Plasma Spice Latte - Chapter One

Topher found Happy Meal dead in the dumpster. 

Her open throat produced only the smallest speckles of blood. Moonlight reflected in her dead eyes, shining like cautionary lighthouse beams. Beacons warning life would never be the same.

A clash of clutter hitting concrete disturbed the silent night and Topher realized he’d dropped the trash bags. As the garbage spilled, he didn’t think about how he’d just sullied a crime scene, but how he’d picked up Dawn’s shift that night. She owed him way more than a Saturday off.

Joe Harker

Before Topher took the trash out and found his dead coworker, Joe’s thoughts were on Lu West and the poem he planned to read about her. He stood at the back of the lobby clutching a notebook to his chest so tight the binder hurt his hands. Biggest worry? She wouldn’t pay attention—that she’d be preoccupied doing an inventory count or something. 

Although, he thought, that might be better. She might laugh and treat me like a foolish kid for harboring a crush on my boss.

On Monday nights, Lu let Joe run an open mic at the coffee shop. He hoped it helped business as much as it helped his art. The store filled up, but mostly with tea-drinking poets. More than a few only asked for hot water and then conspicuously pulled tea bags from their purses, handbags, or dirty jean pockets. They did, however, always compliment the art on the walls and fill the tip jar.

“The moon is cold

like your heart.

like your heart.

I stood up to you.

it’s a start.

it’s a start.”

Even from his distance, Joe could tell Fat Becky was gripping the cheap podium too hard. Her knuckles turned white and she swayed back and forth on the stack of wood pallets they called a stage. Becky had the cadence of a Baptist preacher, demanding the room's attention with her sing-song voice. The audience thumbed through their cell phones.

“You kissed me

with your lies

with your lies

I knew your truth

by your eyes

by your eyes.”

“At least this isn’t another one about coming out to her parents,” Lu whispered in Joe’s ear. He hadn’t realized she’d snuck from behind the counter to stand next to him, and felt a rush with her warm breath. His heart forgot its task. He grew very aware of how he stood. How do people usually stand? Is it like this?

Joe wrestled what he hoped was a suave smile to his face. “I don’t think you’re allowed to say that.”

“Not allowed because I own the coffee shop that employs her or because of gay rights in general?”

“Because you haven’t given this poem enough time. It will get there.”

“I confessed about Jane

highschool love

highschool love

Ugly prejudice came

Your lord above

lord above.”

“I fully support LGBTQ stuff, but that girl needs different material,” Lu said.

“Whatever, heartless bigot.”

She silenced a snicker with a hand to her lips.

Somehow when she laughs she’s even prettier.

Lu freed her dark hair from a ponytail. She spread fingers wide, then bent over so that her hair fell and used hands to brush it. Joe found himself staring once again at a faded, tattooed guitar. Small and off-center on the lower nape of her neck, it peeked above the collar. He’d first seen it at a summer work party where they’d all worn civilian dress—she rocked a Batman tank top that showed off a lot more than the tattoo—It’d been a good day. The word Patris artfully surrounded the acoustic guitar in small, red letters. Joe didn’t know what that meant, but whenever he saw the tattoo she felt even more out of his league

“This coming from the man who brands all these sweet people I hire with pejorative nicknames?” she asked, putting her hair back up.

“Look, I can’t help it if Wendy’s a few fries short of a happy meal. And back when you hired Fat Becky, there were two Becky’s.” Joe said. He offered a grin, but when it wasn’t returned he knew he’d gone too far. 

He vogued his best unaffected stance while Becky finished her poem. The room bloomed into faint applause. Joe and Lu clapped along and he hoped that erased his social misstep, but when he went to whisper more repartee Lu had already left his side.

“Next up,” Becky said. “The man responsible for putting this whole night together. Give it up for Lanfred, Michigan’s favorite barista and poet, Joe Harker!”

The sound of small but enthusiastic clapping brought him to the stage. The “podium” was a box of lids set on an old display base covered in a fancy blanket he’d found at Goodwill. As Joe got in position, he felt the sides of the box, the deep impressions where Fat Becky’s hands had been. 

I’m usually speaking by now.

