Eventually, it faded. "My parents owned a cheesesteak place," she said, almost as though testing the effect her voice would have. "That's probably way beneath you."
"I love cheesesteaks," Owen answered. The memory of that shoe came back to him so powerfully that he flinched. "I eat everything."
The crinkling paper sound didn't come back. Gina slipped into the alley. Owen followed her at a slower pace, letting her get some distance. Eventually, they were back on the street, weaving between newspaper sellers, old women pushing shopping carts fully of gray sludge, and other stranger sights.
It was two blocks before Gina turned her head and looked up at a building. When he reached it, Owen glanced up, too. It was the right door--painted green, with two dragons baring their teeth at each other.
He turned around and looked at the building across the street. There it was. That was the place he'd been brought to cook that damn meal, and there was the window he'd looked through when he'd seen the dragon door. He crossed toward it and rang the doorbell.
The door was opened by a young man with a missing ear and the fear-stink of penned cattle. His left leg was missing below the hip, and he had a mop in its place. A wave of antiseptic billowed through the doorway. The young man barely looked at him. "You're expected." He led Owen into the building.
They went down a long hall into a sitting room. Every surface, even the chairs and desk, were tiled like an operating room. Two women worked in the far corner of the room. Both of their right legs had been sawed off and replaced with mops, and their left hands had been replaced with stained kitchen rags. Owen had a sudden sickening feeling he knew how they'd lost those limbs.
The door at the far end of the room opened and a not-hallucination strolled in. It was tall and lanky with a misshapen head and goggly eyes. It was dressed in a dark, sober waistcoat and tie, but it moved like a boy on Christmas morning. "Mr. Keller!" it exclaimed. "How pleased I am! We didn't speak on the occasion of your previous visit, but let me assure you that my guests and I were delighted by the meal you prepared!"
It smiled; its teeth were metal-bright, rounded and serrated like the tips of steak knives. To his own disgust, Owen heard himself say: "Thank you."
"There wasn't a problem with the payment, I hope?"
"I'm not here about the payment," Owen said. He wanted to bolt for the door. What had he been thinking? What had he imagined he would do when he got here? Bad enough he had prepared that meal, but coming here now was madness.
The thing stepped very close to him, as if sensing his instinct to flee. "My name is Mr. Savor. Please! Sit!'
Mr. Savor raised its hands as if it was about to push him into a ceramic chair, but Owen dropped into it on his own. In place of fingers, Mr. Savor had forks, tiny knives, and delicate silver spoons.
"So, Mr. Keller, I'm sure you get this sort of thing all the time and I hope you don't mind, but I consider myself something of a gourmand." Mr. Savor leaned against the desk, looming over Owen. "Not that I would compare my humble self to you! Your reputation is flawless! But in my own way I try to keep current and eat only the finest. I'm sure you understand."
Sweat ran down Owen's face. He couldn't look away from those teeth. He was going to die here, sliced and ground up in those stainless steel jaws. He was utterly certain of it. "What matters is that you enjoy what you eat."
"Oh, quite!" Mr. Savor leaned close, his voice low and conspiratorial. "But I must ask you, as an expert: What is going to be the next big thing?"
"T- t- turines."
Mr. Savor was disappointed. "I thought turines were two years ago."
"Everything is two years ago." Owen's voice trembled, but he knew his lines. He'd given this little speech at many a party. "Everything is being done somewhere by someone. Savory chocolate sauce? Pork chops and oysters? Sri Lankan curry? Someone is doing that right now, and you, being somewhat plugged in, have heard about it. But you want to know what's going to break out to the people who aren't plugged in, and I'm saying turines."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because," Owen said, trying to take control of his fear, "I've already shot three fucking episodes on them for the fall."
Mr. Savor laughed with delight, but Owen didn't find anything reassuring in the sound.
"I came here because I have to know--"
The door behind him swung open. "My friends!" Mr. Savor said as it stood.
