The Delivery

        The whole scene felt like a heart attack, as if the restaurant itself was experiencing palpitations, or high blood pressure, or something. The smell of sweat and grease clogged the kitchen, and through it teenage boys with baseball caps and acne-bloated faces fumbled around. Carrying their pizzas. Their lifelines. Their paychecks. Packaged in grease-dampened boxes, baking, bubbling in the ovens and under heat-lamps. Cholesterol streamed through the kitchen as if through veins. Constantly racing towards some unknown destination, on a never-ending marathon, without water, without prior training, like a fatass jogger with a rash down south, the restaurant continued to move--whipped at the slightest sign of waver by the ever-looming ideology, emblazoned in neon light on all sides.

         “We fly all the way, or YOU DON’T PAY!!!”

         Carl jogged through the kitchen. Pizza box in hand, he weaved through the cooks and the cashiers, passed his boss--who started grumbling and shook his fist--out from behind the counter, around customers, out the door.

         The cold air nipped at Carl as he escaped the heat box of Luigi’s Pizza, emerging into the night. There was no moon. There were no stars. Light radiated from behind apartment complexes and shopping plazas--the collective, restless soul of the city. Carl paid no attention, however, and continued his jog. He had to get the pizza to the customer’s house in thirty minutes, so he ran until he got to his car. Then he got in. Then he peeled out. Then he left.

         

         Carl had an unhealthy fear of his boss. It probably wasn’t normal. A bit embarrassing, actually. But the man, whose name was Rick Shaffer, had a downright intimidating air about him. He was a skinny old guy, but something about him demanded obedience. He seemed bigger than he was, and he seemed critical. Like every moment you were talking to him, or doing a job for him, or associating with him, you were being judged. Like your entire relationship with him was a test, and, no matter what you did, there was something to be fixed.

But Carl needed the job. He’d reached the point where asking his dad for money had become a painful experience that left him feeling like a bum--so he wasn’t going to complain about Shaffer. He wasn’t going to say anything bad about him. He was just going to keep his head down, do the job, do it right, and get his paycheck every two weeks. It was going to be just like Shaffer had told him last week, when Carl had been hired, “I expect you to be like a machine, Mr. Locke. I will program you, and you will act. Like a zombie, but with a smile.”

Shaffer had chuckled at this, like it was funny.



        Carl glanced at the clock. It was 7:45. He had fifteen minutes to get to the customer, or who knew what Shaffer would do to him. Fire him? Cut his pay? Cut his balls off? Something undesirable for sure. Maybe it was just the fact that he was new to the job, still taking it all a bit too seriously, but Carl didn’t care. He was going to keep up the perfection as long as he could, and that meant he was going to speed like a mad man. He stamped down on the pedal, and that Camry flew as fast as its fuel efficient ass could fly. Straight down Rural Road, left on Price, right on 42nd, straight for a mile.

He looked at the clock.

        The clock said 7:50.

Carl took a left. He slowed and sped and curved and weaved, dodged, darted. Back and forth, around cars, cutting through parking lots and gas stations. Racing people who didn’t know they were racing. Receiving the bird from all directions, returning it liberally. Without bias, without restraint. Indiscriminately flipping everyone off and being flipped off.

        The clock said 7:54.

        Took a right. Took a left. Made a U-turn. Made an illegal U-turn. Rolled down windows. Blared music. Went fast.

          7:57.

        Left. Right. Back. Forward. Round-about. Getting nervous. Turning off the music. Getting anxious. Getting scared. Getting lost. The neighborhood was a damned maze, and Carl couldn’t find the house.

          7:58.

          Nothing. Nada. Negative. Jesus. Moses. Mary Magdalen. Joseph. John. Jonathan. Mary Mother of God. Where the hell was the house?

        Still 7:58.

        A pinkish house, faded with a P.O.S. truck out front. A bluish house, vines growing up the sides in a decorative kind of way. A house with a fountain in the front yard, with landscaping that would make the whole thing look very elegant if not for the open, trashy garage. None of them were the right house.

          7:59.

        “Shit.” Carl began to rationalize in his head, soothing his unreasonably panicky mind. A minute late wasn’t going to make a difference anyway. These people didn’t actually care, he knew that--he’d ordered from Luigi’s a thousand freakin’ times. People never actually pay attention to pizza delivery guarantees. People don’t really report that stuff, they don’t ask for a free pizza, they don’t care. He’d be fine, as long as he found the...

