When she looked at her face in the dirty
mirror, she did not recognize her own self. She touched her face, clean it with
the few drops of water that came out of the sink and just looked at her hideous
face. Somehow, time had deformed it, changing from those times in which she had
known proper food and a stable way of life. It hadn’t been like that for a very
long time and she even doubted that all of the past she remembered had
happened. Maybe she had invented all of it from TV, which now she loved to watch.
The motel where she worked was the perfect
place for her because there was no pressure in getting anything done. Her boss
was a very fat man that couldn’t even go to the second floor of his own
business, so she could spent all of the time she wanted up there and he would
only yell at her once she came down, not having changed the sheets properly or
without cleaning all the bathrooms of the very old building.
She had chosen her name to be Carrie. One
night, she had seen that very scary movie in her room and had loved it so much
she had decided to be named like that. Her boss agreed to call her that as it
was better than calling her “girl” all the time. She was thankful he was only a
very stubborn man, as maybe her luck would have been pretty different if she
had fallen into the hands of someone else. After all, Carrie was not her name
as she did not remembered anything from her past accurately, only parts and
feelings, like the ones that indicated her she had changed physically.
Carrie had been working there for more than
two years, and she was much more experienced now that she had been in the past,
so just imagine how bad she was when she first started scrubbing floors and
fixing small problems that people had in their rooms. Not that many people came
to this part of the world. The world was normally empty, only some cars that
wanted to take a more scenic rout would end up in the motel. The rest took the
highway, which was better and much faster. But Mr. Ray, the fat man, never even
thought of changing the location of his motel.
Apparently, it had been a family estate. So
when Mr. Ray’s parents died, the motel became instantly his and he had been
managing it from the age of twenty. Carrie secretly admired him because the
place could be much worse bur Mr. Ray kept it afloat; although how he did it
was shrouded in mystery. Not many people came in and he only had two people to
attend to the twenty rooms he had available. Carrie was in charge of all the
chambermaid duties, Mr. Ray himself was the repairman (even if he did not know
what he was doing most of the time) and there was also and old man called
Timmy, who was the one protecting everyone and everything within the premises
of the motel.
So most days Carrie would only clean half of
the rooms, as the other ones were rarely used, and she mused about what her
life had been before. Mr. Ray had convinced her that looking for her past could
not en up well for her and at first she thought that he only wanted to keep her
there, almost like a slave, but that wasn’t the case. He let her go to the
nearest town, where she told the police of her situation. At first, no one
believed her. And when one young guy decided to listen to her, he couldn’t
anything about a missing woman fitting her description. She asked him to check
again and he even let her try but there was nothing in there.
When she finally gave up, the people of the
police were kind enough to give her a new identity, so Mr. Ray was able to
actually pay her and keep her healthy in his motel. With Timmy, they worked as
a strange family but every time things were going too good in the motel, she
was reminded of that past she had no idea about and started crying: what if she
had been married? What if her parents were alive and missing her? What if she had
been a mother? That was enough to make her cry all night and not making her
able to sleep.
One day, a young couple arrived at the motel.
They wore really strange clothes and barely talked. As there was no one else in
the building, Carrie tried to be very nice in order to get to know them better.
She even made coffee for them and gave them some cookies she kept for herself.
The strangers accepted the gifts, but she wasn’t really able to speak to them
or looking at what they had in their suitcases. They would only open the door
enough to have a short talk and that was it.
Every day, Carrie attempted to talk to them
and to do her job, cleaning the room. But she was never able to do any of that
because they wouldn’t come out of the bedroom for anything. She knocked on the
door, asking them if they wanted new bed sheets, water, coffee, their bathroom
cleaned, candles… But the answer was always no. Only at night she would see the
man walking out and driving off to town, then coming back with what appeared to
be food.
Those times the woman was alone, she tied to
talk to her but Carrie realized it was her who was the crazier or weirder one.
She wouldn’t even open the door to say the few words that came out of her mouth
and Carrie knew she didn’t even stand by the door to say these things. It was
very annoying after a while and they ended up staying in the motel for almost a
month. Even Mr. Ray tried to talk to them once, but they only answered by
paying a whole week in advance, so he didn’t insisted on asking them who they
were and why they were barricaded in his motel.
The man, however, was nicer. Carrie had been
taken out the trash one night and she saw him arrive from one of his trips to
town. He carried two bags with him and when she saw some liquid soap fell out
of one of the bags, she just helped him and had a short conversation. He smiled
a lot and it did not seem fake, it seemed like he really wanted to be nice but
just couldn’t be fully nice in that moment. Carrie talked to him many times at
night and she would only get some words but enough to know his voice and that
the couple living there were loaded.
Since they had arrived, they had spent a lot
of money in food and probably other supplies. Besides, they would pay every
week in anticipation and the car seemed to always have a full tank of gas.
After the first two weeks, Carrie concluded that those two were running away
from or with something, She even imagined they had killed people and the police
should really know what was happening. But she was scared and decided to
consult Mr. Ray before doing anything. He agreed and she called the young
officer that had helped her search for her past.
They decided it was best if they did it in the
morning, as the couple would always make sounds later in the day, avoiding to
be seen before midday. So the young officer arrived at the motel at nine
o’clock and knocked on their door, announcing the presence of the police. At
first, there was no noise, but as he kept knocking the door, there was a sudden
strange sound. The officer understood the noise as something he had to respond
to, so he kicked down the door (to Mr. Ray’s dismay) and shot one of the people
inside and pointed at the other with the gun.
Carrie came closer and saw the woman bleeding
on the ground and the man terrified, fully dressed, by the window. They didn’t
seem to have been sleeping; the bed sheets were in the exact same place Carrie
had left them several days ago. None of them talked and when the officer
attempted to call reinforcements with his radio, the man moved, causing the
young man to be scared, shooting him several times. Carrie screamed and
fainted.
When she came to her senses, she was in the
hospital. She had been taken there and Mr. Ray was in the next bed. Apparently
the entire situation had been too much for him and he had a heart attack on the
spot. Carrie did not feel bad, so she attempted to walk out the room but a
police officer stopped her. It was a woman and she made her go back to bed.
Carrie asked what had happened with the couple and the officer just told her
that they had found them to be some kind of stalkers but that she shouldn’t
worry too much about it, as she would get her answers pretty soon. So she
waited, trying to sleep but unsuccessfully.
The next day, she learned the young officer
that had come to their aid was now facing jail, as there was no real proof the
couple, which were dead, were any kind of criminals. However, they did found
that they never slept in the days they were there, instead writing pages after
pages about Carrie. They had taken pictures of her every day and, the strangest
thing was that they had pictures that seemed to be her from a very young age.
When looking one of the pictures, she cried because she couldn’t see herself in
there. She was lost once again.
