Thrills

 

Janel Gradowski

 

 

Making loud and sloppy love in cheap hotel rooms, knowing other people could hear through the thin walls, was a thrill for her. The TV in the next room turning on, volume increasing to overpower the noise. Oblivious snores prompted additional, frenzied effort.

 

She used to think the people lying and listening in unfamiliar beds imagined her as an exotic enchantress having a passionate fling with her lover. Tonight the hotel neighbors were lugging bulging suitcases into their room when she pulled into the parking space next to their SUV. They saw her true identity.

 

Her back itched from the friction between damp skin and coarse sheets. The smell of sweat mingled with bleach and stale cigarette smoke. Her husband groaned and made one, last thrust which shoved her head into the vinyl headboard with a thud. He rolled off of her onto his back.

 

A few minutes later he was asleep. His erratic snores punctuated the rattling hum of the air conditioner. No sounds from the people next door. She shivered and pulled the sheets over her head, escaping into the pungent humidity and warmth.

 

Hurried footsteps and a drunken giggle seeped through the ceiling. She slid her head out from under the sheets. The rhythmic beat of headboard hitting wall filled the room. Her husband sighed and turned away from her, still asleep despite the noise. The thumping continued, faster and louder. On the nightstand bolted to the wall ice cubes rattled in a half-empty highball glass. Her fingers crab-walked across the nightstand’s surface, searching for the remote in the dark.

 

She stared at the TV screen, trying to concentrate on what the actors were saying. Voices from an enthusiastic infomercial filtered through the wall behind her head. She raised the glass to the ceiling in a toast to the couple upstairs. The bourbon traced a warm path to her stomach.

 

 

 

 

Janel started out writing beadwork patterns for internationally distributed magazines, like Beadwork, but has switched over to writing mainly short stories and flash fiction. Some of her work has recently appeared in Every Day Fiction, Boston Literary Magazine, and Six Sentences. She has also won the last two short story contests at the Fiction for Dessert blog and will have stories published this year in Long Story Short and Flashshot.