          And there it was.

          The house.

          Carl pulled his environmentally friendly machine up to the curb and hopped out without pulling the key from the ignition, without closing the door. He speed-walked up the path that lead through the lawn, carrying the pizza in a big red carrying case.



        The house almost looked abandoned, lit by a single candle on the front porch, flickering under the deep yellow glow. It was identical to the rest of the cookie-cutter houses only in architecture. Its walls were caked in thick layers of dirt, streaking across the stucco in wave-like patterns. Crawling across the pathway and under cement, weeds infested the yard, creating a jungle-like atmosphere as Carl approached the front door. To his left, in the street opposite his car, an old motor home was parked. It looked more fresh than the rest of the scene, more clean, as if the owners cared more about it than the house.

        Strange sculptures and European-looking garden gnomes lay scattered around the welcome mat. Except it wasn’t a welcome mat. It didn’t say welcome. It said...Carl didn’t know what the hell it said. But it wasn’t in English--it was like Hebrew, or Chinese, or Carl didn’t have any idea. But the whole place gave him an uncomfortable feeling, a feeling that was indescribable except that it was very similar to the one he got around mimes.

        Carl hesitated for a moment, because he had the strongest compulsion to not ring the doorbell.

        But he did anyway, suddenly realizing that if he didn’t do it before it turned 8:01, he’d be at the mercy of these creepy foreign people.

And he waited. He could hear a lot of fumbling and yelling inside. It was in some other language, probably the same one that was on the mat, but even if it had been in English Carl wouldn’t have understood it--some weird accordion music muffled out the voices. There was light flashing in there, probably from a T.V., through the window that was blocked by a thin white curtain.

        Carl waited for a moment, and then the curtain moved. It was pulled to the side, and a strange, emaciated face appeared. The face’s eyes were wide and shocking, and the lips were pursed, and Carl gasped a little. He attempted not to look put-off, but failed, and found himself stepping back with a little leap. He looked back in the window. The face was gone.

          His muscles relaxed for a tenth of a second, and then the door opened, and that emaciated face appeared once again--this time accompanied by a woman’s body. Accordion music and light and the smell of burning incense spilled out of the place. It made Carl feel uneasy. In fact, the whole house made him feel uneasy. It was a familiar feeling he was having, the same kind of feeling he got when he used to sell boyscout raffle tickets door-to-door--a foreign atmosphere that came with most houses. It was a deep unease that made him feel like he would never want to live there, and at most houses it dissipated within a few minutes. Here it didn’t. Here, that feeling was stronger than ever, and it made him squirm. Made him feel like tossing that pizza in there as quick as he could and running for the hills.

          The woman in front of him was tall and bony, with grayish-brown hair which fell to her shoulders, and an extravagant outfit. Long, handmade jewelry decorated her, with earrings that stretched the earlobes down past the jaw, and bracelets big enough to double as hula hoops. Behind her, the sparsely furnished house flashed black and white. A man’s shadow was thrown on a far wall. It popped in and out of sight as an unseen T.V. continued to light the room. As the man’s head fell back, and he let out a bellowing, deep-chested laugh, the woman spat some words at Carl through a thick accent. Carl couldn’t tell what it was, but it was odd. She sounded like she could be a Bond chick from one of the old Sean Connery movies.

          Not knowing what she’d said, Carl simply pretended that she’d said nothing at all. He briefly struggled to pull the pizza box out of the case, and once he did, he extended it to her with a smile.

          “Hello. Here’s your pizza,”

          Her face looked shocked, as if Carl had green skin and had just landed in a flying saucer. She almost looked scared, or disgusted--confused, maybe.

Carl ignored it and pulled the credit card scanner off his belt. He just wanted to get this over with. But, when he glanced up, the look was still there.

            “...that’ll be eleven eighty-five, please...”

            Silence.



            Her eyes seemed to grow with every agonizing second. The accordion music  still sounded from the distant recesses of the house, faint but audible, and there were more bellows of laughter. Carl rubbed the the back of his neck. He looked at the ground and he looked up at the lady and he looked back at the ground and he swayed back and forth.

            Then the lady muttered something--something harsh and bitter--but he again could not make it out. It was in English, Carl was pretty sure, but he just couldn’t understand it. So he said, “I’m sorry, what was that?”

