by D. M. Guay
Hmmm. He sure loved those doughnuts. So did a lot of people. They sold out every day. I stepped closer to the case. The doughnuts called to me in seductive, quiet whispers, lighter than air. Eat me. I'm delicious. You need me. Just a taste.
Normally, I'd tune it out. I'd learned to do as much, to go do something else in another part of the store right after the doughnuts arrived. The pull was stronger when they were fresh and new. This time, I gave in. I peered into the case, my nose inches from the glass. Why was eating them specifically off limits to me, but anyone off the street could buy one for two bucks?
You know what? I had a lot of questions. It was time to get at least one straight answer. Knowledge was power, and knowledge began with a doughnut. I opened the display case.
Eat me, they whispered.
“I'm gonna,” I whispered back. I steeled my nerves. Which one do I pick?
If I was gonna give in, I had to make it count. My hand hovered over the pink frosted. Then I thought of Pawnshop Doc and the pink one behind the emergency glass in the weapons safe. Maybe not the smart choice. I wanted a doughnut, not instant death. So I went for the chocolate devil's food with the chocolate icing. I mean, the body builder ate one every night, and he was still alive. In fact, he looked better, stronger. At least I knew it wouldn't kill me, right?
I had my fingers on the doughnut and hadn't even lifted it off the bakery paper before Kevin jump-flew off the counter and landed on top of the display case. “Drop it!” He stood on his back four legs and waved his other two at me as if signaling an SOS from a sinking ship. “Drop it. Right now!”
“What if I don't?”
“Listen, dipshit. You have no idea. These doughnuts are a delicious assortment of absolute nightmares.”
“Well, why are we selling them if they aren't safe?” Take that. Comeback of the year!
“Dude. I'm a roach not an existential philosopher. We sell soda pop, processed meat sticks, and deep-fried microwave noodles, too. People shouldn't eat that crap, but they do. The doughnuts are another level. Besides, we are specifically banned from eating them unless it's an emergency.”
“This is an emergency,” I said.
“Yeah? What's the problem?”
“I'm hungry,” I said.
“Not good enough, fatty. You just ate two steaks. Rules are rules. Actions have consequences. And as your manager, I'm enforcing the rules. Drop the doughnut, or I'm writing you up.” he squeaked.
“What? Write me up? This is America. It's my God-given, Constitutional right to eat a damned doughnut.”
“Listen, dumbass. You haven't even eaten it yet, and look what it's done to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look in the case,” Kevin said. He crossed all of his arms—legs?—smugly.
I shouldn't have asked. My hand, the one touching the chocolate doughnut, had ballooned in size. It looked like the hand of a giant. Fingers fat and long as bratwurst, puffed up and elongated, like a monster hand had been grafted onto my arm. And it was still growing. “What the hell?”
I tried to yank my hand out of the case, but it had swelled so much it was stuck. “Kevin. Help!”
“Nothing I can do,” he said. “It's also your Constitutional right to pay the price when you write a check your ass can't cash.”
“Dude. Seriously! Help me.” My hand was super warm, and the skin was so tight...so so tight, like a fat lady's yoga pants, stretched to the max, holding on for dear life.
“Hey. I told you not to touch the doughnuts. You touched the doughnuts. What did you expect?”
“Well, not this! Help me!”
“I can't.” He shrugged.
“What do you mean you can't?”
He rolled his beady black eyes. “You haven't read your employee manual yet, have you?”
“What—HELP ME!”
“Look. I can't help you. The doughnut spells are irreversible.”
“Spells? What? Like magic? Like, witch spells?”
He shook his head. “You're just gonna have to wait until it wears off. There's no reversal. It's time-based. On the plus side, if you jerk off today, it'll feel like you're getting some strange. That'll be fun for you.”
“That's not funny!”
“It's kinda funny. Speaking of jerking off.” He thumbed a leg behind him as DeeDee walked up to the counter. “You're number one spank bank star is on the move.”
“Is everything all ri—oh my GOD!” She put her hands over her mouth, but I could still see the shock in the rise of her perfectly tweezed eyebrows. And it wasn't making me feel better about my situation. “Lloyd! Your HAND!”
