The dusky gray light of the dawn dying outside the motel’s windows had begun to fade into blues and pinks much too bright for so early in the day.
Staff working the night-shift sighed in relief, swiping their time cards with delight and condolences in their wide-lipped smiles. They were met with drooping eyelids and grumbled “good mornings” from those who had just arrived.
Celeste let the steam from her coffee soak into the skin on her cheeks and cast a foggy glaze over her eyes. The warmth pouring in through the café window from the rising sun begged her not to leave her seat, and if she were being honest with herself, she wondered how long she could sit there before her absence would be noticed. She could almost imagine her and the chair she sat on turning into one entity, as it felt like she was slowly sinking into it moments before a hand shook her shoulder. She sat bolt upright, and felt the coffee that had sloshed over the side of the mug burning her hand.
“I’d think you’d be used to the early hours by now - you’ve been working here longer than I have!”
Celeste blinked rapidly, shaking the quickly-cooling coffee off of her offended hand and digging her teeth into her lip as the pain passed. She mumbled an excuse that likely didn’t make sense in her state of fatigue before grabbing her coffee and snapping open the probing cane she held in her uninjured hand.
“I’ll meet you at the front desk.” Celeste heard her co-worker’s voice echoing down the hall as she hurried off, seeming to have been in the same state of disarray as Celeste herself.
“Thanks, Em.” Her voice came out more scratchy than she hoped, and she heaved a hefty groan. The cane in her hand made rhythmic humming noises as she swung it back and forth in small arcs over the carpet.
She dropped into the rolling chair behind her desk with a resigned huff, allowing herself only a moment to blink the sleepiness away before pulling out one of the drawers in the filing cabinet beside her. The heavy stack of papers she pulled out hit her desk with a dull thump, followed by a softer mimic of that sound from her head dropping on top of it. Grabbing the mug beside her, she gave little thought to what her coworkers would think before she brought it to her lips and chugged it.
The papers made a crisp clap as she straightened them out against the desk, and she walked out to the front with them tucked between her elbow and her side. She wouldn’t have paid mind to the conversation going on there if it hadn’t been for the noticeable tension it held.
Vanna, her manager, strict albeit caring, spoke with a quiet anger. “I can’t let you request a hostess to sign you in because that would be a violation of our staff’s privacy, sir. And for the last time, I don’t understand how there’s anything wrong with me being the one to do it. If you’d cooperate, you’d be at this desk for the minute or two only that it takes to write you into our system - no, forget that, it would take less than a minute because you’re already in the system-”
The man she quarreled with interrupted her with an unfitting gaiety. “Well, I don’t need to request her after all; she’s right there. Good to see you again, Celeste.”
Celeste recognized that voice well. She smiled brightly, much to the chagrin of her manager, and strolled up to the desk to meet him. “Always happy to see you here, Mr. Ryehart. How many nights this time?”
She heard the smile returned in his gravely, strident voice. “Just three. Did I miss breakfast?”
The roomkey clinked as she pulled it from its hook in the wall and passed it over to him. “Afraid so. Lunch won’t be too long, though. Enjoy your stay.” She turned to the computer monitor next to the roster to sign him in as he left. The machine’s electronic drawl greeted her as she switched on the voice simulator. 
Vanna sighed irritably from behind her. Celeste couldn’t hide her wry smile in response.
“That man is ridiculous.”
Celeste turned and passed her the stack of papers still clutched under her arm. Her voice reflected none of the worry in her manager’s, and she tried not to laugh at the situation. “I mean, he’s our only regular. I really don’t get how he manages to butt heads with you so often.”
Vanna groaned. “I know! I swear, he smokes weed in his room because I can smell it in the hall! It’s happened three times, Celeste, but every time we send someone up there to catch him in the act, there’s no proof. I don’t know how he does it. And, you know, Roger thinks that he sleeps in his car when he’s not here.”
Celeste laughed at that, shaking her head in fond amusement.
“Really, Celeste, I don’t care if he’s homeless or not. I will not have his nasty habits scaring off my other customers.”
“Hey, I was homeless once too, remember?”
Vanna snorted and lightly pushed Celeste’s shoulder. “Yeah, well you didn’t bring drugs into other people’s establishments, now did you?”
The conversation came to an end as another customer approached the desk. Celeste sighed warmly as she stepped back into the office and slumped once again into her seat. She never could understand Vanna’s strictness about the matter, let alone her mistrust.

The sunlight that had previously pierced in through the motel’s windows dimmed as the day neared its middle. Celeste pushed the drawer on the bottom side of the cabinet shut with her foot, sighing in a mix of relief and apprehension for the remaining four hours of her shift. The doorframe behind her creaked when Em leaned her weight against it. She sounded breathless.
“Hey, Celeste, would you mind heating my lunch up for me? I’m swamped.”
Celeste dropped her head melodramatically over the back of her chair. “I made your lunch yesterday, Em.”
“I’ll make yours tomorrow!” Em’s voice turned pleading before she turned quickly out of the room.
A small, reluctantly fond smile spread on Celeste’s face.
The kitchen felt cold, and Celeste bent over the pot of steaming left-overs to suck up some of the stove’s warm. With the job complete, she spooned a portion of the food into a tupperware and set it into Em’s mail-cubby on her way into the cafe. She paused for a moment to yawn before pushing the door open with her shoulder.
