It ain't the Ritz. Shit, it's never even heard of the Ritz. The Donnybrook Motel is a blemish on the cheap-side of a bad neighborhood. It's a squat concrete one-story with no paint except of the spray-can variety in big black letters on the side: If you can read this, your life sucks.
No lights on in any of the rooms, except the middle one: 106--matches the number on Richard's card key. One car in the lot: a security truck from the Sacramento Zoo. There's a hag sitting in the rental office by the window, facing away. Flickering gray-blue light says she has a date with a TV. The door to her office is cracked open.
There's a Rottweiler chained to a stake in the corner of the lot, but he's as interested in Blake and Richard as the woman is--which is not at all. They get the sense that no one would mind Richard's shotgun or Blake's hunting rifle--guns are common in that part of town, or no one cares because they all have their own.
I'm saying Rina took a separate cab. You don't know if she'll show up later or at all--she's elusive like that, and didn't seem to be enjoying herself the last you saw. This is because Cabo hasn't posted in this plot for a week.
Waking up from torpor is as bad as birth trauma: it hurts like hell and you have no clue what's going on. One second, you're crushed beneath the weight of endless darkness. The next, well, you don't know, but it's shitty.
Bobcat's vision swims. A hand with a blue nylon glove on it drops a bloody stake on the floor. It's some guy you've never seen before, and he doesn't look nice. He's courteous enough, at least, not to say anything. He doesn't look like the say-anything type.
A familiar voice: "I thought you'd be taller in person." It's Geraldine, and she's dressed to the nines. You don't get the impression that it's her birthday; that's just her style. "You might want to take a minute, this next part's going to hurt."
Bobcat is handcuffed to a rolling chair, three sets on each wrist. His feet are duct-taped together at the ankles, and resting in a metal pail of what smells like gasoline. There's also something taped to his forehead that he can't see.
His best bet about where he is, is an empty storage container: one wall being a sliding metal door, and the others being of concrete blocks, those walls all being close together.
This is the last scene of the 4 Legs Good, 2 Legs Bad plot, continued from In Vitae Veritas.
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feeding roll from the previous scene
