the obnoxious desk clerk loved death.
he had a round face,
he had been young once, but not for long.
the name on his driver’s license was george q williams.
nobody ever asked him what the “q” stood for.
he often had dreams standing up behind the desk.
but so far he had always managed to wake from them when approached.
he had always been a dreamer, in his present life and in past lives.
were his dreams derived from his past lives?
or were they just dreams?
occasionally, when he was off duty, he would try to remember the dreams and record them in a notebook he bought at cvs.
when he first started doing this, he would do it sitting at a table in a coffee shop or a mcdonalds or wendy’s.
he thought that perhaps somebody might notice him and ask what he was writing, but nobody ever did.
when he was tired of trying to record the dreams, he wrote little stories, mostly about zombies and werewolves and mighty barbarians and professional hit men.
but never about vampires - he was not a vampire person.
one night, at wendy’s, he was so engrossed in a story about a barbarian and a hit man whose brains are swapped by a mad scientist from the 27th century, that he almost forgot the time.
he would be late for his shift!
he gulped down his cold coffee, left his half eaten hot honey chicken sandwich behind, and hurried out the door into the falling night.
a light rain was falling.
as he reached the door of the hotel, he patted his coat pocket to make sure his notebook was in it.
it was gone!
although he always put the notebook in the same pocket, he checked the other ones.
it was gone!
he retraced his steps for half a block in case it had just fallen out of his pocket - no luck!
and he had to get to work!
another, more terrible thought hit him.
somebody would find his notebook and steal all his dreams and ideas!
in despair, he turned back and headed to work, barely getting there on time.
he would never get his dreams back.
he wanted to cry.
but big boys don’t cry.
so he fell in love with death.
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