His vibrating hands shook the box, so he dropped them to his sides. That didn’t feel right, so he put one hand on the podium and demanded it to stay still. It didn’t listen. He hoped the resulting tremble could only be heard by him. “Thanks again to Becky,” he stuttered. 

“Her poem tonight, as always, was great. The worst I had to deal with was coming out to my dad that I wasn’t a Republican.” The crowd laughed. His hand finally obeyed. 

He heard a rustling of bags and tried to hide the annoyance on his face, “Hey, Topher, you think you could wait to take the trash out till after I’m done?  I’m the last poet.”

“You know we are trying to run a business here, right?” Lu said.

She’s still being playful, he thought, smiling.  He flipped open a notebook. “This one is called. “Alliterative Allegory of Agatha” or, as an alternative title, “Girl, You Got it Goin’ On!”

A blender buzzed, whipping up a drink for a drive through customer. Joe took the opportunity to catch his breath. The words on the page in front of him suddenly seemed the most nakedly vapid text in existence. What am doing? The blender subsided into silence. Fat Becky coughed and said, “‘Scuse me.” Someone got the purr of a silenced phone notification. Joe looked to Lu, who stood again in the spot at the back. Even from the stage, her hazel eyes demanded attention. She chewed a fingernail—she always nibbles that right ring finger—and when she noticed his gaze she beamed. He quickly looked back to the notebook. You got this, he told himself.

“Like Agatha Christie 

creates confounding cryptograms

moments mature a mess:

How can I draw closer to you than Instagram?”

Only Becky laughed at the Instagram line, emitting one, loud, “Heh.” One of the poet’s boyfriends sat in the front row, arms crossed, fighting to stay awake. He was losing. His eyes and head fell lower and lower.

This drivel sounds like something out of a freshmen creative writing class, Joe thought. He chanced surveying Lu—still biting her nail, still paying attention, still smiling—then swiftly returned eyes to the page. Then again, what artist likes their own work? 

“You're the Nora to My Nick

If that flick’s even remembered—”

The back door swung open with a creek and every head swiveled—other than the now snoring boyfriend—to see Topher stagger in. When he tapped Lu on the shoulder and stole her attention, Joe made a fist and clenched it hard. He hoped visible frustration ended there.

“What?” Lu said. Her loud exclamation woke the boyfriend up, who quickly pretended he hadn’t been sleeping. Lu pushed past Topher and darted out the back door.

Joe gritted his teeth, flipping his notebook to another page. “Perhaps this isn’t the right night for this poem. Let’s do one of my old favorites. This one is—”

The door squeaked again. As Lu entered and nodded, Topher made a guttural squeal that gained in pitch as his eyes clenched and face turned red. Joe couldn’t see tears from the stage, but as Lu put an arm around Topher and helped him into a chair, Joe could guess the blubbering streaked his face. Once seated, the kid threw his head in his arms on the table.  The sobs intensified, but muffled by his arms he seemed to Joe like the perfect kid falling apart at his elementary desk because he’s gotten his first B.

Joe closed the notebook. He watched Lu attempt to comfort Topher, rubbing and patting his back. The sobs didn’t stop. “What’s wrong?” Joe asked.

“Wendy is dead.”  Joe heard Lu say it, but for a moment those three words were meaningless. “Joe, can you come sit with Topher? I need to call the Sheriff.”

Happy Meal

aka

Wendy Knowles

aka

The Dead Girl in the Dumpster

“You’re free to clock out, Wendy,” Lu said, “Thanks for all the hard work today.”

“I made a lot of mistakes...again,” Wendy said. During the after school rush she handed the wrong drink out the drive through causing about four minutes of chaos and confusion and a handful of pissed off customers. She flooded the back a few hours later by leaving the sink filling while she took an order. Five minutes before Lu asked her to clock out, she heard Topher angrily ask from the bar who put fat free milk in the two percent spot. She pretended she didn’t know. Everything she did was a mistake, which is why they kept calling her Happy Meal. She’d heard it slip into conversations she wasn’t supposed to overhear. She should be mad, but it was nothing new. Growing up as a fat girl gets you used to nicknames.

