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Chelsea grins because Candy’s food addiction is well known
and she’s never dated, not once in her life. Candy lives
with her mother in the house on the hill, just past Turner
Street where Jeb wrecked his tow truck last year after the
fireman’s annual dance. Candy has resigned herself to
living without a man in her life, preferring instead to
gorge herself on all the diner has to offer. Candy and
Chelsea have talked many times. They see each other almost
daily. If Candy noticed Mr. Hot—if the man somehow broke
through her sugar high—then he must be as dreamy as Chelsea
thinks he is.
But she’s not dreaming.
As if to further cement the fact she’s awake, the words of
Jake, her manager, pinches her with a dose of reality:
“We’ve got other patrons other than the Gleasons, girl.”
Jake leans on the counter, his large belly spreading on the
tabletop, his hands folded together as if he’s praying that
Chelsea can somehow manage the floor alone.
Like that is going to happen, she thinks with a glance
around the full diner. At least he has help in the kitchen,
but then he’s the boss.
A cup of coffee rests next to Jake’s elbow. It’s been there
for an hour, every since Jeb’s nephew, Hank Miller, left his
favorite barstool. Mr. Hot takes the seat. Chelsea notices
the sheen of sweat upon Jake’s head. Steam rises from the
coffee cup. She realizes she was wrong, that it must be
Jake’s coffee and he must have brought it with him from the
kitchen.
“Danged air conditioning go out?” Jake asks. He stands
revealing a large apron conforming to his massive gut, and
he rubs his hands over the dingy material. “I just had the
repair guy out last month.”
She notices he doesn’t take his coffee with him.
Chelsea takes the orders of two nearby tables before she
heads back to the kitchen. She looks up to push against the
swinging door between the walk-through between counters, and
she finds Mr. Hot’s eyes meeting hers. Passion wets her
soul but she isn’t sure—
“Miss?” he says. “Can you take my order?”
She forces a smile and walks behind the counter. She needs
to get the two new orders back to Jake and Esmeralda, his
wife, the only two cooks tonight, but she can’t refuse Mr.
Hot, even if it means the last two tables get their food a
few minutes late.
“What can I get for you, honey?” she asks. He glances at
her apron or shirt—or breasts?—and she feels her face flush
red. “Do you need a menu?”
“Oh, I know what I want,” he says. His eyes trail down her
body to the counter that needs wiping, ending at the
steaming cup of coffee. “This isn’t mine.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She grabs the cup since the handle
is facing opposite her, but she lets go immediately because
the cup itself is scalding, and when black liquid sloshes on
her hand she yelps. “Ouch, that’s hot.”
He pulls napkins from the dispenser and hands them to her.
Chelsea has a rag to wipe down tables in her apron, but she
takes the gift anyway. “Thanks,” she says as his hand
brushes hers. She almost yelps again as the skin of her
hand sticks to his fingers. The word blistering comes to
mind as she wipes up the spilled coffee, never averting her
eyes from those burning hazel orbs that seem to swirl from
some inner seething turmoil.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“The heat,” she says. She pushes a sweaty strand of hair
from her brow, hoping the dark strand doesn’t look too out
of place against the rest of her blond hair. “I think
Jake’s right; the air conditioning is going out.”
She glimpses her reflection in the large window past the
Gleasons, looks for signs of her dark roots. She can’t see
them and hopes Mr. Hot doesn’t spot them either.
“Do you have any ice cream?” he asks.
“Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry,” she says. “Those are
the only three flavors we have in this diner, honey.”
She holds her legs together and feels them stick—she’s
definitely wet. A drop of sweat slides from the band of her
underwear into the crack of her butt, and she squeezes her
cheeks together trapping it. I’d like to trap Mr. hot here,
she thinks while ogling him. She imagines Mr. Hot naked on
some tropical beach, the feel of his hard muscles beneath
his tanned skin. He’s blond like her, but without the dark
roots, and his hair is sun bleached.
“I don’t care what flavor,” he says. “Just get me ice
cream. I’m burning up.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” she says writing his order. She
doesn’t have to write it down to remember, but it gives her
a chance to talk a few seconds. “Hank Miller—who was
sitting on the very barstool you’re sitting on—told me the
tires of his truck actually melted on the pavement when—”
“Miss?” he says. “I don’t mean to be rude. Ice cream?”
“Yeah, I got it,” she says and puts her receipt book in her
apron pocket. “I’ll have it back in a flash.”
