“I know that, Dad,” Slim answered, her fists balled up by her sides, “But I’m still not going. Do you know the damage those places cause to small towns? Fuck that place!”
Her dad spat out his coffee, his features creasing in shock, “Sandra Crawford! There’s no need for that sort of...”
“Yes there is, Dad. And it doesn’t matter whether I eat meat or not. It’s the principle of the thing. It’s not like the crap they sell is meat, anyway.”
Dad huffed, “Look, before you get up on your soap-box, just try to consider that...”
“You’re messing with my mojo, old man, and I won’t have it!”
“Mojo?! What in god’s name are you talking about?”
“My beliefs, then.” Slim slammed her own steaming mug down on the kitchen table; a half-hearted gesture of defiance that had no effect whatsoever on the matter at hand.
Behind her, her brother Preston sighed. “Relax, sister soldier. Jeez.”
“You stay out of this!” she barked over her shoulder.
“Okay, okay. Not saying a word, he answered, raising his hands in mock supplication.
She could hear the humour in her brother’s tone.
Shit-head.
“Well don’t!”
Preston laughed.
Slim fought to resist swinging for him.
She was just gearing up to turn on her older brother when her father piped up again.
This is becoming a two-pronged attack!
“Leave your brother alone, Sandra, dear.”
‘Sandra, dear’
“Call me Slim!” she retorted.
After more than five years of everyone, everywhere outside this mad house calling me ‘Slim’, my own damned family still can’t make the leap!
Seventeen years old, and these clowns still treat me like I’m five!
“I’ll call you a cab! Ship you off to stay with your Auntie Lyn, any more of this bullshit! See how you like them apples.”
Preston grinned, “Apples is about all she’ll eat, Dad. She’d like ‘em fine.”
“Zip it, son.” Dad smiled as he met Preston’s eyes.
Two overgrown children, both trying to get a rise out of me.
Life in the Crawford household.
“You wouldn’t do that to me, and we both know it.” Slim couldn’t help but smile.
Dad smiled too. “Yeah, that’s probably true. She’s a real bitch, you’re Auntie. Still...it’s what you deserve.”
“Send her!” Preston laughed.
“Spin on it, Preston!”
“Hey!” Dad fought his amusement. Slim could see right through it. “If you continue talking that shit, I’ll have both of you living with Evil Lyn!”
Dad had called their auntie by the name, Evil Lyn, for as long as she could remember. Preston seemed to get the joke – some sort of reference to an old cartoon – but it bypassed Slim, like most of the jokes these two shared.
That said, her auntie was evil. Cold as cracked ice.
“Okay, okay...nobody wants to see that transpire. Let’s never speak of that woman again.” Slim took a sip of her coffee, savouring the warmth as it coated her throat. “Also, you do know that children swear from around the age of five, Dad, yes?”
“No, I don’t, or didn’t!” he barked.
“Oh please. You were a kid in the 80’s, a teen in the 90’s. You were no saint, and we all know it.”
“Hear hear!” Preston called over his shoulder.
Slim watched her Dad’s features soften some more.
Yup.
Got him.
“I was like Jesus. But with better hair,” he said, smiling.
They all laughed at that.
Slim was relieved to feel the tension break.
It had looked like a full blown argument for a moment, there.
It had been two days since Plainfield’s main street had spread its legs and given birth to the burgeoning corporate behemoth that was Waldo’s Burger Emporium, and for some reason, the whole shit-kicker town had gone mad over it.
Slim had walked past it on her way to school yesterday, had stopped to peer in its windows, had watched the braying hordes of junk-food shovelling sheep, as they volleyed that muck they called food down their gullets, like pigs in revelling in shit. Zombies gathered around a still warm corpse.
With the heralding of the town’s first franchise restaurant, drawing one and all into its garish charms, she wondered if that was just what her small, beloved town would soon become.
A corpse rapidly cooling, until it was little more than a lifeless, inanimate ruin.
She’d watched as smiling, soulless faces served up steaming hot, nutrition-free junk to the grasping crowd, watched small children laugh and beam with sunshine smiles as mom and dad went about the business of poisoning their perfect, fragile bodies with chemical-laced chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers that could inexplicably survive a nuclear winter, quarter pounders and French fries that housed more bacteria than a Victorian prostitute.
What a world.
Slim’s heart had sank as she’d stood at that window, watching her once proud townsfolk devolve into mindless consumers.
She thought of the small businesses around town that this food chain and its cold, unconcerned owners would drive into the ground.
Patricia’s Butcher’s Shop - just off Blake Street - where the product was fresh, clean and handled with care.
Marv’s Diner, where not even the greasy spoon clichés could dispel the charm that Marv brought to the enterprise; always ready with a smile and a filthy joke, no matter what the age of the buying customer.
And what of her best friend, Meg, and her mom’s all-organic produce store? What would happen to them?
Slim already knew the answer.
The giant, crushing wheels of corporate America would run over them, breaking bones and hearts and bank accounts with every merciless turn of the wheel.
This Waldo’s franchise would be the death of Plainfield, just as its ilk had been the death of small communities all over the states, and the world at large.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Well, perhaps not nothing.