She decided to lose weight when Mr. Wrong Number Three took her to a movie and kept pushing the back of her head lapward despite suggesting, given that she’d had her wisdom teeth removed a few days prior, that she wasn’t feeling up to the task. “What’s the use of dating a fat chick if I can’t even get blown?”

So she did Couch to 5k. She looped around her apartment complex with Bink 182 blasting in her ears. As winter thawed to spring, workouts got easier and clothes got larger. After her first 5k in July she thought the world more accessible than ever before. She applied to Lanfred College with an entrance essay all about weight loss, achieving goals, and how she’d apply that to a nursing degree. Turns out college is expensive—thus the job at The Cozy Coffee Corner. But a few simple mistakes—using the wrong syrup in whip creams, accidentally filling the bean hopper with decaf espresso—and she heard the name “Happy Meal” follow her in whispers the same way high school boys would “beep beep beep” when she backed up.

“Everyone struggles at first so stop beating yourself up,” Lu said, wearing Wendy down with a smile. “The thing to remember is that this gig has a large learning curve. It takes six months before you don’t feel in the way. Now get out of here. Unless you’re into this poetry nonsense?”

“Nope.”

“I didn’t think you were the not-shaving-your-armpits sort.”

Wendy laughed but Lu’s face wrinkled. “I really shouldn’t have said that. I’m a terrible manager. Get your butt out of here, Knowles, before I eat my foot.”

Wendy resisted the urge to hug Lu. Had they known what was going to happen, neither would have hesitated. As she pushed through the back door and walked past the fridges and sinks, she braced herself for the smell as she removed her apron. At the end of the day, it always reeked of spent dairy. She had to pull down someone's Carhartt—probably Tophers?—from the hooks before she could get to her purse and stuff the apron inside. A text from her mother waited on her phone:

7:53. [Hiya Sweetie, How was work today? Better?]

The final text Wendy Knowles sent was a single poop emoji.

“Taking off before I woo everyone with my words?” Joe asked.

She’d have been into Joe Harker even if he wasn’t a ginger—and gingers were sort of her thing. She loved his blue eyes and stubble, but most of all his bravado. When he’d been tasked with training her he sandwiched the information dumps with jokes and flirting—at least she hoped it was flirting. Like Lu, he seemed to always have a funny line handy and never once made Wendy feel stupid. Not like those other jerks that keep calling me Happy Meal.

“It’s just a little too much, the poetry. Aren’t your kind supposed to be doing a caber toss or something?” she said.

“Is that a red hair joke?”

“Goodnight, Joe.” Wendy slipped on her jacket, left the store, and walked to the back parking lot. Her exchange with Joe had her smiling despite the November wind feeling like it stole a piece of you. She hated the dark of eight o’clock after time change. It seemed oppressively early to exit work and still be denied sunshine. Her shivers made the search for keys difficult, eventually finding them buried in the purse under tic-tacs, gum, and—

“He’s just like the rest, you know,” came a low, sultry voice.

Wendy looked up to see a woman leaning against her Taurus, blowing cigarette smoke skyward. A car passed on the highway, the headlights illuminating skin that seemed an unnatural milky white, the lamps reflecting on hipster glasses, and the beams showcasing auburn hair that brazened bangs then belled around her ears. After the headlights, the scene dimmed to darkness. Still, Wendy could see the woman wore no coat, no shoes, just jeans and a male undershirt. How is she not freezing?.

“Who?” Wendy asked, remembering the woman had mentioned a ‘he.’

“Men. They’re all the same. Have you heard of Kyle Lanfred?  I suppose not. This used to all be his farmland. He and I were a thing, till I ended that.”  The woman removed her glasses, cleaning them with the bottom of her shirt.

“What?”

“Nevermind. Tonight’s about you, Happy Meal.”  She flicked her cigarette. It bounced off the asphalt and sparked into the night.

Wendy’s fight or flight whirled into gear, but just a moment too late. She felt the tug at each arm from two men that had silently crept behind her. Her purse fell to the ground, the contents spilling, and a forgotten pill bottle tumbled out of the purse and the noise of it rolling across the parking lot seemed to stretch till it was nothing. Wendy tried to assess the two men. They didn’t seem imposing, but their grip into her biceps was more than enough to render any effort she make useless. Both wore the same jeans and tanktop combo, seeming to be unaffected by the cold gust that blew and bit Wendy’s face and neck, dominating her thoughts and making her shudder even as she had a lot more to worry about.