            She rolled her eyes, which, for some reason, put him at ease again. The gesture of disgust reminded him that he was still in America, and not in some twisted Netherlands dream-scape. Not trapped in a nightmarish version of Hansel and Gretel, alone in the dark at the door of some solitary, dimly lit cottage, waiting on the outskirts of the World for a psychotic witch, with only the ghoulish gnomes to keep him company. With yodeling, with gypsies, with accordions. Alone.

            Carl rolled his own eyes at that.

            He was thinking like a drunk lunatic.



            The woman in the weird clothes said something again, this time struggling to get rid of her accent, “Zu ah leyt.”

            You are late.

            Crap, Carl thought. She’d timed him, the damned European piece of shit. She’d actually checked the time. Of all the people he could have gotten on his first day of work, he’d had the fine luck to deliver a pizza to this Russian-Swedish-Austrian-German damned old foreigner, who didn’t know what the hell was going on. Nobody else would have checked the time.

            And he wasn’t late anyway. It was 7:59 when he got out of the car, probably wasn’t even eight when he rang the doorbell. He was right on time, and now this lady was trying to make him look bad so she could stuff her decrepit old face full of...God there were anchovies and tomatoes on this pizza; he should have known he was going to get a freak.

            “I’m very sorry,” he said with a heavy smile, “but I think you’re mistaken. I checked the time when I--”

            “Leyt! Zu ah leyt! I vant my free pizza! I vant zu gif me ze pizza now!”

God this wasn’t happening. Carl’s smile quivered, and he hesitated. He pulled the pizza away and shakily extended it forward again, then back. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to argue with the lady, but he also didn’t want to lose his job.

            Oh, dammit he wasn’t going to lose his job over one mistake.

            But it was the first day. Wasn’t going to look good if he screwed it up now.

            It wouldn’t look good if he lost his temper on an old lady either.

            But he was on time.

            “Look, lady. I got here on time. I’m sorry, but you don’t get a free pizza unless I’m late.”

            “Leyt! Zu ah leyt! Zu...”



            She trailed off, and for a moment looked past him. She looked into the darkness. After that, she glanced back and frowned. Then she smiled, slowly but warmly. Creepily.

            “Gum een, pless.”

            Come in? Dear Lord, no. He didn’t want to go in. Carl was getting a bad vibe just standing in front of the house. He sure as hell didn’t want to go in. But something about that smile made him go in anyway. It was a disturbing smile. It thinly concealed something rotten and sinister, and he didn’t want to deny it. So he stepped past her as she gestured him on.



            To his right, Carl saw the back of a sofa, silhouetted against the television’s glow, with the back of a man’s balding head poking out from the other side. He did not turn to greet Carl, but instead chose to keep on laughing. Carl couldn’t see what was on and he couldn’t hear it--the man looked like he was wearing one of those wireless T.V. headphones. Of course, it seemed a little strange for these people to own any kind of luxury like that.

            The house was almost completely bare of decoration. As Carl had noticed before, the furniture was just as scarce. Only what was necessary could be seen, and the rest, he inferred, must have been packaged in the mountains of boxes that piled against walls in the next room. He decided they must have just moved in.

            The decorations and furniture that could be seen were peculiar. The couch was upholstered in darkish red material, with stringy golden tassels hanging off like slime. There were, lining the wall opposite the entrance, a series of seven or eight wooden pedestals, holding up murky glass orbs. Incense and candles served as some kind of cluttered motif throughout the place, and the smell was suffocating. It was worse than the smell of sweat in Luigi’s kitchen, worse than any kind of air pollution he’d ever encountered. His lungs filled with the perfume-like smell, and Carl struggled not to gasp. Somewhere, not too close but also not to far away, in a distant room, the accordion music entered and exited consciousness through the wisps of candle smoke.

            “Pless, gum een.” the woman said, passing Carl and waving him onward into the next room, the one with all of the boxes. He followed, and they came into an open space, surrounded on all sides by the disordered cardboard cubes. A table sat alone in the middle of the indoor valley. It appeared to be naturally cut from a tree stump, the kind of thing you’d find in a ski lodge or a hunter’s cabin, and it looked misplaced out there in the middle of the large room. It looked alone.

            They came to it, and the woman said something that could not have been deciphered without the obvious hand gestures, which offered Carl a seat. He accepted, and the two strangers sat across from one another. At odds. Feeling an amount of tension that should never be felt over a one-minute-late pizza. Especially not one with anchovies and tomatoes.

