Eat

By Lisa Tate

The rain had already set in by the time the couple biked away from the roadside café where they’d stopped for lunch.  Missy felt the drops sting her cheeks.  Pushing the pedals on her touring bicycle, she glanced at her husband Parker, his large frame pedaling easily alongside of her.

She hadn’t wanted to stop at the cafe.  But since Parker’s heart attack she had tried her best to accommodate him.  Maybe now they could keep moving until they got to the quaint bed and breakfast.  Cold and uncomfortable, she yearned to take a hot bath.

Her husband pointed ahead.  Before them a grey cumulous cloud sat over the wide Texas horizon, precipitation lines streaming from its belly like jellyfish tendrils.

“We’d better take cover,” he shouted. “Want to turn back?”

“No!” she called, raising her voice against the wind’s drag.  Missy hadn’t liked the place where they’d stopped.  She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why, but it had made her uneasy.  Maybe it was the way the waitress kept pushing food on them, piling their plates with mounds of mashed potatoes they hadn’t asked for, sliding bright gelatinous slices of cherry and key lime pie they didn’t want onto their table.

“On the house,” she’d said with a smile, folding her hands across her huge chest.  Her china blue eyes were lost in creases of fat when she smiled.

Free food.  Parker thought he was in heaven, gobbling up the extras as well as his own order, paying and rolling out with a satisfied grin.  But Missy had been disturbed by the sight of the kitchen as she walked to the bathroom.

Catering-sized cans of beans, sauce, mayonnaise, and mixed vegetables towered to the ceiling.  Huge rectangular pans of fried eggs and sausages waited under hot lights, and the smell of beef hamburgers sizzling on the grill mingled with the smell of chickens turning on the rotisserie.  The waitress was hunched over, cramming cotton candy into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten in days, yet Missy had seen her demolish a turkey drumstick behind the counter. 

Missy would have sworn she saw something move behind the woman’s eyes; not greed but a fearful helplessness.  The sight chilled her blood.  She had said thank you and goodbye politely but very swiftly.

What was all that extra food for?  It seemed so wrong.  They had been the only customers in the place.  The parking lot was empty, and the road was a meandering two-lane back route that came from nowhere, and led to nowhere.  Ideal for cyclists, she’d thought.  Now she was beginning to wonder if they shouldn’t have stayed on the more traveled roads.

The couple pushed ahead, rain soaking into their lycra bike outfits.  They didn’t pass anyone going in either direction.  The road was lined with large old trees, leafless at this time of year, their skeletal branches forming a tangled canopy that made the afternoon darker than it should have been.

An hour later, Missy was soaked to the skin, her teeth chattering, her gloved fingers numb.  Parker slowed, pulling over to the side of the road.  She followed.  He blinked the raindrops from his face and touched her cheek.  His hand was warm.

“Hon?  You look really cold.  I think we ought to stop at the next place we see.”

“N..n...no. I’m all r.r.r...right,” she said through gritted teeth.

He shook his head.  “I’m serious.  Your lips are blue.  What’s wrong anyhow?”

His face was ruddy, his brown eyes clear.  He looked so normal.  How could she explain what she’d felt in the cafe...explain that the plump waitress was somehow sinister?  “I just want to get out of here.  To our buh buh...bed and breakfast.”

“Me too,” he said, putting his goggles back down.  “But you’re going to have a cup of hot tea the next place we see.”

Two minutes later a low-slung building came into view.  ‘EAT’ was spelled out in red neon in one window.  There were no cars in the parking lot.  She felt the hand of dread clutch at her heart.  She could not say why.  She just knew she did not want to go into that restaurant.

“Parker?  I don’t want to stop here.”

But he had already parked his bike under the awning.  He took off his helmet and called for her.

She saw a checkerboard curtain twitch at one of the windows.

Inside, it was hot and heavily scented with the odors of cooking.  The aromas of seafood stew and baked chocolate chip cookies fought for dominance.  Blueberry, blackberry, and pumpkin pies lined the cases behind the front counter.