She heard screaming seconds before realizing that she was the one doing it. The echoes from the gunshot bounced off the walls, closing in on her, and she didn’t feel the pain when the tray she held dropped from her hands onto her feet. Plates and cups shattered on the floor as others started screaming as well. People bolted up from their seats, diving to the floor and crawling, running away, trying to get to anywhere but the diner they had previously been enjoying lunch in. The sounds drowned her. The rushing of her blood flooded her ears and she wondered for a brief moment if it was her that had been shot.
William had the devil’s luck. Not two seconds had passed after he had entered the dining area before he saw the barrel of a gun pointed directly at his face from the opposite corner of the room. He threw himself to the floor. The deafening bang sent him into momentary shock. Feet and hands and knees scrambled across the red, carpeted floor all around him as he lay crumpled against the wall. He couldn’t remember if the carpet had been red all along - perhaps it was his blood, perhaps an illusion from the adrenalin - but he soon came to his senses enough to scamper back out the door he had come through.
Celeste fumbled with the door-handle behind her for what felt like minutes, and it did not want to open. Her breath came out in wheezing, shallow gasps, arms trembling and legs wobbling as she threw her weight onto the door and dashed clumsily through it. She skidded to a halt in front of a cabinet in the kitchen and, without second thought, slid the door open and threw its contents out onto the floor behind her. Curled nearly all the way inside, she was jolted to a halt as the cane she carried would not fit in with her. Her arms shook so badly that she barely had the coordination to turn it round in hopes of finding a way to get it inside before throwing it down and shutting herself in.
The change from carpet to metal flooring nearly made William slip as he bolted into the kitchen through the back door.  He found the fire alarm before he found the telephone and pulled the handle without a second thought. The shrieking of the alarm covered the yelling and the footsteps in the next room over, and William felt the slightest bit of relaxation tug on his shoulders. He turned, ready to make his escape, when he saw the pile of metal cutlery thrown haphazardly across the floor, and a white cane that he recognized lying next to it. The cabinet screeched as he opened it, and he jumped back. No, it hadn’t been the cabinet, it was the woman curled up inside of it, and he shot out a hand to cover her mouth.
“What are you doing?! Everyone else is evacuating, come on.”
She knew his voice. “Mr. Ryehart?!”
He picked the cane up from where it had been left and wrapped Celeste’s shaking fingers around its handle before taking her other hand and helping her up. A million questions that needed answers swirled in her head, but her throat wouldn’t open enough for her to ask them. She felt choked by dread and fear as he lead her toward the hall.
He slid the door open, peering out as he asked, “Do you know any back exits?”
Celeste blinked rapidly and managed not without effort to gasp an affirmation out.
“Good, take me there after I get my things from the room. We won’t get far if I don’t have my car keys.” William didn’t give her time to ask questions before darting out into the hall and toward the staircase.
William Ryehart had been making frequent, week-long stays at the motel since before Celeste had begun working there. He had taken an interest in her back when she still worked the front desk, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. Perhaps their personalities clicked; perhaps it was the welcome lack of discomfort she exuded around him. Their brief, infrequent conversations came naturally, and he found himself looking forward to running into her whenever he had enough cash saved up to spend the night in one of the motel’s rooms. His relationship with management had always been tense, understandably so. He knew his outward appearance to be threatening.
Celeste had found William to be quite the character. He gave off the air of someone who cared very much about making others think he didn’t care at all. That amused and baffled her. Regardless what opinions the other employees had formed about him, William had been kind to her every time he visited; and even though she considered him still a stranger, she thought of him fondly.
Vanna had been unsettled by William’s presence in her hotel from the first day they’d met, and the reason for this was written on his skin - tattoos filled every inch of his right arm, his neck; metal rings pierced through his cracked lips, his hawkish nose, his eyebrows. His wild, alarmingly pale eyes bulged under drooping lids inked with thin black lines, like the print on paper money. His left arm was a prosthetic - probably blasted off in a gang fight, or atrophied from one too many secondhand needles, Vanna thought. However, she couldn’t disagree with Celeste’s argument - William had been nothing but kind to all of them. Perhaps annoying with his perpetual teasing, but that proved to be the most difficult thing about him. And Vanna had to admit that the compassion and warmth in his lopsided smile was nearly enough to cancel out his ugliness.
She feared that the only reason Celeste wasn’t frightened by him was because of her blindness.
William tried not to admit that he worried that as well.
And so, when Vanna stood at the front door, phoning the police with one hand and holding the doors open for evacuees to escape through with the other, the sight she had least expected to bear witness to felt like ice water poured over her head. Celeste, at the end of the hall across from the front desk, had stopped to kick off her high heels before running up the stairs on William’s tail. It felt wrong, suspicious, disturbing, and Vanna’s first thought was to run after her - but not before the delicate voice on the end of the phone said, “911, what’s your emergency?”
The mismatched pair dove up the stairs, two steps at a time, and once they’d reached the second floor, Celeste gained control over her shaking voice.
“Wouldn’t the elevator be safer?”
William paused, the smallest bit of doubt underscoring his words as he responded. “I don’t trust elevators.”
Celeste scoffed, and they continued their mad dash to the third floor.