Christina Henry
“There’s a rat in the refrigerator.”
Jen looked up from the reorder forms she’d been painstakingly filling out based on last week’s numbers. She wished, for the ten-thousandth time that day, that Quinn was there to do this. A promotion to manager of this burger franchise had brought a raise but also, in her mind, an amount of aggravation greater than the increased compensation.
“What?”
McKayla stood in the door – seventeen, stringy blonde hair in a stringy ponytail under her hat, acne-splotched chin. McKayla had a little voice, a diffident manner and a conflict allergy. She was constantly in Jen’s doorway, asking for help with something – especially fractious customers.
This, Jen thought, is why it doesn’t pay to be the manager.
Regular employees got to pass off their difficult problems to her. It had been much nicer when she’d been the passer rather than the passee.
Quinn had been a good manager – calm, collected, never ruffled by anything. But he’d disappeared a week ago – really disappeared, like up and vanished into thin air – and now McKayla was Jen’s problem.
McKayla took a deep breath, preparatory to raising her little voice, a thing Jen had encouraged her to practise. Just then McKayla’s words sank in.
“Wait,” Jen said, alarmed. It would not do if customers heard an employee shouting about rats on the premises. “Come in and shut the door.”
McKayla entered, uncertainly, the way she did everything. Her red polo had come untucked from her black pants. Jen wanted to point this out but knew from experience that if she did, then McKayla would get derailed from her original mission. It didn’t take much with her. She was a pinball caroming off the flippers of life.
The girl shut the door behind her and stood there, twisting her fingers together, looking everywhere except at Jen.
“Tell me what happened,” Jen said. There was a good chance there was no rat at all, just a skittering spider she’d seen out of the corner of her eye and turned into a rat.
“Well, um, I, um, went into the refrigerator to get lettuce because we were out up front.”
Jen made a mental note that this task probably had not been completed and that Brian, who was on the sandwich-making station, was probably having a fit. Brian had wanted to be manager, unlike Jen, and every day he found some fault and expressed it loudly.
Just as she thought this she heard Brian bellow, “McKayla! The lettuce!”
Brian’s voice was the opposite of McKayla’s. Even when speaking in what he called “a normal tone” it wasn’t what you’d call an inside voice.
McKayla winced. “He needs the stuff.”
“All right, don’t worry. You went to get the lettuce.”
“I w-went to get the lettuce,” McKayla said. “And on the shelf where it is, where it’s supposed to be, there was a rat. A big one. Eating it. And I kinda screamed a little and it, um, looked at me.”
“It looked at you? It didn’t run away?” If there was a rat, then that was pretty scary. It was either completely acclimatised to humans or it was rabid or something. Jen didn’t know what to make of this story, but she still wanted to believe there was no rat at all. “Well, let’s go take a look.”
She indicated that McKayla should follow her, fervently hoping there was no rodent in the refrigerator. It would be nothing but trouble for her if there were. She’d have to call an exterminator, who’d probably contact a health inspector. The presence of a health inspector would result in fines at best and a temporary closure at worst, and Carl, the franchise owner, would go through the roof.
As she led McKayla down the hall she wondered why a rat couldn’t have appeared last week, when Quinn was in charge.
The hallway was redolent with the scent of slightly stale fry oil, a smell that Jen found clung to the inside of her nose even when she left the restaurant.
“McKayla!” Brian yelled from the kitchen. “Where are you?”
The door to the walk-in refrigerator was open. Jen strode in, but McKayla paused, hovering in the doorway.
“What now?” Jen said, glancing back.
“The rat,” McKayla said, whispering so low that Jen barely heard the words. “His eyes. He had red eyes.”
Jen suppressed a sigh. The girl had probably seen a reflection of her own red uniform – if there was a rat at all, and Jen was still holding out hope that McKayla had been mistaken. The inside of the walk-in refrigerator had several long shelves that ran perpendicular to the door. She went around the first shelf to the left over to the one that held several sealed bags of shredded lettuce. All the bags sat there, neatly stacked, untouched by man or rat.
