Amongst the stillness of the foreign hotel room, the woman replayed all she could remember from the article she’d read on the plane over. Though it felt impossible to recall the words exactly within the series of listless lines, within the dog-eared airline magazine, she remembered it being about the modern woman. According to the journalist, when all is said and done, a good modern woman should be able to keep herself entertained both mentally and physically, regardless of the situation that she finds herself in. The woman reading, herself knew she was resourceful, undoubtedly, and yet there she was in the hotel room, lost within the glare of a television set, the company of which was being rented.
Raising her arms, either side of her like a diver, she fell backwards onto the memory foam mattress, like a gallant raptor shot down from the safety of the sky. She fell like a stoic archangel with clipped, burdensome wings, cast down into a damnable abyss. The woman was adrift; home in some ways, so far from it, in others, beached upon the banks of time and space’s confluenced stream, like a nugget of precious metal.
Although the night was indeed still young and weightless, to her it felt as deep and as ensnaring as slick, black crude oil, spurting from the depths of disturbed earth. She listened as the rush of water within the ajar, tiled bathroom sounded, the bourgeoise toilet’s cistern refilling. How it shushed and sputtered, and sprayed water through its various pipes, nooks and compartments, all sounded wrong to that of normality that she knew from back home. Within a Christ-like pose atop the bed, she pondered the comparative logistics between British plumbing and that of her native country, spread apathetically upon the ruffled, silky duvet. Neon light lathered her, each dilated, bloodshot pupil fixed upon the flatscreen, absorbing the content of the illuminated glass. She was a slender woman; one who when previously visiting the United Kingdom, had been referred to as leggy by a flamboyant shop attendant who seemed in jealous awe of her stature. She was half-dressed, half-awake and half-interested in the game on the television, feeling both grateful and dissatisfied in equal measures. Up there, on the eleventh floor of a glowing amber, glass building, in a city whose name sounded pleasantly nondescript and foreign (despite never having heard of it until an hour previous) she wondered about who out there could remedy her situation.

Upon the veneer side table, her two mobile phones, one archaic, one pristinely fashionable, pinged and buzzed needily, like pining pups. The woman felt bloated, both in the tummy and in the soul; fit to burst— bubbling with both the unwelcome rumble of lactose and something else between existential frustration and brilliant loneliness. She was supposed to be in another city, one far more exciting, and adrenaline-inducing, complete with thudding baselines, and pretentious cocktail bars and questionable morals. Each sip from her Jack Daniels miniature regretfully exacerbated the writhing of lava in her stomach, and the isolation growing deep within. She didn’t even like whiskey, but the feeling of feeling grown-up for doing so, despite making more money in a month than her parents did in a year, was too seductive to ignore. There, in the shadowy, alien room the woman was no more than a flawed ornament. All things considered, she was far from entertained.
On the television screen, the game was being played to formal rows of audience members, within a silent auditorium. For some reason, watching it reminded her of her grandmother, and she watched each of the players, sizing them up. One was larger than the other by some way, but both looked the wrong end of thirty. One by one, red balls on the screen disappeared across the turf-green table, this way and that, as she sculpted scenarios within her hazy mind, imagining both of them serving her in every way she saw fit. The larger one would likely be better at oral, than the skinnier one. His intense glare with glossy eyes suggested he would be the type who enjoyed being spanked, to tears. She pondered to herself whether the lasagne was indeed the culprit, as she slowly removed her stubborn, brown leather cowboy boots one by one, followed by a pair of damp, frilled, ankle socks which she sealed methodically within a ziplock bag. The more she thought about it, the lasagne certainly had to have been the culprit. Despite her request to the horsey air hostess who served her, she was sure that the perma-scowling woman had sabotaged her out of sheer spite. The air within the hotel room smelled fresh, yet artificial, as if synthesised by an advanced race on a distant planet in a bid to tease dependents on oxygen. Each of the yellow towels stacked messily on a wicker chair, looked like strips of fake cheese, freshly sliced for an overgrown burger. The woman felt a sudden urge to open another whiskey miniature, but the more she drank, the more her temple throbbed; her vision blurred. The more her skin felt loose, and numb, and glazed with a clammy dirtiness that only came with transatlantic travel and recycled air. Yet, having no impetus to shower, she settled for removing her long-sleeved, striped t-shirt instead. She wasn’t partial to wearing a brassiere, and her minute breasts raised and fell, grateful for their extended freedom.

