Creative Writing Week 4: Character Creation


Music was coming from somewhere in the building. It wasn’t quite loud enough for Creasy to recognise what it was, but just loud enough so he couldn’t ignore it. This did not put him in a good mood as he threw off the sheet and sat up yawning. He got up, and ambling over to the bathroom, hawked and spat into the bowl. His mouth tasted like a running back’s sock after he’d played a whole season in it- not surprising considering the amount of beer he’d put away last night. As he looked into the mirror, he was struck by how haggard he actually looked. Pale, with eyes that had so many red lines etched in them that they resembled a map of the major highways of the United States, and his curly black hair matted and plastered to his forehead. He spat again, trying to clear the taste from his mouth, and stepped into the shower.
Ten minutes later he got out feeling slightly refreshed, drying himself off as he moved back into the hotel room. All things considered, it was one of the better ones that he’d stayed in recently. He dressed quickly, thinking as he did so just how much of a cliché he’d become. He was an ex-cop drifter in his late thirties, living in hotel accommodation, drinking too much. I’m not divorced though, he thought. I never had a wife and daughter killed to make me become a borderline alcoholic- I drink because I like to. My partner wasn’t shot dead on the last week before his retirement- he’s living down in Palm Springs. And I never went to ‘Nam. Maybe I’m not so much of a cliché after all.
He picked his bag up from where he’d thrown it when he checked in and opened it, stuffing the previous night’s shirt on top of the pile of dirty clothes already in there. He was going to need to find a Laundromat at some point, but at that moment all he wanted to do was get out of there, so after taking one final item from the bureau by the bed, he put on his leather jacket and turned to leave the room. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall. The door to the stairs was at the far end, and as he walked toward it he passed the room where the music that had woken him up was coming from. Now he recognised it- Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”. He scowled and went down the stairs to the lobby. The guy at the desk was asleep, his head lolling. Creasy dropped a couple of $10 bills on the desk in front of him and stepped out of the double doors and into the Texan sunshine. Even at this time- 9 in the morning- the sun was blazing in a cloudless sky. The sun beating down on his head didn’t improve his mood- or his hangover- and neither did the fact that some hump had put a large dent in his bumper, as he discovered when he went to throw his bag onto the back seat. It was the final straw. He leant back against the car and sucked his teeth as he pondered what to do about it. Reaching his decision, he opened his bag, and taking out the item he’d stuffed in there last, he turned and walked back into the hotel, climbing the stairs until he stood outside the door that the music was coming from. He knocked.
“Who is it?” a surly voice said from within.
“Room service,” Creasy answered.
“I didn’t order any goddamn room service…” the voice said, and the door opened. The thickset truck driver stood there, whom Creasy recognised from the bar the previous night, rubbed his eyes blearily as he tried to focus on whoever had knocked on his door.
Creasy pulled the silenced Glock automatic from inside his jacket and shot the truck driver twice in the chest. As the man crumpled back into his room, Creasy quietly shut the door and turned to go back down the hall.
The clerk was still sprawled across the desk when he re-entered the lobby, the bills he’d dropped by the man’s hand still there. Creasy picked up the money, and pressing the tip of the silencer against the receptionist’s temple, shot him though the head. He let the dead man fall back onto the desk- the only difference now being the pool of red spreading out from around his head.
Creasy turned and left the lobby, walking across the forecourt and into the bar and grill adjacent to the hotel. He pushed open the door and walked in. There were only a couple of customers in there- two guys in Stetsons drinking coffee, and the same bartender who’d served him last night. Phil, Creasy remembered.
“Anyone in here dent the bumper of a blue Olds parked out there?” Creasy asked.
One of the guys at the bar turned. “That was me,” he drawled. “You got a problem?”
“That was my car,” Creasy said.
“So sue me,” the jerk replied, and turned back to the bar.
You all just keep making this easier and easier, Creasy thought as he pulled out the Glock. He shot the asshole in the back of the head, and he fell against the bar before crumpling to the floor. The second coffee drinker turned, his mouth open in shock, and Creasy shot him in the left eye. The bartender raised his hands up as if to protect himself, and Creasy put two bullets into his chest, slamming him back into the bottles stacked behind him, which fell and shattered as the bartender slid to the ground.
Creasy put his gun away and walked out of the door. Walking back to his car, he opened the trunk and leaned in.
“Still here?” he asked. The eyes of the man who lay bound and gagged on the floor of the trunk opened wide, and he screamed through his gag, thrashing maniacally as he tried to escape from the space he had been crammed into.
“Good,” Creasy said, smiling, and closing the trunk, he opened the door of his car and got in, pulling out of the motel forecourt and onto the highway, disappearing into the shimmering haze so quickly that “The Drifter”- as the newspapers who had reported his many crimes across America had nicknamed him- might never have been there at all.