Trapped in the Booth

I hadn’t wanted to go to Applebees, but my friends insisted.

I’m not opposed to going out to have a meal, but I hate going to the Applebees in our town. It’s a gathering place for every half drunk Chad and happy hour drunk who doesn’t have enough money to drink at the yacht club but too much class for the Tilted Stool. We aren’t big drinkers. I mean, we like to tie a few on sometimes, but these guys get downright sloppy. We get the booth as far from the bar as we can, but it’s still so damn noisy in there! By the end of the night, we’re all yelling at each other just to be heard over the jukebox and the drunks. I spend the rest of the night with my eardrums pounding and my head ready to crack open.

At least that’s how it had always been until tonight.

So we were at the back booth, like always, when I saw the guy. Mark was talking about some girl he was seeing from work, Frank laughing like a donkey. His latest drink bounced around, threatening to spill as he pounded the table, and I looked up from my cowboy burger just in time to see this guy hunkered over his food at the end of the row. He was bent over his plate, the top of his bald head gleaming, and the light over heard lit him like a wax sculpture.

I’m not usually one for people watching, but this guy stood out. He reminded me of a story from Temple, back when I still went with my parents. They told us a story about a guy who had built a creature to get revenge, a golem, and that was my first thought when I saw this fella. That sounds a little harsh, but I only mean that he appeared not like a man, but like the approximation of a man. He had on a white button up, a red tie hanging loose around his neck like a noose, and even from here, I could see the sweat starting to pool under his arms. Despite the noise, I could almost hear him perfectly.

At first I thought he was eating his meal loudly, bent over at the waist like a dog, but the longer I watched, the more I thought he might be crying.

His shoulders were hitching in slow up and down jerks, and he appeared to be sobbing into his plate. I felt a little voyeuristic as I watched him live what was likely the worst day of his life. Poor guy had probably been stood up for a date or lost his mother, and here I was watching.

When Mark leaned nearly into my ear, I jumped a little when he spoke.

“Whatcha lookin at, pally?”

He followed my line of sight, and found the poor guy before I could.

“Whoa! That’s a guy who's got a date with a rope later.”

Frank turned to look, but winced as Mark kicked him.

“Don’t look. Ain’t you got no sense? Poor guy. Looks like this guy we had in the Gas station the other night. He comes in, high as a kite, and when I wouldn’t sell him beer, he just starts crying and,”

Mark went on but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore.

I felt a little bad for continuing to watch him, but I just couldn’t turn away. Something about him was mesmerizing. It was like driving past a car crash and being unable to stop staring at the bodies on the pavement. You knew it was wrong to stare, but you just couldn’t stop. Frank was braying laughter again, and I could see our waitress contemplating whether to offer him another beer as she took our empty plates away. Mark told her he was fine, Frank ordered another beer, and after several tense seconds, and an elbow from Mark, I snapped back to myself and said I was okay.

“Jeez, buddy.” Mark said as the waitress shuffled off, “You gonna go over there and propose?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, biting into my burger and realized was luke warm.

Had I really been staring at the poor guy as my hamburger turned to ice?

“You've been staring at him for almost ten minutes. I thought you were gonna order him a drink for a minute.”

We all laughed, mine being a little forced, and then Mark stood up and waved to a pair coming through the door. Jim and his wife, Selene, waved at us in turn, and Frank moved to our side of the table so the two love birds could sit together. They had been inseparable since college, and I don’t think I had ever seen one without the other more than a handful of times. They excused their lateness, their sitter had been late, and Jim started in on a story about how she had gotten lost and turned down the wrong road when I turned my attention back to the poor guy two booths down.

He was still bent over his burger, still quietly sobbing, but the way his shoulders moved had started to seem wrong. I was no expert on sobbing, but this guy's herky jerky movements were starting to look like something else. A rational part of me chastised myself for continuing to stare at this poor fellow, but I was like a moth to flame now. He was my car wreck, and I was starting to notice signs of foul play.

When he snorted loudly, I heard the laughter for the first time.

It made me shiver a little as I heard it thrum into me like badly played piano notes. The guy wasn’t crying, he was laughing. The more I looked, the more I could see bits of meat and lettuce sprayed over the table top. The longer I looked, the more I wondered how I had misunderstood his laughter for crying? I was now drawn deeper into his web of strangeness, no escape in sight. Crying was one thing, I could understand crying, but who sat in a booth by themselves and laughed? Was he a nut? Some kind of mental case who was off his meds? Watching him from behind Selene’s shoulder, I wondered if he might be dangerous? Maybe we should leave, maybe I should suggest a change of venue, but all thought escaped me as he finally lifted his head from the plate.

