light, and as he waited, he caught a young couple in the car beside him laughing and playfully tickling one another. He must have been staring too long, because the girl in the passenger seat noticed him and glared, and the couple’s vehicle sped off just as a car behind Todd started to honk.
“It’s green, moron,” a voice yelled.
Todd raised his hand into the rearview mirror, waved, and continued on.
The Sunway was in a miserable, forgotten, old stretch of town at the end of a long and winding road dotted with shady liquor stores and housing projects. He wondered why the Sunway, of all damn places, a place known only for drug and prostitution busts on the evening news, would be the preferred place of meeting. He shrugged. Just another item on a long list of things that no longer made any sense.
Nothing made sense, nothing, Todd realized, in the past forty-eight hours. In fact, everything had gone quite to shit ever since…ever since…
Ever since that arcade cabinet showed up, Todd thought. And he tried to rationalize if the sudden string of odd occurrences could somehow be related to the arrival of Phantasos. But, of all the things that didn’t make sense, that made the least sense. If anything, Phantasos had been the only ray of hope he’d seen in the past two days. It would surely drum up business at the arcade, and the game itself was the most wondrous thing he’d set eyes on in recent memory. He remembered the first time he played the game and the dazzling visuals that drew him in, as if he was in another world—
A raccoon ran out into the street in front of Todd, and he stomped on the brake pedal of the Fiero. The car screeched, fish tailed slightly, and came to an abrupt stop just before it would have flattened the creature. The raccoon looked at Todd through the windshield, frozen in fear. Todd honked the horn of the car and yelled, “Get outta the way, would ya?”
The raccoon stood motionless in the road, staring at Todd, and for the first time all morning Todd began to fill with a particular brand of dread. He had been uneasy, sure, ever since he agreed to meet Shelly on the outskirts of town. But this—the two lane road, dense with foliage, ramshackle houses, and sketchy convenience stores; the raccoon staring a hole through him; the smell of burnt rubber tickling his nostrils—it all made his stomach feel sour, and for a moment he considered turning his car around and forgetting the entire thing had ever happened.
Honk. Honk. Todd repeatedly tapped the car horn, yelled: “Go, go on, get. You stupid raccoon!” And suddenly, as if it had seen something that spooked it, the raccoon darted off into the bushes on the side of the road.
Todd drove up to the Sunway, parked his car, and glanced around anxiously. There were hardly any other cars in the mostly vacant lot. A neon sign to the side of the building flickered, read: Vacancy. Todd thought, Of course ‘Vacancy,’ who in their right mind would decide to sleep in a place like this?
He strolled into the front office. In the confusion of his phone call with Shelly, he realized, he had never asked her for her room number. So, short of knocking on each door to find her, and risk being shot at (or worse), Todd approached the weathered woman sitting behind the front desk.
“Excuse me,” he said meekly.
“Whadda ya want,” the woman said, and she took a long draw off of her cigarette. She didn’t bother to turn away from the seven-inch black and white television she was watching.
“I’m looking for someone who’s staying here. I’m not sure what room she’s in. Shelly Flynn.”
“Lotta men come in here lookin’ for women.” The woman shrugged and took another puff of her cigarette, then glanced at the cash register.
“Cut me a break, lady.” Todd said. “You think I’m going to fork over some cash, for what—to find out which room she’s in?”
Again the woman shrugged.
Todd reached over the counter, yanked a clipboard