Three horrors entered the room. The first was tiny, hunch-backed and gray like an old woman. It wore huge tinted drug store sunglasses that looked like safety goggles. Its face and canary yellow smock was spattered with food, splashes of blood, and old sweat stains. As it shuffled in, a long hairy tongue slid from its mouth and licked a greenish smear from its chin.
The second was huge, bald and pink, and so fat that it had to be carried on the shoulders four men. Each of its fingers ended in an iron skewer and its dainty feet were a foot off the ground. It smiled at Mr. Savor as though it was delightfully surprised to run into it.
The third looked like a middle-aged woman with rumpled clothes and frazzled hair. Its eyes were wide and staring, and as soon as it saw Owen, its mouth fell open and lips curled back, revealing teeth like sharpened, slow-turning gears.
The worst one of all came last. It was Gina.
"Owen Keller, celebrity chef and restauranteur," Mr. Savor said, "Let me introduce my guests: Miss Indulgence, Mr. Appetite, and Miss Bite. We were the lucky four to enjoy the meal you prepared."
"And now you're back with us again," Miss Bite said, gaze focused and hungry.
The smell of them was overwhelming. Owen wished he could shut it off, but he didn't have the nerve to pinch his nose in front of them.
But Gina... He was already so damn tired, and discovering she had sold him out nearly broke him. A glance at the door Mr. Savor had entered showed that the two mop women were cleaning in front of it. Would they block him if he tried to run? He wanted to collapse from despair.
"Mr. Keller, what's going to be the next big thing?" Mr. Appetite asked.
Mr. Savor interjected: "That was my very first question! His answer was quite illuminating."
"You can discuss it over dinner," Gina said, stepping forward. "My payment."
"Of course," Mr. Savor answered. It went around the desk, slid open a tiled drawer, and took out a sheet of parchment. "Your letter of introduction."
Gina opened it and glanced at the contents. Satisfied, she nodded at Mr. Savor.
Miss Indulgence stared from behind its dark glasses. "Time for another feast, I think."
"Yes," Mr. Appetite said. "You've outdone yourself this time, Mr. Savor."
"Wait," Owen said, mind racing. "You haven't told me what I came here to find out." The four creatures stared at him, waiting. "The night I cooked for you, I... I know it was a child that I served. A boy."
"Yes?" Mr. Savor prompted.
Was this question worth dying for? Not that he had a choice anymore. "Who was he? Where did he come from? I-- I want to meet his parents."
One of the mop women looked up at him sharply. At the same time, Mr. Savor said: "Why, he was my son, of course!" Owen found that he couldn't look away from the cleaning woman; the expression on her face was empty, intense, and completely horrifying. Her eyes were the same color as extravecchio balsamic. "You don't think I'd eat just anything do you? I like to have some idea where my food comes from."
"Besides," Mr. Appetite said. "We can't keep eating each other." It tugged its housecoat open to reveal a clumsily-stitched slash in its left breast. Something that looked like brown gravy seeped out.
"This isn't just meat to us," Miss Bite said. "It's experience and memory, too. When we ate that boy, we experienced the thrill of climbing a tree, of running through tall grass, of cowering below the covers as mysterious shapes moved in the closet."
"All carefully nurtured by me!" Mr. Savor said.
"And quite wonderfully, too," Mr. Appetite said.
Miss Indulgen
ce frowned. "I thought the running was a bit gamey."
"Oh dear," Mr. Appetite said. "I fear for your palate, dear lady."
"But you will be a special treat, Mr. Keller," Miss Bite said. It hadn't looked away from him, like a snake hypnotizing a mouse. "When we eat you, we'll experience every fine meal you've ever had: duck confit, foie gras, everything."
"Me?" Owen said. "You don't want me. I've never been careful about what I eat. Grubby diner eggs and lunch truck chili and supermarket hot dogs with relish from the public condiment dispenser..." He looked around at the carefully scrubbed and gleaming tiles around him. "Those are the experiences you'd get from me."
The four not-hallucinations seemed confused and discomfited. For a moment, Owen thought they might let him go.
"I guess," Mr. Savor said, "if the great Owen Keller is catholic in his tastes, we should be, too."
