The Second Morning

When Robyn awoke the second morning, the early Arizona air was dancing through her window - this time she had propped it open using her toiletry bag - when halfway through the night she had stumbled to the bathroom and used what she could. She found the night air was so refreshing her sleep was all the deeper for it.

She lay faced to the window, enjoying the sheets so cool against her timid skin; and the recess of the pillow was perfect to her neck's incline. Very slowly and drowsily she turned over, opened her hazel brown eyes, to see a strange man lying in the bed right beside her. She yelped reactively.

The figure in her bed moved and began to turn over to now face her. Robyn leapt up and out, backing into the side table, whereupon tilting it, and her mobile phone slid off onto the carpet.

Even more surprisingly still, she realised he was a very old man. He was looking back at her as though she were half mad.

"Who are you?" she demanded. Old or not, this was an unspeakable horror. She looked at his bony form which was undressed down to the boxer shorts now peeping out from under the top sheet.

In the moment she caught sight of a small tattoo on his chest to one side, half covered by the immensely long curly hair. She wondered if he was a native - or demented - or a demented native that had found his way into her room.

No explanation seemed to be coming.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances