The Vacation

It was the first night of her solitary vacation, and there was work to do. Cathryn Tacey rode various buses up I-95 from Virginia to the Maine-New Hampshire border, with the final bus dropping her off at a Walmart on the New Hampshire side. She made a beeline for the frozen goods section and loaded her cart with various microwave meals to eat over the next week and a half. She grabbed ten, twenty, maybe thirty meals—more than enough, but she had no expectation of moderation on this trip. The self-checkout line was long, but it was better than having to speak with a cashier.

Her eyes stung from sleep deprivation, but determination kept her going until she reached the half-lit “Vacancy” sign marking her home for the next eleven days—or until the police arrived to spoil her fun. Cathryn brought her one backpack of clothes and three paper bags of microwave meals to the front desk. The agent manning the desk gave her a curious look but did not question her. He attempted to make small talk, but Cathryn remained expressionless. The less she said, the better.

The room was unremarkable. A single queen bed with a dresser, refrigerator, microwave, television, radio, and a janky old rotary phone. Cathryn closed the blinds, turned off the lights, and flipped the “Do Not Disturb” sign around on her door. She bunkered down on the lumpy motel mattress and stared at the ceiling. She was free—really, truly free—for the first time in years. She could have done anything, gone anywhere, but this is exactly what her soul needed after everything. It was late, so she closed her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep.

Cathryn breezed through the first two days, occupying herself with eating, stretching, and telling stories to herself in her head. She turned on the television and was disappointed to see static across the screen. She tried the radio next, but no station came through clearly. She’d have to find other ways to entertain herself. Whenever boredom set in, she simply switched activities to keep her brain stimulated. Yoga and meditation did wonders for her mental state. At first.

Anxiety haunted her dreams that third night. She couldn’t recall any one nightmare, but she remembered being deathly afraid. The nightmare woke her up in an instant, her heart pounding and sweat dripping from her brow. A beam of light peeked in from the closed curtains. Cathryn checked the time on the clock radio. 12:47 p.m. Never would she have ever been allowed to sleep in so late back home. She smiled at her newfound privilege, forgetting for a second the terror that originally woke her.

Her joy was short-lived. The phone rang on the nightstand. It was funny—the motel phone used the same ringtone as Cathryn’s phone, which she left back in Virginia. The sound card in this phone was likely beginning to die based on the dissonant tone. She hung up the receiver. The ringing ended, but it then began not a moment later, louder than before. Frustrated, she unplugged the phone. Nobody worth speaking to would be calling at such a time as this. She didn’t plan on talking to anyone during her vacation, but especially not before breakfast.

Cathryn prepared one of her microwave meals and ate it on the edge of the bed. It was too quiet in there for Cathryn’s liking. No fists slamming on the table, no arguing about dishes not getting done, no being screamed at for seemingly no reason. She almost missed the routine nature of it. What was she meant to do between bites of food if not get into a verbal altercation?

Upon finishing her food, the stillness in the room boomed in her head. How could silence be so deafening? Cathryn laid back on the bed and stared at the popcorn ceiling. Her mind made up shapes and images in the lines of the ceiling. As much as she tried to avoid seeing it, the face of her late husband continually popped up. He looked irate, his default state, like he was ready to tear her down at any given moment. Then she saw his flat face, the one he had when she left his body in their bedroom mere days prior.

She blinked, and the face disappeared.

Cathryn looked around the room. Her heart raced in her chest, and tears formed in her eyes. He wasn’t supposed to be there. This was her escape from him. He was supposed to be back at home, dead, not haunting her thoughts. Cathryn tugged at her hair and groaned in pain. It hurt like hell, but it felt good to feel a new sensation.

Stories distracted her. Stories kept her mind occupied when bad thoughts fought for her attention. They weren’t the most interesting of narratives, but they didn’t need to be. Cathryn took it and came up with endless amounts of endings for each tale, parsing out which way she thought the story might go. As she thought through the options, she crawled back into the bed and closed her eyes.

As it turned out, Cathryn found it better to be unconscious than awake. When asleep, she didn’t have to do the work of coming up with her dreams; a whole epic could play out before her eyes, and she wouldn’t need to move a muscle to make it happen. That day, she slept seventeen hours, waking only to eat dinner, stretch, and go back to sleep.

The rotary phone ringing roused her from her slumber early the next morning, and Cathryn was not amused. She slammed the receiver again, knocking it off the nightstand and onto the floor. It continued to ring regardless. Cathryn reached to unplug the phone, but when she did, she remembered: it was already unplugged.

Cathryn kicked the phone out of the way, padded to the television, and turned it on. To her dismay, it was still only static. The remote was on the dresser. She picked it up to change the channel. When that didn’t work, she pressed the input button. Nothing.

Cathryn stared into the static. If she watched carefully enough, she could almost pick out patterns in the chaos. It was fun in the beginning. Scenes of kids running, fish swimming across the screen. It didn’t take long, however, for the images to morph into her husband. God, why did everything have to remind her of him? On the screen, he stared at her and smiled. She turned off the television.

The static was gone, but he was still there, grinning wide.

She didn’t notice herself pulling her hair until she tugged too hard and tore out a patch of hair from her scalp. It stung worse than the bleach on her skin when she cleaned the murder scene. No, not murder. It was justifiable homicide. Remember that, Cathryn, she told herself. Remember that. She looked down at the wad of hair in her palm and dropped it to the ground. No use fussing over it.

