With nothing to hang onto, she clings to the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

She wishes she could say that when her fragile skull hits the pavement, her world goes black. But it isn’t like going to sleep. No—when she hits the ground, she’s simply gone. Removed from Earth. She isn’t there long enough to see the world fade out. 

***

The man returns with her drink order and asks, “What’s your name, darling?”

“Val. You?”

“I’m Raj,” he replies, wiping his hand off with the towel slung over his shoulder before shaking Val’s hand. 

She takes a sip of her drink, trying to sort through the hundreds of questions in her head before formulating her next words carefully. “So, can I ask you some questions? I tried to talk to the guy at the motel reception desk and he just handed me a really unhelpful brochure.”

“Oh, yeah,” Raj groans, rolling his eyes. “The one that’s like, ‘You’re dead. What’s next?’ And it has no answers—just some greeting card nonsense about ‘moving on’ and a picture of a taxi.” 

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Val takes another sip of her drink, rolling the ice around in her glass. She’s grateful to have something to occupy her hands. “So, uh… Is this, like, a Christian place? Or—like, who was right?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They don’t tell us. We don’t find out until we leave, I guess.” Raj lets her process that for a moment. Then, with an air of jest, he asks, “So, what are you in for?”

“What?” She asks, and Raj simply raises his eyebrows. “Oh, uh… bike accident. That’s what I remember, anyway.” Val closes her eyes for a moment to tamper down the panic swirling inside of her chest, but she quickly learns that the dark insides of her eyelids serve as a perfect projector screen for her death to play on repeat. Note to self: don’t close eyes. No problem. “And by ‘bike accident,’ I mean that I got hit by a truck during my ride to work.”

“Where did you work?”

“You’re really good at this bartender small talk thing—asking questions so the other person doesn’t get to ask about you.”

He laughs, patting his chest and making a sound like someone knocked the wind out of him. “Call me out, why don’t you?” he jokes. “Yeah, I was a barman in West London for six years back when I was alive. Got pretty good at keeping people at counter-length.”

“So, you were alive, then? You’re not just some sort of... mythical staff member?”

He lets out a hearty laugh in response. “Oh god, no. No, I got stuck here. Can’t move on, for some reason. Same thing happened to the guy working reception across the street. He’s never been much of a talker, though.”

“That really sucks. I’m sorry.” Val doesn’t want to pry. She’s searching the area desperately for a conversation point when she spots a dusty, antique-looking cash register at the far end of the bar. “Wait—if there’s no money here, then how do they pay you?”

“They don’t,” he replies, the downward shift in his tone intimating both acceptance and defeat. 

“Why do you work if you’re not getting paid?”

“What else is there to do? Plus, I don’t mind it. I like to keep myself busy—staves off the existential dread.”

“Great point. In that case, need a hand?”

They share a sympathetic laugh. As Raj’s is the only lively face around—and since drinking is the only viable activity here—Val talks to Raj, and they’re both grateful for the company.

***

“Good morning, old man whose name must be something like Leslie or Sam. Good morning, guy in the fishing gear. Good morning—I want to say, Stacey? You look like a Stacey. I’m gonna call you Stacey.”

Val leans over the railing outside of her motel room, waving fruitlessly at the roaming residents below. The corpses’ breathy gasps and lax-eyed stares as they meander around the blacktop is truly something to behold—and luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), Val gets to behold it every morning. The empty husks might as well be moaning “brains,” but that would involve having some sort of drive or motivation or hunger, which is far more than the husk people are capable of.

“One of these days, I’ll figure out what to call you guys. Any suggestions? No?” She pauses, waiting for a response she knows will never come; even the environment around her stays silent. No wind, no traffic, no wildlife—just the odd apathetic grunt from an un-person with nothing left to say. “Oh, boo. Well, I made you guys some gifts. Hang on, don’t run off now!”

Val bustles back inside her motel room. On the table beside the door, there’s a Bible that’s been torn to shreds beside a pile of folded paper crafts. She carefully gathers all of the paper into her arms and heads back outside to the awaiting pack of shamblers, marching excitedly down the concrete exterior staircase to join the crowd of the dead.

