u/AugustusMartisVT

I'd been living in that motel room for over three weeks, and it still smelled like stale sex, cheap bleach, and ancient carpet. It wasn't the type of place for people with a shred of hope remaining. Well, at the very least, you don't end up in a room like that because you're doing well in life, that's for damn sure.

I was laying the rope out on the shitty bedspread like I was setting the table for a dinner guest that I'd hated for years but still had to play at being polite for anyway.

It was a really nice rope, at least. Real, "Authentic American" hemp, according to the packaging. The kind of rope that made you feel outdoorsy just by touching it. Like the "authentic" part came with a specific texture, and you could only get that feeling from the right hardware store and, even then, only if you had enough cash left in your dwindling bank account to pretend you could still make luxury purchases.

But I kept telling myself that I was "keeping it classy" by using a high-quality rope, and that the whole thing would send some kind of message out into the aether.

No handful of pills.

No blood-dyed bathtub.

No note full of excuses and pleads for forgiveness.

Just a perfectly tied knot and a tree.

Just me and my childhood backyard.

Just a failure of a man and his noose, where everything started and everything should end: the loop closing cleanly like the story always knew how it would end, since it knew what genre it belonged to.

My phone, charging on the nightstand—like I'd need a full battery at the morgue—glowed with multiple notifications.

My wife's—or, I guess, my now ex-wife's—most recent text sat above the rest like some conqueror's founding-flag, claiming the pride and glory of being what finally destroyed me.

Just below hers was the notification email from the FTC, "Immediate cooperation required in regard to an ongoing fraud investigation". My business partner had already fled the country, all our liquid assets in-tow.

My bank app's notification loomed over the rest like the third judge of my tribunal, "Multiple overcharges and declined charges require your attention :)"

That fucking smiley.

Why the fuck would they still include it on overcharge notifications?

I tossed the phone onto the nightstand and tried to push it out of my mind. Went back to making my fingers do something simple.

You see, a noose wasn't a difficult knot. Not really. It was just a modified slip knot, that's all. So, my fingers refusing to tie the knot properly was adding another layer of annoyance onto my mounting self-loathing.

I tried to make them obey, but the "authentic" rope was fighting against me, just like everything else.

Maybe it was my hands.

Maybe they were fighting against making the knot properly.

Or maybe it was just another example of me being a failure.

I had built a company out of sheer confidence and borrowed funds. Now I couldn't even make a simple knot. I kept getting it wrong, over and over, like even the universe was mocking me in my final task. I was failing at the only thing left that mattered.

So, I tried again.

And again.

And again.

Those damned "authentic" hemp fibers kept scratching at my fingers and palms as I tried to work the rope. They were dry. Stubborn. Mocking.

And every attempt at the knot sent up another waft of that scent. That scent that was supposed to smell like barn dust and summer. But that only worked if you'd really experienced those things. To me it just smelled like a fucking rope that I spent too much fucking money on. It smelled like aggravation and yet another failure.

It smelled like...

It smelled like my father's shed. Like the summer I helped him on that huge carving project—the kayak he’d been talking about making for years. The summer before the October when I’d found out why my dad drank so much.

Back when I thought life was going to be straightforward.

Midnight was crawling closer and closer. The digital clock on the microwave's face glared in a dull red, keeping count of my countless defeats.

11:46. Failure.

11:51. Failure.

11:58. Failure.

At 11:59 my phone buzzed with a notification.

I didn't open it.

Probably another automated message.

Another update on my numerous failures, surely.

Another person on the internet explaining why men like me deserved this and worse.

In frustration I turned the phone face-down and scratched at my scalp in hopelessness.

That was when I first heard it—what I could only identify as a distant, muffled cry.

Soft, quiet, but cut short.

I froze with the rope half-coiled in my lap.

The motel had been mostly quiet during my stay, surprisingly. Maybe a too-loud TV down the hall once, or a couple arguing in the parking lot. There was a bout of manic laughter that came from someone on the first floor—some kind of mental breakdown, I assumed.

Then the sound was coming again, but slightly closer.

I heard another door whining open, even closer this time. The cry that followed was short, strangled, then gone.

I was waiting for the sound of the front desk to do something.

For another guest to slam their door or shout some curse into the void.

For anything to signal that whatever that was, it had already concluded.

But nothing was coming.

I told myself it was none of my business, that I had one problem left, and it was the shape that rope refused to take.

Then, another cry. Closer, but still quite enough that it wouldn't have woken a light sleeper. 

