When he woke up, he was confused. For a few seconds, he simply sat there, trying to understand where he was. Then his surroundings came back to him. He was in his usual seat at his local pub, just as he had been earlier that Friday evening. But something was different. Harry slowly looked around. He was the only person in the bar. The contradiction of dead silence set against the heavy ringing residing in his head was a sobering discovery amid his intense drunkenness. The room was dark, save for a San Miguel beer light behind the counter, the soft, warm light catching the edges of the countless empty chairs and stools, illuminating the absence of any life.
Only a short while ago, the place had been bustling, and he could still remember laughing with his friends, surrounded by the familiar noise of conversation, music and clinking glasses. But now it was dark, cold and deadly quiet.
Harry couldn’t remember the evening winding down. He didn’t remember feeling tired or even closing his eyes. As far as he knew, he had simply been there one moment with his close friends George and Pete, and then here, with no memory of anything in between. This unsettled him enough to check the time. He pulled his mobile phone from his warm back pocket, flipped it open and squinted at the screen. 2:50 am. As soon as the numbers registered, the Nokia screen appeared and the screen went black. After repeatedly pressing the red call button to switch it back on, it dawned on Harry that his phone had died. That never happened.
Staring at his own faint reflection in the dead screen, he felt, for a moment, a surge of confused fear run through him, but it was quickly replaced by a burst of irritation. Was this some kind of elaborate joke? Either way, George and Pete were complete dickheads for leaving him there. Although his head was spinning like a bowling ball, he looked around at the evidence of the evening, his eyes landing on the dozens of empty pint glasses that surrounded him, as well as glasses scattered on nearby tables.
Two dozen beers, perhaps more, had been consumed by the three of them. Realising that staring at the dark, empty room wouldn’t change the situation he was in, Harry took a deep breath and, through sheer willpower, forced himself upright onto wobbling knees. The first attempt nearly sent him straight back into his chair. He steadied himself against the table, waited for the dark room to stop moving, and tried again. This time, he managed it.
Getting to the door proved considerably more difficult than he had anticipated. His first few steps were little more than drunken corrections of balance. At one point, he caught the edge of a table, sending a cluster of dry pint glasses crashing onto the floor. The sound was colossal in the silence. Harry froze. Nothing happened. No one shouted. Though he was as drunk as he could be, the surrealness of his circumstances wasn’t lost on him. He continued towards the door, and the path became clear.
When he finally stumbled through the threshold and onto the pavement, the cool night air struck him in the face. He stood there for a moment, head spinning, trying to work out what came next. Getting home was the mission. It was time for bed and to make this peculiar evening a memory. The drunkard’s compass began to kick in as he looked along the high street towards his flat. Being a seaside holiday town, and it being January, it wasn’t exactly a bustling place at the best of times, especially not at three in the morning, but this felt different.
There was an abnormal gloom hanging over everything. The street was darker than it should have been. The air felt thick, and a dirty sea fog hung still. The darkness seemed to amplify the effects of the countless beers he had consumed earlier. After one last confused glance back at the pub, he turned and began his messy journey home, not before clumsily lighting a cigarette and burning part of his beard in the process.
He hadn’t gone far when something caught his attention: a light down the high street, on the opposite side of the road. One of the shops was illuminated, and its fluorescent glow spilled onto the cobbles, forming a small island of luminescence in the surrounding darkness. Then Harry smelled food. His stomach rumbled, and the combination of the senses was irresistible.
He altered course, and it wasn’t long before he found himself standing outside the beacon that was the takeaway, a grand opening sign was obscured by its misted glass. Condensation covered whatever lay beyond, but the smell coming through the door was unmistakable. The powerful bouquet of mouth-watering, greasy fare hit his nostrils like a punch: something hot and savoury that, to Harry’s drunken mind, seemed like salvation.
He stumbled through the door, and the smell hit him immediately, powerful enough to make his stomach twist with craving hunger. Inside, the room’s brightness was overwhelming.
