Leftover's Diner

Red neon reading "Leftover's Diner" glowed eerie as the light refracted through a clinging mist. The weary cabin had been abandoned for years, but today it had a certain hum about it. And the telltale growling of tires crunching over gravel signaled Frieda Carson's semi-truck pulling up to the shack.

For starters, her ass ached. From Green Bay to Oklahoma City - a path she'd driven for her job countless times. It had been maybe three months since the last journey. And back then, the decrepit cabin she was watching had been just that: lifeless, broken down, forgotten. Had she been more awake, her eyes would have narrowed at the dingy windows; diners don’t just pop up out of nowhere… good diners, at least.

But her stomach didn't care.

And her weary hands cried when she clenched them. Eyes so heavy, so tired of squinting all day at the blinding road. She could still hear the whoosh of the wind in her ears and feel the rumbling of the engine in her legs bumping along Interstate 435. Hours earlier, she'd passed the rolling crop fields of Iowa, finding it funny how much more voluptuous it appeared than Illinois - despite the former’s fallen-flat reputation. And finally working her way through Kansas, ten minutes ago, she had passed a truck yard chock-full of unmarked white vans. She’d laughed, referring to this as the ‘Pedo-Van Emporium’ in the guided tours she would ramble to herself for wasting time.

In short, her brain was a bit fried. Frieda was dead on her feet.

She killed the engine, shutting off her headlights and swinging open the door. Metallic thuds rang out as she fell from one step to the next, the ridged metal groaning beneath her boots. And she landed solid on the gravel.

Now for the best part of her day: with the backswing of a Wimbledon champion, Frieda absolutely slammed the truck door closed. What can only be described as a guffaw, puffed from her smile. Her semi, like herself, could take (and had taken) a beating.

Once the resonance of her crashing entry subsided, the yard was silent - aside from the buzzing bug-zapper on the wooden porch. Spring wildflowers dotted the patches of grass that poked through the lot. Her combat boots thunked again onto said porch. The tired wood creaked curses at her from underfoot. She paid no heed, accustomed to the world talking to her a bit more than it did to others.

The air in the podunk diner was stale. The chime on the door played - in ragged harpsichord - a couple infamous bars of the ‘Funeral March’ to announce her arrival. A few lost souls saddled up at red leather stools by the bar. Others gravitated to the darker corners for sluggish chewing. Instead of a ‘please wait to be seated’ sign, there was a scrap of wood with markered words reading ‘please sit to be eated’. Classy.

Not one patron looked up as Frieda ambled into a fire-engine red booth. And it wasn’t until she sunk into the cushion that she was hit with the smell:

Oily, rotten, moldy, forgotten.

Patience was one of her few virtues, so she waited a lengthy time for a server to come take her order. The longer she sat, the more her skin began to crawl. The odor was permeating her nose, creeping its way up into her brain, poisoning her thoughts.

Finally a woman appeared at her side. Apron strewn on, slashed by what was certainly the largest of the chef’s knives, and finger-painted with all sorts of slimy, colorful substances. Frieda stared at that apron, opening her mouth to ask for a glass of water, when a low moan emanated from above her.

Her eyes flickered up to the woman’s face… she wished they hadn’t.

The gaunt waitress’ jaw hung open revealing a rotten row of cracked teeth. Her mouth looked full of bumble bees, yellow and black, unkempt and missing teeth patterned throughout. A string of red slobber rolled down her bony chin, threatening the formation of a drip. She groaned again, leaning closer to Frieda.

The trucker held her breath, wide eyes bearing horrid witness to the black sockets that seemed to drill for miles into this woman’s skull. The server tilted her head, wobbly on such a thin neck, and reached out a skeletal hand to traipse Frieda’s forearm where it rested on the sticky table. It was as if she had been touched by the arctic itself. Or rather, a sheet of arctic ice that was smeared with seal blood from a fresh kill - her arm displayed a streak of burgundy left by the woman.

Frieda bared down on her teeth, overwhelmed as the server staggered away. Then she rushed for the stack of moth-eaten napkins on her right, wiping at the stain before it could seep into her skin and infect her with god knows what sorts of diseases.

Forks stopped clinking against plates, spoons were set down in soup, knives were left sticking haphazardly out of meat chunks. Frieda lifted her eyes to the diner; everyone was staring at her. Her stomach soured, flipping, trying to climb further up behind the protection of her ribs. Their eyes were in varying states of… decay. Some were soulless, wide balls of ghostly, cataract white. Others were on their way to sockets like the waitress’ voids. A man at the table nearest was losing his left eye, melting out of his skull. A fried egg slipping off a dinner plate.