“Happy Meal, meet the boys. I call them Left Hand and Right Hand.”

The two men turned their heads towards Wendy, and she saw faces ravaged by burn damage. One seemed young, probably Becky’s age, his healthy left profile even a little handsome. The other was older, the opposite side of his face horribly disfigured. A dirty half mustache curved around his dark lips. 

Before Wendy could even part her mouth to scream, the woman was upon her. She pressed a finger against lips. “None of that now, unless you want Left Hand and Right Hand to rip you in two,” 

The women laughed until the laugh grew stale. “I’m sorry, my manners are all but gone in this iPhone age with its social media and earbud zoned-out mindless automatons. My name is Mildred, pleased to meet you Happy Meal.”

She extended her hand. A moment passed.

“Goddamnit, Right Hand, let her shake my hand!”

The creature lifted Wendy’s hand. She left it noodle limp but Mildred took it as if it was offered. She then slunk back to the top of Wendy’s trunk, the car hardly lowering with her weight.

“Training, lots and lots of training. And removing their tongues. It’s the only way you can trust a man. Take Joe Harker in there. You dote on him every shift with his boyish antics and blood red hair. Did you know that he coined the nickname ‘Happy Meal?”

Wendy said nothing.

“You can’t trust a man’s tongue. It’ll woo down your underwear as natural as gravity but scorn you the minute you are out of earshot. You’ve known this. What did he used to call you?  The one that used to make you go down on him while he watched porn on his laptop?”

Despite her best efforts to hold them back, tears streaked Wendy’s face.  She wanted to cover them with hands. She wanted fall forward to a fetal crouch. She wanted to do anything but stand there, crying and vulnerable, so she strained against the arms to no results. Why didn’t I run when I first saw her? I’ve gotten so good at running. I'd have been nearly home by now.

“What did he call you, Wendy? Say it.”

Another car passed, illuminating the scene, and Wendy thought to shout out for help.  Before she could, Mildred stood nose to nose with her in an instant. “SAY IT!”

“Chunkyslut.” 

The word came out almost with relief, like some tension deep within Wendy had just given way. The sound of Mildred’s laughter smothered any short felt release, the cackling creating stomach unease. Wendy watched the woman spin in delight with her arms extended.

“I was excited to meet you, Happy meal. I thought you might be the one I’d promote.” Mildred climbed back to the car. She crossed her legs and sat atop the trunk. “See, I figured with the sorts of animals you’ve been forced to deal with that you and I would understand each other. Upper management has their eyes set on Lu but I was hoping I could make a case for you.”

Wendy could hear car-door slams and chatter coming from the parking lot on the front side of the building. Arriving poets? Other customers? Maybe it will be to busy inside and someone will decide they’d rather come through the drive through than wait and see us—

“But you know what?  Now that I meet you, it would never work. You’re the worst kind. Weak. Soft. They’re right about you. You are Chunkyslut. You are Happy Meal. If it weren’t for me it would eventually happen. Maybe not this week, or the next, but someday. That boy in there—who will never love you—he’ll get drunk enough that he forgets you’re a person and asks you to blow him or let him grind against you. Over and over till he’s through. And you know what?  You’d do it.”

Wendy tensed as Mildred lowered off the car and stepped towards her, the gate slow and measured. She ran a hand down Wendy’s cheek, punctuating the movement with a needling pain. Wendy tried to break away but the Hands gripped her still and the resistance made the sharp pain in her cheek crescendo. She was forced to stand while Mildred scooped blood up with her finger like it was cookie batter and brought it to her lips quickly before a drop could fall. Canine teeth were now conspicuous: a pair of large, lacerating daggers.

“You really are the worst, you know that, Happy Meal? You enable men to be groomed into monsters.”

Wendy felt her arms lose tension. They’d let go of her. She was just putting the mental exhursion into running when Mildred’s hand gripped her throat and lifted her. Wendy struggled for breath, tried to pull Mildred’s claw from her neck, and kicked her legs beneath her uselessly.

