Dragged into Darkness (13 page)

“No, you’re not, mom.”

“Charlene, you just need help and you’re getting it.”

Charlene edged her way into the bathroom and tried to cover up something on the wall.

“What’s that?”

Charlene stood aside.  She exposed a collection of used and bloodstained Band-Aids stuck to the wall with the remaining adhesive.

“Charlene.”

“I know, doctor.”

“There’s a lot we can put straight into the Things I don’t need box.”

“Can we move on, doctor?”

Birnbaum
agreed and allowed Charlene, with Marcy at her side, to show him around the house.  It was a tragic account of the woman’s neurosis, but through the tears and her daughter’s strength, he felt he could help.

“That’s our home, doctor.  I suppose we should start.”

“What about here?”  He pointed at a door.

“The basement,” Marcy said.

The basement—if it was anything like his own it would be Charlene’s crowning glory.  If he shared any of her traits, the basement was where it would be found.  Anything he couldn’t bear to throw away was consigned to the basement.  He shuddered to think what he would find in Charlene’s.

“I think we should take a peek.”

“No, Doctor
Birnbaum
,” she protested.

He ignored her and twisted the doorknob.  She tried to stop him but it was too late.  He opened the door.

He expected to be confronted with trash bags up to the top of the door, but he wasn’t.  It seemed bare.  He flicked the light switch but it didn’t work.  He squinted into the gloom.  Something was down there, but he couldn’t make out what
lie
in the cellar depths.

“What is that down there?”

Charlene helped him see.

Her beefy hands thrust him forward.  He plunged into the void.  The box he held and the cell phone in his jacket broke his fall on the wooden stairs, both destroyed in the tumble.  He tasted dirt when he struck the bottom.

Disgust had caused his stomach to tighten but terror loosened it.  He was face to face with Jack from Social Services.  He had wondered why his friend hadn’t returned his calls, now he knew.  Jack’s bloated face and waxy pallor, not to mention the curious angle of his neck to the rest of his body, meant he hadn’t lasted his fall.

“Jack said he was
my
Social Services officer and I kept him.  You said you were
my
psychiatrist and I think I’ll keep you, too.”

Marcy took hold of mother’s hand.  “Others will come, mom.”

“And others will stay.”

The horror sank in and
Birnbaum
scrabbled up the stairs.

Charlene closed the door and turned the lock.

This was Dave’s first week in the US after the inter-company transfer and it was his first lunch out with his American colleagues.  It was also his first American meal.  Up until now, he had been making his own meals.  Staring at the menu, he didn’t know what to choose.  It was quite a revelation.  The menu could never be confused with an English one.

The waitress tapped her pad and popped her bubblegum in tired anticipation.  “What’s it to be?” she prompted.

“Come on, Dave.  We only get an hour,” Clark said, pointing to his watch.

The problem was the size of the meal.  His menu didn’t describe the meals but provided laminated illustrations of them.  It was packed with lunches and sandwiches big enough to take up a page of the menu.  The US was the land of plenty, but this went a little too far.  What this diner promised to get in between a bun consisted of a complete meal for four with leftovers.  Sure, he could always leave what he didn’t want.  But he couldn’t.  His mother’s belief that wasted food was a sin was ingrained in his soul.   The pitiful Save the Children poster in the restaurant foyer only went to carve her words deeper.

“Tick-tock, Dave,” Marcus said, piling on the social pressure.

“Are these pictures to scale?  Are the sandwiches this big?”

“No,” the waitress said bluntly.

“Oh, good,” Dave replied, relieved.

“They’re bigger.”

His heart sank and his stomach rumbled.  Even his body was against him. 

Silence deafened.  His co-worker’s stares willed him to make a decision, their impatience heating his face.  The tension was magnified by the burning stares he received from neighboring tables.  Everybody waited for Dave. 

When in Rome, he decided.  “I’ll have the Bacon-Cheese-Western burger.”

“With fries or home fries?”

“
Er
, um.”

“He’ll have the Double-Bacon-Cheese-Western with curly-fries,” Marcus replied for

Dave.

The waitress sneered and shuffled over to the next table.

“What’s wrong with you English people?   Are you guys afraid to eat or something?” Clark demanded.

“No, we just eat reasonably.”

“No wonder you guys are small,” Marcus added.

Marcus had a point.  Dave seemed to be at least six inches smaller than everyone else.  Were people like fish—only growing to the size of their tank?  Americans did have a lot of tank to swim in.

Dave retaliated, “But this much food per meal, no wonder there’s a problem with obesity in this country.”

“Listen, Dave, what you call obesity, we call healthy,” Clark said.  “From where I’m sitting, you guys are weedy.”