“Is it there?” McKayla called from the doorway.
“No,” Jen said. She took one of the bags down and carried it over. “Bring this to Brian before he has a heart attack.”
McKayla just stood there, her dishwater eyes confused, the packet of lettuce limp in her hand. “I don’t understand. He was there. He spoke to me.”
Jen paused in the act of chivvying McKayla out of the doorway. “It spoke to you?”
Maybe the girl was doing drugs, or had a fever.
“Yes,” McKayla said, pushing one hand against the side of her head as if she were trying to dislodge something stuck there. “He said my name.”
“Oohkay. We’ll discuss this later, on your break maybe. In the meantime, get back up front. It’s nearly the lunch rush and they’ll need you.”
McKayla wandered away from Jen, her whole body communicating ‘dazed and confused’. Jen flipped off the light and turned to pull the refrigerator door shut behind her.
Something skittered across the floor. Jen paused, staring hard into the shadows. Nothing, she concluded. That gleam of red was nothing but her imagination. She closed the door firmly, her mind already moving back to paperwork.
Quinn, she thought in despair, how could you just disappear like that?
Quinn had closed up last Tuesday, sent everyone home and said he had some things to finish up in the office. Jen was apparently one of the last people to have seen him. She’d been the lowly assistant manager then, blessedly free of excess responsibility. She’d waved to Quinn from the parking lot as he locked the back door.
The next morning his car was still sitting in its usual place, and according to police he’d not withdrawn any money from his accounts. The security footage from the cameras in and around the store was mysteriously blank. He’d just poofed, vanished into thin air.
The office Jen currently occupied still had Quinn’s personal items on the wall, his employee of the month awards and snapshots with friends. Jen didn’t have the heart to get rid of them. She kept thinking about Quinn waving goodbye, the way he’d seemed perfectly normal.
She picked up the pen, tried to focus on the order forms. Something streaked across her memory and she put the pen down again. Quinn, waving to her as he pulled the back door closed. And just before it shut completely, had something darted inside, close to the ground? A rat?
She shook her head. She was imagining things.
McKayla passed by the open door, walking in a strange way – shuffling, her eyes staring like she was in a trance.
“McKayla?” Jen called.
The girl didn’t answer, just kept scuffing along in the direction of the refrigerator.
Jen went after her, caught up before McKayla reached the fridge door. She put her hand on McKayla’s shoulder.
“He’s calling me,” McKayla said. “He keeps saying my name.”
McKayla’s face was pale and covered in sweat. She tried to move forward, to open the refrigerator door, but Jen firmly steered her in the direction of the office. “I’m calling your mother. I think you’ve got a fever.”
McKayla wrenched out of Jen’s grasp and put her nose close to Jen’s nose. Her breath smelled like something had died inside her.
“He’s… calling… me,” she said, flecks of sour spittle landing on Jen’s face.
There was a strange light in her eyes, something that made Jen want to curl up and hide, a feeling she had certainly never experienced before with McKayla.
“W-who’s calling you?” Jen said, trying to get a grip on herself and the conversation.
“The rat,” McKayla said. “He’s calling me and I must obey.”
The kid’s having hallucinations, Jen thought.
McKayla didn’t wait for Jen’s response. She started for the refrigerator again.
Brian appeared at the other end of the hallway. “Hey, McKayla, what the hell are you doing? You can’t just walk away from your station. We’re short staffed as it is.”
Jen approached him, gesturing for him to lower his voice. “I think she’s sick. She’s all sweaty and appears to be hallucinating. I’m going to call her mother.”
“Great,” Brian said. “I’ll just handle everything myself, shall I?”
Jen heard the refrigerator door open and shut behind her. “I’ll call around, see if anyone wants to pick up an extra shift. Just do your best for now.”
Brian stomped off. Jen looked at the refrigerator door, debated if she should call McKayla’s mother first, then decided to go after her. McKayla might faint and hit her head or something.