“See, boys, oxygen is a bit like salt. Too little in the blood, and it just doesn’t taste right. Too much and it’s just overpowering. Always choke a runner a little.”

The world started to dark in the corners. Mildred dominated Wendy’s diminishing vision with her large ironic glasses and anticipating lips. Are those still tears I feel running down my cheeks, or is that blood?

“You’ve been measured, chunkyslut, and found wanting. You need to be pruned from this world.”

Mildred let go and with fluid movement Wendy felt the back of her neck scooped up and the teeth penetrate her skin. It felt wonderful at first. The adrenaline rush reminded her of how she felt after a good run and giving up her blood felt like an orgasm that extended to fingertips and toes. 

That soon eroded to pain. 

She felt pulled on the back of the neck and tore like a serrated knife on a stale piece of bread and emptied and ripped until she thudded to the ground, the world blurry and cold, and a dreamy voice said something about ‘she’s all yours boys’ but it seemed distant and indefinite and buried in the fabric of the earth and she thought not of her killers or her coworkers or her family but of a girl name Chloe who was to be her roommate at Lanfred College next semester and how Chloe would have to be assigned a new girl.

Joe Harker II

The double wide Joe Harker and his father shared sat surrounded by farmland that neither knew who owned, but as the Cavalier’s headlights hit the corn at the end of the road it felt like his. It felt like home. He could use home right now. They cut it, Joe thought. Though dried husks, the corn had stood high in the daylight when he’d left. But as Joe arrived home the night Topher found Happy Meal slaughtered, he searched the barren field with wary eyes and found no comfort of belonging.

He pulled into the carport, smiling despite the night he’d had. The prime parking spot had become his.  George Harker would never admit to his son that the last few weeks he came home too fucked up to pull the Ford Focus into the carport with its narrow steel structure, but Joe knew that was why. His father’s car sat where Joe used to park. Where mom used to park, before she left. Although when Joe had parked there he’d done it straight and safely off the street. The ass of the Focus brushed the edge of the road at an acute angle to the carport. Joe shook his head, thankful that no judgmental neighbors lived close. Just whoever tends and cuts the corn, he thought as he killed the engine. He grabbed his apron, phone, and keys and left the car. 

Another reason to be thankful for no nearby neighbors: he could smell the weed as soon as he stepped outside. The dank grew thicker as Joe half-sprinted up the steps to get out of the cold and when he opened the door the intensity of the smell made his nose wrinkle. He knew he’d adjust to the smell soon and not notice it at all. He always did. From the doorway he could see his dad asleep in the La-Z-boy again. Joe stepped inside and wandered by his passed out father, shut off the blaring TV that’d been filling the room with dancing light, and staggered back to his bedroom where Joe collapsed on the bed. He kicked shoes to the floor. His phone buzzed with a new text message from Lu:

11:03 PM. [Crazy night. always thought Lanfred was safe]

Lit only by cellphone glow and the occasional passing car’s headlights through the cracks of the curtains, the poems he scotched taped over the wood-paneled walls of the bedroom did what he hoped the corn would. He felt at home. Some of the poems were his, but most either from classes or stumbled upon in internet travels. The world seemed simpler in poems. Poems had structure and rules, and playing with A always brought about B, and only the potency would vary.

He texted her back:

11:05. [You okay?  Need me to come over?]

While waiting for a reply, Joe flipped about his phone, thumbing to the Facebook page of Wendy Knowles. He looked at her pictures. All of them alive. All of them smiling. All of them with her head completely attached.

11:09. [Sorry. Didn’t mean for that to seem weird]

11:10. [Or sexist]

In most of Happy Meal’s pictures she flaunted a knee-weakening smile that Joe struggled not to return, even to a dead image from a Facebook feed. She’d lost a lot of weight. Had she told me that?  She seemed to wear the extra pounds well, but fewer of those pics had that infectious smile. Photo after photo, Joe felt something left unsaid in her eyes.

Had her eyes looked that way tonight?