Dave wasn’t sure if he had offended his hosts but felt he was close.  He steered his remarks away from the confrontational to the more humorous, mainly at his expense.  The break from the banter came a few minutes later when their food arrived. 

Their waitress placed each person’s order before them.  Dave’s, she dropped.  It clattered on the table.  Fortunately, the food stayed in place.

His burger teetered like the tower of Pisa before him.  Only a double-length cocktail stick spearing the layers of meat, vegetables, dairy and bread stopped it from collapsing onto a hillside of crispy potato springs.   He was going to cut the monster into more user-friendly pieces, but when he noticed his colleagues manhandling their prizes, he thought better of it and left his silverware alone.

Hefting the burger, Dave was glad of the cocktail stick restraining the food grenade.  He held the quivering mass to his face.  He couldn’t eat it.  He couldn’t see over the damned thing, it was so thick.  Dave could never fit his mouth around the thing.  Even with mouth fully open, he needed his nose to bite into his burger.

“How the hell do you guys eat these things?”  Dave protested, returning his order to his plate.

Dave’s answer was before him.  Marcus’ jaw had dislocated.  It hung slack, stretching his cheeks and making his face grotesquely gaunt.  A quarter of the burger was wedged between his teeth.  He jerked his head twice, snapping his jaw back into place and snaring a chunk of food. 

Dave’s
throat
sphinctered
on a phantom swallow
.  Marcus wasn’t the only person eating that way.  Clark was also in mid-dislocating bite.  The spectacle didn’t stop there.  The restaurant patrons were doing the exact same thing as Marcus and Clark.  Some chewed wads of food large enough to choke a horse.  Throats bulged as the food went down.  Nobody ate like Dave.  He recoiled against the vinyl-clad bench seat.

“You don’t eat this way?” Marcus demanded.

Dave shook his head violently.

“I thought he’d been inducted,” Clark said coldly.

Other diners noticed the commotion at Dave’s table.  Again, everyone went silent.  Some
stared,
slack jawed—extremely slack jawed.  A fork struck the floor.  It sounded like power lines snapping.

Their waitress returned.  “Do we have a problem here?” she demanded.

Clark cracked his jaw back into place.  “Yeah, we have a problem.  This guy’s English.”

“We don’t care.  We get ‘
em
all in here.”

Marcus shook his head.  “You don’t understand.  He doesn’t eat like us.”

“Nobody leaves until we sort this guy out,” their waitress bellowed. 

Another waitress locked the door.

Dave bolted—he had to.  He was cornered in his booth wedged between the window seat and Clark.  He jumped onto the table and leapt off, but Marcus caught his ankle and sent him sprawling, along with their food.  Their waitress jumped out of his way as he crashed to the floor. 

Diners leapt from their seats and pounced on the food, not Dave.  He saw his mean of escape.

Dave scrambled to his feet and charged a transfixed waitress.  His momentum blasted the tray piled high with orders from her fragile grip.  The diners gasped.  And when the food hit the floor, so did they.

“No!” boomed Clark.  “Leave the damn food and get him.  We can’t let him get away.  No one can know our secret.”

Clark was ignored.  Diners fought for scraps. 

Dave
hurdled
the snake-jawed diners.  He raced for the emergency exit.  Clark and Marcus were in pursuit with their waitress close behind.  They would never catch him; there were too many obstacles scrabbling for scraps.  He faked out two waitresses and was on the home stretch for the door.

But it wasn’t to be.  A chef straight-armed Dave as he ran past the kitchen.  The impact flipped him on his back.  Dave crashed onto the unforgiving vinyl, wheezing and fighting for breath.

Marcus and Clark caught up and descended.   They hoisted him to his feet. 

“What do we do with him?” Marcus asked.

“The food disposal,” the chef suggested.  The waitress agreed.

Dave saw his destiny—he would be the disposal’s next meal.  He fought against his captors, but they were too strong—a useful by-product derived from their immense appetites.

“No!” Dave bellowed.  “You can’t do this.”

“This way,” the chef said, and retreated into the kitchen.

Marcus and Clark did as they were told and dragged Dave.  The waitresses and the busboys followed.  None of his fellow diners came to his aid.  Instead, they got up from their tables to get a closer look.  They fought for a good view from the kitchen doorway.

Amongst the kitchen’s stainless steel and ceramic tile was the food disposal.  It wasn’t what he expected.  Chained to the floor and wedged in the corner, between the dishwasher and the toilets was a person.  Well, it had been a person once, because what it was now defied belief.  Naked and covered with filth and dripping with grease and sweat was a squatting figure.  Fat rolls flopped from every part of its body.  Kept from the light, it had an unnatural anemic complexion.  The creature’s only coloration came from its oil-slick black hair—long and unkempt, it cascaded down its back.  The creature resembled a grotesque and poorly modeled Chinese Buddha fashioned from wax.