            After a moment of silence, the woman reached for a folded slip of paper that lay in the center of the table. She unfolded it with care, smoothed out the wrinkles along the edge of the table, laid it out, flattened it with her hands, then looked back up at Carl. Her eyes were wide and penetrating. Fine red cracks split across the whites, and the pupils turned to specks. And she stared at Carl for a little while more, until he squirmed and prayed with silent passion that he would be as far away from this place as possible in the next five minutes. Then the lady lifted the piece of paper.

          She hung it there in the air, and, with her open hand, extended a bony finger toward the sheet, scratching it with the tip of her blood-red fingernail. Candles were all that lit the room, so Carl could not see what the paper was at first. But after squinting a little, Carl could see it plain as day, and recognized it.

          "‘Ve fly oll ze vay, or ZU DON’T PEY!” The strange gypsy woman read. All the remaining remnants of her smile were gone. Now she was just flat out pissed.

          “Yes ma’am,” Carl said, “I am familiar with our ad, and that is our guarantee, but--”

          “Zu cot hee-ah leyt.”

          “But that’s the thing, ma’am, I didn’t get here late. I checked the clock. I was right on time.” Carl was scared about this place, but he knew deep down there was really nothing wrong with it. There was really nothing to be scared of. The only thing to be scared of was his boss, so he had to stand his ground against this idiot. He had gotten here on time.

          “No! Zu cot hee-ah leyt! I check ze time zu see, on zat clock right zer!”

          She pointed to some ancient cuckoo clock that hung on a bare spot of wall. It fit in with the rest of this place. Just creepy as hell. But there was no way the old thing was accurate.

          “Et iss accurate. Very accurate! Ant zu now gif me ze pizza. Eef I don’t get my free pizza, zu vill pay, and Luigi’s pizza vill be under new management!”

          Carl felt exhausted at this point, and the accordion music was rising down there somewhere--getting louder. And he was getting more uncomfortable, but this pizza thing was personal now. It wasn’t even about his boss anymore; Carl knew he was right. Knew it for a fact. And there was no way this lady was going to win. Not after he’d been here so damned long. Not after he’d put so much energy into this one job. He was going to leave with eleven dollars and eighty-five cents, whether it was in cash or in check or in credit or in Euros. Carl didn’t give a flying shit. This old bag of dirt was going to pay for the pizza.

            “Look, ma’am. I am very sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you. If you don’t pay, I’m gonna have to take this pizza back with me.”

          “I get eet free!”

          “No you don’t!”

          “Boot, ze advertisement sess I do!”

          “No it--”

          “YES EET DOES!”



          She leaped to her feet and pushed her end of the table up in the air. It collapsed forward, sending Carl onto his back.

          Glaring down with eyes wider than ever, the woman stood there over him, and her fingers curled into unruly, grizzly positions. Like claws. She ripped away the mid-section of her strange garments, revealing a stomach that was old and wrinkly and unsightly, and then she crouched. She extended her arms outward and took position. Ready for combat. She hissed and growled like a crazy person, never taking her eyes off of him--not attacking, just waiting. Waiting for him to get up. Waiting for him to fight.

Carl didn’t have many options, and none of them involved lying on the ground waiting to get beat to pieces by a crazed old gypsy woman. The accordion music grew louder. The balding guy let out another detached roar of laughter. He obviously took no interest in what was going on.

          Carl came to his feet and faced the woman. He thought about running, but then remembered that he had a pair of balls and that he might as well use them. They wouldn’t stick around too long if he fled from an old lady.

          She foamed at the mouth and muttered under her breath.

          Carl, not knowing what else to, crouched into a position identical to hers. He stretched out his arms and curled his fists--and that, apparently, was her cue. The woman lunged forward, arms flailing, and scratched at Carl like a maniac. She shrieked as she did this. She all-out screamed. It took Carl by surprise, and his first reaction was to throw his arms up in the air and pray. After a good thirty seconds of that, with his arms bleeding, Carl realized that this lady was sixty-five years old, at least, and that he was embarrassing himself.

          He delivered a strong punch.

          Missed.

          An uppercut.

          Missed.

          The gypsy cut, scratched, clawed. Carl threw a punch with the other arm.

Missed.

          He got spat on. He got slapped. He cried out. He delivered another failed uppercut. He got sliced across the forehead. Blood gushing. Eyes stinging. Burning.



          Then Carl lunged, and he tackled her to the ground.