“I really don’t want to be in charge,” Jen muttered. She didn’t feel equipped to deal with this. And for some reason she kept thinking about the movement around Quinn’s ankles on that last day, the thing she hadn’t registered at the time.
Her hand closed around the door handle and she jerked back, crying out. Across her palm was a bloody streak in the shape of—
“What the fuck? Teeth?” Jen held her palm closer to her face. It sure as hell looked like teeth imprints, deeper at the centre, like two protruding rodent’s teeth.
“No,” she said. “The door handle did not bite me.”
But she shook her sweater cuff over her hand anyway before pulling the handle down. The door did not bite this time (it didn’t bite the last time) but swung open and halted, like an open, welcoming mouth.
Jen hesitated. Why did I think of it as a mouth? It’s just a door. It’s not a great gaping maw waiting to swallow me down…
“Jen!” Brian shouted. “Did you call anyone yet? We’re swamped up here.”
“Not yet,” she called back. “Go back to your station.”
The scrape (bite) on her hand throbbed. The cheap fibres of her manager sweater caught in the edges of the wound and scratched painfully. And something else was scratching, something inside the refrigerator.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. Pause. Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Like something was digging. Methodically digging.
Jen eyed the door, not certain it wouldn’t swing closed behind her as soon as she stepped inside. A long, pained moan came from the darkened corner behind the shelves, but it didn’t sound like McKayla. It sounded like a man’s voice. A familiar man’s voice.
“Quinn?” Jen said as she stepped inside the fridge.
* * *
Brian was at his wits’ fucking end. He was the only one making sandwiches. The drive-thru was backed up “for a mile” according to Tanya, who was a nasty bitch at the best of times.
All she does is put the food in the bag and hand it out the window. What are her panties in a twist for?
Jen was doing a terrible job since she’d taken over from Quinn. Brian had hinted strongly that he should be considered for a leadership position but Carl seemed to think that since Jen was the assistant she should be moved up. Now here he was alone, fucking McKayla having disappeared, and Jen wasn’t doing a goddamned thing about it.
* * *
The door did not slam closed on Jen, but she thought she felt warm breath blow over her face, like a big sigh of contentment. That’s just the cold air blowing around, she thought. But she realised that the air in the refrigerator was quite warm, much warmer than it should be, and she felt a flash of annoyance. Another problem for me to solve.
Then she heard the groan again. It did sound like Quinn, it really did, but Jen didn’t understand how he could suddenly be here.
She rushed around the shelves and stopped. A man stood by the back wall. He was tall and thin and wore a manager’s sweater over his uniform pants. He scratched at the wall and Jen saw dark streaks running there.
“Quinn?” she asked. “Quinn, is that you? How can you be here? Where have you been?”
He turned around, slowly, and Jen screamed.
The skin of his face was torn away in ragged strips, blood running down to his neck, and the tips of his fingers were worn away.
Quinn groaned again, and took a shuffling step toward Jen. “He took me away, because I wouldn’t obey. And now I have to. I have to obey. He’s calling me.”
Jen staggered back, away from Quinn’s seeking hands. The bite on her palm burned now, and the burning spread up to her wrist and forearm.
He sounds like McKayla. And where is McKayla? She went into the refrigerator. I saw her.
But there seemed to be no one but herself and Quinn, and Quinn needed a sedative and an ambulance immediately. Jen held up a hand like a stop sign, backing away from Quinn and around the shelf.
“Just stay here for a minute and I’ll call someone to help you.”
I’m going to have to shut him in here. I can’t have him wandering around the store like that. At least he won’t freeze.
The refrigerator was noticeably hotter now. Sweat pooled in the small of her back and trickled down her temples.
Something is really on the fritz, she thought, her brain trying to latch on to anything that was normal and not Quinn’s shredded face.
She turned toward the doorway, but every step she took seemed to take the door farther from her instead of closer. How can that be? It’s only a few feet away.