“Okay, so I didn’t have tape, or markers, or glue...” The woman that Val called Stacey groans something verging on annoyance from a few feet away, though it could just as easily be gas, or acknowledgement. “I know, Stacey. Big letdown.” In truth, Val has learned not to look too deeply into the dead’s responses, as one glance into their eyes will prove that their sounds meant absolutely nothing. She’s grown to avoid their gaze altogether, lest her little game end in helpless realization. “Anyway, I’ve got a little origami hat for you, and one for you.” She places the folded paper atop the empty skulls of Stacey and Leslie/Sam. She feels like she’s playing Santa Claus to a room full of vegetables. “Nice big paper chain necklace for my friend with the waders on. Here’s a little paper airplane because I ran out of ideas. I’ll just slip that into this pocket right here...” As her armful of decorative religious texts begins to wane, she comes across a member of the crowd that she’s never seen before. 

The newest corpse is a woman in her sixties (Val would surmise) who carries herself with the paralleled grace of every other husk, yet still somehow maintains an air of something stoic; she reminds Val of a strict grade school librarian, aggressive shushing and all. Her form is wrapped in hues of white and beige, with enough textured linen and crocheted fabric to make any thrift store junkie weep. The woman’s brow, while now slack in her current state of un-death, has permanent creases where her sternness once sat in life—perched upon her forehead and, Val imagines, once serving as the woman’s greatest weapon against opponents of the Dewey Decimal system.

Val is arrested by the woman’s glassy stare. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that she and Mrs. Levins—her own grade school librarian—never got along. She also forgot to return her library books before she died, thus ingraining a permanent guilt onto her soul which will follow her through to the afterlife—if she ever makes it there, that is. Still, faced with the imprint of this woman’s personality, splayed plainly on her person, Val can’t simply place a funny hat atop her head. For the first time, she questions whether the decorating of the husks might be construed as disrespectful.

Probably, she tells herself.

But who’s keeping score?

After emptying the contents of her crafty armful onto the remaining members of the horde (minus the newest resident, of course), Val stands back and admires her handiwork. Instead of a crowd of dead people, she’s now faced with a crowd of dead people with stupid paper hats and necklaces adorning them. 

She couldn’t be prouder. 

“Raj! You’ve gotta see what I did!” Val bursts into the saloon, finding Raj in the midst of his early-afternoon glass-polishing routine.

“A little busy right now,” he says, wrapping the tea towel tighter around his forefinger to buff out a water stain. He nods, approving of the glass’ cleanliness, giving it a final swipe around the rim before tipping it upside-down and stacking it among what is slowly becoming a hefty pyramid of perfectly clean glasses.

“Oh, come on! You have to see. The glasses can wait.”

“No, they can’t. Gotta get ready for the Happy Hour rush.”

Val turns her head, scanning the small gathering of deathful patrons at the bar. One of them grunts, raising his glass in a salute, before taking a gulp of whatever’s in his glass.

“See? Mickey agrees with me, eh Mickey?” Raj asks, receiving no response from the patron. He turns back to Val and continues, “He does that every few minutes anyway. I like to pretend that he’s my buddy and I’ve just said something incredible.”

Val taps her foot. “So are you gonna come have a look, or what?”

Raj shakes his head, moving onto the next dirty glass. “Sorry, kid. This bar won’t run itself.”

“I’m pretty certain it would.” 

Mickey grunts and raises his glass again, right on cue. 

“A salient point,” Raj replies, a hint of a smirk gracing his cheeks. “Still, I have my routine. I’ll catch you after sundown. Until then, the bar needs me.”

“Whatever you say, dude.”

Val exits the saloon, defeat evident in the dragging of her heels. Trudging over to the swing set on the playground next door, she takes a moment to appreciate the well-decorated horde wandering the motel parking lot across the street. From here, the dead could easily be mistaken for a crowd of drunks at a Mummers Parade, or perhaps a group of parents who begrudgingly let their children accessorize them at a kindergarten birthday party. Val feels a spark of warmth in her chest at the knowledge that she added a little levity to this place, but that warmth quickly fizzles and fades.