“Welcome folks!”  A very large man in a striped shirt and a dirty white apron spoke cheerfully enough, but his cheeks were flushed bright red, his eyes were glassy and his grin seemed, to Missy, to be over-eager.  She nudged her husband, wanting to leave
before...before what?

“Mmmmumh.  Smells good in here!” her husband said.

“Glad y’all like it.  What will you eat, folks?”

Missy frowned at his odd phrase.  “Just two cups of tea please,” she said.

The host’s jowly face fell.  “That’s all?”

“Yes,” Missy said, covering her husband’s large hand with her own delicate one.  “We’ve just eaten.”

The chef lurched away, walking, Missy thought, just like a puppet with someone pulling his strings.  I don’t like this at all, she thought.

“You okay, hon?”  Parker said again.  “You look pale.  Why don’t you have something to eat?”

She stared at him, surprised.  “I did.  I had a pork pie and beans at the other place.  Don’t you remember?”

Before he could reply, the chef put two mugs of tea on the table with a clumsy movement.  The tea slopped over the edge and made a stain on the tablecloth.  He didn’t seem to notice.

She took a sip from her mug, then frowned.  “He’s used heavy cream instead of milk.”

Parker drank some of his.  “Tastes just fine to me.”

The chef returned with a plate filled with cookies of different types.  He put it down on the table.  Next to it he put a tray with peanut butter, fluffy white marshmallow spread, cream cheese, and four different kinds of jam.  Then he brought out a plate piled with doughnuts and scones.

“Help yourself folks!”  he said.  “Compliments of the kitchen.”

Apprehension crept up Missy’s spine.  Why should everyone on this small stretch of back country road be so determined to have them eat something?  She didn’t want to eat.  She was still full from lunch.  And the chef had an edge of, what?, to his voice.  Desperation, she decided.  As if something would happen to them if they didn’t eat.  Too wild, she thought, and yet suddenly, she knew she had to get out.  “Parker?”    

Her husband had an oatmeal cookie in one hand, his cheeks full with a chocolate chip. “’Zis is great, Missy,” he said, showering crumbs.  “Home baked.  Mmfh.”  He polished off the oatmeal and got to work on a sugar cookie.

She looked at him with something approaching revulsion.  “Parker!  Can we go?
 Please.” 

He swallowed the last of his cookie and looked at her with uncomprehending brown eyes.

“I don’t like it here,” she whispered.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm.  “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.  It just scares me?”

Parker surveyed her for a moment as if wondering where her sanity had gone.  But he loved his wife.  “Sure.  We can leave.”  He put a five dollar bill on the table.  “Keep the change,” he called out.

As the chef took the bill, his red-lipped mouth twisted into an expression of fearful despair.  His eyes darted around like panicked goldfish.  He leaned close.

“Can I interest you folks in some smoked salmon?”

“Sounds good, but no thanks,” Parker said.

Deeper, more urgently: “How about a quiche?”   

“No,” Parker’s eyes went to Missy then back to the chef.  “No,” he said firmly.  “We’re finished.”

He was doing this just for her.  Missy decided she loved him more than ever.  They stood up and walked towards the door. 

At the door, her husband stopped.  “Do you mind if I use the bathroom?”  He said.  The sign for the men’s room was next to the kitchen.

“Sure.  I’ll be okay,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

It seemed like he was gone for a long time.  Missy waited nervously.  The chef had disappeared into the kitchen.  She checked the big black clock over the counter and realized with a start that her husband had been gone fifteen minutes.  A terrible fear gripped her.  What if he’d had another heart attack?  Or something worse.  She started
sweating, even though she’d been cold before.  She ran towards the men’s room. The sound of water running echoed in the tiny hall.

Her mouth dry, she pushed open the door.  “Parker?”