The scream that welled up inside me was cut off by my constricting throat, and likely sounded like nothing so much as a sigh.

The mans face looked like a fantastic bit of prosthesis. He was like a piece of halloween decoration that's just a little too realistic, the kind you worry might contain a person who wants to bite. His face looked like the front of a thumb, calloused and rippled with wrinkles or ridges. His eyes were like colorless slits, something slashed into his face with a knife. His nose appeared to be drawn on, like a cartoon character. He was unreal, something that shouldn’t exist in polite society outside a circus tent.

His mouth, though.

His mouth was the worst.

His mouth was full of long needlelike teeth, reminding me of an angler fish as it protruded from his thin lips. Those teeth looked like they would never close comfortably. From here, it looked like they would constantly poke at your lips and gums and you would be in agony most of the time. There were pieces of meat on those teeth, red raw chunks that had been speared by them, and that's when I looked down at his plate. It was covered in the remains of raw hamburger meat. I doubted like hell that the staff had just handed this guy raw beef, but the alternative seemed even wilder. The alternative was that this man had brought his own raw meat from home so he could just consume it here in public.

As the horror ran through me like ice water, I looked up to see those colorless slits observing me.

The two of us just stared at each other for a count of five, and then he pulled those thin lips and monstrous teeth into a smile and I could see red pooling at the edges of his flesh.

I glanced over at Mark and Frank, both now sitting on this side of the booth, but neither of them had noticed him. The four of them were involved in a conversation like there wasn’t a monster sitting twelve feet away. It seemed impossible that anyone could be having a normal conversation so close to this creature. Its very presence should have triggered some ancient, primal node deep in our brains, and forced us to either destroy it or flee from it. The four of them were talking about jobs and school and Jim and Selene’s daughter while this thing got to exist in humanity with the rest of us.

It was too much to handle.

Suddenly, I wanted out, I wanted to be anywhere but there. I tried to tap on Mark, to get him to move or look up or just acknowledge that I was losing my mind within easy reach of him, but my body wouldn’t respond. I managed to flick my finger at his arm, bumping him a little, but he only rubbed a hand over it as if a bug had landed on him. Selene was talking about the new pokemon game, and Mark and Frank were just nerdy enough and broke enough to be enraptured by her descriptions. I was stuck in a state of eye contact with this thing, and the longer I looked, the more it seemed to drink me in with its strange eyes.

Then, without warning, it began to sink down into its seat, lost beneath its table.

I panicked. Suddenly not being able to see it was worse than having it on display. Could it slink beneath our table? How far could it go and how close could it get? I was suddenly imagining the damage those teeth could do to a foot, even a foot within a shoe, and pulled mine up a little higher as Selene’s word washed over me. He didn’t resurface for quite some time, and you would have said that a thing that size would not have gone unnoticed.

Then he slid back up from under the table on the opposite side of the booth.

He was grinning from ghastly ear to ear, and he looked like a little kid whose trying to play with the table behind them. There was still a table between us and him, but I was no longer sure how much protection that provided us. I didn’t know what his mental state was and whether he meant us harm or not, but when he dipped back down again, I began to shake.

“What is wrong with you?” Mark suddenly asked, turning to look at me as I shuddered beside him.

I pointed to the empty plate where the man had been sitting and Mark looked over before scoffing loudly.

“Oh no, your boyfriend left. Don’t worry, I’m sure most of those guys at the bar will take you home if you ask them nicely enough.”

“Whats going on?” Jim asked, noticing my discomfort and looking alarmed.

“He’s obsessed with the guy that was sitting a couple of tables back. Couldn’t take his eyes off him. I swear, I thought he was gonna try and console the guy for a minute. The dude was jut sitting there crying and this freak sits over here and,”

The bald and sweaty head began to surface behind Selene, and when I shouted for her to look out, the whole restaurant went dead silent.

Jim and Selene turned to look, but there was nothing behind them.

I’d had enough though. I pushed Mark and Frank out of the way, freeing myself from the booth as I went to check under the table behind us. He’d be crouching down there, grinning like the little goblin he was, but as I got down on my knees and looked beneath, I was greeted with nothing but an empty space.

The waitress asked me what I was looking for as I moved to look under his table as well, but by then I was already intent on leaving.

I got to my car, threw the keys in the ignition, and sped out as fast as I could.

Sitting at home now, I can’t get that image out of my head. My phone has been blowing up, and I know my friends are worried. I want to assure them that everythings okay, but I just can’t make sense of it. What was that thing, and why did it take such an interest in me? Is it dangerous? Did it follow me home?

Everytime I close my eyes, I see those repulsive needle-like teeth and those no-color slits staring back at me.

Everytime I close my eyes, I wonder if I will ever be able to see anything but that creature again.