A man’s hand reached out from behind me and snatched the menu from my hands. After I reigned in my urge to scream, I twirled around and craned my head up… and up… and up…
“Apologies,” the gargantuan man said. “That menu is no good.”
He looked like Frankenstein’s monster. Only thin and pale and stretched out way too long… His face was handsome enough, but there was something weird in the bone structure, something so different, I could not help but stare.
“In what universe is that the right menu?” I said, after a moment.
“Just a little, ah, joke menu for our Halloween specials. My mother, her English is not so good, and she must have grabbed the wrong one. Many apologies.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Tamara, just order for me.”
“You want the salad?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think I’ll stick with a salad,” I said.
“I’ll have the spinach ravioli,” Tamara said.
The man nodded.
“And to drink?”
“Water,” we both said at the same time.
The man bobbed his head, stooping into a half-bow, and stumbled off into the backroom.
“What was with snatchy snatchmo?” Tamara asked.
“This whole place is weird,” I said quietly.
The couple in the corner laughed at something. At my gaze, they shrugged their shoulders and slid down in their seats a bit. Tamara and I talked about the weather, and her job, and her relationship problems. It probably made me a bad person, but I tuned most of it out. I couldn’t help it. I could smell a scoop hanging in the air, and it was all I could think about.
“Crazy restaurant a front for… for…” And then I stopped in my tracks because there was some kind of unifying theme behind the patrons, but I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it…
Eventually, our food was brought out by the same lanky man from before, who sat it before us and smiled quickly before leaving again.
Another customer entered, his voice loud and jovial.
“Say hey, Sal,” the customer said.
The tall man from before echoed something back, and then made a surreptitious gesture our way—I only saw it through the glass of water I was so occupied in drinking.
This was just weird.
I stared at the menu Sal handed him—sure enough, it was the one with all the pictures. I made a show of pretending to chat with Tamara loudly, but the man whispered an order—and Sal took off again, menu in hands, the smell of cumin and spice floating from him as he whiffed past our table.
I waited until he wandered back and grabbed him by the elbow. There was some kind of growth, I realized, startled, letting his arm go. Something under his shirt… some kind of lump, some kind of weird flesh…
“Hey, Sal,” I said. “My name’s Stacey.”
“Hello,” he said, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. One of his eyes was staring off to the left, the other staring at me. The irises were mismatched.
“Sorry,” I said. “Look. I’m a journalist with Feedworthy. I’m here in search of some bizarre stories. I have heard word this whole area is called the Night Market.”
Sal stared at me with renewed vigor at the phrase. His wandering eye refocused itself on me, and suddenly I felt a bloom of terror rolling over my chest. His gaze was hateful, somehow burning…
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He turned away. “I have other customers—”
“Look, I’m really here as a non-judgmental fact checker. I have heard there is a gang that stakes this place out. Called the Flames of Hell.”