          She gasped, and her face twisted with surprise. The man laughed at the T.V.            Carl pinned the hag to the ground and raised his right arm. His breathing heavy. Sweat pouring. The lady gasping for air but not speaking--too shocked to speak. Carl prepared to bring his arm down. Prepared to give the final blow. But he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t punch her. She was old and frail, and she couldn’t take it. It would kill her.

          Well, perhaps he was giving himself too much credit there.

          But still, Carl just couldn’t bring himself to it.

          He slackened off, stood up. But he kept his eyes firmly directed at his attacker.  The accordion music crept higher still. The T.V. continued to flash in the other room, and the candle continued to flicker. Smoke weaved through the air. It swirled around with Carl’s every movement.

          Carl was still.

          The bald guy stopped laughing.

          The woman, silent--motionless.



          Her face was blank at first. She expressed nothing, but her thoughts could be guessed. The woman was shocked, amazed at what Carl had done. He had tackled her--attacked her. She looked up at him, and those big eyes just sunk. They sunk back into her head and her brow lowered. She glared at Carl.

          The accordion music rose.

          She seemed to be looking into his soul. Something was coming out of her, some kind of pure bitterness. Pure hatred. Her brow lowered, and her face was now locked in rage. She was pissed beyond comprehension--Carl could feel it. Something--something he could not understand, could not grasp the meaning of--was coming into him from those eyes. They turned yellow and hellish. Like twin demons. His jaw dropped. His body began to shake with uncontrollable violence.

          The accordion music rose.

Carl’s skin pulled tight. He could feel sweat trying to break out through the pores and cover him, but it was caught. He could feel it being stopped and building up, and it made him feel like he was going to burst. It was like his sweat was frozen.

          The accordion music rose.

          The woman’s eyes intensified and the yellow deepened. She growled, and her jaw started twitching. She bared her teeth. She spread those spider-like fingers across the floor and curled them together again. Her body started shaking, as did the floor. Tremors shot throughout the room, and it was like a small earthquake. And the bald guy started laughing again. And the T.V. flashed. And the smoke curled into balls and exploded, and curled, and exploded. And chimes jingled somewhere. Echoing, bouncing off the walls and fading away.

          The accordion music rose.

          The sound of an ancient violin joined.

          Shakers and clappers followed.

          All of it was without rhythm--without pattern or purpose. The sounds clashed with each other and grew louder. And the earthquake shook the entire house. The table started bouncing around. The anchovy and tomato pizza fell with a splat. The cuckoo clock chimed and cried “CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO!” The mountains of packaged cargo quavered away from the walls, the boxes sliding out of place and bouncing and crashing to the floor. They burst open as they made contact with the earth, and spiders and human skulls and snakes spilled out. More glass orbs emerged, and they were smashed into tens of thousands of millions of murky, shimmering shards.

          “CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCK--” The cuckoo clock fell to its demise.

          Through it all, the woman kept staring at Carl. And Carl kept staring at her. Not believing. Not grasping. Not able to move.

          She muttered something, and Carl didn’t understand. She muttered it again. He couldn’t hear. She repeated it, this time louder. It wasn’t in English. She said it louder again. And louder. And louder.

            And the accordion, violin, shakers, and clappers roared--blared. Screamed.

The woman’s words turned into a chant. She yelled them and bellowed them and cried them out to the heavens with furious anger. Somewhere in the distance--perhaps in this world, perhaps not--people joined in. Ghostly voices chanting in unison with this lunatic. And Carl just stood there for a long time, entranced, until he felt like he was emptying. Like something was leaving him. Dissipating into the walls and into the eyes of the gypsy. Into the twin demons.

          Then he let out an ear-splitting scream and fell away from the madness. He ran back, through the falling boxes and over the floorboards that were beginning to split. He ran and he ran and he stumbled. Carl slammed into a wall and lumbered back and forth for a moment, massaging his bleeding nose before pressing on like a drunk lunatic. Again, for the second time today, he felt like a drunk lunatic. Except maybe not drunk. Just on some insane acid trip or running through the nightmares of a schizophrenic. Trapped in a collapsing Netherlands dream-scape.

            The music kept playing, louder and louder.

            He stumbled around, but the world twisted and faded and turned into doubles through Carl’s worsening vision. He jumped into the next room, rolled around on the ground, pulled himself up. The T.V. kept flashing. The glass orbs glowed. They changed colors erratically. Madly. Purple and red and green and blue and white and brown and gray and black. Deep, bottomless black. Without end, without escape. And Carl ran toward them. And Carl swooped his hand through them, and he pushed them all off their pedestals and sent them shattering to the ground, releasing unspeakable, blinding light. The lady still chanted back there; he could still see her eyes. They were burnt into his corneas, and they wouldn’t go away no matter how much he blinked.