She could at least make a small stand; hold steady to her ideals and never enter that horrid place, no matter what the circumstances.
That’s what she could do.
And that’s just what she goddam planned to do.
She’d rather be caught dead with a sex-toy up her soft spot, than give money to a corporate monster.
Not to mention the food, itself.
What was in it?
Did anyone even care what they put inside their bodies, anymore...what they put inside their children?
“Just come with us, honey. Put aside all this nonsense for just one evening. If you don’t come, I’ll make a point of leaving a burger under your pillow tonight.”
Dad was such a dick, sometimes, “Gross, Pop.”
“And you know what happens then, don’t you...?”
“No, Dad. I don’t.”
Her father leaned forward, his eyes like slits, baring his teeth. “The meat fairy will come for you...”
“Is that so?”
“She’ll come and she’ll see you haven’t eaten your burger, and she’ll be mad. Very, very mad. She’ll whisk you off to burgerland, where you’ll spend the last years of your life, munching on live cows. And you’ll only have a blunt spoon to cut into them, and when you sleep, you’ll hear them calling out to you, Clarice...those poor little cows...”
Slim gave him her most dead-eyed stare.
Both her brother and her father chuckled.
Boys being boys.
Never grow up, do they?
Slim sighed, “Look, I know you two don’t care for my beliefs, or understand them...”
“It’s not that we don’t understand them, it’s that we don’t give a shit, sis.”
“Charming, Preston,” she said, holding up her coffee cup. “How’d
you like this cup rammed up your...”
“Kids...” Dad bemoaned.
Slim, heedless of the rampant immaturity on display in the Crawford household, tried again to explain herself. “I just can’t. I won’t. Anyway, what’s the big deal? It’s just a restaurant – and I use the term very lightly.”
Preston pulled up a chair by the table, reached for a piece of toast and bit down on the crusty bread with a moan, “It’s not just a restaurant, Sis, it’s Waldo’s Burger Emporium. What’s sure to be the fastest growing fast food franchise in the western world. And you know why?”
“Because dumb bastards like you go there?”
“Nope. It’s because all your little school chums – the emo’s, the hipsters, the jocks – it’s because all those no-lifers need a place to hang out and look cool.”
“You’re not so old yourself, Pres.”
“Old enough to know you’re a self-righteous little hippie chick in need of a good hiding,” he replied, grinning.
“Fuuuuuuck you.” Slim purred, flipping her brother the bird.
“Enough!” Dad shouted. When he shouted, he meant business.
They’ve reduced me to their level.
Damn it.
Perhaps this would devolve into a full-blown family brawl, after all.
“I’m not going,” she said, quietly.
“You are,” Dad said, flatly.
“Nope.”
“I’ll ground your ass.”
“I’ll climb out the window.”
“I’ll put boards up.”
“You couldn’t pull that off if you tried.”
“My DIY skills are legendary.”
“You’re DIY skills begin and end with pushing tacks through your Rolling Stones posters, Dad.”
“Go to your room.”
“Go to your room!”
Dad grinned, “Did you just tell me to go to my room?”
“Yep.”
With that, her father navigated his way around the table, took her in his arms, and ruffled her soft brown hair, “I believe I will. Preston, you coming? Xbox time...”
“I’m on it.” Preston stood up from the table and joined their dad. Slim watched them leave the room via the hallway, and stomp upstairs to where her dear old dad had built a game-room.
It’s true, men never grow up!
Her dad’s voice drifted from the houses higher level, “You’re still going!” he yelled.
Slim reached for the now cold toast, and bit into it.
Waldo’s, she thought.
Am I hell.
Slim lay with her head propped up by two soft pillows, the novel balanced before her nose. The smell of the pages filled her with a quiet joy as she lost herself in the author’s turgid world or rape, violence and depravity.
Outside her bedroom window, birds sang gentle songs of summer in the treetops of the sycamores lining the family garden. The bushels below her room chittered with the sounds of a hundred crickets, a soundtrack as comforting as it was familiar.
Summer in Plainfield was a wonderful, vibrant time, and in the midst of this particularly warm June, it felt great to be a part of it, a part of this town.
She pulled herself from the pages of the novel to watch the shards of sunlight dance across her legs as she lay there on the bed. Beams of brilliant light cut through the leaves and branches of the Oaks outside, painting her room in an ever-moving luminescent tapestry.
Life, and light, and sound, flowed over her like a sheltering companion.
She sighed with content as outside, a lawnmower growled to life and began to buzz in the adjacent garden, its ebb and flow washing her in the haze of nostalgia, its grumbling engine and the smell of fresh cut grass transporting her to the endless summers of her childhood, when the world seemed and felt and surely was a much more innocent and safe place.
Her worries about her families eating arrangements for this evening all but forgotten, Slim dropped her book and hopped off the bed. Pulling down her Velvet Underground T-shirt, she walked on bare feet to the window and looked out onto the suburb below.
A small shiatsu was playing ball in the net door neighbours garden, its master, and her headmaster at Plainfield High, Miss Spears, was giggling with delight as the cute little critter bounced and barked and chased its small red ball around the brilliant green lawn.