Okay, yeah. I know. It was shocking. I get it. It was a super giant-sized hand now, and my still normal-sized wrist was having trouble lifting the weight of it. And oh, did I mention it was still stuck in the case and now, oh boy, it was so big it was starting to seriously pinch. I was running out of room in there.
DeeDee freaking out wasn't helping me get through it. “Help MEEEEEEEE!”
She snapped to. “Oh, yeah. Right.”
She hopped over the counter like a parkour master. A second later, she'd snapped on some black rubber cleaning gloves like she was a surgeon on a prime time television medical drama. She grabbed my wrist and started twisting, trying to angle my hand out of the case. “Try not to touch any of the other ones. We don't want to make it worse,” she said.
“Worse? How could it get any worse?” Nope. Don't answer that.
“Just try, okay?” She twisted and turned but my giant hand was not coming out. “We need lube.”
She hopped the counter and ran to aisle four.
“That's what she said,” Kevin said. Then he roach chuckled. Gah. Dickhead.
“Thanks for your help, Kevin.”
“Dude. No means no. You're the one who went all rapey on the doughnuts. This is all your fault, not mine.”
“The second I get my giant hand out of the case, I'm gonna pound you into oblivion,” I growled like an injured animal.
“Whatever, monster mitt.”
DeeDee emerged from aisle four with a giant tub of Vaseline. A minute later, she was behind the counter slathering it onto my giant hand. She jammed her fingers inside the case and rubbed the lube onto my ever swelling—so I wish this story was going in a different direction, but no—freakazoid giant troll hand.
My head started to spin a little. Okay. A lot. “I think I'm gonna pass out.”
“Your heart's probably not pumping enough blood to fuel that massive meat mitt,” Kevin said. “Unless you're hiding a Stallone arm under that polo shirt, your jerk off plan is probably shot, too. No way you'll be able to lift that thing!”
“I'm glad you're finding this so amusing,” I said. Room. Spinning.
“Hey. I'm a talking roach with a pack of dickheads for roommates. I have to find joy wherever I can.”
And that was the last thing I remember.
Chapter 13
I woke up with my cheek pressed against the softest velvet I had ever felt in my entire life. Soooo smooth, luxurious, and absolutely soaking wet. With drool. Crap. My drool, because I had fallen asleep face down, snoring, leaking fluids like an over-topped dam, mouth-breathing like an orc. All night.
Wait. Whose couch was this? Where the hell was I? I opened one eye to peek, assessing for danger. Kinda like I was the star of those spy movies where the bad guys were right next to me and inexplicably waiting for me to wake up before they hurt me? But the good guy pretended to be asleep so he could listen to the bad guys outline their plan? Yeah. Just like that.
The room was dim, but not totally dark. My one eye told me I was face down and had completely drooled-up a red velvet fainting couch that looked like it'd been lifted straight out of Dracula's boudoir in Victorian England. There was another one exactly like it right across from me. There was a polished black coffee table shaped like an old-timey coffin in between. All on top of a very black, very shaggy rug.
Great
. I'd been abducted by vampires. I was dinner. They just hadn't eaten me yet.
I got brave and opened both eyes to scope out the scene and hopefully plan my escape. I was in a long, open room in a trendy, expensive loft by the looks of it. Exposed ducts and heavy wood support beams ran along the ceiling. The walls were brick, and the few bits of actual drywall were painted black. There was a wall of windows, but the curtains were black and pulled shut. Bright white sunlight blazed around the curtain edges. Oh, thank God. It's daytime! I could open the curtains and burn my captors to dust!
I sat up. All the furniture was either black or blood red. Geesh. Textbook vampire! I was about to check my neck for bite marks—you would too if you'd seen what I'd seen—when I practically yanked my bicep clean off the bone trying to lift my hand. It was so heavy. Crap. My giant hand. That wasn't a dream. That happened.
My hand was wrapped in a red towel, on the red velvet sofa, surrounded by ice packs that had clearly fallen off during my (hopefully not undead, because how would I tell Mom I'd been turned into a vampire?) slumber.