Though the television was out of commission, Cathryn didn’t give up hope. She turned the radio on and began flipping through different frequencies. None were coming through; the only station with a hint of music breaking through the interference played Michael Buble’s rendition of Sway. Of course it had to be that damned song. She switched it back to a static station. It had a nicer hum to it than the television, and she couldn’t look at it to see her husband, so Cathryn left the radio on to fill the empty room with white noise. She ate her meal for the day and blocked out any thoughts of her husband.

Cathryn didn’t notice the radio’s change in tone; not initially, at least. It had to have been gradual, changing ever-so-slightly until it reached the critical point where it was no longer recognizable as the same sound she had been hearing. The pitch was lower, and it somehow sounded slower than before. It was no longer pleasing to the ear. She turned off the radio, but the low vibrations still rang in her ears. More hair pulling ensued.

Eighteen hours she slept that night. Cathryn was now more accustomed to sleep than being awake. At least she wasn’t awoken by the droll of the phone like the previous night—day; it was still light out when she fell asleep then. The only reason she knew how long she slept is because the radio alarm clock forced the information on her. Actually, no; Cathryn did have a choice. She took a pillow sheet off one of the two pillows on the bed and covered the clock. Simple as that.

It worked—at first. Cathryn continued on with her day without checking the clock to see what time it was. If she did glance at it, the pillow covering quickly reminded her that time no longer mattered, and she’d return to her daydreaming or stretching. By this point, she had her routine down pat.

As Cathryn performed a series of lunges parallel to the bed, the radio turned itself on, blasting static at full volume. Cathryn jumped to her feet and removed the cover from the radio. The red seven-segment display flashed 12:00 a.m. in her face. A glitch in the system, she assumed.

“Why did you do it?” A voice spoke through the radio.

It was the voice of her late husband.

“Why did you do it?” He asked again.

Cathryn’s heart almost broke through her chest. “I had to, and you know it!” She shouted.

“I didn’t do anything to you. I loved you, Cat.”

No. That was a lie. He didn’t love her. He never loved her. Not the way a man was meant to love his wife. If he truly loved her, he wouldn’t have caused her so much grief in their short marriage. He wouldn’t have shouted fear into her every chance he could without so much as a warning. He wouldn’t have put his hands on her the way he did. God, his cold hands. One on her throat and the other caressing her side. She could feel them on her now, the rough, cracked skin he refused to care for.

“I was asleep when you killed me, Cat.”

Yes—yes! He was asleep! But that was purely for functionality. See, he was easily six feet tall; she was barely five-foot-two. Five-foot-two! That was her only shot, and she took it—she took the gun and shot him, right there in bed. Surely she couldn’t be held responsible. No one would look at this petite, abused woman and find malice in her. Right? RIGHT?

“You won’t get away with this.” He said, his voice flat.

Cathryn snapped back to the present. “I’ve had enough of this.” She did what she should have done as soon as she started hearing her husband’s voice and unplugged the radio. When she did, the radio snapped off, and the television turned on. The image of her bloodied spouse’s body splashed across the screen.

“I won’t be ignored, Cat.” His voice emanated from the unpowered radio.

Cathryn’s whole body trembled, and she ripped out even more hair, leaving a large bald patch on her head. She turned away from the screen and reached for the door handle to leave the room. The knob turned, but the door wouldn’t budge. Why won’t the door budge? She shook it ferociously, but it did nothing. Ah! The bathroom door! She gripped the handle, only to immediately pull away in anguish. It burned like a hot stovetop. She cursed aloud and held her hand to her chest.

“There’s no escape for you.”

If the doors wouldn’t work, certainly a flimsy glass pane wouldn’t be able to keep her in. She raced to the window facing the motel parking lot and rammed her shoulder into it. Pain radiated from the impact site, like she had run into a wall of concrete. The window was unscathed.

The radio laughed.

Cathryn’s vision split, making her see double. Her head grew heavy, and it was nearly impossible to stand up straight. She was trapped. Trapped!

The radio’s chuckling turned to a full-force cackle.

Her face flushed hot as she pounded on the door. “Get me out of here!”

The phone began to ring, its volume far louder than it ever should have been able to reach—not to mention, it still was unplugged. She picked up the receiver and brought it to her ear. “What?” She shouted, her burned hand grasping at another fistful of hair.

“It’s too late for you.” It was her husband on the other line.

She slammed down the phone. It resumed ringing immediately upon hanging up the call.

“Why are you doing this?” Cathryn called out.

The hyena-like laughter continued, as did the phone ringing. The static volume from both the television and radio climbed louder and louder.

Knocking rapped at the door.

“Let me out!” Cathryn screamed at the top of her lungs.

The doorknob turned, and the door swung open. The room went silent. The TV turned off, as did the radio. The phone stopped ringing, and the low hum of the static ceased.

“This is her, officer.” The person at the door said.

Three police officers entered the room and grappled Cathryn. She thrashed and twisted and swung at them, did everything in her power to escape.

“No! Get off of me! You can’t take me!”

But they did.

Cathryn’s heart rate dropped once she was in the back of the police car, and she could see clearly once again. Oh God, what had she done?

Her eyes navigated to the police radio. Chatter from the other end filled the small vehicle. The words were indistinguishable from babbling to Cathryn. The static crackling muffled the words too much. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her shoulder.

One loud spike of static came from the radio.

“This is the end, Cat.”