One of the men supporting Mr. Appetite grabbed Owen's wrist in a powerful grip. Owen shrieked, the stink of his own fear flooding his nostrils.
"This isn't what we agreed," Gina said.
Mr. Savor bowed and Owen was released. Gina came forward and aimed the gun at him.
"I'm disappointed, Mr. Savor," Miss Bite said. "We're not going to have Terror of Being Sliced Apart."
"We always have Terror of Being Sliced Apart," Miss Indulgence said.
"Because it's so goooooood."
"You'll have to settle for Despair Before Being Shot To Death," Gina said. That seemed to mollify them, and Gina held up a water bottle. "Take a big swig and hold it in your mouth. For insurance." Owen only stared at her. "No? Look, the last noob as clueless as you was tortured to death in District 13. It took him months to die. I'm going to save you that pain. I'm very good with this gun; I can do it so you won't feel a thing." She put the gun to Owen's lips and he opened his mouth. "See? I'm doing you a favor, and this deal is going to help my mother."
Crazy. The whole world had gone crazy, and so had he. Owen felt a vicious hunger pang, and he had an absurd urge to request a last meal, and just as he felt like bursting out in laughter, he bit down on the gun.
His teeth sheared through the barrel like a ripe apple.
Gina, shocked, jumped back. Owen had only taken the end of the barrel, but it slid down his throat like pudding. She aimed the gun again and he lunged for it, still hungry. The bullet she fired went into his mouth--it should have blasted out the back of his head, but instead it vanished into him. He bit down on her gun again and she barely managed to yank her hand away to save her own fingers.
She stumbled back, weaponless, her eyes wide and as full of madness as his own. "Don't make me call the surgeons," she whispered. "Don't make me."
Owen chewed on the gun and felt it slide into his belly. "Get out of here."
He turned. Miss Bite leaned forward like a predator about to spring. As it leapt Owen did, too. His mouth gaped impossibly wide, taking one of its arms between his jaws. It tried to pull away at the last moment, but he bit down, severing its arm between the elbow and shoulder. Miss Bite screamed and, twisting wildly, fell onto its stomach.
Owen lunged at the back of its head, opening his mouth as wide as he could. His teeth gouged through the tile floor, bursting the ceramic and rotted wood beneath as he bit away the upper half of of the creature's body.
The hole in the floor was large enough to jump through, but Owen couldn't run away, not when he was starving. He gulped down the rest of Miss Bite, taking in more broken tile and shattered furniture, but none of it satisfied him. Everything he swallowed turned into more hunger.
The other three horrors were scrambling for the exit. Owen opened his mouth as wide as a door, then even wider; he felt his hunger catch them, dragging them into his gaping jaws.
His lips were stretched so tight he thought they would tear like threadbare fabric, and his eyes felt as though they would burst like squashed grapes. But his nostrils were wide, and he could smell the utter terror and helplessness of the three horrors, and the bursting caulk of the shattered tiles, and the splintered wooden beams, and dusty bricks.
The creatures fell into him and were destroyed, but he couldn't stop. The walls collapsed, the floors were flung up and the roof thrown down as nearby matter tore itself into dust and flowed into his throat.
His mouth widened further and the pull became stronger. The wind and air fell into him, and fire, and fear, and a thousand thousand pieces of trash from out on the street, with all their small, useless memories. He felt people plummet into him, but it wasn't just their flesh he consumed; it was also their love, their regret, their hope, their desperate, pathetic need for kindness. The whole awful city broke into pieces and was sucked down into his guts like a house of cards blown by a tornado. And with it he devoured all connection, all sense, all wildness.
Still his hunger grew. He ate distance, time, then nothingness itself.
His hunger burned, but there was nothing left for him to take in but self, and slowly, he dwindled.
But the city, whatever it was and whatever had created it, could not simply be destroyed. Not in his way. He felt a strange unfolding in the depths of his hunger, and the nightmarish city recreated itself, and recreated him, too.
Owen collapsed into the rubble, cutting his palms against broken bricks. The awful odors of the city had returned and he was himself again, down to his stupid crocs.