Srnnk. Churrrr. Snort. Snort. A loud grumble came from somewhere in the apartment. Uh oh. I wasn't abducted by vampires. I was abducted by a moaning Frankenstein's monster. Well, a snoring one. I had to get out of here.
“Good afternoon, sleepyhead.” DeeDee walked out of a doorway cut into the brick wall.
“Shhhh! Quiet, DeeDee. Vampires!” I yell whispered.
“Are you still dizzy? You're talking crazy.” She wasn't fazed.
“Didn't you hear that groaning?” I whispered. “Monster! Let's get out of here!”
“I'm not leaving. This is my place. No monsters here.” She glanced back at the doorway she'd walked out of. She looked a little uncomfortable. “No real monsters, anyway.”
She rustled around in the kitchen for a few minutes then carried two mugs over to me. She plopped down on the blood-red (see the theme?) velvet armchair next to me. She wore only a large T-shirt for some indie rock band I'd never heard of. And black panties. And I know that because I could see them for a split second when she put her leg underneath her to sit down.
Gulp. Tea Cups. Rainbows. Unicorns. Fat dudes. Think of anything but those panties. I didn't have enough blood flow to support a giant hand and a giant hard-on.
“I don't know what you like, so I figured coffee was a safe bet.” She sat a mug shaped like the Bride of Frankenstein on the coffin coffee table between us. She sipped something bright red out of her own matching mug.
Something red. “Great. You're a vampire.” I threw my hands up in defeat. Okay, I threw one hand up. I still couldn't lift the other one. “I should have known.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Look around. This place looks like the set of, oh, every vampire movie ever made? You work nights. All the monsters at the store don't faze you. And now you're drinking blood.”
She looked at her cup. “It's Raspberry Zinger. Caffeine makes me crazy.”
“Well, this place screams vampire. Vampires always have fancy houses.” I'd seen Twilight, but I wasn't gonna admit that out loud. “And, how do I know you're not lying about the tea to make me feel better?”
“Taste it.” She held it out, but I didn't take it. “And all this?”
She waved her hand around the room. “It's called goth girl with a job. I bought all of this stuff off the Internet, and it came in flat-packed in boxes. I used coupons, too, so it can't be too edgy. I would hope real vampires could afford real antiques.”
“You aren't just saying that to make me feel better?”
“Vampires wish they had this much style,” she said. “How's your hand?”
“I don't know. I'm scared to look.” I may have never uttered a truer statement.
“Then close your eyes, and I'll look.”
She put her mug down, crawled across the shag rug, and knelt down in front of me. Woah boy. I'd seen a few X-rated scenes that started like this. Her pale skin was smooth and flawless. Her face perfect, even without a hint of makeup.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No. But do it anyway.” I closed my eyes and felt DeeDee gingerly moving the towel around. Then silence. Dead silence. “That bad, huh?”
“Actually it's about half the size it was when you passed out. At this rate, it should be close to normal before work.”
“Really?” I opened my eyes and made the mistake of looking. Holy hell. It still looked like someone had sewn a monster hand onto my wrist. And it wasn't just puffy skin. Even the bones looked bigger.
“No permanent harm done. At least now we know what happens when you eat a chocolate doughnut. That's a win.”
“But I didn't eat it.”
“Yeah. About that,” she said. “Customers come in and buy doughnuts all day long, but I've never heard of anyone getting a reaction from only touching them. I'm guessing you're allergic. Or just more sensitive. I don't know. The doughnuts are another magical mystery. The manual says they impact everyone differently. It's all very personal.”
“A mystery? How can you be so cazh about the doughnuts, and all the weird shit you've seen?”
She shrugged.
“Oh God. Let me guess. You're from hell. You're one of them and you didn't tell me because you didn't want to freak me out.”
“You're hilarious. You know that?” She reached up and pushed a piece of my hair back off of my forehead. “I'm a plain old human being just like you.”
DeeDee was hardly plain. Most people never got the chance to walk around in a body like that.
