[TALES OF DREAD] ‘Get ’em While They’re Hot’ by Abbey Decker
Tales of Dread is an ongoing series dedicated to showcasing the best works of terrifying short fiction from underrepresented and emerging voices within the horror community.
Story One: Get ‘em While They’re Hot By Abbey Decker
Watch the visual story here:
O’Neill took a sip of his beer. He wasn’t supposed to drink on the job, but the boss took off for the night. The beer tickled his throat on the way down. It was a pleasant fizz, like Pop Rocks. He took another swig, then set it down beside the grill.
With the spatula, he pressed down on each hamburger patty. The hiss of grease on the griddle was loud in the cramped kitchen. He squashed each patty flat, then reached up to take down a shaker with a piece of masking tape on it that read “Secret Herbs N Spices” in Sharpie. O’Neill was damn sure there wasn’t anything in it but salt, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, and a few rat turds for good measure.
He watched the burgers fry for a little while. Let himself zone out to the sound, and the smell. The way the blood welled up from the patties when he pressed ‘em, dripped into the grill, and made the fire burn brighter. Hotter. Sweat on his brow. Fog on his glasses. His long, dirty blonde ponytail sticking to the back of his neck like a mink stole, making him uncomfortably warm. So warm he felt like he might just go bugshit if he had to put up with one more bead of sweat dripping into the divots on either side of his nostrils.
The radio was playing Creedence. His older brother loved Creedence. “CCR,” he called ‘em. Like he was special. He was always acting like that. Like he was in some special club just for him, and nobody else could join. He sold car insurance in a cramped and stuffy office that smelled like farts, and he croaked in the middle of a triple bypass when he was 47.
O’Neill looked out the short-order window at the crowd of placid, bovine assholes taking up every goddamn booth in the house. Loudmouth moms with loudmouth kids. Men clinging to the last two hairs on their shiny heads, trying to talk up the same leathery old barflies that have been sucking down watery margaritas. Bored, loveless couples making small talk over deep-fried pickles, trying not to think about how much they hated each other. Shitty teenagers staring down the long rifle barrel of the future and seeing nothing but a hundred thousand more Friday nights just like this, four of ‘em splitting one order of fries because you had to have a master’s degree in this day and age just to work for minimum wage at a goddamn car wash, and they knew it was only gonna get worse the older they got.
Meat on the grill.
Meat in the booths.
Hell, that’s what everything was in the end. Just meat, sizzling on a flattop in hell. Coming into this world bloody and soft, then leaving it shriveled and burnt, and tougher than you should be.
When he lifted his head again, the whole damn bar was full of fuckin’ animals.
And that wasn’t a euphemism.
In a booth by the bathrooms, Momma cow had her udder out, and her baby calves were suckling at her teats. Two pigs in trucker hats sat at the bar, guzzling beer down their flabby gullets, oinking and squealing at a big-breasted chicken, covered in downy white feathers. Sitting next to her was a rooster in a black leather jacket, pecking in the piggies’ direction, looking to start some shit. Four young goats sat bleating at a booth by the window, gobbling down French fries and butting heads every so often over the tabletop.
O’Neill blinked. Reached up and took his glasses off. Wiped the sweat off his brow. Put his glasses back on.
They were all still there. Sweaty hogs, smelly cows, fat racoons hissing and slapping their knees like one of ‘em told a real ripper of a dirty joke.
“Nope,” O’Neill murmured to himself, shaking his head. Sweat dripping down his neck into the dirty wife beater he wore under his grease-stained apron. “You’re losing your nut.”
He looked back down at the grill. At the meat. Thinking that somehow, that would fix it. Set it all back to square one.
On the grill were eight human faces, staring up at him with gaping mouths. Not heads, just faces. Skin and lips, nostrils and eye sockets. Nothing underneath. Skin crackling and popping. Blistering on the grill.
Everything smelled like burnt hair and pork chops.
That was about when O’Neill realized he didn’t want to be a fry cook anymore.
It never ceased to amaze him how quickly things could end sometimes. It could be the same shit for decades, and then one day, you realize how easy it is to make it all stop.
He turned the gas on every burner all the way up.
The faces screamed.
He poured the rest of his beer on ‘em to shut ‘em up.
The fire burned bright as O’Neill walked out the front door. The cacophony that followed him was an unholy barn afire. Piggies squealing, horses whinnying, chickens squawking. And underneath it all, the screams from the grill, deepening in tone, rising in volume. Souls bellowing in agonizing three-part harmony, building to a staggering crescendo, making O’Neill’s ears ring.
Once the flames licked their way out of the kitchen and ate up the bar, all that liquor turned into a five-alarm blaze, and the fire roared so loud, it swallowed every sound but the wood popping.
And as it devoured the restaurant whole, O’Neill got a sneak preview of the hell he would someday end up in.
“Fuck ‘em all, big ‘n small,” he said, and he locked the door on his way out.
Abbey Decker is an author, editor, and native New Yorker who lives in Queens with her wife Elandriel and their psychotic cat. She was born in the ’80s, her favorite horror movies are The Shining and Child’s Play, and she’s still bummed that she never got to work at Blockbuster Video.
Followe Abbey Decker online: https://twitter.com/AbbeyDoesntKnow
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