24/7 Diner

The neon lights reflected in the rain splashed sidewalk and the girl’s boots made squishing noises as she paced.

The 24/7 diner was a thirty-minute walk from her house that she walked in a decisive twenty-five. When she got there, standing just across the street and watching the building like it was a living thing crouched in the tangled of limp palm trees, her legs would take her not further. She usually walked this neighbourhood during the day, but in the darkness, unlit even by moonlight and the area too poor to fix the streetlights that had burnt out long ago, there was something sinister about the city she called home.

Her hands and face felt numb and it had nothing to do with the crisp air, unseasonably cold for southern Texas. She could have sworn the lights flashed, spelling the word ‘DIE’, but when she shook her head the word ‘DINER’ was spelled out as plain as day in blood red block letters.

She had heard the engines from their bikes from blocks away, the sound making her stomach rise and drop like a rollercoaster as she approached. She watched them all gathered out front of the diner, wolves in men’s clothing, prowling, howling their calls into the dark night.

They wore leather jackets and were tossing back cans of beer, throwing them around. A trashcan was on fire. There were two girls around her age, one dancing in the middle of the group with a drunken fervour and one sitting frozen on a bike, her eyes wide in horror, like a deer surrounded by hungry wolves.

The girl took a deep breath before she crossed the street towards the revel. The crumpled up bills in the her backpack weighed heavy in her mind and she clutched the straps so hard that her hands were aching, but she didn’t let up. She had smashed her piggy banks, stuffed with money from birthdays and Christmas, on her bedroom floor, muffling the sound in an old bag so her mother didn’t hear. She had walked carefully from her house, holding her shoes and avoiding the steps that creaked.

The men called for her as she walked by, but she ignored them, holding her head up high. Under her breath, she recited the prayers her abuela had told her. She skirted as far away from them as she could while heading to the door. They laughed at her, their teeth gleaming white in the darkness, eyes shining like cats.

Before the diner had been abandoned years or decades ago, it used to be bright and kitschy, with women in pastel pink uniforms, singing under their breath as they weaved between tables, holding trays piled with burgers and fries and vanilla milkshakes.

This was not that place.

Broken glass crunched under her boots as she stepped through the threshold, the air colder inside the diner than it was outside. She shivered and pulled her bomber jacket tight, her breath fogging like cigarette smoke. The air smelled damp, like burnt coffee, and something else, something foul.

The diner was mostly dark, the pale lights from the kitchen flickering, giving off just enough light to see shapes, but not enough to see what lurked in the dark. The jukebox in the corner was on, crooning an old song her abuela had liked, giving off a halo of golden light which allowed her to pretend she felt a little safer than she did.

The man was hunched over the bar, his broad leather-jacket clad back to her. Even though she couldn’t see him, she could feel his attention on her as soon as she walked in, but he didn’t turn or make a sound to acknowledge her.

“I want to make a deal,” she croaked, so low that she was afraid that he couldn’t hear her.

She had heard legends about this place, about the creatures that ruled the dark. About what those words would get her and what it would cost. About creatures who drank blood from pale-faced virgins and ones made people see and do things, like eat their own children. Her abuela had told her all about it, but they had never felt real in her warm bed, drinking hot champurrado with her sister. She would only laugh in disbelief, but her sister had always known the truth of it.

He inclined his head to the stool next to his. Her shoes made squelching noises as she walked and sat next to him at the bar, holding her body as far from him as possible, all of her hairs rising in unison. The flickering lights cast the side of his face into relief, the shadows darker than they should have been, thicker somehow.

In front of him was a slice of pie and a cup of black coffee. As she looked closer, a cockroach skittered out of the pie crust, along his hand and into the sleeve of his jacket. She shuddered.

“How old are you, girl?” He said, his voice a deep growl with a hint of a twang.

“Sixteen,” she whispered. “But you’ve made deals with kids my age before. I know you have.” Her words tumbled out in a rush.

“So eager to sell yourself.” He chuckled. “Let’s hear it, girl. What is it that you desire?”

She choked on silence. The words didn’t come to her lips, no matter how many times she had practiced them on the walk here and even before that when she had gotten this idea the day of the funeral, the smell of lilies in her nose and this rotting smell that wouldn’t come out of her clothes no matter how many times she washed them. But she couldn’t think when his eyes were on her and boring in deep, like he could read her mind, like he was burrowing deep into her brain where her darkest thoughts lived.

“Your sister,” he said, at last. “Twins.”

She looked up in surprise. “How did you—?”

He laughed, the flashing lights making him look like a grinning skeleton. “It’s my job, isn’t it?”

The lights flickered and in what she had thought was coffee was a cup full of earth worms, the pie now more roaches and beetles, earwigs squirming on the plate. She squeezed her eyes tight and when she opened them, the food was normal.

“Eat something.”

It wasn’t so much a question as a command. Before she could refuse, a plate appeared before her, a slice of warm cherry pie. The cherries looked too red, too dark, the colour of blood dripping onto a tile floor. She shuddered and jumped back, the stool squealing against the black and white checkered linoleum. The man let out a low chuckle.

He settled back, crossed his hands behind his head, looking at her with pupil-less black eyes. “Look, girl, it can’t be done. I don’t bring back the dead.”

“But— but—” she sputtered. She upended her bag onto the counter, not caring that hiding cockroaches skittered around, not sure if they were real or not and not caring. “I have money. I can pay you.”

“What use do I have for money? I am a king.” He stretched out his hands, as if to show off his castle, a palace of pestilence and decay, his grin stretched wider. “I can do you one better. I will kill the man who murdered your sister.”

Her heart stopped in her chest. “You can do that?”

“I’m a king. A king can do whatever he wants.” He frowned. “But it won’t be free.”

In her mind, she could see her sister laying in a casket, alone and afraid, choking on dirt. She could see smears of blood and hear screams when she closed her eyes to sleep at night. There was no life for one without the other.

The girl nodded, fervently. “Anything.”

He smiled again at that. He moved his hands like a conductor. “Music to my ears,” he said. “You can have six years. After that,” he reached out and touched a strand of her hair. “You’re mine.”

Her stomach dropped. Yes, she had heard stories about deals like this; about men who sold their souls at the crossroads to be rockstars, women who sold their lives for years of unparalleled beauty. About what it would get her and about what it would cost.

He put out a pale hand and she took it in her own without a thought, the hand freezing cold and coarse.

“It’s a deal,” he grinned the devil’s smile.

When she left the diner stumbling on her feet and fogging brained, the men were gone, along with their lupine smiles, and the frightened girls, dancing like they were stolen by faeries to live under a mound for all time. When she looked back, the diner was empty, the dark less sinister.

The sun began to cast its light over the land and, with it, a spell had lifted. The girl set her shoulders and followed the trail back to her mother’s house.

Six years would have to be enough.