Avitus B. Carle

Where the brown leather stools and chairs suction to the patrons’ skin until they bruise. Where the tables wobble and the menus are always sticky and the food listed changes every day. The bar is slanted and the floor dips and your uniform remains the same except for the endless supply of toothpicks you carry in the pockets of your apron. Where you are the only employee. Where food cooks itself. Where you can gaze at a new apocalypse just outside the window every time the bell that hangs over the door sings a brand-new carol and a new customer arrives.

***

A man asks for an eyeball in his large glass of gasoline served with a bendy straw. A foot with clipped toenails dipped in ketchup to go. He’s a zombie and you’re a zombie well versed in the language of snarl. Your hand falls off while pouring a bag of teeth into the coffee grinder and you watch it spin and change into liquid. You return to the man with your steaming liquid hand mixed with the teeth of strangers and snarl that all you have left are shoes. But your jaw falls off and lands in his lap and he takes it, replacing his own.

***

A mother and her two children grab a booth by the window while the ocean consumes the world. Their lips are purple, their skin withered, and they drool mini-puddles when they talk. One child, a girl, tries to detach the menu from her cheek. The other, a boy, rocks the table until the salt spills and dissolves in the water around them. Their eyes turn red, your eyes turn red, and both you and the girl clench your hands into fists. You rub your eyes and she rubs her eyes and you both suck your teeth. You think clutz. The girl says clutz and you laugh because she sounds like you.

***

The man asks for green Jello — no whipped cream — and a single french fry with ketchup. But you’re a mannequin. You are both mannequins and cannot move, which doesn’t matter, since all you have are peaches. You ask the man if he likes mushrooms because that’s what the cloud blooming behind him reminds you of. You don’t hear his answer. He’s suckling two ketchup packets. The cloud, you say, again and again, and watch his jaw melt into his lap. You feel the heat of all his words as they hit you and throw you like the depleted packets flicked from his thumb.

***

The mother asks if you will watch her children. Her daughter has bat wings, feathers instead of hair, and teeth like a shark. Her son’s eyes blink sideways. He has green scales and a tail that curls around your waist. He picks you up and brings you to their table. You’re needed as a guest, a witness for the wedding, at the special request of a toothpick pulled from your pocket. She wears a ketchup packet for a veil and is marrying a butter knife. The girl plucks blue feathers from her scalp and showers them over the bride as she hops down the aisle. You remove a few toothpicks from your pocket and place them on both sides in the audience. After the couple kisses, the children devour them all. They screech and howl, shatter the window between you and the apocalypse, and invite you to go hunting with them.

***

The man is a teenager covered in boils who asks for the cure but you only have a bowl filled with Imodium. You push the bowl closer to him and notice your hand, soft, but your fingernails are chipped. Your reflection displays your teenage self, listening to a young man talk about football. How he loves the sport, but math is his passion, and you reach and touch his hand. The boils that burst beneath your fingers remind you of the poppers you threw with...who? You weren’t alone then, you aren’t alone now, and recognize the surprised look on the young man’s face. He pulls away, knocks the bowl of Imodium over, and you watch them spill into his lap.

***

The boy is a robot who detaches his jaw and places it on the table. The girl, who is a floating orb made up of the sequence for Pi levitates a toothpick between her brother’s metal teeth. She clicks about humans; how helpless they would be without them. But instead of “humans” you hear “mothers” and “if she ever wonders about me.”

***

The man is back to being a man and asks if you at least have pancakes that look like Darth Vader and ketchup he can use as a lightsaber? And you tell him no, you don’t, because the microwave and oven and stove and dishwasher all quit to rule the world but you provide him two packets of ketchup.

***

The girl picks her nose and pulls a clone of herself out and she tells you, on her planet, children rule. She keeps picking and pulling clones of herself until the diner is filled with clones. You search for her brother. Didn’t you promise their mother you would keep an eye on them? You search for him amongst the girls but all you find is a toothpick sinking into a perfectly swirled pit of ketchup.

***

Are you ready to go? The man asks, holding the door open. All the humans have left, except the two of you, boarding a ship to the moon. You tell him not yet, that you’re waiting for someone. She’s not coming, and you know you’ve heard this before. You look for the children, reach into your pocket, feel your palm fill with pinprick kisses of toothpicks. Are you ready to go? And you still aren’t sure until he removes the ketchup packets from his pockets.She never comes back, you hear him say, and you can’t remember ever seeing her leave.