The doorway stretched away from her like a rubber band being pulled, and it now looked impossibly distant. She began to run, but the harder she tried to get there, the more out of reach it seemed.
I’m hallucinating. This bite on my hand has poisoned me. No, it’s not a bite. Door handles don’t bite.
“Jen,” Quinn said behind her, and his bloodied hand landed on her shoulder. “He’s calling you, and you must obey.”
His mouth came close to her ear, and his breath was rank, and Jen thought again of McKayla.
“He wants your flesh.”
“No,” Jen said, but her voice was little, as little as McKayla’s, a tiny pathetic squeak.
A mouse, I’m nothing but a mouse, she thought as a shadow seemed to swell before her, a shadow that was sort of shaped like a rat, only much bigger than it ought to be. A rat the size of a raccoon, and its eyes glowed red, and it called her name.
A rat like that could gobble up a little mouse like me.
* * *
“That’s it,” Brian said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Tanya, you make the sandwiches. I’m going to go call in extra help myself.”
“It’s not my job to make sandwiches. I’m on drive-thru,” Tanya said.
“Just do it,” Brian snapped, yanking off his gloves and throwing them on the counter.
“Hey,” Tanya called after him. “You’re not the boss of me!”
“No, but I should be,” Brian muttered as he stomped into the back.
Jen wasn’t in her office and the refrigerator door was open, which meant she was still dealing with the McKayla situation, whatever that was about. The light was off in the fridge, which was weird, but Brian had bigger problems than whether or not Jen chose to flick a light switch. He went to the phone on Jen’s desk and started methodically calling everyone who wasn’t on shift at that moment.
* * *
The rat swelled, grew, became the size of a wolf, the size of a bear. Its mouth was a massive, monstrous thing with flesh clinging to its giant front teeth.
Mine, she thought. That’s my skin, my blood there, and the bite on her palm seemed to swell in response.
The eyes weren’t red. McKayla was wrong about that. They were made of fire, and a whiff of smoke and sulphur reached her. Her body was a creation of stone, impossible to dislodge. Smoke filled her eyes and nose and mouth, pressed into her ears, coated her skin. The bear-rat changed again, its body a pliable thing, pushing and stretching from the inside. But no bones cracked and no blood flowed, and that was somehow more terrible than if they had.
A long forked tail swam out the back of the creature and a long forked tongue uncurled from its mouth and long curved claws reached from unnaturally long fingers. Steam rose from ragged fissures in its body. It was like seeing the innards of the Earth given form and power.
Then Quinn grabbed her under her right arm and his grip was hard and unyielding. Before she could struggle, before she could even think about getting away, McKayla was there, holding her left arm. They pulled her toward the creature, the thing that was not a rat at all. Jen whimpered, dug in her heels, tried to arch back and away, away from the thing, this terrible thing, but Quinn (Quinn, you were my friend) and McKayla (I always looked out for you) pulled her horribly, inexorably toward its mouth.
The mouth grew and stretched and its teeth were sharper than they had been a moment before and a carrion reek emitted from its throat.
“Quinn,” she pleaded. “Help me.”
Quinn shook his head, slowly, from side to side.
“He wants your flesh, and you must obey.”
* * *
Brian slammed down the phone.
“Useless,” he muttered, stalking out of the office. Not one person was willing to come in.
“‘I have school, I have a kid,’” Brian said in a mocking, singsong voice. “Nobody is committed to their job besides me.”
The sounds of a scuffle reached him and he glanced back at the open refrigerator door. It was all darkness, though.
He thought he heard a short, sharp scream that was abruptly cut off. He rolled his eyes. Whatever. McKayla was probably having a meltdown and Jen had had to slap her.
Tanya was sweaty and bitchy when he got back to his station. “Where have you been? I can’t keep up.”
Brian made an Executive Decision. I’ll prove to Carl that I’m the one who should be in charge here.