Catching Slim’s eye, Miss Spears gave a friendly wave. Slim waved back as the woman returned to her beloved animal and resumed play.
Across the street, two kids had built a skateboard ramp, and were taking turns riding over the rickety looking thing. The kids were no more than ten, and had a long way to go before becoming pro, but Slim revelled in their joy as they took on the ramp with fearless, youthful verve.
“There are worse places to live.” she said to herself, smiling.
The ringtone of her Android broke her reverie. ‘Run’ by ‘Spiritualized’ filled the room with its psychedelic goodness, and she pulled herself from the humble vista of her world.
Throwing herself on the bed, she grabbed her phone and looked at the display.
It was Meg.
With a grin, she answered, “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hi, babe. How’s life treating you?” Meg always sounded like she could burst at any moment with joy. If she was a colour, she’d be ‘rainbow’.
“So, so. You pulled me from my book, you know? That’s a crime where I come from.”
She could sense Meg grinning down the line, “Is that so? Well, I hate to be a burden on you, when you’re so deeply involved in your literary adventure.”
“And so you should be.”
“What is it this time? Lemme guess...”
“Shoot.”
“I’m guessing you’re tits deep in a horror novel. Something by Laymon, or Ketchum, or one of those sick fucks you read.”
Slim giggled. “You nailed it! I think you must be psychic.”
“Ha! You’re about as predictable as a politician, Slim. It’s a Laymon, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you.”
“Anytime. Now am I right, or am I right?”
“Like I said, fuck you!”
Both girls were laughing. Slim felt a deep surge of affection for her friend.
And something more.
The two had met in Junior High, right around the same time they’d met with Sam and John, the other half of their not-so-dynamic little gang.
It had also been only weeks after her mother’s passing, and she had been immediately drawn to the stronger, more outgoing girl. Their wayward dress sense, their fully-developed taste in music that was uncannily similar, and their political ideals had brought them together. There had been much to bond over.
Not least of all, their mutual sense of alienation from their peers.
Besides Sam Stevens and John Moore, that was.
They hadn’t been bullied, as such, but there was a clear and unspoken divide between the two girls and the rest of their classmates. They functioned on a different level from the other kids, and the other kids, consciously or otherwise, were keenly aware of the gulf.
They had other acquaintances besides John and Sam - girls and boys with whom they would hang out and share an occasional beer with, but what they really had, at the end of it all, was each other. The four of them made a relatively strong unit, but as John and Sam were tied at the soul, so too were Slim and Meg.
If Meg was in need, she turned to Slim. If Slim felt the weight of the world bearing down on her, Meg would be there to help her bare the load.
It hadn’t taken Slim long to realise that her feelings for her friend ran deeper than mere comradery.
Meg, with her perfect long locks of golden hair, her swan-like neck, her crystalline bone structure that seemed cut from diamonds, her smile that promised not only trust and loyalty, but a deep, loin-tingling lust, her small, perfect breasts, defying gravity and nature’s law of imperfection.
Meg was beautiful, A testament to all that was good and righ
t in the world.
And a stone cold knock-out, to boot.
Slim had known she wasn’t into guys from an early age. Boy bands and male models had done nothing for her. Her earliest experiences of her sexual awakening had involved nervous, clumsy explorations of her own body, much like any other girl riding through the tempest of puberty. The feelings of confusion, the timid touches of her most secret place, all that any teenage girl had undergone, Slim had embraced also.
She could never reach orgasm, though.
In the beginning, she believed that something may have been wrong with her, bad wiring down below perhaps. She contemplated the notion that she may be asexual.
All that had changed on meeting Meg.
For the entirety of their first sleepover, Slim had been on edge. Having Meg so close to her, their bodies touching, the warmth of her friend beside her, under the covers on that long December night, had driven Slim almost to the precipice of madness. What began as a stirring in her loins quickly escalated into a maddening, throbbing heat that demanded to be satiated. The two girls had talked, and laughed, told secrets and watched cheap and nasty b-movies until the small hours, much like any other friends.
For Slim, it had been a torture, immediate and all consuming.
By the time Meg had finally relented to the inexorable pull of sleep, and lay snoring softly by her side, Slim had been soaking. Her pyjamas clung to the wet centre between her legs, her head spun, a delicious ache coursed through her body as she lay staring at her friends bedroom ceiling, the last of the evenings movies droning away softly in the background. Lost in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions, lust, guilt, shame, even a sense of betrayal, she had reached into her pyjamas and allowed herself to quietly drift off into fantasies of the unaware girl laid beside her.
The orgasm, her first, had been devastating.
From that moment, she understood her true nature, and embraced it.
Determined to remain honest and thwart any chance of polluting their relationship, she had told Meg over breakfast the next morning.
Slim had expected her best friend to show disgust, maybe even dismiss her entirely, but Meg, as usual, was full of surprises.
“I can hardly blame you,” Meg had whispered as her mom and dad wandered by, getting prepped for work. “I am something of a knockout.”
AFTERTASTE Page 2