11:14. [Sorry. Stepped over some sort of line?  Only good intentions were meant. See you tomorrow. Get some sleep]

11:15. [LOL I was looking for a charger this whole time dude chill :)]

11:15. [dumbass]

[Yep. captain dumbass here. sailing the good ship Foot-In-Mouth]

[gave u a whole ship? trusting]

[Sail a dumbass from shore to shore, he’ll travel for a day. Give the dumbass a boat…]

Joe put in earbuds and got Sufjan Stevens going on Spotify. While he waited for Lu to text back he tried to avoid looking again at Happy Meal’s social media, but he couldn’t help it. He guessed he was trying to get the image of her dead in the dumpster out of his head. Maybe if he looked at enough photos of her alive and smiling he would no longer see her agape neck when he closed his eyes. He would no longer see the ant. He would no longer—

Why did you look?

Because he had to.

Joe thought about how easily the world unraveled. The stage, like the poems on the wall, was where he felt he could be himself. Where once a week he’d stand, read, and in the resulting applause the world felt under control. But he’d been standing there when it all went to shit. “Joe, can you come sit with Topher? I need to call the Sheriff,” Lu had said, but Joe had been processing the thing she said before.

“What?”

“Wendy’s dead in the dumpster and I need to call the sheriff.”

Instead of coming to Lu’s aid, Joe found himself stepping off the stage and walking to the back to disprove the lunacy of what she was saying.

“Joe?  JOE?”

He pushed through the door that separated the customer visible half of the coffee house from the back. This is a prank. A goof, he remembered thinking. When he walked past the sinks and fridges he saw that Lu’s keys still hung from the lock on the back door. The large steel barricade was only opened for daily trash runs. It had an alarm that sounded if it was ever even slightly ajar without the keys in the lock.  Seeing it left wide, swinging to and fro, the red lanyard of the keys blowing when outside gusts made their way through the opening, it already unsettled Joe. Still, like the involuntary urge that made him keep looking through Happy Meal’s social media, he found himself opening that door further and stepping into the ominous night. 

The back parking lot was never well lit, so he used his phone’s flashlight to find his way to two trash bags that looked like they’d vomited. Empty milk cartons littered the cement, smashed down for maximum storage in the trash bags. The worst, however, were the used coffee grounds. Everywhere Joe shined the light he saw damp, tar-like grounds spilling out of soggy filters. I hope I don’t have to clean this up, he remembered thinking. Both at the time and recalling it later in his bed awaiting Lu’s text, he hated himself for that being his first thought.

11:24 [i’m scared Joe. like legit shit ur pants scared]

[I know. its fucked up. like really fucked up]”

[If you need me there, just let me know]

[no. thanks. ur armors very shining though, mr knight]

[Thought I was a sea captain. Naval officer to medieval knight is quite a downgrade]

[listen i need to talk to u about something]

While he waited for the dot dot dot to become whatever Lu had to say, he scanned the text history with Wendy Knowles and found nothing but shift-swapping work stuff. Shouldn’t all of this digital footprint disappear, or at least transform when someone dies?  Facebook pages, full of history, now empty of potential. Stagnant twitters, time capsules of hashtags and trending topics the dead felt worth engaging, now nakedly banal. The body seemed just as fake. Plastic, almost. Constructed. He’d looked up from the scattered coffee grounds and there she’d been. But it wasn’t her. Just a husk. Just as dead as the corn stalks they cut down around his house. He shined the phone light on her and she looked back at him with empty eyes. As he guided the light around he caught the neck wound like a spotlight. The gash still dripped blood, but less than you’d expect. It trickled. Like a leaky faucet. Joe froze, unable to take eyes and light away from the open neck, until he saw an ant scurry through the wound like it was just any other terrain. That did him in. He rushed back inside to avoid adding puke to the garbage.

What kind of monster calls someone Happy Meal, Joe thought, laying in bed and holding a hand to his once again uneasy stomach. For what? Laughs?

11:28. [i’m selling coffee corner. this was my dad’s dream not mine. a chain from Seattle is buying it so it’s going to be a barlow’s coffee. new rules. new management. hate to do it to u guys. on the fence about it, really, but after tonight]

11:30. [im still gonna be with the company for a bit. try out upper management. see if it fits]

11:34. [promise you’re not mad?]

11:43. [joe?]

ON TO CHAPTER TWO