The beeping sound started so faint, but began to build in Christopher's ears. Rubbing the spot where Zita's hair had softly swept his skin, he realized he was alone in the bed. His eyes fluttered open and he instantly felt confused. He was staring at a white ceiling with a fire sprinkler jutting out on the corner. Jumping out of bed, he looked around to see he was in the hotel room he had been in before meeting the woman to help her with the door. THE WOMAN... THE TEXT, he screamed in his own head. He looked frantically on the bedside table, floor, tossing bedding onto the floor; but he couldn't find his phone.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
The sound startled Christopher. It was the same sound he had heard while he was sleeping and had assumed it was an alarm, but this sound was coming from outside. He looked out his window. Three police cars lined the curb across the street and they had sectioned off a part of what used to be the street with yellow tape. A loader was scooping dirt in to the back of a dump truck and as the loader backed up, the beeping sound bounced off the surrounding buildings. The scene was so strange that Christopher had to physically rub his eyes and look again. When he continued to see the same thing, he turned and ran to the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face. He looked up at the mirror. He looked like himself, what he had remembered he looked like anyway. But, he didn't feel like himself at all. Slowly, he made his way back to the window and peered down, sure that he would see a normal busy city street this time. There were two large pine trees butchered and laying on a city street in downtown Denver, and patches of grass and flowers in the ground as if they had been there for years. The current scoop of dirt in the loader revealed what looked like a wooden door. THE wooden door. The one with carvings and metal ribbon. Placing his hands on the air conditioning unit in front of the window to balance himself, he felt something rectangular. His phone. Quickly, he woke the screen and checked his text messages. There were the ones from his mother he had saved. A few from friends he received during his recent trip to Texas. He checked the deleted folder and it was empty. No message from the woman. As he stared at his phone in disbelief, it pinged with a new text.
HEY MAN, YOU MISSED THE MEETING. YOU OK?
The message was from Ron. Ron set up a meeting with a company in Denver hoping they would offer Christopher a position. Christopher really didn't want the position because he loved traveling and basically being his own boss. But, he wanted to take the meeting for Ron's sake. The flashing alarm clock on the bedside table said it was already 10:45am. He sent a text back to Ron with an apology and asked if he'd like to meet for lunch. Ron sent an address and a time to meet.
After a shower, and briefly writing down everything he remembered from his dream, Christopher left his hotel room to meet Ron for lunch. The pub Ron suggested looked more like a seedy strip club than a blue collar bar from the outside. The parking lot was packed with work trucks and motorcycles. He pushed the heavy metal door open, spray painted in stencil was the name of the pub, Rome's, in white. A long bar was the first thing he saw upon entering. Several bartenders were working behind it but one in particular caught his attention. A curvy tattooed woman with dark dreads stood behind the bar smiling at the man across from her while she mixed his drink. Her eyes were an aqua blue. They reminded him of someone, glistening like a diamond as they darted around to her customers. She wore tight blue jeans with tears all down both legs and under her left butt cheek and black bra with spikes. His eyes moved around the room to see each waitress was dressed similarly. Cute bottoms, either shorts or pants, and a bra.
He was escorted to a table by a woman he couldn't describe. He couldn't take his eyes off of the bartender. For a second, her eyes moved away from her customers and pierced his; his heart jumping in his chest, and stomach flipped as she did.
"I told you this would be a great place for lunch!" Ron slapped Christopher on the shoulder and took the chair across from him. Christopher smiled and nodded at Ron. The waitress appeared next to the table, setting menus in front of both men. Christopher almost choked on his own tongue when he looked up at her. She had beautiful red tendrils bouncing over full breasts. She was wearing a brown leather bra and matching pants. Her green eyes burned into his and he looked away slightly to see an intricate tattoo of a sword on her left shoulder. Flashes of his dream flooded his mind and he shook his head while the waitress giggled.
"What can I get you guys to drink?"
Ron stared at Christopher waiting for him to order.
"Two beers," he answered for Christopher. "Geez man, you act like you've never seen a woman before."
"I've seen plenty, man. But that particular one I saw in a dream." Christopher rubbed his face aggressively.
"Dream girl," Ron laughed hard at the thought.