“Let’s close the floor. Take everyone off the registers, drive-thru only.”
Tanya looked doubtful. “Is that what Jen said to do?”
“Jen’s dealing with McKayla. I think she’s having a psychotic break or something.”
“Jen’s having a psychotic break?”
“No, McKayla,” he said, shoving her aside so he could start filling orders. “Come on. Put a note on the door that says ‘short-staffed, drive-thru only.’”
“I’m gonna get in trouble,” Tanya said.
“I’ll take responsibility,” Brian said.
That manager’s job would be his in no time.
* * *
McKayla shuffled into the hallway. The sounds of ripping and tearing and crunching and crying were behind her now. A buzz had filled her ears, a low voltage static that chased away any thoughts that tried to form.
He had told her to bring more, to bring the others. Quinn wasn’t very good at doing what he wanted, Quinn wasn’t a good listener, and so Quinn had followed Jen and now it was all up to McKayla.
Her sneakers scuffed and squeaked on the tile floor.
But if…
The words tried to push up from the back of her mind, but they were drowned out by the buzzing. Tanya appeared in the hallway, headed for the break room.
“I don’t give a fuck what he says. He’s not in charge and I’m entitled to my fifteen-minute break.”
She stopped when she saw McKayla, her eyes widening.
“Hey, kid. You look like shit. I thought Jen was calling your mom.”
Jen, McKayla thought, and a scream welled up inside her but the noise in her head smothered it.
“Kid?” Tanya said.
McKayla turned toward the open refrigerator door, pointed.
“Jen,” she managed to say. “Jen.”
“Is something wrong with her?”
McKayla nodded, and the scream inside her tried to come out again but it seemed to be stuck, lodged there like bile.
Tanya frowned, her gaze following McKayla’s trembling fingers. She strode toward the refrigerator. “You go sit down in the break room. I don’t know what the hell is going on today.”
McKayla waited for Tanya to go inside, waited for the door to swing shut behind her, waited for the smoke in the hallway to curl and dissipate before she went into the kitchen to get someone else.
* * *
Brian noticed McKayla shuffle by like an actor in a zombie show and wondered what the hell Jen was thinking. There was obviously something wrong with the girl and Jen shouldn’t be sending her back out on shift. Then a large order spit out of the machine, and he put his head down and forgot about McKayla.
* * *
McKayla took Laura next. Laura was always nice to her, even when she messed up, which she did all the time. She didn’t want Laura to be afraid, so she held Laura’s arm tight as they went down the hall.
Laura patted her hand. “It’s all right. If Jen fell down in the refrigerator, I’m sure she’ll be fine. Might have got her bell rung.”
This story was what He had told her to say. Somehow His voice blasted through the buzzing while her own voice was squashed into a corner.
Laura reached for the door and cried out. She held up a bloodied palm. “Jesus! What the hell? It looks like something bit me.”
She crouched down and peered at the handle. “I don’t see anything sharp, though. McKayla, get me a bandage, okay?”
McKayla had already turned away, the voice telling her to move on. She would get Ava next. Laura was a goner now that she’d been marked. It was too bad, because Laura was always nice to her.
* * *
Brian was so busy until 1:30 p.m. that he didn’t notice there was no one taking the drive-thru bags he’d filled. He shouldn’t have been doing that, either – he was supposed to make the sandwiches and Tanya was supposed to pack the bags and add the fries and onion rings, but Tanya had disappeared after having a total shit fit about her break. Now Laura was gone, too, and he didn’t know what that was about because Laura was usually reliable.
He grabbed the drive-thru bags, quickly filled the soda orders and handed out the food to a snippy asshole in a black BMW.
“Took you long enough,” the driver said, practically throwing his platinum card at Brian.
Some of us actually work for a living, was what he wanted to reply, but managers were supposed to be above the fray.
“Thank you for your patience,” he said, handing back the card along with a ‘Buy 1 Get 1 Free’ coupon. The man sniffed and gunned his engine as he pulled away.
