II: Ramla

The man's appearance was strange.

His coat was like a trenchcoat, long and leathery, reaching all the way down to his calfs, but with no pockets or buttons to speak of. It also had no sleeves, instead it sat on this man's broad shoulders like a vest. Underneath that was a buttoned shirt that was deep purple in colour that fitted the man's body loosely. This garment did have sleeves but they only went as far as the middle of his upper arm, where they clung tightly to his form like a t-shirt. He wasn't tall, standing only as tall as Val herself. She thought he had the build and look of a Rugby player, with hair cut very short all around, but slightly longer on the top. He was also tattooed all along his arms and neck with strange symbols and letterings Val had never seen before.

The last thing she noticed about him was the peculiar device around his wrist. It seemed to be merely a metal bracelet of sorts that began right below his thumb and ended just before his elbow. It was made of some kind of metal that seemed to both reflect light and absorb it at the same time, it was made up of many interlocking plates, all of different shapes and sizes, with spaces between that seemed to glow faintly.

The presence of such a man this suddenly and this dramatically into her hotel room was terrifying to Val. She had been rooted to the spot unable to move, or think or even breathe, simply trying to absorb and process what had just happened. It was like a weird adrenaline fuelled trance that she couldn't break out of. That seemed to all change when he spoke.

"Don't suppose you know where to find an exit do you" He had said in a confident voice with an accent that sounded like it was more hinting at british than outright claim to be.

These words seemed to awaken Val as she took the only sensible course of action.

She screamed.

Right in his face, as she backed away quickly, falling to the ground as she did so, backing herself into the corner of the meagre closet with no door.

This spurred an odd reaction in the man.

"Oh, for god's sake." He uttered tersely, before continuing more loudly. "I'm not going to hurt you, ok?"

Val got up quickly, keeping her back flat against the back wall of her closet staring at the man over the shoulder of the leather coat she had left to hang a minute before hand.

"Why did you break my window?" She asked, not entirely sure why this was the first of perhaps a dozen questions she had yet to ask.

He looked back over his shoulder at the break.

"Oh that yeah well I was-" He was interrupted by a loud and low humming sound coming from outside, different from any sound Val had heard before. She couldn't identify it at all, it rumbled like thunder and an outboard motor. It swelled as whatever was causing the sound grew closer and closer to the window. Val looked at the man, who met her gaze for a moment. A moment that seemed long and mournful, as if he was already regretting what was about to happen. He turned towards the window, standing with his feet planted firmly.

"I was trying to get away." He said it with weariness Val had not ever heard matched before, except perhaps by her own father in the last few days of her stay with him.

The man raised the arm with the metal bracelet on it and pointed it towards the window, Val could see that several of the plates making up the device were hovering, seemingly independently of any wires or attachments, three or four inches about the surface of the bracelet, orbiting it quickly. It gave of a high pitched whirring sound that was foreign to Val's ears but seemed to tell this man something because she could hear him mutter to himself.

The rumbling sound continued to grow louder and louder, the rumbling now mixed with some high pitched noise that sounded like microphone feedback.

This was too much to take for Val, she looked at the doorknob to her right and reached out a hand slowly to grab it. Perhaps, she thought, she could sneak out while the man's back was turned and get out of here, the sound that was coming from outside would surely cover the sond of the door's opening and closing.

She squeezed the metal of the doorknob tightly in her hand as she felt the objects in the room begin to vibrate from the menacing hum now mixing with a strong breeze blowing strongly into the room, causing her to shiver. This cold chill did not seem to effect the man, still muttering as his wrist apparatus began to whir and click faster and louder, it's pieces floating even further away from the wrist they orbited. Val was just about to turn the doorknob and bolt when she remembered her suitcase, it was home to everything she owned, it contained her clothes, some money, the last of her jewelry her favorite movie and the photo album and diary she'd kept since she was a girl.

She wanted to ran and grab it, she wanted to very badly it was all she had left of her past.

Was that past worth dying for?

She wasn't given much time to decide, as the man turned swiftly to face her, and looking her dead in the eyes once more asked;

"What's your name?"

"Valerie Park"

The words seemed odd in her mouth, like they didn't quite belong in the scene she was forcing them into.

"Val"

Every ounce of her consciousness was telling her to not to speak those words, it wanted her to leave. Now. Screw the suitcase, this man was some kind of crazy murderer for sure. Every fiber of her being was telling her not to ask, but there was something about him that made her.

"What's yours?"

"Ramla Tappa" He replied calmly, "but if we don't get out of here right now, Valerie Park, Then our names are all that's going to be left of us."

It was at that moment that the sound reached deafening levels and Val could finally make out the source, rotor blades, like from a helicopter, like the dark black one that came to a hover right outside her window, it's side door open and occupied by a menacing figure dressed in red.

"RUN, NOW!" Screamed Ramla, grabbing Val's suitcase from off the bed and throwing it to her as the room exploded in bright lights and smoke.

I: Horses Included

This boring, bland hotel lobby was hardly the place one would expect to hear the melody of an opera like this.

The white walls with their peeling paint, the old and grisled receptionist, the cracked window panes, it all shouted misuse and dispair to Valerie as she entered through the shakily revolving lobby door. This was not where she thought she would be spending her boxing day. Not even close.

