Milind Padki
POETRY
SCIENCE FICTION
● What Frank Saw in the Parking Lot
OTHER
OBITUARY
(remove spaces)
What Frank Saw In The Parking Lot
Dear Reader, I present this as fiction, or more accurately as lore, since it will be unbelievable if presented as history. Could this have happened? Judge for yourself. Email me.
This was the beginning of the twenty-first century and the place was the Metropolitan East-coast of US. After a long and interesting meeting of the local science fiction association, a group of the participants had repaired to the local diner, a chrome-plated, cushy, happening place. It was mainly a Caucasian, temperate, well-to-do, highly wonkified group with the usual couple of upwardly mobile techy Asians thrown in.
Most of the group ordered diet drinks, garden salads, fruit bowls and such like. The diner offered a fair variety of such fair to accommodate the current lifestyle.
There were these two Caucasian-American women, both in their mid-thirties, both good-looking, both with svelte figures, both with that enviable carnal sponginess to their skins which comes from a salad diet. Both talked a good game about pilates, the glycemic index and the South beach diet.
A waiter carrying a plate laden with a steaming mountain of cheese-fires passed by.
A strange look came over the faces of these two women. A certain complicity in evil developed with astonishing speed. They nodded at each other, much as people about to engage in sudden , illicit and dangerous sex would.
They called the waiter over and ordered cheese fries.
Conversation came to a standstill across the whole table. Spoons halted in mid-air, jaws dropped, horrified looks were exchanged, even between straight men.
Sensing a crisis, the group-leader changed the conversation to Bush-bashing, a favorite sport of the early twenty-first century America. Conversation started flowing slowly but smoothly again, as if nothing had happened.
The waiter brought over the mountain of cheese fries. The two women, their chins set in defiance raised each of those delectable worms, dripping gobs of molten cheese, to their mouths and ate them slowly. The bliss was palpable.
They finished the whole plate.
Frank sat across them at the same table, greatly puzzled and mildly distressed, but gamely carrying on. The dinner party broke up slowly, the guests leaving one by one with cheery good byes and good nights. Our two women waved dutifully at everyone.
The two left towards the end. After they had got into their car and settled in, Frank noticed that one of them had left glasses on the window sill in the diner. Worried, Frank picked them up and and ran hurriedly to their car and knocked on the glass.
According to whatever broken testimony we have from Frank, both the women had removed their human heads and tossed them on the back seat of the car.
"There was nothing above the neck", Frank keeps muttering, "And then it turned and looked at me."
That look apparently destroyed Frank's psyche forever. He ran back to the diner screaming and collapsed at the door. The car left with a roar and was lost to sight within seconds on the freeway.
The diner's manager called the police, who could only take Frank for a psychiatric evaluation.
______________
This was some fifty years ago. Frank still sits muttering on the doorsteps of the diner. He has been a homeless person ever since.
To whoever who would listen, Frank tells the story in broken words. Most do not believe him.
But those who do, especially people of his generation, shake their heads sadly.
“ He should have known. He just should have known.” They say. “Those cheese-fries should have been a dead give-away.”
(Elmwood Park, 10/15/05)
Dear Reader, I present this as fiction, or more accurately as lore, since it will be unbelievable if presented as history. Could this have happened? Judge for yourself. Email me.
This was the beginning of the twenty-first century and the place was the Metropolitan East-coast of US. After a long and interesting meeting of the local science fiction association, a group of the participants had repaired to the local diner, a chrome-plated, cushy, happening place. It was mainly a Caucasian, temperate, well-to-do, highly wonkified group with the usual couple of upwardly mobile techy Asians thrown in.
Most of the group ordered diet drinks, garden salads, fruit bowls and such like. The diner offered a fair variety of such fair to accommodate the current lifestyle.
There were these two Caucasian-American women, both in their mid-thirties, both good-looking, both with svelte figures, both with that enviable carnal sponginess to their skins which comes from a salad diet. Both talked a good game about pilates, the glycemic index and the South beach diet.
A waiter carrying a plate laden with a steaming mountain of cheese-fires passed by.
A strange look came over the faces of these two women. A certain complicity in evil developed with astonishing speed. They nodded at each other, much as people about to engage in sudden , illicit and dangerous sex would.
They called the waiter over and ordered cheese fries.
Conversation came to a standstill across the whole table. Spoons halted in mid-air, jaws dropped, horrified looks were exchanged, even between straight men.
Sensing a crisis, the group-leader changed the conversation to Bush-bashing, a favorite sport of the early twenty-first century America. Conversation started flowing slowly but smoothly again, as if nothing had happened.
The waiter brought over the mountain of cheese fries. The two women, their chins set in defiance raised each of those delectable worms, dripping gobs of molten cheese, to their mouths and ate them slowly. The bliss was palpable.
They finished the whole plate.
Frank sat across them at the same table, greatly puzzled and mildly distressed, but gamely carrying on. The dinner party broke up slowly, the guests leaving one by one with cheery good byes and good nights. Our two women waved dutifully at everyone.
The two left towards the end. After they had got into their car and settled in, Frank noticed that one of them had left glasses on the window sill in the diner. Worried, Frank picked them up and and ran hurriedly to their car and knocked on the glass.
According to whatever broken testimony we have from Frank, both the women had removed their human heads and tossed them on the back seat of the car.
"There was nothing above the neck", Frank keeps muttering, "And then it turned and looked at me."
That look apparently destroyed Frank's psyche forever. He ran back to the diner screaming and collapsed at the door. The car left with a roar and was lost to sight within seconds on the freeway.
The diner's manager called the police, who could only take Frank for a psychiatric evaluation.
______________
This was some fifty years ago. Frank still sits muttering on the doorsteps of the diner. He has been a homeless person ever since.
To whoever who would listen, Frank tells the story in broken words. Most do not believe him.
But those who do, especially people of his generation, shake their heads sadly.
“ He should have known. He just should have known.” They say. “Those cheese-fries should have been a dead give-away.”
(Elmwood Park, 10/15/05)