That crusty apron appeared right in her face again. Frieda was so grateful to have her vision blocked from the horror-show that populated the diner. And with a heavy clunk, she had set a three-course meal before her.

Frieda was no stranger to eyeballs watching her from her plate. She had partaken in plenty of fish-fry events, enjoying crawdads and fish with gusto. But this plate had lots of eyes. It was nothing but fish heads.

The little creeps gawked at her with open, gasping mouths and beady black eyes. They were arranged in a pattern, like a circle of strawberries rimming the top of a cake. In the center of the plate, was a smear of crusty sauce that had separated from the clearer liquid it accompanied. Frieda tapped the tip of her finger into the red sauce, compelled by some strange desire to taste it. Runny ketchup?

The bowl adjacent was full to the brim with a soup - watery, chunky, foul. It was a deep crimson, like tomato or pozole. But there was a cloth napkin dunked into it, along with a few abused kids-table crayons. Ice cubes and crumpled sugar packets floated to the top, dodging sharp peaks of tortilla chips. A dirty table had been scraped into her soup. Balanced on the bowl’s edge, were two strips of bread, or rather strips of crust. The aforementioned bread part was nowhere to be seen.

And lastly, what must have been dessert, was a small saucer smeared stingy with whipped cream. A dusting of cookie crumbs littered the plate. One long, black hair wiggled its way through the whip.

It looked like the remnants of someone else’s meal. Their leftovers.

And something about it, whether it was the odorous air in the diner or the way everyone else was still turned toward her in anxious waiting, made Frieda feel hungry.

So she ate. The moment she dipped the first fish head into the ketchup, the other patrons resumed their meals. The diner sprung back to life with the sounds of silverware on dishes. Retro music buzzed from a jukebox she hadn’t noticed before. A ghastly couple stood up to dance on the checkered tiles, their knobby knees and spindly arms bobbing to the beat. It was clear how in love they were, gazing into each other’s hollow socket eyes.

The next fish head, she dragged through the whipped cream dessert. She slurped up the strand of hair like it was a vermicelli noodle. The saltiness of the fish with the sweet whip set her mouth tingling with delight. Frieda grinned, lifting the bowl of teetering soup to her lips for a hearty swallow. So much texture. The diner was becoming warmer. Outside the window she was sitting by, the sun blazed down on the parking lot.

The man with the fried egg eye slumped into her booth, sitting across from her. He had a plate of salmon skin, its shiny grey scales glinting in the colored lights. His lips lifted in smile, reaching out to wipe a droplet of the soup from Frieda’s chin with a bent hitchhiker’s thumb. He brought it back to his mouth as she felt her face warm.

The pair traded fish heads for a piece of skin. They tucked into their meals, bashful smiles being sent either way.

A new apron appeared at the head of their booth. Frieda lifted her eyes to see a portly man covered in oil stains, sauces, and general sweat. He was the chef. The little nametag pinned askew on his shirt read “Leftover.” With a meaty hand, he reached over and plucked a green crayon from Frieda’s soup. Dirty, burned fingernails kissed the red broth. His eye sockets regarded her with surprising warmth while he chewed the wax.

The chef squeezed her shoulder, his touch not feeling cold like the waitresses’ had. His head yanked upward at the sound of the door chime, the Funeral March tune playing again. A family floated in, a father with two young daughters that clutched stuffies and a road map. Alongside them, with a gust of wind, came autumn leaves that littered the floor of the diner. The group sat at one of the tables, silently regarding one another with their brown eyes. Leftover returned to his kitchen, there were more souls to feed.

When Frieda and the fried egg man finished their meal, the same skeletal waitress collected their dishes. She placed a friendly slobbery, bloody kiss on the man’s cheek. He patted her hand like they were old pals. Perhaps they were.

Frieda stood, glancing out the window again. The sky was dark with storm clouds. In the evening light, she couldn’t make out the shape of her beloved semi-truck. But then the egg man whisked her away to dance by the jukebox, and they hobbled together for an eternity. The colorful leaves had long since browned and now were crushed to dust beneath their stomping shoes. Soon they would grow hungry again, and Leftover would concoct another delicious feast for his haunting patrons.

Had she looked up again, had she cared even an ounce about the outside world, Frieda would have seen the frost forming on the windows. She would have noticed in the daylight that her truck was, in fact, gone. She’d have felt the new spindly nature of her bony fingers.

And had she found a mirror, or peered into the reflective chrome of the diner’s décor accents, she would have seen hollow, dark sockets where her green eyes had once lived. She was dead on her feet.