He waltzed back into the empty parking lot and opened the rear window to the Gremlin. There wasn’t much inside. A few pornos and socks. The priest picked up a porno, the March issue of Penthouse, and thumbed through it. He nodded and rolled it up. After shutting the window, he eyeballed the poorly lit parking lot and saw an old Ford F-100 parked in the rear of the lobby. The priest presumed it was the old man’s. He walked up to it and dug through the rusted up bed and found a gas can and a garden hose. Then he took out a pocket knife, cut the hose, and stuck one end into the tank and the other in the gas can and siphoned the gas. When it was full, he capped the can and carried it to the other end of the motel directly to his room. The time was 11:37pm. The lights were out in the room next door.
The priest unlocked the door to his room and cut on the lights. The beds weren’t made and there were finger prints on the mirror and two mice were fighting on the bathroom sink. To the right was the adjoining door to the brothers’ room. He put his ear to the door and listened. Not a sound was heard. Were they sleeping? This was a little too easy, the priest thought. But not wasting the opportunity, he cut off the lights and began picking the lock with a hairpin. When the catch released, the knob turned smoothly and the priest readied the .38. Then he took the rolled up Penthouse and stuffed one end into the gas can. Cautiously, he peeked open the door. Through the dark, he squinted his eyes to see still lumps under the covers of each bed. Content, he lit the protruding end of the porno on fire and quickly rushed into the room and sat the gas can between the beds. Once back across the threshold, he lifted the .38 and shouted. “See you in hell!”. He fired the gun. The bullet pierced the gas can and the room erupted into an inferno.
But through the heat and deluge of fire, the priest realized he had been had by the oldest trick in the book. As the flames spread across the beds, no one was underneath the covers. It was only rolled up blankets and pillows. Recognizing the deception, the priest rushed back out to the Gremlin as fire overtook the motel. Once in the driver’s seat, his godly senses began tingling. Without a second to spare, he leapt out of the vehicle as his stolen death can exploded into a hellish mushroom. Laying face down on the pavement, half conscious and the Gremlin ablaze, the priest came to and climbed to his knees. Gunshots rang from the roof and ricochet around him. With the shotgun lassoed around his shoulder, he unloaded it in the direction of the gun blasts and hurried his way backward toward the treeline.
Interrupting this exchange, the old man busted out of the lobby with an automatic M16 and unleashed it. “Take that you cocksuckers!”
But both the brothers and the priest disappeared into the darkness.
TO BE CONTINUED…