Unholy Trinity: “A Room in Hotel Purgatory” “He, Them Like String” & “Running Backwards” by Andrew Buckner

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

A Room in Hotel Purgatory

The blood will wash off, but the indignity will not.

I was going in circles. My hotel room, an undug coffin, had already morphed into a rundown home. The home was previously a diner.

But, I did kill him. He was abusive. He wasn’t going to stop any other way. 

The ghostly, alien creature with my abuser’s face told me to leave my hotel, run around in the daylight, and stop to let everyone see the blood and I would be forgiven.

His body would walk again. The blood would wash away.

I just had to find my hotel room.

He, Them Like String

The rage red planet he landed on was a set for a television show of his life.

In the corner, his mother, an eight-legged spider, knitted another him.

In the living room, his two sisters, four-foot gray alien spiderlings, took the freshly knitted version of him and set it on fire. 

A script turned its pages in front of him.

It read: “THE FIRE SYMBOLIZES THE PASSION HE LOST IN CHILDHOOD. THE STRING REPRESENTS HIS SELF-ESTEEM. PRIMARILY, HOW THOSE CLOSE TO HIM USED AND MANIPULATED HIM.”

A mass of rendered flesh, string, a web connected, unspooled bones, those around him.

Running Backwards

The tarot card flipped over. It revealed a creature running backwards, a strange symbol the psychic had never seen before.

The psychic started to speak but her eyes said it all. She’d never seen this card before.

“The circular movements seem to suggest…,” she started.

An animal-like rage built in me. Was this part of the fate forecast by the unknown card?

A growl was heard far away.

A glass broke.

Was the creature in the cards some type of ghost or demon?

“No, it’s running backwards,” I thought. “They are terrified of me. A power I had all along.”