Midnight Snack

The smell was sweet and pungent. Decades of frying meat, fat, and blood splattered on every surface, caked in every unreachable crevice. The grime of life and death, so thick and sticky it builds up under the nails.

He breathed it in, a long, ragged breath filling his barrel chest; the scent of meat filling his nostrils and getting stuck in his lungs. Like tar to a smoker.

A gloved hand raked through his tangled mane of hair. All that feculence meant the restaurant was crawling, from the humming florescence above to the scratched linoleum below. From the fuming grill to the poorly scrubbed wooden table. Most couldn’t feel it, but even his scalp writhed with life. The itch had faded long ago. Scratching was merely the habit of a lost life; a self-soothing gesture while he waited there in the dark.

The kid in the kitchen still had his back turned to him. He had glimpsed the name tag on a previous night.

Tyler.

The young man’s face was cast down towards the deep frier. The deep golden liquid was bubbling with potential.

In one motion, his hand could wrap around the back of the kid’s skull and dunk it into the simmering vat. Tyler wouldn’t hear it coming.

Almost instinctively, he glided forward. Each silent step across the linoleum was made with such gleeful trepidation.

There it was… the real itch. The need worth scratching. It had been so long. What was life without death?

So close now… he could smell Tyler’s sweat beneath his fragrant cologne. So close he could count the freckles on his neck.

When plunged, would his face crisp? Would his skin bubble and bloat? Or would the thrashing cause it to flake off? Detritus left to skim. Seasoning for the putrid oil.

He hoped it would stick on like a crispy coating—a satisfying crunch protecting the veal beneath. Texture was everything.

His watering mouth quivered as sense returned to his torn psyche.

It wasn’t time. It wasn’t the right place.

A half-forgotten phrase floated to the surface of his fractured mind.

He’s part of the family.

It was a poor excuse to stay his hand. A lie born not from practicality but sentimentality. The underlying kindness he still couldn’t excise.

Pathetic.

He would have laughed if he could.

Still, he could already feel the pull. Saturday night was not the time to play… there was work to do.

So, he moved on, behind the unsuspecting teen, through the kitchen and past the office.

The basement was waiting.

He placed a hand on the cement wall of the descending staircase. It would have been cool, but he couldn’t feel it behind those gloves—only the heat of flesh and the wetness of exertion.

The covenant awaited.

Cornucopia made manifest. Meat in perpetuity.

When the door swung open, he would face it alone, with a smile on his face.

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