The waitress returned with two beers and Ron ordered food for both of them while Christopher stared at the name tag placed on the strap of her bra. Her name was Lilith. She winked at him and left them to their meal. Christopher no longer had much of an appetite. He slowly sipped his beer, slipping in and out of the conversation Ron was happily having with himself. Stories of job sites he'd visited, estimates he needed to give for work here or there, and every story had some hot mom or college age student just begging for his attention. Lilith's shift must have ended because she never returned to their table. She was replaced by a curvy blonde in short jean shorts and a colorful bra. She was bouncy and sweet but seemed very offended by Christopher's obvious disappointed reaction when she greeted them as their new waitress.
He waited until she came back to replace empty bottles with fresh new beer, and excused himself to the bathroom. Weaving through busy tables and busty wait staff down a long dim hallway, he found two doors that were clearly the bathrooms. Everything was so difficult to focus on, including the signs on the doors. His eyes reacted as if he had been out in the bright sun for hours and just walked inside an unlit area of a house. The music that had been almost too loud in the pub now sounded like a garbled echo. Christopher felt a little dizzy, but when he leaned back against the wall, he felt someone behind him. It was almost too dark to make out who it was, but he could smell dirt, a little sweat, and ...was that a wet dog smell? Lips were pressing against his and it was a kiss he knew very well. The lips had only met his once, but he remembered the way Zita tasted on his tongue. He couldn't forget how her moan filled his mouth and sent waves of arousal all the way down his stomach, into his groin. His hands wrapped around her body, sliding down her spine to her plump ass, and pulling her into him tightly. She moaned in his mouth and he felt as if he could scream from the rooftops and hop up and down at the same time. He felt like a child on Christmas.
A loud DING rang through the hallway, and in an instant, he was alone. The space was a little brighter, sound returned to a normal frequency, he could see everything and everyone clearly. But he was completely alone. Not just physically alone, but mentally as well. His heart ached and his body craved Zita. But she was just gone.
Christopher felt so disconnected to his surroundings. He could hear Ron babbling about something as they walked out of the pub. Something about setting up another meeting but it was the last thing on Christopher's mind. Wondering if Zita would wake up and be upset that he was gone almost made Christopher laugh out loud. The dream was so real that he was seeing parts of it in his waking life and wondering how a dream participant feels now that he's not there. Going so far as to imagine making out with this dream woman in a hallway of a pub. Even though he was trying to laugh at himself, he still felt a sick feeling in his stomach. A "homesick" feeling.
Arriving back to the hotel three hours later, he still felt off. A woman at the front desk was facing the computer away from the counter, her backside jiggling a little as she typed standing up. Her pencil skirt hugged her in all the right ways, and Christopher excepted her to turn around and be the woman he had helped the night before. Or had he helped anyone? When she turned to face him, he knew for certain it wasn't her. She looked nothing like the beautiful mystery woman that met him in the lobby. His stomach rolled and he thought he may vomit. Quickly he made his way to his room, fumbling with the card and finally getting it to scan. He heard the locks release and he opened the door. The sun poured into the window and he stood in the beam of light, soaking up the warmth. A calm washed over him and he started to feel sleepy. Removing his clothes and shoes, he crawled under the blankets and placed his phone on the charger and laid it on the nightstand.
A whirring sound woke him and it must have been much later because the room was dark. An uneasiness washed over him; a feeling of being in an unfamiliar place. The fan on the dresser at the end of the bed was the source of the whirring noise. Fan...there wasn't a fan in this room. There wasn't even a dresser at the foot of the bed. His focus was pulled to the small circular fan, with a metal cage surrounding the blades, and a white plastic circle in the middle of it with a name in silver. He couldn't make out the name but saw light flickering against the plastic. A reflection of people moving about the room, and light flashing bright against the plastic again. Christopher looked behind him but all that was there was a wall, and dark room. His eyes drop slowly to the plastic piece on the fan, staring now at the reflections...the lights...whatever it is. It seemed to pull him in and his body relaxed as he continued to stare into the circle. He felt his body being physically pulled now. In...in to the fan...in to the scene inside the plastic of the fan.
A crisp ring or perhaps a song wakes him. Warm wind whips white sheer curtains softly away from two large windows. Bird are singing outside and he can hear the neighbor start up his lawn mower.
Mower? Neighbor? Where am...
