The Love Shack

The feeble flickering of a fluorescent lamp. Red flag number one. A thick visible white miasma came with every flicker - a miasma that enveloped the empty space, a miasma that smelled horribly like cigarettes. Red flag number two.

And then was the number three…

"Why, good evening. Staying for the night, are you dearie?" 

A jubilant wheezy whisper that resounded from just mere meters away, as I cautiously threaded across creaking planks and moth-eaten carpets, I came face to face with a wide toothy grin belonging to a shriveled, sullen-looking old woman sitting behind an ash glazed desk, with enough cigarette butts and ashtrays littered about to make a literal desert of ash.

She had a name-tag over a stained uniform, got her frazzled strains of white hair tied up semi-proper in a bun, and her wrinkly sagging expression was somewhat… I guess… in a way… hospitable?