And the distinct sound of someone thrashing. 

And then nothing.

My heart was suddenly thudding against my ribcage in a panicked staccato.

I grabbed my phone and hit 9-1-1.

One ring, then the call dissolved into a flat fuzz, dead noise that sat in my ear like a thick cotton swab.

The screen showed a shadow of bars with a slash through them.

I hung up and tried again. 

Same fuzz, same blank.

My mind called back to an old fact that I never bothered looking up to verify. Cell phones should be able to dial 9-1-1, no matter where they were. Something was wrong, so I snatched up the room phone and pressed the receiver to the side of my face.

Dead air greeted me. The line was just as dead as the cellphone. It was like the motel had a hand clamped over every mouth, all at once.

My heartbeat got loud enough to block out all sound with every pulse. I kept thinking about why I was there. What my singular mission was.

Through the cascade of thumps, I tried to listen to my surroundings again. and heard another key enter a door. The same deliberate pace.

Whoever was doing this was going room to room like they were flipping breakers.

The room suddenly felt smaller—both oppressive and claustrophobic in equal measures.

The sound was wrong in a way I couldn't pinpoint at first. It was a cry—human, unmistakably—but cut just short of being urgent somehow.

A man’s voice came from the room right next to mine—more confused than scared.

I held my breath and listened, moving over to press my ear against the wall.

Casual—but heavy—footsteps. The sound of shitty carpet giving way under their patient weight. A quick shuffling followed by the sound of fleshy meat hitting the wooden headboard. Then the dull thump that could only be the sound of a skull weakly hitting drywall. A smaller thump, like a flailing hand that barely met the wall. 

No fight. No struggle. Just the sounds of inevitability.

Next, the muffled taunts of a voice, muted to the point where I couldn’t understand the words through the thin motel walls, but could still pick out the cruelty of them.

The attacker was mocking the dying man. He was taking pleasure in the man’s struggle.

The voice paused and then footsteps sounded out again. 

I hear a distinct CLICK through the wall. Then the slow grinding sound of a Polaroid being released from an old camera, the patient sound of a cherished antique.

My fingers clamped tighter on the rope, and the hemp fibers were biting back, scratching my palm’s nerves raw. The “authentic” hemp smelled like dust and summer and my father's shed. My stomach twisted because that smell used to mean that I was somewhere safe.

A meaning I was planning to change.

I knew my room was next. And, just like that, my body was moving on its own—without my permission or control.

Hands moving before my brain caught up, I built a slap-dash decoy in my bed with all the care I’d given to my taxes—which, is to say, none. 

Pillows got stacked, blankets got bunched up, and my hoodie got positioned to resemble a messy slumber. It looked like shit. A decoy made by some teenager who’d snuck out enough times to think they had it figured out.

I glanced out the sliver of the window that the curtains had refused to cover since I first arrived. I could see the second-floor railing and the mostly empty parking lot, all lit with dull orange sodium lights. 

I couldn’t see it, but my mind dwelled on the patchy, oil-stained asphalt beyond the railing.

The night outside that window was completely indifferent to the sounds I’d heard and unwilling to interrupt what was about to occur. Meaning that it was up to me.

I shut off the bedside lamp. I left the bathroom light on because I knew it would take too long to turn it off. I needed the place to look normal at first glance, that's all.

I crouched by the door with the rope in my hands, waiting with such spring-like tension that my legs started to shake and ache.

My door’s lock gave out a weak ticking sound.

Metal scraped.

The key slowly turned.

The knob twisted.

The door cracked open and the chain rattled. A flashlight beam slipped in. It sliced across the room, found the bed, lingered on the lump of my blankets.

A man let out a low, satisfied murmur—strangely familiar.

A thin, metallic tool slipped into the crack. It flicked the security chain in a way that disengaged it. The door gave way and slowly swung wider, letting in a gust of humid-thick midnight air.

Without a second thought I surged toward him. I was too hasty, though, and I tripped over my own feet. I stumbled, nearly falling onto the ground in front of him. Before I could tip all the way, I tucked my shoulder and rammed into him. The rope tangled around my wrists and hands, and the impact of my shoulder into his stomach caused my arms to jumble up in a useless mess between us. I forced myself against him until we hit the wall, the impact enough to force a surprised yelp from him and cause him to drop whatever gleaming metal he was holding. I accidentally kicked it away.

He reeked of two-packs-a-day, burnt coffee, and no-brand hand soap. Meaning he smelled exactly like the front desk of every place like that you’ve ever checked into, cranked to eleven.

