On the Road

by Alun Williams

The Viking Motel in Breakwater, Idaho did not make it on the list of the top hundred motels a man on the road should visit. There’s a woman behind the reception desk sitting behind a glass window, reading True Confessions and chewing gum, and I had half a mind to place a "Do Not Feed the Animals" sign in front of her. I was staying one night, one night which would be one too many, but I was tired and had no place else to go. The bed was hard, the towels dirty, the tv’s black and white and there were remnants of the last guest’s pubic hairs in the shower. I lie naked on the bed and called my wife to tell her that I wouldn’t make it home 'til tomorrow and she screamed at me, telling me that I was a shit, but hell, I already knew that. I find a porn magazine instead of a Gideon’s Bible but God is watching so the light bulb fails and I’m left holding my dick in the dark, which is as good a feeling as it ever gets on the road.

6S

Alun Williams, ex-member of East of the Web and author of The Long Box, lives in Wales. He now writes in Critters Bar and Zoetrope under "maxie slim" and "Maxwell Allen." Several shorts by Alun have been published in Write Side Up, Cambrensis and Secret Attic.