"Then she lit up a candle; And she showed me the way"

Is this really it? Or, is this how we die?

We approach the hotel. The two-lane main road is dark, quiet, and slick with recent rains.

A woman sits on an old-school hard plastic crate with a tablet in her lap. She smokes a cigarette. Her blonde hair is stringy as though it hasn’t been washed in days. Her figure is thin, but not attractive. Her face wears more wrinkles than are naturally hers. I am seconds away from starting a conversation when she answers a cell phone that didn’t ring. She coughs a throaty and hearty exhalation of breath.

We walk past her. I have my purse and he has our suitcases. Opening the door, the two-story brick building tries to appear quaint with the purple painted cinder blocks, just like in the nineties NBC hit sitcom “Friends.” There are rack stands offering brochures and cards to nearby attractions. Floral curtains line the check-in window and a tiny Indian woman dressed in a magenta sweatshirt and purple sweatpants stands on the other side.

“We’d like a room, just for tonight. How much is one of your rooms?” I ask.

She’s ready to check us in, pulling out the necessary paperwork. “I have just one left,” she says with the stereotypical thick Indian accent. “It has a king-sized bed.”

My other half stutters to say something.

“I can show you.” She wastes no time grabbing a credit card-like key. “This way.”

She walks quickly leading us down a drab hallway with industrial grade burnt orange carpet and cream-colored cinder block walls. Sheer emerald green curtains hang over tiny basement windows near the ceiling of the hallway side without doors. It's confusing. We're on the first floor. We reach the end of the long corridor and she opens the door. As promised, there’s a king-size bed in the center of the squished room. Its cover dons stripes in maroon, forest green, and mustard yellow. Around it are two nightstands and at the foot of the bed is a dresser, desk, mini fridge, and flat screen TV. She shows us the bathroom, her pride and joy. The sink, toilet, tub, and tiles are mint green with white caulking.

“It’s all in very good condition. There’s no smoking, but sometimes people smoke.”

There’s a smell of an old building but nothing that resembles tobacco.

Hastily, she leads us out of the room and back to the entryway, gathering the old-school credit card machine in which the card is imprinted onto carbon paper.

I give my card and she takes it with a smile, running it through her machine. I can’t help but wonder if we just checked into the Hotel California or an episode of American Horror Story.

The task had been simple. Find a hotel room close to Interstate 90 Eastbound. We had left Niagara Falls in such a rush, we hadn’t really planned next steps. It was all spontaneous. We stopped for a quick bite and once I had sucked down a bottle of liquid caffeine, I drove. And drove. The clock ticked closer to midnight when he suggested we stop to lie down on a stationary and completely horizontal bed.

Three times we attempted to stop. The first would have taken us on a maze of other highways, which just countered the point. The second hotel was eight miles from the interstate and just too far for my tired brain to compute. The third wanted nearly two hundred dollars despite the fact we had zero interest in their pool and gym.

With our own key, we walk down the hallway. This time is different. Doors are slamming. Screaming is coming from within the space between the door and its frame. A portly dude dressed in black with a baseball cap swiftly walks by us. I think I see a blonde in the bedroom.

We reach our room. It’s just as she showed us, except I just notice a window is boarded up. Someone bangs on a wall. Somebody else yells.

“So, either this place is rented out by the hour or we have to be strung out on something to stay here,” I say to my other half as he realizes the TV doesn’t work. He laughs and nods in agreement. "I think the last place in Niagara Falls prepared us for this moment," I add, remembering the house we rented from Airbnb that was in the heart of the city's ghetto.

Soon enough, the air conditioning is cranked and I’m in bed. The outside noise is drowned out.

Bang! Crash! Jackhammers. Hand-held hammers. It's nonstop.

The sounds of demolition wake me from a sound sleep. It’s loud. Incessant, and possibly over my head. What I would give to hear door slamming and people screaming. Having accepted sleep is no longer my destiny, we dress, pack our few items, and leave the room. The hallway is different, somehow quiet.

The door that continuously opened and slammed closed is miraculously shut. But the next room’s door is wide open. It’s empty and a handyman is on a ladder pulling ceiling tiles and dropping them on the floor. The innkeeper, dressed exactly as she was the night before, picks them up and transfers them to a large circular gray pail on wheels. She rolls it out to the dumpster like part of some routine, like “nothing to see here. Be on your way.”

She smiles at us as we announce our departure and walk out into the dreary Sunday morning.