seeing your friends as entrees is hard & unfair ft. nicholas fish
Soft little plip-plops of rain mosey down the windshield. Veronica’s asleep in the back. Grayson’s slumped over himself in the passenger seat. I yawn a little and drag a hand through my hair. The world’s so horribly drab. I’m yearning for the sort of food one can only get from their peers, but I doubt either of the two I’m with would be willing to supply me. And no matter what, there’s Grayson to be concerned with. I spring for Ronny, he’s got me. I spring for him, well, enough said, clearly.
And I know for a fact he wouldn’t take too kindly to me just taking a little off one of this filled-out arms of his, so this leaves me to toil in throes of cravings. That damn boy only fuels them. I can see the faint pulse in Grayson’s neck, his skin dappled with molted light from outside the windshield. His face catches the faint, yellow luminosity from an overhead streetlamp, painting him in a ghoulish light, casting faded glimmers on his stubble, on the dark lush of his eyelashes. I glance back to his pulse.
Grayson’s a sweet kid. I use the term “kid” very loosely, as he’s quite a bit older than me, but it still feels applicable. He’s too…eh, innocent to be considered an adult yet. It doesn’t matter how the world has touched him, fondled him. He remains unmolested and a picture of absolute naivety. Way to go, Sonny, you managed to somehow be even more difficult to kill.
And then there’s Ronny. Honestly just a dew-drop of pudgy sweetness. She’s still curled up in the backseat, oblivious to the images of a char-broiled her that dance through my mind. I close my eyes and lean back in my seat. My head’s near to bursting with thoughts in full fracas. They’re yelping at each other, encouraging me to ignore ones full morality and to embrace…others. Others that would result in me needing a change of clothes and a good shower.
Hunger crashes into me like tornado-propelled gales. I bury my face in my hands and scrub. I need to get out of this car. I need to get away from the purely human smell of Grayson and Ronny, both of them marinating in their individual perfumes and colognes and deodorants, the aromatic sort that would make even a non-cannibal’s mouth water.
I open my door quietly and step out onto the wet grass flanking the gas station parking lot. Rain’s still pissing down on me, but I don’t much mind. Anything to be out of the musky smell of sleeping bodies and cranked up heaters.
I suppose it’s time I formally came out and said it: I’m a cannibal. But we all have our flaws, don’t we?
I’m not really your stereotypical cannibal. At least, I don’t like to think I am. After all, I’m not misanthropic or brooding. I wouldn’t consider myself a Lecterian sort of cannibal, one dripping gastronomic tendencies and insurmountable intellect. I’m kinda dumb, actually, and I’m not really good at preparing meat.
Also, major thing that excludes me from archetypical cannibals: I don’t have a jar full of eyes, fingers, toes or any other bite-sized body part anywhere in my dwelling or elsewhere. Frankly, I think that idea’s a little Hollywoodized and is mostly hearsay, because why would you keep your food in formaldehyde? Like, riddle me that, Hollywood.
So, yeah, no, I guess I vary from most cannibals.
I sigh and start toward the gas station. The dull glow of a fluorescent light inside sends gloomy shimmers dancing along puddles streaming from the gutter and pooling in front of the rusty ice chest. I glance down on my way in and see dozens of weeds climbing up from in between the cracks in the cement. The lot of them were being pushed back by the little torrents of rushing rain water, their shallow roots kicked up, drowned ruthlessly. They’d probably be too severely waterlogged after this to survive too long.
C’est la vie, little guys.
I step inside and shake out my jacket, pulling my hands over my hair in an attempt to get some of the water out of it. A girl whose face is essentially just one large acne scar watches me, her eyes platters of hazel-toned lust. I probably made her night by coming in here.
I’m a little hot, but that’s just my opinion of myself. And most people’s opinions of me.
I look up at her and give her a closed-mouth smile. I’ve mastered this smile. It’s perfected to make the guy and/or girl I’m smiling at believe I’m too shy to even show my teeth to them. In reality, it’s just my way of hiding my teeth. I’ve sharpened my canines, top and bottom, to points so sharp the inside of my lips are callused from them. The girl stifles a smile and looks subconsciously at the cash register, as if it would offer moral support in this situation.
I finish shaking out my hair and square my shoulders, giving another sheepish-looking smile and shuffling toward the back of the store. It’s a tiny little station, the kind of place that probably wouldn’t let you use the employee restroom even if you really had to pee. But, tiny as it was, they had beef jerky. It’s not nearly the sort of meat I’d like, but it’ll have to do. The jolt of protein might do something to subdue the “systematically ingest my travel companions” urges.
Except I know it won’t. I know why I’m in here.
The girl behind the counter, she’s why.
I review the store quickly, holding a pack of beef jerky through the sleeve of my jacket. It’s a small gas station. Small and run-down and shoddy enough to need security cameras but to not have them.
The lights flicker. What I think is a cockroach scurries through along the inside of a light fixture.
What’s that in the corner? Mm. A single camera, aimed at the cash register. That shouldn’t be a problem.
“Excuse me?” I call, keeping my voice soft and, as Ronny calls it, “sweet as sugar cookies”.
The girl looks up, her eyes wide and eager. If my heart still gave a crap, I’m sure I would’ve felt a tug of guilt. But luckily, it’s too jaded to care about stuff like this anymore.
I held up the packet a little, positioning most of my body behind the wire shelf. There’s a rusty screw by my foot. I keep it in mind as I say, “Do you maybe have turkey jerky?” Cue the apologetic smile and partial lift of the shoulder. The “oh damn, I’m inconveniencing you, aren’t I?” approach to things.
Some god awful country song twangs away from a radio in the corner that has clearly seen better days. Some syrupy brown substance splatters its side.
I decide the radio’s gonna have to go as soon as the girl’s gone.
The girl frowns a little, but only for a second, because she’s all crooked smiles and nervous lip chewing as she approaches me. “Well,” she says, her voice unexpectedly pleasant, “I’m not sure. Lemme see here…” She steps in front of me, digging through inventory she certainly knows by heart in order to get her head closer to my hips.
I move quickly. The screw’s in my hand in a second, between my fingers, biting into the webbing at their bases. I jam it into the soft skin behind her ear. She screams against my hand, and it’s clear the screw’s taking too long to work.
Bludgeoning is a laborious project, but one well worth it in the end. It only takes a few well-placed strikes of her head against the linoleum for the fight to simmer out of her. Now it’s the radio’s turn.
By the time I get back into the car, having had to backtrack out of the store through the stock room in order to avoid the camera, Grayson’s awake. He takes one look at the bloody plastic bag in my hand and sighs.
“Are you at least going to cook it this time?”
“The George Forman Grill’s in the back. Hurry up, we need to get moving.”
I settle in for breakfast as Grayson takes over the wheel. Being on the run is a hoot.