            The bald man’s laughter still bellowed on. It was now louder than ever. Mad, crazy. Like it came from some distant asylum, the laughter sounded far away. Carl just wanted it to stop. He’d give anything for the laughing to just go away. He ran for the couch. He ran to it and around it and finally faced the man, the balding, laughing, insane man.

              The man was chained to the couch. Carl now realized that he wore no T.V. headphones. The television was silent because there was nothing on--just static snow with the volume clicked to zero. And the man did not care. The man just laughed. He laughed and he laughed and cried and pulled his arms up, only to have them stopped by the strain of heavy cuffs.

              The man had no eyes.

              Just empty sockets, long ago cleaned out and dried into black pits.        Emotionless pits. And the man kept writhing and laughing.

              The music got louder.

              The woman and the ghosts chanted.

              She cried something out in English, “Zu did not listen to me! Now zu vill be my PUPPET!”

              Carl wanted to scream but he couldn’t. The breath was gone from him, sucked out. It seemed like everything was being sucked out. He was beginning to feel empty. Drained. Soon he could feel nothing at all, and the power started seeping out through his feet or through his head--he couldn’t tell which. Turning around, gazing into the static snow on the T.V. screen, Carl collapsed forward. He crawled up to it. Up to the T.V. He pulled up a limp arm, almost completely vacant of life, with only an instant’s worth of energy left. And Carl tossed it at the T.V.’s control panel. He clicked off the television set. He stared into the shiny surface of the black screen. And he let out a scream as he looked at his reflection. Carl’s skin was pulling inward, his eyes were sinking, and the facial bones were becoming prominent. Carl was dying, and it was all because of that damned pizza.

              He let out a final gasp, and then the world went black.

---------------------------------------------------

              Rick Shaffer grumbled to himself as he drove his way through the maze of cookie cutter houses. That kid. That damned kid. Rick should have known not to hire him. It was his first day on the job and he’d already gone and disappeared. Disappeared. Who got lost delivering pizzas? The little shit had probably ran off. Found some friends and just ditched work. Who did that? Really? Rick just couldn’t understand the little son-of-a-bitch. In fact, Rick couldn’t understand kids at all these days. “They just get lazier every year.” he muttered to himself, then continued searching for the the new kid’s assigned house.

              Rick passed a pinkish house, faded with a P.O.S. truck out front. A bluish house, vines growing up the sides in a decorative kind of way. A house with a fountain in the front yard, with landscaping that would have made the whole thing look very elegant if not for the open, junky garage. He cursed. None of these places were the right house, and it was almost nine thirty. Rick Shaffer had to get home and get some sleep; he didn’t have time to babysit this kid.

              He told himself that if he didn’t find the house in the next ten minutes, he’d go home.

              Then he found the house.

              The kid’s car was parked out front. It’s driver’s side door hung open over the sidewalk, and its tail-lights shone bright red in Rick’s face. The house itself looked like a piece of shit. The yard hadn’t been mowed in months and there was dirt all over the walls. A pretty nice camper was parked across from the Camry.

              Rick Shaffer pulled up and hopped out without turning the car off. He looked at the porch, which was lit by a solitary candle, and then proceeded up the pathway. But before he could make it to the porch, the front door opened. There was a silhouette standing there. The air was still and silent, except for the faint sound of accordion music, and Rick Shaffer stopped because he had a bad feeling. There was a growl, and the black figure stepped forward into the light.

              It was the kid.

              At least, it looked kind of like him. Except pale. And a lot bonier. He looked emaciated, even lifeless. And he was drooling. Rick Shaffer stepped back slowly, trying, for some reason, not to make any sudden movements. He looked into the kid’s eyes and he saw no trace of sentience. No understanding or mental existence in the here-and-now. Rick Shaffer was looking at...

              Like a zombie, but with a smile.

              Except this zombie wasn’t smiling. He was just--standing there. Twitching.

“Very funny kid.” Rick said, trying to sound unfazed, putting on his poker face.

But it didn’t last long. The zombie tilted its head to one side, like a curious puppy, then jumped forward. And there was a shriek. And there was a struggle. And there was silence.

              And the next week, Luigi’s Pizza was under new management.