Valerie walked up to the desk hesitantly, looking over her shoulder at the homeless man sleeping on one of the dusty benches next to the elevator. She pulled her purse closer to her, it's leather sticking to the  dry leather of her jacket, the sound of which was not loud, but seemed to alert the man behind the counter. He looked up at her from behind think hard glass, and Valerie noticed the gaze his beady black eyes stop on her chest for a moment before meeting her own eyes. She zipped up her sweater quickly before placing her purse on the counter.

Val was not used to these kinds of places, her father had always seen to it that all his children were always looked after. She had not quite gotten used to life without him. She was 22 when he cut her off- for reasons still unclear to Val herself, it wasn't like she was acting out any worse than Logan, or Dick, or Selena, her siblings, yet they had all retained their trust funds and company credit cards, even when he found about about Logan's arrests, Dick's drug problem, and Selena's constant shoplifting and deception. He still was feeding them all money, but not Valerie. For some reason she had been the one to become the outcast. She was the one who had been shunned from the family. It was her trust fund that was disolved, her bank account frozen. She was the one checking into a seedy hotel in the middle of the night.

"What'll it be?" Asked the man behind the counter, every word carrying with it the stench alcohol and halitosis, even through the glass.

"Just a room, thanks." Said Valerie, catching sight of her own reflection in the glass and saw that the cold and the wind had turned normally flowing brown hair seemingly upside down. This revelation did not improve her mood as she got a grimy key from the landlord and dragged her wheeled suitcase, filled now with what remained of her personal effects, past the sleeping homeless man into the elevator.

It shook violently as it began to climb, slowly, toward the 14th floor. Val tried not to look down at the floor of the elevator which was extremely dirty and covered in stains that she was desperately hoping were from a coffee spill or something, and not blood... she really hoped it wasn't blood. the walls were similarly dirty, they might have at one point been green, but they were more greyish brown than anything now, with the paint all but peeled off and what green remained had not aged well. Val thought about the likelihood that she would get some kind of degenerative infection just by being in this elevator. Whatever that likelihood was, she was happy when the elevator shuffled to a halt on her floor.

The carpets were a dark red, and carried the same amount of grime as the rest of this hotel. The sign above the door had called it "The Stagecoach." Val had been in an actual stagecoach on a vacation to Prince Edward Island when she was young, and it was about a million times nicer than this place, horses included. The walls of the stagecoach from her childhood had been lovely oak, stained and sanded to perfection, the walls in this "Stagecoach" were covered in peeling wallpaper with cigarette burns, and tears all over the beige and cream coloured stripes.

Val sighed and stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall, looking for the room she had procured, debating internally wether or not she was going to actually be able to sleep at all here. Given what she'd seen so far, she was hardly expecting her room to be any better. She continued down the hallway, looking for her room, number 7.

She saw it.

As Val pulled her suitcase up to the door, she stood and stared at it. Key in hand. She really didn't want to go inside, all she could think about was her bed back home, she corrected herself, in her family's home. It wasn't hers anymore. It hadn't been for two years now. Two years had never felt so long to her before, and it wasn't the lack of money. She'd been able to sell a lot of her jewellery and designer clothes, and had even been able to find work as a personal shopper for a while. What made the years long was the loneliness. She' gone her whole life surrounded by her family, and as deceitful and rebellious her older siblings had been, they had always made time to be there for her, attending her parties, listening to her, and she to them, they had been close, in their own way. Or at least she had thought they had been. Now they were gone, no one was returning her texts or calls. They'd left her alone, just like her so called friends when they found out Val's money was gone.

She felt like she was going to cry, a familiar feeling recently, and didn't want to break down in the hallway. She may have fallen a long way, but she was going to be damned if she let some randoms at The Stagecoach see her bawling outside her room. Besides the embarrassment, she was fairly sure anyone who lived here would try to steal her belongings, few as they were, in that event.

So, she pulled herself together, shutting out all thoughts of times gone by for the moment and put the key into the lock, turned it and went inside number 7. The light had been left on by whoever was last in the room and it flickered as Val closed the door behind her. The room was small, and to it's credit Val thought it was more dingy than outright dirty, she could tell that someone had at least made some effort in here, the carpet, while stained was at least cleaned recently, same with the large window on the opposite side of the room from the door. The bed was made as well, the closet next to the door even had some coat-hangers left in it, no door on the closet, but still, Val thought sarcastically, at least she got coat-hangers. She put her coat on one of these hangers and threw her suitcase on the bed.

But just as it landed something happened that would change her life forever.

A man dressed in black, all of a sudden, and without any warning smashed headfirst through the window across from the door, rolled to break his fall and stood up straight, immediately, less than six inches from Val's face as she stood, transfixed in terror, not able to move.

It was at that moment that he spoke.

"Hi there, don't suppose you know where to find the exit do you?"

Forward

Previously I wrote a blog about a trip I took to Nova Scotia, and a lot of people seemed to like it, and since I'm back home and have little to report on, I decided to give creative writing a shot. That's where "The Long Drop" comes in, it's an episodic, fictional blog, written in novel format, think of each post as a chapter in a book I'm writing as I go. The idea for the story has been kicking around in my head for a few months and I decided that, to hell with it, I'm going to start writing it.

So hopefully you like it, if not, that's cool, but if you do that's cooler.

-Matt