Hallelujah

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room
I've walked this floor
I used to live alone
Before I knew you

She felt as she looked; white, like her Persian kitten. The room had been shaking for fifteen seconds; maybe it was an hour. She watched in amazement, as everything inside of the hotel remained firmly bolted into its place; all that tumbled to the floor were phone receivers...flower arrangements. Her television set was part of the wall.

Blank, pale colors scraped at her nerves as the vibrations ceased; she wanted to melt down the doorframe in relief. There was so little damage; only the power flickered, on and off, like a warning signal. A hanging lamp, spilling light and flickering from its center seemed to serve as a warning signal in the dark hall. It was the middle of the night. On faun-long legs she tottered out of her doorframe, once her own shaking ceased. Never noticing a streak of blood racing down her outside of her thigh, uniting with another type racing on the in.

Perhaps...she was the last living person here.

But no, there were signs of life; the quake hadn't been that bad. Perhaps the shock of it all, and it being her first one, just made everything seem worse. A courtesy phone which had tumbled free from it's hook on the phone burred a dial tone. When it suddenly jumped to life with the tone of a voice, she dove for it.

"Is anyone there?"

"Yes!" She shouted, perhaps too hysterically, "Is anyone there alive?"

"Ma'am, it was only a 3.4 Richter," came a snotty voice, "Is everyone OK up there?"

"I'm the only person around...I have a cut." She looked down at her legs, embarrassed by the mingling stain her body made on the floor; she crossed one leg over the other, tightly. "I hear other people moving...you'll have to talk to them and find out how they are..." She saw Jason emerge from his room, three doors down from hers. "Jason!" She was screeching, but she couldn't help it, "I have someone at the ground level on the phone." She tried not to notice that the only article of clothing he wore was a towel; blocking out his conversation, she made her way back to her room.

She heard Jason hang the phone up somewhere behind her, "They said the elevators are out, and they'll be sending concierges around with supplies and food later."

"What about elevators?"

"They're all down; if you want out, you have to use the stairs."

"All fifteen flights?!"

"Look, ballerina," He said, a bit too brusquely, "That's all they said to me. I can't stop the earth from cracking in half."

"What bit you in the ass?!" She snapped, watching him retreat back to his room.

"Nothing...I...just leave me alone, OK?" He asked.

"Fine.."

In passing, she peered into his room, around the space left by his hip, and, to her surprise, there lay little Molly Holly. Slung across the bed, tightly covered by a sheet, her mouth formed a hard line of frustration; clearly, they had been interrupted at something important.

Stacy Keibler hid her amusement, avoiding Molly's gaze as she tried to reenter her room.

That was when the aftershock began.

She couldn't have stopped him from tossing that body of his onto hers; maybe what he told her later that day was a lie. Maybe he had simply tripped coming out of his room and fallen on top of her.

In any case, as the world shook around them, she was stuck staring into Chris Jericho's wonderbeard, completely aware that her body was leaking blood all over his Scooby Doo boxer shorts.

As the world stopped shaking, he looked down at his blood-covered crotch and then smiled at her weakly, offering a parody of his usual joie de vivre.

"How you doin'?"


Go On