They were people. 

They were all people once. 

She doesn’t feel too bad, though—because tomorrow morning, all evidence of her fun will be gone with the night. Just like everything she’s ever done to make this world more exciting—by morning, the damage, the progress, the life in this place will all be reset. 

Val, of course, has learned this the hard way.

In the time Val has spent here waiting to ‘move on,’ she’s tried everything that the area has to offer to alleviate her boredom. She weeded the cracks in the motel parking lot only for them to reappear the next day. She masturbated until it wasn’t fun anymore. She’s tasted every combination of mixers and liquors with her Jack Daniel’s at the saloon, though nothing has ever topped Coke. She tried to see how long she could hang upside-down from the monkey bars at the playground (though she really has no way of measuring time). She even spent an entire day in her motel room’s shower, fully clothed, waiting for the hot water to run out. It never did. 

Val, above all else, has gotten good at waiting. So, she waits. She waits patiently on the swing set, scuffing her feet through the mulch below and making no real progress forward or backward. She waits for the non-existent sun to set and for the streetlights to come to life. Eventually, Raj finally joins her, though several members of the horde have returned to their rooms by now. What they do in there, Val may never know.

“Sorry, mate,” Raj says, looking dubiously at the swing beside Val for a moment before ultimately deciding to join her. Suddenly, Raj appears much younger to Val. He lacks the certainty he normally maintains on two feet—he usually looks so solid, so sure, so knowing. Now, with his feet out from under him, he seems almost as small as she does. “Oh, look at that! Gone a bit arts and crafts, have you?”

“Yeah,” Val replies, her voice smaller than she intended. Hours of disuse passing in the blink of an eye will do that to a person. “I only had the Bible to work with.”

“Well, I love it. This place can always use a little more life in it.”

“Yeah? You don’t think it’s... I don’t know, disrespectful?”

“Nah,” Raj says. “Of course not. It’s not hurting anyone, is it?”

“I guess not, no.”

“Well, in that case, I’ve got some ideas involving cocktail napkins and toothpicks. Fancy coming by the saloon tomorrow to make some fascinators with me? Mickey’s look could use a bit of freshening up.”

“I’ll say. Such a downer, that one,” Val jokes, letting the smile rise out of her chest and onto her face. “Sure, I’m in. Nothing better to do anyway.”

“You always say the nicest things.”

***

After months of waiting around, spending her days drinking and twiddling her thumbs, Val finally gets a call on her motel room phone. 

The call comes just as she awakens one morning, ringing mere moments after she opens her eyes. It’s happening. The ring resounds with a jolt in her gut, her hands shaking violently as she scrambles to pick up the phone. I’ll have to say goodbye to Raj. The line crackles with static as it connects.

 However, instead of telling her where she’ll be going next, much to her chagrin, she’s given another cheerfully voiced automated message: “Greetings, resident 52M8J6L. We regret to inform you that you will be remaining in your current location until further notice. Please report to reception immediately for instruction.”

The receptionist’s name is Gabe—which Val only knows from his name tag, because up until this point, he hasn’t spoken a single word to her. Gabe always looks terribly bored, never making eye contact or any semblance of human connection, his gaze cast down to the magazine in front of him. He’s always reading the same magazine. 

But when Val wanders into reception after that fateful phone call, the glass door striking the rusted brass bell above the entrance, she concludes that someone else must be possessing Gabe’s body. He looks engaged and ecstatic, restlessly bouncing on the balls of his feet and clasping his hands in front of him—an excitement Val barely got to taste before her hopes were quashed by that phone call.

“Fantastic! You’re here. Valerie, I presume?”

She’s startled by the sound of his voice; she didn’t expect it to be so high-pitched.

“Just Val. What’s going on? Am I stuck here?”

“Yeah, I’m really sorry,” he replies, the grin on his face not at all apologetic. “I’m leaving. You’re my replacement. Welcome to the employ of Station 90K67—or as I like to call it, Hell Motel.”

“But we’re not in Hell.”

“We might as well be.”