Soon afterwards, she realised that she was in fact hungry, and so, wanted to order room service. Then, she remembered she was unable to locate a menu in her room. Perhaps they had forgotten to place one; it was possible, yet unlikely in joints like Ramada. Then, she remembered that she could not remember the telephone code for reception. She wanted to scream, so for five seconds exactly, she did just that, before visiting the bathroom to empty her bladder, her bowels and with the aid of two fingers, her stomach.
Usually, the woman enjoyed flying by way of Business Class. It was a modest pleasure; one which enabled a number of other pleasures that nobody born within her hand-built family homestead in Topeka, Kansas, would have ever dreamed accessible in their lifetimes, or that of their offspring to come, generations into the future. This time round, however, there were delays. Delays that became cancellations; cancellations which became staunchly British announcements that began with drawn-out apologies, live and clear from hidden, crystal-clear terminal speakers. Without having much of a say, the woman ended up stranded between two cities that she’d never heard of, in a country she had no affinity with, driven by a taxi driver whose otherwise chaste and humble eyes, seemed to fix upon the rearview mirror one glance too much at her cleavage under the cover of night.
As she was ferried away from the familiarity of an airport, she gazed out at the stony city. Each of its rigid buildings looked sad, and forlorn— as solemn as mausoleums or perverted headstones, for honoured, long-dead peasants. Work had taken her to places beyond reasonable description, and unfettered imagination, and now there she was, stuck within the gut of the British Midlands, unsure exactly when she would be consumed, digested and excreted, back to her intended destination. They navigated the desolate, shadowy ring road, each of its empty lanes characterised by fading paint and crater-sized potholes, looming amber-lit structures high above them, and then seconds later, down below, their angular facades, both unsettling and mesmerising. She pressed her nose against the condensation glass, sucking her thumb; a spectator in awe, the warm, breath-like air of the cab pricked the bare skin of her arms. A smattering of goosebumps.

The airline had offered each of the Business Class passengers a night at the closest Ramada Inn. Given that they had essentially cheated her out of nearly a grand’s worth of income (income that would not be able to be recovered), it seemed as though it was the least they could do. She’d already talked her way into a refund for the flight, having scared a spectacled, sweaty, middle-aged worker into overseeing the transaction there and then in front of her. She was the kind of woman used to getting what she wanted, true, but fair was fair after all. She recalled the pleasure of watching the man sweat with fear, his fingers tapping away at his modest computer as fast as they possibly could.
Reaching over to her side table, she handled one of her mobile phones. It was her primary one, and hot to the touch, gleaming with activity. It felt perversely heavy in her palm, and seductive in her grip. Even in a different country, men were the same. They spoke a little differently and photographed a little differently, but when all was said and done were all the same. The same demands, and pleads, and dick-pics. Ultimately, it was a question of circuitry— it was biology after all. She scrolled through an endless stream of messages from suitors. It was as if they were wild dogs, baying up a tree’s bough at a trapped fox, snarling with beads of frothing saliva. Wild dogs, outwardly untamable, yet equipped with an unwavering desire to be led by a hand.
She stood suddenly, and paced over to the largest, longest window within the room, staring out at the city below, carpeted in darkness. For the first time, she noticed the glisten of rain amongst the lightless asphalt roads and the narrow pavements of the city, drizzle falling from the neon-lit sky above. The hotel was not where she wanted to be— that was a given, but as she stared out at the mismatched shadows, she felt a strange sense of familiarity and sympathy for the place in which she was marooned. Upon realising that she too was wet, her mind sharpening from its nonchalant blurriness to one of confronting panic, a strange sense of guilt washed over her as she hurriedly attempted to rub away the problem. Polite television applause drowned out her noises, her eyes shut so tightly that their lids shuddered. As her breath quickened, she attempted to recall the scraps of hazy teenage memories, as was her way since official adulthood. She gave it a minute; and then five, and then ten, at which point she cursed aloud, closing her legs and rising to her feet. She stretched, this way and that, before starting again. When that didn’t work, she ran herself a bath, pacing around the room in generous circles, each step upon the shaggy carpet met with the pad of scrunched toes. Feeling the creeping silence of the room closing in on her, she sang some songs, pirouetting playfully with graceful spins. She entered the bath, the water rising to the edge of the tub, submerging herself beneath the water in intervals, before touching herself once more. She then washed her jet-black hair with some sort of body wash that smelled like limes, before getting out to take a piss, rinsing and pulling the plug. She watched the scum and lost hair gather by the plughole, and felt a strange hunger.

Towel wrapped around her head, she did three feeble push-ups, and five squats, before circling back around the room, finally giving in to the pull of her cell. Assessing her suitors, she fingered a blunt invitation to the most suitable, least threatening prospect. Five more squats later, there was a knock at her hotel door.

***