This was a competition entry to write a short story in 48 hours - the challenge being a spy story set in a motel that featured a stencil. It received 5th place! Steven was getting quite used to the fact that nothing was going to go right on this trip. It was supposed to be simple, a visit to his daughter – and if he’d left it at that, it probably would have been. He could have just flown in, and she’d have picked him up at the airport. Nice, simple, easy. But no, he’d had to complicate it, wanting to tour the local sights first. That should also have been simple – rent a car, and just take a few days to play tourist.
Naturally, the sat-nav in the car had failed, and he started to run low on fuel. Then the storm had blown in, making driving treacherous, especially given he was no longer used to driving on the right-hand side – had barely needed to since his retirement from MI6. Steven slowed, looking for a place to stop but when he pulled into the carpark of the motel, his heart sank. It was the Excelsior. He’d been certain that this place must have been torn down in the last twenty years, but here it still was. He didn’t want to remember it – had worked hard not to, in fact. but his reluctance didn’t change the fact that he needed somewhere to stay. Fate, it seemed, was bored. The woman at the reception desk didn’t put her book down until he pointedly rang the bell on the desk. He was, apparently, “in luck” – there was one room left. Somehow, he knew that it would be apartment 7 – just like last time. He wasn’t shocked when that turned out to be true. Sighing, and resolved to just not think about it, he carried his bags in and lay down on the bed. He reached for the TV remote, but its batteries were dead. Of course. The rain hammered on the windows, and there was a musty smell. The room looked dated, but Steven knew for a fact that it had been re-decorated at least once in its life. In this motel – in fact, this very room – Steven’s greatest failure during his service occurred. He was supposed to be meeting an American agent – England and America against the world. Though why here was anybody’s guess. He supposed that was the point. He and Carl each had part of a message which was, according to their tip, of vital importance to national security. He had the document and Carl had the stencil to decode it. Only Carl hadn’t arrived and, after a week of waiting in apartment 7, foreign agents had come in shooting. Steven escaped, and destroyed the document, assuming that Carl had been captured, or killed, and the stencil was now in enemy hands. Carl’s body was found a day later a few miles up the road, with no sign of the stencil. Steven had been congratulated on his escape and quick response in destroying the document, but there had been clear disappointment in the loss of the message. In a lot of ways, it had been the beginning of the end of his career. They lost the message, but nothing changed. National security was as secure – or not – as ever, but a good man was dead. Was it worth it? He wasn’t so sure anymore… The rain continued to drum on the window, and, lacking options, Steven pulled out a book. He flipped aimlessly through the pages for a few minutes until he felt a drop of water on his head. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling was dripping. Sighing, he went to the bathroom, hoping to find a bucket, or anything else to catch the water in. Steven wasn’t even surprised when he entered and saw water running down the walls. Well – there was no point in complaining about it now. It wasn’t as if the Excelsior’s staff would be able to get it fixed tonight, if he could even get the woman at reception to look into it at all, and he could insist on a refund just as easily in the morning. He did manage to find a bucket and placed it on the bed to catch the drip. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept in a chair. He went back into the bathroom and grabbed the towel, hoping to wad up the leak in there before water ran too far across the floor. He knelt to place the towel along the skirtings: the wallpaper was peeling in a way that suggested this wasn’t the first time the wall had flooded. The towel caught it, and the damp paper shredded. Steven blinked as it came away, unable to believe what he was seeing. Behind it, the stencil that he’d come to collect twenty years ago slipped free. How could it be there? How had it come to be behind the wallpaper, in the room he’d visited so many times, so long ago? A miscommunication? Had Carl hidden it here, rather than intending to meet him to hand it over? Or had he known he didn’t have long, and had hidden it and run, hoping to leave a message for Steven, a message Steven never got? Was it even important how it got there? Steven sighed. Probably not… Could it still be important? He could take it home with him, and turn it in. It might still matter, even after all these years. Or it could lead to a whole lot of trouble. He was out of that game. Did he want to get back into it again? At the very least he’d feel compelled to cut his holiday short – if he was going to hand it in, he’d better do it quickly. He shook his head. No – it was too late, and it could only bring back a past he wanted to forget. He took the stencil and broke it into pieces, intending to burn them. Let the past stay where it belonged – and in the morning, he could drive on to see his daughter.
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Flash FictionSome shorter fiction, usually based on some kind of challenge. Archives
October 2021
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