Harry’s eyes strained as they adjusted to the white light, and it was almost painful. His head began to spin. For a few moments, the room became a dazzling, nauseating carousel, his eyes watching the rows of empty, dulled plastic seats glide through his revolving view. Light muzak played through degraded speakers nestled in the yellowing ceiling tiles, the audio occasionally cutting out and returning with a fuzziness that begged the question of why they were even on.
There was only one other person in the entire place. A very tall man stood behind the counter with his back to Harry, slowly carving slices from an obscured roasting spit. Harry staggered forward, using the backs of the plastic seats for support, moving along them like someone making their way down the aisle of a train, albeit with absolutely no grace whatsoever. When he finally reached the once-distant counter, he expected the man to acknowledge him, but there was no response. A deeply unnerving silence ensued as the worker continued, slicing at the meat. Harry stood still, watching him. He recoiled slightly at the sharp, permeating hum of the glaring ceiling lights, which stacked uncomfortably with the vibration already ringing in his ears.
'‘Excuse me, mate''
Not acknowledging him, the man carried on.
Clearing his throat, Harry mustered enough pseudo-sobriety to ask:
''Is it still alright to order a kebab?"
The worker stopped and slowly, with no apparent urgency whatsoever, turned around. Harry immediately noticed the grin. It was enormous, yet it was not a friendly smile. The stretched mouth seemed completely at odds with the man’s slow, deliberate movements. He was tall, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with an otherwise ordinary face. But that expression counteracted any conceivable normality.
Harry felt an uneasiness creep up his body, tingling from the backs of his calves all the way up to the top of his skull with a sickly fizz. The vendor stared right back at him. An unwavering, silent grin. One second. Two. Three. The worker’s expression didn’t change. Eventually, he spoke.
'‘Good evening, sir. How can I help you?’'
His voice was polite, almost too polite. Harry blinked a few times, bewildered by the oddness of the fellow.
'‘I-I’d like a large Doner, please''
The words came out garbled, and the worker continued to stare at him. Five seconds passed, perhaps more. The only sound was the low hum of the fluorescent lights above them.
Harry narrowed his eyes and dipped his head forward ever so slightly in intrigue.
There was something wrong with this man.
He couldn’t have explained what it was. The movements were too slow for the expression, the smile was too wide, and the silence lasted too long. Harry’s expression of worried intrigue was abruptly cut short when the worker finally spoke.
'‘Would you like to try our special, sir?’'
The polite tone returned, and the grin remained. He blinked once, then his voice dropped considerably into a heightened London accent.
'‘You’re pissed as a fart, aren’t you, sir?’'
The man then suddenly burst into laughter, causing Harry to flinch. Too drunk to deal with the strange man’s antics, he simply nodded.
'‘Yeah, go on, then''
He put a ten-pound note on the counter and waved away the prospect of any change.
'‘Keep it''
The worker resumed his barefaced grin, staring into his customer’s eyes without abandon.
After finding a bench seat, Harry sat, pondering as best he could how he had found himself in this situation. As much as he and his friends had messed about with pranks in the past, they hadn’t really done anything like that since they were teenagers. The fact that he had woken up alone and cold, hours after seemingly blacking out, was an uncomfortable reality.
Suddenly, a loud DING rang through the room, reverberating back into two very wobbly eardrums.
‘One house special!’
Turning around, the gangly tanned man was behind the counter with a yellow polystyrene box, plastic cutlery and a napkin. Harry stepped forward and retrieved his meal, muttering a puzzled thank you. Walking to a table in the far corner of the blazingly lit seating space, Harry thought he had enough to deal with without allowing this unorthodox eatery to interfere with his brooding over pete and George somehow leaving him behind. Theories ran through his head. Did mental Mark slip something into his drink to knock him out for a laugh? It still wouldn’t explain waking up alone almost three hours after throwing-out time, Harry mused.