Brian tended to the next few orders until finally there was a break in traffic. He turned around, ready to bellow at everyone else shirking their duties but there was no one in the kitchen with him.
What the hell? Where did they all go? Are they having a period party or something?
“This is what happens when you make a woman a manager,” he muttered, taking off the drive-thru headset and throwing it on the counter. If anyone drove up in the next few minutes, they could either wait or go to the Other Place across the street. It killed him to give up sales but someone had to take this group of layabouts in hand.
He stalked toward the break room, ready to terrify the lot of them back into service. But there was no one in the break room, or in Jen’s office. The door to the walk-in refrigerator was closed, though. Are those bitches having a secret meeting in there?
The door opened and out came McKayla, looking more like a zombie than ever.
“Hey, McKayla,” Brian said. “What’s going on?”
She didn’t answer, only kept shuffling toward him with blank dishwater eyes, and for some reason he couldn’t understand, he felt afraid.
He found himself shrinking away, backing up to get away from her until he was in the kitchen again. Patties smoked on the grill with no one to tend them, and the persistent, tinny sound of “Hello? Hello?” came through the abandoned headset by the drive-thru window. Brian knew he should do something about all those things, prove his worth, but there was McKayla, and McKayla was not right, and he was all alone.
* * *
McKayla moved toward Brian. She knew what she was supposed to do, because He wanted all flesh and it was up to her to deliver it. But the buzzing was loud, so loud, and it wasn’t just in her head anymore. It crawled under her skin and coated her throat and followed the pathway of blood through her heart.
She didn’t want it anymore. She was sick of the buzzing and the noise, sick of the scream stuck inside her, sick of the crunching sounds.
So she went right past Brian and on to the bubbling fryer. The scent of hot oil filled her up, made her whole.
Yes, this will end it.
She plunged her face into the fryer.
* * *
Brian screamed. He didn’t even know he could scream like that. McKayla’s body bucked and danced, like she was being electrocuted, but her hands held fast to the hot counter and her head stayed inside the fryer, and into the kitchen billowed the strangely tantalising smell of freshly cooked meat. His gorge rose and Brian ran down the hallway to get Jen, to get somebody, anybody, because he was not the manager and this was not his responsibility.
I’m not paid enough for this shit, he thought as he threw open the door. The words on his tongue dried up.
Something crouched there, just inside the entrance, like a hugely swollen spider drunk on prey. Dark stains and abandoned shoes littered the floor all around it. His brain didn’t want to say what the thing was but he knew, he knew.
It opened its mouth and Brian thought, for a moment, that he saw the dead screaming faces of his co-workers inside there. Then his own thoughts were gone, stuffed into a box in the corner, and there was only His voice and His voice said, “Bring me flesh.”
Brian turned and shuffled away.
* * *
Sam was in a rush, running late to work as usual, when she pulled up to the drive-thru. There was a sign taped to the speaker.
SPEAKER BROKEN, WALK INS ONLY
She huffed out a sigh, but swung the car around to park. It would take longer to cross the traffic to go to the drive-thru across the street, she reasoned. And she really preferred the cheeseburgers here.
When she reached the glass door she saw another sign.
PLEASE BE PATIENT
WE ARE SHORT STAFFED TODAY
THERE’S A DEMON IN THE REFRIGERATOR
NOBODY WANTS TO WORK HERE ANYMORE
“Haha,” she said, smiling at the wage-worker humour.
There was a strange smell in the restaurant when she entered, and a haze of smoke hung by the ceiling. Sam hesitated, then made her way to the counter. She’d committed and she didn’t have time to stop anywhere else.
There was one skinny kid behind the register and he was so pale that he looked like a zombie.
“Rough day, huh?” Sam said.
“May I take your order?” he said, his voice slurred with exhaustion.
“Yeah,” she said, and dug in her bag for her wallet, which had fallen to the bottom as usual.
She wasn’t looking when the shadow rose up to take her.