Lola: Chapter One
A shaft of light shoots in from a window over the closed eye of a young woman.
Lola lies in bed asleep, passed out. The light grows stronger as the sun rises higher. Her eye opens, bringing her back to consciousness. In the background a tv plays a replay of the presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry from the night before. It’s volume is low, the lights in the motel room are off.
Lola raises her head. She does not know where she is or how she got there. It’s a motel room, she can see that, a seedy motel room, she can see that, too. There are bars on the windows, not a nice area of town. And there is a rough looking man next to her on the bed sound asleep. Lola winces.
How the fuck did I end up here with this guy? My head is killing me.
As her life spiraled downward, this was not the first time she woke up next to a strange guy trying to remember the details of the previous night. But it was the first time she couldn’t remember anything at all. Maybe it was better to forget the details anyway.
Lola gets up from bed. Her black dress is still on. Couldn’t have been that good of a one night stand then. That guy must have been drunker than she was from the looks of him. He still hasn’t moved an inch. He was definitely drunker than she was.
Lola walks from the bed, flicking the tv off as John Kerry is making some important point about the war in Iraq and makes her way to the bathroom sink. She has to step over an empty champagne bottle on her way there. Champagne is usually not the drink of choice for such nights. She wishes she could remember last night. She wishes she could remember the name of the guy. She wishes she could remember her own name.
What the fuck happened to my head?
She splashes water on her face to help her remember, well, anything. A brief flash from the night before. She sees the face of the man she woke up beside, a couple of decades older than her, and then the face of a blonde woman. The blonde woman is wearing black sunglasses.
What the hell happened last night? How did I end up here? God this hangover. It feels like I’ve been hit with a club.
Lola reaches up and feels the back of her head, the source of the throbbing. It’s sticky. She brings her hand down and her fingers have clumps of congealed blood on them. She feels her head again. More blood. There’s definitely a cut on the back of her head.
What did this asshole do to me? He’s not going to get away with it.
Lola marches back to the bed and stops abruptly. Frozen, she stares at the man. She sees the side of his face that was hidden before. There’s a huge gash in his neck, blood has pooled on the sheet and floor. He looks dead.
She is stunned. Her knees buckle. She runs to the door to get the hell of that motel room. She turns the handle. It won’t open. Lola tries it again.
What the fuck!
It still won’t open.
Lola tries with all her strength. She bangs on it and kicks at it, but the damn thing won’t move.
She runs to the window and throws the blinds back. There is no way she is fitting between those bars on the window. She sprints into the bathroom. There’s the smallest window over the bathtub. She looks through it. There was no way she could fit through there.
Fuck.
Lola sinks down in the tub, her back against the wall, muttering to herself, trying to remember how she ended up in a room with a dead guy. Wondering how she can get out of this.
Her eyes brighten. Lola jumps out of the tub and goes over to the phone. The cord has been cut. She looks around the room and sees her purse sitting on one of the tables and quickly digs through it, she pours the contents onto the table.
Her cell phone is gone. Her ID is gone. But there is a key. It looks like a house key. She picks it up and examines it. It’s not much use to her now if she can’t get out of this room. Maybe it’ll be useful later. Lola keeps the key and puts it in the inside pocket of her dress. She turns and looks at the dead man lying on the bed.
There’s one last thing to check.
Cautiously, very cautiously she walks over to him.
Lola reaches out and pokes him and backs away, expecting him to wake up.
Of course, he doesn’t. He’s dead.
Disgusted by the thought of going through a dead man’s pockets, she does it anyway. Lola reaches into his pocket and begins to dig around. She finds a wallet. She rifles through it. There’s no identification for the man. She finds a business card with a woman’s name on it.
It says ‘Dorothy Drake.’ Below the name it there’s a tagline. ‘I can make all of your dreams come true.’ Below that is a phone number.
Lola mutters the name to herself. That name sounds familiar. Lola thinks back to the blonde in sunglasses that flashed in her mind. That must be her. Maybe she knows what’s going on. Maybe she knows the dead guy. Lola keeps the card and looks around the room again.
There’s got to be some way out of this fucking room.
She sees the spilled contents of her purse. There’s something odd sticking up amongst all of the useless stuff.
It’s another card. This one isn’t a business card. It looks like a birthday card or one of those cards you give to relatives on holidays.
Lola opens it. And looks at the card confused. The writing is clear, but it doesn’t make any sense. She looks at the silly picture of balloons on the front and then back to the message written inside. It still doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense this morning.
Dejected, Lola sits on the floor, card still in hand. She stares at the message. Scrawled in bright red lipstick in large letters are two words ‘Goodbye Lola’.
What does that even mean? Who’s saying goodbye? This Dorothy Drake woman? The dead guy in the bed?
She looks at the dead guy.
I doubt he wrote that.
The focus of her eye is drawn beyond the red and white of the card. To the darkness underneath the bed. There is the digital readout of a clock.
How did the clock end up under the bed?
She drops the card and crawls to the clock. It not telling the time. It’s counting down. It’s attached to something else. It’s attached to a black box.
It’s a fucking bomb!
It reads 1:20 and is counting fast!
Lola tries to rip it out from underneath the bed. Its handcuffed to the frame. She yanks on it again. It’s not going anywhere.
Lola jumps and runs to the door, desperately screaming and shouting for help, she tries to kick it down.
She runs to the window, but the bars are still there. She runs to the bathroom.
She reemerges into the main room. There is no way out. Not in a minute.
She’s Trapped.
Less than forty-five seconds left on the clock.
Lola paces for five seconds.
She paces for ren seconds.
Pacing isn’t going to get her out of that room.
Or maybe it is.
Thirty-five seconds left on the clock.
She’s thinking.
Thirty seconds.
Lola looks at the man. A thought flashes across her face.
She springs into action and pushes him off the bed. She pushes the bed to the far corner of the room. The still attached bomb is counting down.
Twenty seconds.
Lola wraps the man in the bedsheets and starts dragging his ass out of the main room towards the bathroom where the bathtub is. He’s a heavy dude, she struggles. Fifteen seconds. Down the hallway. Twelve seconds.
She’s at the bathroom door. Ten seconds.
At the tub. She drops him there. And climbs in, she’s got to pull this guy and the bedsheets over here for protection. She pulls.
Five seconds.
FOUR seconds.
THREE.
Finally, she’s got the dead guy, the sheets, everything over her in the bathtub. She waits.
Two..
And waits.
One.
The dead guy ‘s eye opens. His hand jerks down grabbing Lola on the wrist as he coughs up blood.
He’s still alive!
Explosion.
The world shakes. Everything goes white then black. Lola’s world disappears.
There is silence.
Her world returns. She hears the chirping of birds.
Sunlight streaks down onto the rubble covered bathtub from the now roofless motel room. The metal frame of the shower lays broken amidst shards of glass and plaster. It’s like an earthquake just hit.
A hand stirs in the rubble. It peaks through the rubble. A face emerges. Lola has survived. She crawls out of the debris and stands amidst a destroyed room, a demolished motel.
The dead guy looks dead once again. This time Lola’s sure he’s dead.
Lola has bruises and cuts and generally looks like hell, but miraculously is otherwise unharmed. She digs in her dress and takes out the Dorothy Drake business card.
The flash of the blonde in sunglasses pops into her head. There’s only one person that knows why she was there. Well, only one person that’s still alive that knows why she was there.
Lola starts to move.
I’m going to find that woman if it’s the last thing I ever do.