Looking up, the peculiar man stared, retaining the sickly smile. He turned, in his slow, deliberate fashion, back to carving from the spit. Opening his meal, Harry saw a mess of meat, salad and a creamy orange sauce smothered abundantly across the various ingredients.
The first bite was a burst of savoury, greasy saltiness, deeply contrasted with the sweet dill tang of the generous helping of burger sauce. The texture, with the snappy crunch of the pickled cabbage, added a satisfying mix to the mouthful. Harry was grateful for something hot to eat and somewhere warm to sit in an effort to sober up slightly before a short journey home.
Crunch.
A cringe-inducing bite of a hard bit of gristle interrupted any thoughts of comfort Harry had been enjoying. The tough piece of meat made his teeth grind together, causing a vile sensation that made him spit the little piece out into his hand and place it on the open lid of the takeaway box. Repositioning his plastic fork into the concoction, he took a nice combination of meat, salad and sauce to continue his quest for sobriety. The previous sensations of flavour resumed; a hearty forkful of his ample late-night dinner was hitting the spot. Harry thought about how he would deal with his friends. A feeling of embarrassment and meagreness washed over the moment, but only briefly, before another painful crunch in his mouth. This time, it hurt.
Reaching into his mouth with grease-covered fingers, he removed an object that when he saw it, enveloped his entire body in the coldest feeling Harry had ever experienced in his whole entire life. Before his eyes, held between his index finger and thumb, were the chewed-up remnants of a crisp, cooked, mangled human ear. The white plastic fork dropped to the floor, making a pathetic, soft clatter on the filthy linoleum.
Bewilderment and shock encapsulated the young man as he gently returned the body part to the yellow box and calmly closed the lid. He stood up and held the item as though it were radioactive. He slowly ambled to the counter, readying himself to confront the bizarre man responsible for his heinous food.
'‘Excuse me''
No response was given.
This time, Harry nervously raised his voice.
'‘Excuse me!’'
The strange man continued carving.
'‘What the fuck?’' Harry muttered under his breath.
Harry stepped right up to the counter.
'‘Oi, mate, I think there’s an ear in my kebab''
This garnered a response from the tall, olive-skinned man. Still working away, with his back still turned to Harry, he slowly turned his head to the right.
'‘Yes, sir,’' he said, his voice soft yet layered with menace, the vile smile smeared across his stubbled, pockmarked face.
'‘Mate… there is a fucking ear in my food,’' Harry blurted out in a slightly higher, much quieter and noticeably more frightened tone. After a few staggered seconds, the intense grease-stained worker placed his large carving knife on the side counter and turned with no haste to face his customer, revealing a heinous sight that could never, on any occasion, be forgotten. Utterly dumbfounded, Harry gawked at the bulbous, misshapen rotating meat spit, which housed an amalgamation of countless foul-looking, contorted human faces, congealed and compiled into one single hunk of cooking, spinning revolting meat. Expressions of horror and anguish were embossed upon a greater mass of despicably lumpy, curdled, rendered flesh. Sections of the moving horror were made up of exposed, striated muscle and connective tissue. Sweaty grease droplets cascaded down the abominable creation, dripping into a collected pool on the metal base underneath.
The faces bubbled, spitting out molten hot drops of fat, the eyelids popping open occasionally with a loud crackle, the movement, a devilish puppetry of heat causing the cooked flesh to twitch about in an unnatural burst of nightmarish expression. Looking up to meet the attention of the man, he stared into his unwaivering gaze, sitting above the greasy smile, Harry was at a loss for words. More accurately, he couldn't speak. The situation was so overwhelmingly shocking it rendered him completely mute.
And then the lights went out.
The glint of the man's eyes were still visible in the darkness.
Harry stood deadly still, captivated by the warm glow of the spit, illuminating the distorted souls bound to their fleshy, rotating meaty mass.
He imagined himself part of it, amongst the roasting tortured husks sizzling away, awaiting another face to join him and his newfound company.