“Waitress?” a man calls. His family’s table is next to the
Gleasons. “Is our order up?”
His table’s order is in her pocket, but she lies and says,
“The cook’s got it, honey.” She winks at Mr. Hot then
frowns. “Are you okay?”
“Ice cream,” he says through clenched teeth.
She rushes back to the kitchen and posts the two last orders
on the strip above the open window. Beneath it Jake is
flipping eight hamburger patties with practiced ease, the
spatula lifting and turning, one by one. Esmeralda tosses a
salad, her thick fingers a blur, an open bottle of Kraft
Ranch Dressing rests on its side spilling white ooze onto
the counter.
“Are all the orders taken?” Jake asks.
“No, but some guy wants ice cream… and I mean now.” She
gets a bowl and ice cream scooper from the drawer. “He
doesn’t look very good.”
She puts six scoops of vanilla in the bowl, grabs a spoon,
and heads out. It’s a little cooler outside the kitchen but
not much. The front door opens and another wave of heat
rushes in, but it’s not as bad this time. Must be getting
used to it, she thinks. She sets the bowl before Mr. Hot
and gives her most winning smile. He frowns and grabs the
spoon. His hand trembles making the spoon clink against the
side of the bowl, and her first thought is recovering
addict.
“Miss?” Mrs. Gleason calls while walking toward her. “Can
you get me another donut? This one is melted.”
Before she can give her customer-is-always-right-smile she
notices the cup of boiling coffee next to Mr. Hot. Big
black bubbles rise up over the rim, and the coffee boils
over. Mr. Hot doesn’t seem to notice, but she gasps at his
ice cream—it’s melted into a pile of goo.
“You’re hot,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question.
“Something’s wrong with you.”
She smells burnt plastic and sees the counter blackened
around his elbows. Steam rises behind his back, and she
realizes the vapor comes from his barstool. He’s literally
burning up everything around him.
“About my donut,” Mrs. Gleason says standing next to Mr.
Hot, her blue hair bouncing as her head shakes from palsy.
Her smile turns into a frown as the donut plate falls from
her shaking hand and shatters into a thousand shards. “Oh,
my! Maybe I should sit back down.”
Mrs. Gleason’s blue hair seems to turn orange-red. That’s
when Chelsea realizes something is moving in the elderly
woman’s hair.
“Mrs. Gleason,” Chelsea shouts. “You’re on fire!”
Mrs. Gleason yells and reaches for her hair. Mr. Gleason
runs toward his wife’s back. Chelsea steps away, wide eyes
looking from Mrs. Gleason to Mr. Hot who stands and slams
his palms on the steaming counter.
“What’s going on, Chelsea?” Jake asks as he jiggles from the
kitchen past her. He rushes toward Mrs. Gleason as her
husband beats her head with his newspaper. “Why is Mrs.
Gleason on fire?”
Mr. Hot screams so loud Chelsea has to hold her hands over
her ears. He collapses on the counter, rolls onto his back
writhing, his legs and lower back hanging over the side. He
keeps yelling over and over, “Father, why have you forsaken
me?”
Although she’s drenched in sweat, a chill slides down her
spine like an ice cube. She backs away from Mr. Hot, pushes
past her boss, and runs into the kitchen. She watches
through the open window where, she hopes, it’s safe. The
heat from the grill doesn’t phase her like usual.
“Somebody call 911,” Jake shouts. Esmeralda rushes to her
husband with a cell phone against her ear as he yells, “Stop
thrashing and let us help you, Mrs. Gleason.”
Mrs. Gleason explodes. Her blue hair turns black. Her
dress flutters as if from wind then shreds from the blast,
and her legs fall away from her body. Her torso shoots up
off her legs like a propelled rocket. She rises toward the
fifteen foot ceiling, slows and seems to hovers for a
second, then drops. When she strikes the floor she is
nothing more than a clump of burning flesh in bags of
misshapen singed cloth.
Mr. Gleason lies on his back, his chest rising and falling,
his eyebrows missing. He flew through the air when his wife
exploded, and Chelsea sees his long white chest hair now
singed a crispy white and jutting over his button-up
scorched shirt. His newspaper is black, smoking, on the
floor next to his head. His eyes are closed.
Esmeralda screams, her voice matching the volume of Mr.
Hot’s voice. Others begin screaming, children and adults.