He grunted and grabbed my shirt in a practiced grip. Like he’d been waiting for years for the chance.

He drove a knee up into my side and tried to push me away.

“A fookin’ fighter, huh?” he said, in the same tone he used when he told me about the ice machine being out-of-service.

The memory shot through me so sharp it almost felt like an electric shock from a hidden wire.

***

It was check-in, three weeks ago.

Harsh fluorescent lights in the summer twilight. 

He was wearing the forced, friendly smile I’d seen a thousand times from those trapped in the service-industry. His casual pen twirling was perfected from years of working at a front desk. The cup next to the check-in monitor held black-sludge that was probably coffee at one point.

"Traveling for work?" he asked. “We got deals.”

"No," I said. "Just need a place to get away — you know." I knew I sounded pathetic, but I couldn't manage anything more than apathy at the time.

He nodded. Friendly in a way that was a little too rehearsed to be earnest. "Visitors? People coming by? Friends, family?"

"Just me."

Another nod, interested, leaning slightly over the counter. "Anyone who'll be calling for you? Anyone I need to tell your room number?"

I did a small shrug, acting like it didn’t sting to admit. "Nobody."

His smile was so sharp, and I had been so tired that I mistook his attention for hospitality, the way you mistake the heat of a fire for warmth when it has already started burning through the floor you're standing on.

He’d heard exactly what he wanted.

***

My mind snapped back. His elbow drove into my ribs and the pain bloomed, deep and hot in my lungs.

I coughed and tasted metal. He’d done this many times

His flashlight dropped and clattered onto the textured concrete of the rail-guarded hall, the beam spinning across the texture to form pools of shadows that build-peak-fade in fragments of slowed seconds in my mind.

I yanked the rope because pulling was the only thing my body could do at the moment. Surprisingly, some sort of tension built in the line. The “authentic” hemp bit into my palms even more. My hands pushed forward. 

I didn’t know how I managed it, but somewhere in the chaos the rope slid across his collar, across his neck, and caught around his throat. He made a wet sound and his hands flew up, trying to stop the impact to his windpipe.

He was stronger than me, without doubt, but he was also startled. Sometimes surprise is the only advantage you need.

We twisted out of my doorway and onto the outside hallway, both of us half falling. The overhead fluorescent light buzzed.

The railing sat a few feet away, open space beyond it, black and waiting.

He stumbled backward, heel catching on something—his own flashlight. His hands clawed at his neck and his eyes flashed wide.

My feet skidded against the textured concrete. 

My shoulder screamed from the first tackle.

My ribs screamed from his abuse.

My hands kept pulling because stopping felt like a death warrant, and I was not going to go quietly into that waiting maw.

And then…

He tipped over the railing.

For a moment, there was no weight, no struggle.

But now the rope jerked tight—***SNAAAP—***and tried to drag me over with him. 

The hemp burned my palms. My arms felt like they were tearing from their sockets. 

I scrabbled forward, slipping, thinking I was about to follow him, thinking my body finally got its wish by accident.

He hung below the railing, limp but still letting out a wet gurgle that tried to become words and failed.

I let go.

My hands opened like they belonged to a stranger. His body crumpled onto the concrete and began shaking. The buzzing light overhead kept buzzing, and the motel kept smelling like bleach and old carpet like none of that counted as an emergency.

His sounds faded in a few ugly seconds. 

The open-air hallway sat bright and wrong.

A sound came from the room next to mine. A thin, weak noise. A struggling inhale. A wet exhale. Someone was still trying to breathe through whatever damage that man had done to them.

I stepped into the room because my body kept pushing me forward. The air inside smelled sharp, like weeks of sweat and a fistful of pennies on a hotplate. 

The sight that I stumbled into was… It was grizzly. An overweight man with shoulder length curls lay half on the bed and half on the carpet. His eyes were sluggish and on the edge of being glassy. One of his hands scraped weakly at the wad of sheets that he’d fallen out of, like he was trying to pull himself back from the brink.

“Hey,” I forced out. “Hey. Stay with me.”

His eyes moved to me in a lazy arch. There wasn’t any fear in them. He knew the truth already, even if I refused to acknowledge it. And it hurt to see how accepting he was about it.

So, I tried 9-1-1 again and got the same dead fuzz. Then I tried his room’s phone, and it gave me the same silence.

It was like I had never left my room. Like I hadn’t moved at all. It should have been me lying there.

My hands hovered over his chest. The attacker had driven a knife through his sternum above his heart, severing his lungs from his throat and paralyzing him below the arms.