He scrambled out of the second crater he'd seen that day. At least Mr. Savor and his friends--and their whole city block--had been destroyed. He crawled onto the asphalt, not sure if he was even real, or what real might possibly mean.
Gina stood at the end of the street, staring at him in abject terror, and god how hungry he was for it.
Hounds and Moonlight
This is the second piece of fiction I ever sold, to a Canadian magazine called "On Spec." It was inspired by a few lines from The King Of Elfland's Daughter and I think it's emblematic of a certain type of story that beginning writers experiment with. I moved away from this style pretty quickly.
------ ---- ------
The figures walked toward the village, unhurried and unconcerned with their welcome. Kama set her foot against the spade and continued her work. Let the others rush out of doors to examine the stranger. She had work.
One of the village dogs began to bark, and soon others joined the chorus. Folks began poking their heads out of their houses. Ameez stepped out of the kitchen, wiping his bloody hands on his apron.
"What's that?" he said.
"Don't know," Kama replied.
"You got eyes, don't you?" Ameez said. "What do you see?" Kama flinched as he approached her.
"One man, many dogs," Kama said.
Ameez grunted. "The only dogs I hear are Wilkutt's ratting hounds."
Kama shrugged. Let him call her a liar. It didn't matter. The stranger would soon be close enough for him to see for himself, watery eyes and all.
It was strange that the hunting dogs would offer no response to the howling of the village mutts. Dogs are territorial, and challenge each other out of instinct. Why didn't these new dogs answer?
People filed out of their homes to get a look at the stranger. Ameez scowled, as though Kama herself had caused all this trouble. He, too, started walking toward the road. Kama followed at a suitable distance.
Touru, Wilkutt's wife, slapped his rat-hunting dogs with a paddle to quiet them, and Kama could hear the frightened whinnies of the horses in the village stable. Two men went to look after them. Kama couldn't tell who they were in the gathering darkness.
"We heard you were somewhere along the coast," Wilkutt was saying. "We've been sending word with the caravans." three of the stranger's hounds sat by his legs while several more stood behind him. Wilkutt bent to stroke one of them.
"Don't touch the dogs," the stranger said. Wilkutt straightened and stepped back. "They're dangerous. You have a werewolf?"
"We think so," Wilkutt said.
Ameez snorted. He didn't think anything of the s
ort, but would never admit it in front of a stranger. He didn't trust anyone outside the village, and few inside as well.
Wilkutt continued as though Ameez had been silent. "Have you hunted this kind before?"
"We have."
Suddenly Kama understood who he was. This man was the center of many tales told by the trading caravans. He traveled alone with his pack and hunted a dangerous sort of prey: creatures of shadow, of magic, of deviltry.
The twilight sky grew darker, and Kama strained to see his face. It was no use; there was too little light.
"Anyway," Wilkutt said, "we can make up a bed for you in our home, if you like. We have plenty of space, now that the werewolf has taken our Willub."
"No," the stranger answered, "I'll sleep in the field with my pack. If you have any bread, cheese or milk, I'd welcome it. I've eaten nothing but meat and roots for ten days."
He walked away without waiting for a response, his dogs trotting silently before and behind him. The starlight on their backs made them look like serpents gliding through the dark.
Wilkutt shrugged then retreated to his house. Ameez turned to Kama, and the young woman knew the expression on his face without need of any light at all. He clutched her arm and dragged her into the house.
"How dare you!" Ameez hissed. "How dare you stare at him like a starving beast! You won't run away with some man and shame me the way your sister did, you ugly brute. You wretched animal! Why did I ever take you in!" Ameez grabbed his leather strap off the chopping block and struck Kama across the legs.
Kama screamed and ducked behind the fireplace chair. Ameez followed, but Kama held the chair back between them.
"Threatening me with my own furniture?"
A few tactics could end one of Ameez's whippings: screaming was one, since he was sometimes ashamed to let the neighbors know how often he beat her. Running and dodging was another. Sometimes. Usually, nothing stopped one of his beatings except the weariness of his right arm.
Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales Of Dark Fantasy Page 10