A sink ran unheeded.  There were two urinals and one stall.  The door hung partially open.  She pushed it in the rest of the way.  An empty toilet stared back at her.  A half-eaten cupcake lay smashed on the floor near the commode.  The sight of it scared her to the bone.  She backed out of the restroom, panic rising in her throat.  “Parker!” She shouted, stumbling towards the kitchen.  From behind the swing door a horrible gurgling noise sounded.

“Parker?  Hon?”

Her heart in her mouth, she pushed the door open.

The chef stood with his back against the prep counter, his face chalky with abject terror, his jaws working at a large peppermint stick, each fist gripping a giant cinnamon bun.  A dead Japanese woman hung suspended in an enormous vat of green jello.  A postal hat lay beside a barrel of flour, a single stiffened white-dusted hand reaching from within.          

Her husband lay on his back on the floor, struggling.  A large slab of cured beef sat on his chest.  With disbelieving eyes, she saw sticky taffy fingers undulate in his hair, as if gluing it to the linoleum.  Cooked spaghetti strands wormed around his ankles.  A glistening chocolate trail led from the open refrigerator to his body.  A heavy, dark, trembling mass of pudding covered his face, pumping over his mouth.  His body gave one last convulsive twitch, then lay still.

Electric with horror, she lunged towards him.  Her feet touched a pool of vegetable oil and she skidded across the floor, her arms wind milling before she fell.  She landed hard. The pain crackled up from her elbow like lightening running through her bone.  Ignoring the pain, she pulled herself up and clawed the pudding out of her husband’s mouth with her bare hand.  He wasn’t breathing.  She felt something wet hit the side of her head, cling and then slide slowly down her cheek.  With a little moan of fear, she flicked it off.  An egg yolk flew off her fingers and spattered on the stainless steel door of the lower oven.

Stuffed olives pelted them from all sides.  Batting them away, Missy propped her husband’s inert body up and gave him a mightily thump him on the back.  He spewed out a clot of chocolate vomit and then, mercifully, took a choking breath.  His eyes fluttered open.  They struggled to their feet, holding onto each other and the fixtures of the kitchen.

The chef watched them with dead eyes.  He’d finished the candy and was now holding a bag of corn chips, his mouth still crammed with bread.  “You can’t chomp..mphmuph can’t stop it.  Eat something.  It’s your only hope.”

Missy could see the chips jumping inside the bag.  She raised her hand.  “Don’t..”

But it was too late.  With a loud pop, the chips exploded from the bag, landing on the chef and flying at Missy.  She felt them struggling to get under her collar and she crushed them with the flat of her hand, feeling the crumbs run down inside her shirt like insects.

She stopped to get them out, jerking and patting herself like a folk dancer on speed.  She felt Parker’s large hand around her waist, dragging her out the door.

They stumbled outside, into the cold rain.  Parker fumbled with the locks on the bikes, while Missy got the rest of the crumbs out of her shirt.

A rumbling noise from the restaurant made her look up.  A pile of uncooked, peeled potatoes churned out the door, soft white flesh piling on flesh like an angry giant oozing pseudo pod.  The shape paused and tested the air with one tiny finger-like spud, then rumbled towards them.

They left the bikes and ran for the woods.

When they’d run about a mile, Parker uttered a cry, grabbed his chest and sank to his knees gasping, his face grey in the fading light of the afternoon.

She eased him down onto the base of a large oak tree, and slid her arms around him.  “You’ll be all right,” she said.  “Just rest now.”  He closed his eyes as if a great tiredness had come over him.

Missy sat there with her husband, watching fearfully to see if they’d been followed, as the darkness crept into the woods and covered the sky.  At some point, exhaustion claimed her and unable to resist, she drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

She opened her eyes at first light.  Parker’s breathing was labored, but he was still alive and for that she was grateful.  Her arm was horribly swollen from the fall.  She ached all over.  How were they going to get away?

She sat up.  Something rustled in the leaves.  She looked down.  A tiny muffin sat beside her, the raisins in it looking very much like eyes.

With a trembling hand she reached out, picked it up, and took a bite.

About the Author
Each day Lisa Tate wonders uneasily what to have for dinner.

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