“Maybe I've had more time for all of it to sink in,” she said. “I've also been a goth chick who loves horror movies since I was thirteen, so monsters aren't exactly out of left field. Here. Have some coffee. You'll feel better.”
She handed me the mug. I took it and did a quick check for traces of blood. (Couldn't be too careful.) Nope. Just creamy coffee.
“Where are we anyway?”
“This is my place. I couldn't risk sending you out into the world with a giant monster hand. If a normie saw that, it'd raise too many questions. We don't need the attention,” she said. “Besides, you blacked out. I don't know where you live. You couldn't ride your bike there unconscious. And I sure as hell wasn't sending you home with Kevin. His roommates are the absolute worst. So, here you are, safe and sound.”
“This is your place?” I scanned the room. It was a vampire love nest, yes, but it was also deluxe. Sure, there was a framed Evil Dead 2 poster on the wall, the one with the hand reaching out of the ground choking the babe? Yeah, that one. Next to a framed Frankenstein poster, the one with the moody green Boris Karloff. But other than the color scheme and the monster movie posters, the place was posh, modern, like something only the well-paid upwardly mobile could afford to live in. It had that fashionable open floor plan Mom always pined for after she watched too much HGTV. We were in the living room side, along with the stereo system and flat-screen TV, and the kitchen was on the other side.
“So, this is where you live? All the time.”
“Yep. Home sweet home, mine all mine.”
“Yeah right,” I said. “You mean landlord sweet landlord.”
“No. It's mine. I own it. It's a condo. Look out the window. We're on High Street. Short North.”
“Gee. Aren't you tragically hip?”
Yeah, okay. I tried to play it cool because I felt a little hot around the collar. Dude. I still lived in my childhood bedroom. With my parents. In the suburbs. Could I get any less cool? Oh, you know I can! I had no money. I owned nothing but a busted smartphone and a car that didn't run. And here was DeeDee, sitting in her own condo on the hippest, most expensive street in Columbus. Suddenly, it dawned on me that DeeDee was a lot like Simone. All goals and achievement. Why were chicks so put together? Us nice dudes never had so much as a hope to ever keep up.
“It works out,” DeeDee said, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “It's a hike to work, but I can walk to class.”
&nb
sp; “Class?” I had a feeling I was about to feel even more like a loser.
“Yeah. I go to Ohio State. I've got about a year left.”
Yep. Called it. Might as well raise my hand and say “community college drop out here.” I didn't have the grades to go to Ohio State, even if I wanted to. Not even one of the branch locations. I was a budding Homer Wiley, failed subreddit cult leader, if there ever was one.
“Philosophy major. Ironic huh?” She chuckled. “That's probably why I like the job so much. I'm a goth philosophy major for God's sake. Ruminating about life and death is my bag. I spent years wondering what was out there, what was on the other side. And what it is to be good or evil. And vampires, because, you know, goth.”
“Vampires aren't real. Get serious.” I chuckled.
She wrinkled her eyebrows, looking at me like I was stupid. Again. “Anyway. All the mysteries of life. All the things humans can't understand but try to, the essential truth that we're all searching for in the dark, so close and so out of reach. I mean, how lucky are we? We see the mystery every single day. We see it all in person. Monsters. Demons. Heaven. Hell. It's all real. Right here, running right alongside the mundane world every single day. That job changed my life. I love it.”
“Aren't you terrified?” I took a sip out of my mug, trying to control my shaking hand. Mmm. The coffee was delicious. Creamy and strong and mocha. I should know. I was a barista for three hours once, remember? “It hasn't exactly helped me sleep at night.”
“Or helped you make better fashion choices.” She pointed at my pastel blue polo shirt.
Okay, so yeah, I was still on the church camp kick, because I still wasn't convinced my soul wasn't in danger, okay? Knowing made DeeDee excited. Knowing made me want to hedge my bets.
I wasn't taking chances. I wasn't gonna end up in a fiery pit of hell spiders. If the gnats were bad, and the centipedes were twenty feet of frozen jelly, think of the spiders! But of course, the only thing I could articulate was, “You don't like my T-shirts.”