Patrons rush the front door, but some remain trying to call
911 on their cell phones. One approaches Mrs. Gleason with
a flower-print table cloth as if he’s going to throw it on
her to put out a fire, but it’s much too late for that.
Jake cowers behind the counter, and Chelsea follows his wide
eyes to the edge of the countertop. Melted, the laminated
plastic countertop drips over the edge as Mr. Hot thrashes
on the counter above her boss. Shimmering steam above his
body shoots toward ceiling tile which blackens as curtains
curl at the windows beyond the stranger. Somehow Mr. Hot’s
white t-shirt and black jeans don’t catch fire.
“Father,” he says. “Don’t do this.”
Hank Miller rushes the front door but his foot catches on
Mr. Gleason when the elderly man sits up. Hank lands hard,
his face smacks the floor with a crunch, and a tooth leaves
a bloody trail on white linoleum. Hank lifts his head
higher to gaze at the front door as it opens. A black
haired cloven hoof clops against the floor, but Chelsea
can’t see from her vantage point. She moves to the doorway
of the kitchen and gasps.
The figure is naked, red flawless skin stretching over
striated muscles, his gait smooth and elegant like royalty.
His hooves clop like a woman’s high heels. Thin lips turn
into a slight smile beneath a pointed nose and narrow eyes.
He has a black goatee and short black hair, high widow peaks
where twin horns protrude above pointed ears. He closes the
door with his long pointed tail acting like a fifth
appendage.
“Father, you’ve come,” Mr. Hot says. He rolls off the
melted counter, smacks a barstool on the way down, and lands
in the sitting position. “Make the pain go away.”
“You can’t be human no matter how hard you try,” the Devil
says. “I’ve told you and told you, Inferno.”
“I just wanted to get away from it all, father,” Mr. Hot—or
Inferno—says. “I hate hell.”
“You might as well just accept your life, Junior,” the Devil
says, his softly spoken words dancing in an accent Chelsea
doesn’t recognize—probably a land far, far away. “We are
what we are.”
He kneels next to his son. The white tiles around Inferno
smolder and curl at the corners. The Devil seems oblivious
to the heat as he holds his son’s head.
“Make it stop,” Inferno says.
“Only you can make it stop, son,” the father says. “You
can’t handle a human body; your power burns through it like
voltage overloading a tiny circuit.”
Inferno sobs but nods his head. He sits up and a wave of
steaming heat flows from him, leaving a trail of burning
tile as it reaches Hank still on the floor. Hank screams as
his face melts, and Chelsea’s eyes close and she steps back
from the heat blast. She wipes her dry eyes and listens:
nothing. She steps back into the doorway.
The red devil and his son are gone. The patrons are all
dead. Faces are melted, blackened grimaces of agony and
grinning death. They sit and stand and lie frozen, melted
in place. Sneakers coalesce into thick puddles on the
floor. Clothes smolder and poor Candy’s body looks like a
giant roasted pig with stuffed jowls. The curtains are
shorter, the bottom edges black and curling from heat.
Everyone is steaming, melting… dead.
The door opens and the Devil steps back in, his hooves
clicking again. Chelsea flinches but he smiles and gestures
with his hand to dismiss her fear.
“We have an opening,” he tells her. “We just lost a
succubus, and my son tells me he’s quite captivated by you.”
She feels her eyes bulge in her head. She knows she’s
insane, has to be, but she answers as if this is reality.
“No thank you, sir,” she says. “I enjoy working at the
diner.”
“Well, if you change your mind just give me a call, will
you, dear?” he says.
“How would I get a hold of you?” she asks curious.
“Blood is the usual standard summons,” he says. “A
sacrifice or two doesn’t hurt either. Just say my name when
you do it. If I’m too busy I’ll send Junior to fetch you.”
“Th-thank you, sir,” she says. “That’s really quite nice of
you.”
“Think nothing of it, dear,” he says with a flourishing
bow. “Now I have to be off. Junior is pouting and the
saints are praying.”
She watches the Devil go. When the door slams shut, she
goes into the kitchen, past the burning hamburger patties on
the grill, to the freezer. She takes out a pail, carries it
to the counter, and grabs a bowl and scooper. When the fire
department shows up five minutes later, she finishes her
second bowl of ice cream.
“It’s just so hot,” she tells the fire chief. “So damned
hot.”
He grimaces and asks, “Why are you eating food at a time
like this?”
She thinks of Candy from the house on the hill, safe from
men and temptation. She says nothing as she takes another
bite. |