My eyes tried to find a way to stop the dwindling flow of his blood, as if there was anything I could do.

His fingers curled one more time, then went still. His eyes stopped tracking my movements and his chest completely stilled.

I sat back on my heels and felt something unfolding inside me, something that was meant to stay closed. Thoughts of my father flooded forward, and it felt like his crumpled corpse was laughing at me from the basement. 

I went back into the hall and started walking toward the stairs.

Doors stood open along the corridor. Light spilled onto shapes that did not move. A curtain hung half torn down. One room smelled heavily of piss—someone had released themselves as they died, I guess. Another smelled like a heavy cologne and the iron-tang of blood. A couple lay tangled in sheets, dark and soaked through, which was why the blood-smell was so much stronger in that room.

I wanted to stop walking. I wanted to stop looking. I wanted someone to touch my shoulder and wake me up. I wanted anything that would make me feel less useless.

But I kept moving, because there was nothing to do in that situation but move forward.

At the end of the outdoor corridor was the wide stairs with non-slip strips. Each dirty black-rectangle dug into my bare soles—I wasn’t wearing shoes. At the bottom of the stairs sat the front office. 

At least I wouldn’t have to walk past those rooms, some distant part of my mind cried.

The front of the office glowed under flickering fluorescent lights, a pair of graffitied vending machines humming next to the glass door. Through it I could see the little ‘lounge’ that consisted of just a sofa and a coffee table with outdated magazines. On the counter that separated the office from the lounge sat a bowl of peppermint candies, an altar of white and red offerings that forced me to remember the blood-soaked white sheets in the—

And then I was stepping behind the counter, even though I didn’t remember opening the door or going in. My right foot stuck to the tile for half a second, like something had dried there, and then something dried over that, and then another ten layers followed that one.

A monitor glowed on the counter and my eyes drifted down to it, my mind scrambling for something to focus on—really, anything to anchor me to reality.

And, of course, it was slowly flipping through feeds of the rooms, each angled from such a high spot in the room that the cameras must have been disguised as sprinklers or smoke detectors. 

Beside the monitor sat a small plastic box with an antenna and a single blinking, red light. The device emitted a faint high whine, subtle in the way that the sound sank into your skull, and you instinctively ignored it, until you had a pounding headache with no idea where it came from. Next to it was a phone. 

I numbly grabbed the receiver and pressed it to my ear.

Dead silence.

The back-office door behind me was closed tight, but I could hear the slightest of movements from beyond it. The low creak of a chair shifting weight—someone settling in, not about to stand. An old man’s disgruntled noises came from the other side. He let out a low exhale, like I could fling the door open to find him napping.

My mouth instantly went dry and I fully looked around my surroundings for the first time. To the side of the counter was a mini hallway that led to some kind of maintenance room. Along the wall were countless boxes and bubble-packs with printed labels. All the labels I could see from my place at the counter had PO Boxes—from all over the country and maybe a few from beyond. In the maintenance room beyond the hallway, I could make out the shape of a woman, or at the very least, what used to be a woman.

My eyes jerked away from the visceral sight and settled onto the mysterious box, the whine still drilling deep into my nerve endings.

And again, my body was acting on its own. I snatched up the whining box. It was warm in my hand until I slammed it against the tile floor in a single hard spike.

The plastic case cracked, electronic bits sprayed out onto the tile floor, and the whine died in a weak sputter. I took the entire office phone into my hands and pressed my shoulder into the door. Behind the door the old chair let out a louder squeal.

I quickly lifted the receiver again and was greeted with a blessed dial tone.

A voice came from behind the door, almost conversational, “Zeke? What the hell was that?”

My skin crawled. The voice belonged to an older man, and given how steady it was, I had to assume it was the owner.

I punched 9-1-1 into the cream-colored body of the phone quickly, fingers shaking with a fresh burst of adrenaline.

It rang.

The steady voice of a woman answered after two ring, “911, what is your emergency?”

“There are people dead,” I said, and the words scraped out of me in a lethargic haze. “This motel. Someone is killing the guests, please, I’m at the front desk.”

“Zeke—” the old man started but stopped once he realized I sounded nothing like his accomplice. “Who’s out there?!” The office door’s handle twisted and the door pressed against my shoulder. ‘Zeke’ might have been bigger than me, but the weak push of the older man told me he’d not force his way through.

I ignored the older man’s shout and continued to mumble the details of the motel to the woman the best I could. She told me to stay on the line and that officers were on their way.

My eyes looked along the hallway for something I could drag over to block the back-office door. Within my reach was a small filing cabinet and a box of papers, neither of which would stop the man from bursting out to confront me. The office door bumped against my shoulder again.

The old man’s raspy voice came through the thin door. Mild, almost amused. “You can put that phone down, sonny. We can talk abo’t this.”

I rotated to press my back to the door and braced one of my bare feet against the counter. I kept the receiver to my ear, which meant I heard when the line suddenly went dead.

The old man must’ve had a backup device in his office. I felt my stomach turn just as the office door bumped again. 

To my surprise, the old man’s voice shifted to hold a truly merciful tone, “I’m guessin’ you’re hurt and damn exhausted.” He was right. My ribs ached from the attacker’s blows and my palms stung where the hemp chewed into them. “Ain’t no way you got in here without Zeke doin’ summtin to ya.” 

And he was right. I did want to stop. I wanted to let him out. I wanted him to be the noose I couldn’t tie. 

But I wanted to live through that night.

Those two opposing wants crashed into each other in my chest like competing bucks in heat, all loud and clacking.

The voice behind the door sighed, irritated, like I was making a mess in his clean workspace. “Ya think ya got me stuck in here?”

That sentence dropped cold into me. Before I could fully process it the sound of a metal latch moving came from the office. Of course he’d have a back door. Of course, a man who ran a murder motel would have some kind of exit plan.

I started to pull away from the door, my body displacing by three or four inches, and as I did two claps of sudden thunder—***KRAK! KRIACK!—***erupted from the other side of the door. Instinctively, I ducked and pulled away from the door more.

Ears rang, hands trembled, braced knees wobbled.

My mind was flung back again to that overcast Saturday in October.

***

It was that overcast Saturday in October.

Mom had sent me out to get him for dinner because he’d been in the shed too long. She tried to sound annoyed, but she was more concerned than anything else. The factory he’d been working at for sixteen years had shut down suddenly, and for the first time since high school, he was jobless. And he’d been jobless for nearly three months as my mother scrapped us by on her meager salary.

The grass was soaked and I vividly remember the way my shoes kicked up droplets as I crossed the yard. The shed light glowed under the door. I remember thinking he was probably working on that carving project again. I remember thinking that meant he was getting better.

Then came a muffled whip-crack—krikboom*—***from inside the shed. A hard, splitting sound from inside the shed that made the whole yard go deathly still.

I stopped in my tracks as something dark flecked the door’s little window.

My body numbly moved through the next steps, at least that's how I remember it. I opened the door before my rational brain could stop me. At that moment, I couldn’t understand—couldn’t comprehend—the scene I was opening the door onto.

Gunpowder. Sawdust. Blood.

Grandpa’s old Remington lay beside him, and Dad sat slumped next to the workbench. Above him, the ceiling was painted with his grey matter—the part of him that used to hum off-key while he worked and that showed me how to use power tools.

I just stood there, one hand still on the door, until my mother drug my from the door, her muffled voice screaming something I couldn’t grasp.

***

My body felt hollowed out and I crumbled to the ground, barely holding the door still. Above me slumped form, where my head had been just a moment before, two holes in the door, inches from where my face had been.

An engine roared to life outside. Tires squealed as they peeled onto the highway, wet pavement protesting into the distance.

I did not go outside. I did not touch anything else. I just sat on the sticky tile floor behind the counter, staring at the rope-burns across my palms. My father’s shed-smell still clung to me, and I hated that that would be the scent of survival from then on.

When the cops arrived, I kept my hands up and told them that I was the one that made the call. The ambulance arrived moments later. I was loaded up and handcuffed to the stretcher. Just in case, they said.

During the ride, my mind kept circling one thought.

I had a plan for that night: a tree, a knot, and eternal quiet.

But when push came to shove, some part of me chose to fight.

That fact landed heavier than any indictment from the FTC, heavier than any message from my ex-wife, heavier than the overdraft smiley face.

If I truly wanted to die, I could’ve stayed in that bed and let the flashlight find me.

But I didn’t.

So, I guess, I don't know how my story will end. 

But it won't be at the end of some fucking knot.

______

Author's Note:

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out for help. You are not alone, and support is available.

In the United States and Canada, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans can be reached at 116 123.
For other countries, please use a verified international crisis directory such as Find a Helpline or the International Association for Suicide Prevention’s crisis resource page.

Remember, life is worth fighting for, even if it doesn't seem like it in this moment.
Stay strong, get help, live on.