Buddy's BBQ

I hated this God damn job market. I had a masters in engineering, and yet somehow I end up a janitor at Buddy's Bar-B-Q and Grill. Open all night because I live in a town where jack-holes might want barbeque pork rinds at 3 AM.

  

 When I pulled up in the back lot, I saw our manager, Amy, waiting by the back door. A telltale wreathe of smoke told me this would not be a good night.    

"I Though you only smoked when you were stressed?" I asked, walking to the door. She sighed, facial piercings clinking against each other.

"I am stressed. Rebar brought some friends over," She groaned.

 

 A quick note on Rebar: His real name is Robert. He earned the nickname after an idiotic football accident tool his leg. His dad, instead of paying for an artificial one, made on himself. As you can probably guess, it's a mess if iron and rebar. His dreams of being a professional wall of meat ruined, he became our fry cook. He's about as smart as the meat he cooks, and his friends aren't much better.

"Fucking peachy," I sighed. Amy turned around and headed back inside.

" You better come in too. No one else is qualified to clean up the vomit."

 

     The Kitchen was a madhouse. Multiple hicks in various states of undress surrounded Rebar, who was currently chugging what appeared to be one part strawberry milkshake, three parts vodka. I decided to start my shift by cleaning the front of the restaurant. Hannah was manning (womanning?) the counter.

Hannah is our order-taker and customer service rep. She's about 5 feet tall and really sweet. She was finishing a call as I entered.

 "YEAH YOU ASSFUCK! IF YOU EVER SHOW UP HERE AGAIN, I WILL ACQUAINT YOUR BALLS WITH A SAUSAGE GRINDER!"

She slammed the receiver down." Oh heya Ted, what's up?"

 "Have you seen Amy?" I asked.

 "She's in her office. Said she was working and not to bother her unless someone was dying."

   I knew from experience that "working" actually meant "masturbating furiously to deviant furry porn" and vowed not to bother her even if someone died.

 "Right," I sat down in one of the booths. "How has the night been so far?"

  Hannah grimaced. "Noisy," she said, glancing towards the kitchen. As if on cue, the hoots and hollers that had constantly assaulted us grew louder and more frantic. Hannah turned to me. "You gonna check on them?"

 "Someone probably just got their dick stuck in a grease trap," I said. "Be back in a second."

 

  The entire kitchen was crowded around Rebar. I couldn't see him, but the pained moans he was making told me something was wrong.

  "Alright pigfucker," I growled, grabbing the nearest hick. "What the hell did you do to him?"

   "I dunno man," he squealed. "He thought it would be funny to eat some raw meat, and then he just... collapsed!"

 I swore. The meat we sold probably wasn't safe to eat cooked.

  "I-I'm okay fellas. Y'all can stop worryin. It was just a cramp."

  I went over to the now sitting Rebar.

 "Look," I said. "I don't really like you. In fact, I can barely stand you. But you're the only one who knows how to work the death trap we call a deep fryer, and therefore the only reason I have a steady paycheck. Don't fuck that up."

When I looked back down, Rebar was gone. I saw him in the corner of the kitchen, seeing how many burger buns he could stuff in his mouth.

It was gonna be a long night.

 

I was woken by the ringing phone.

 "Fuck, it's three already?" I groaned.

"Yep!" Hannah's chipper tone provided a stark contrast to mine.

  See, every night at 3 AM we get an order for barbeque pork rinds. It's not the same person every time either. Different voice, different address, but the same order at the same time.

By the time I snapped back to reality, Hannah was wrapping up the phone call.

  "So that's a barbeque pork rinds? And what's your address? Elm? Great, we'll deliver it shortly. Have a nice night!" She turned to the kitchen. "Rebar, We got an order of pork rinds!"

There was no response. "REBAR! GET COOKING OR I WILL SHOVE YOUR CUNTGUZZLING FACE INTO THE DEEP FRYER!"

  The only response to that (incredibly disturbing) threat was a faint moan. Hannah looked at me, as if it was my job to constantly check on the kitchen. I made a mental note to tell Amy we needed someone to do that, and headed to the kitchen.

 

 The kitchen was empty, and not just of people. While I wouldn't put it past one of Rebar's friends to steal our buns, I doubted any of them were desperate or resourceful enough to steal our fryer oil. And why was it so damn cold? A quick look around solved that mystery. The freezer was open.

Our freezer, by the way, is fucking massive. As in "bigger than the restaurant" massive. No we don't know how, it's some House of Leaves bullshit. We don't question it because hey, free space is free space.

"Hello?" I called into the freezer. Starting to enter, I felt something hit my foot. I looked down. Rebar's fake leg. He wouldn't be getting far without that.

Picking up the malformed prosthetic, I entered. Something had clearly gone wrong. Entire aisles were empty, spots not covered in frost the only hint that they had been occupied. What was Rebar doing with them?

The answer to that question became apparent when I found Rebar trying to pull a slab of beef off a hook. At least, I assumed it was Rebar. The thing was barely recognizable as human.

Imagine a cross between a blobfish and a trash bag, one of those translucent ones that lets you see everything inside. Now imagine that trashfish had been so filled with trash, it was splitting open at the sides. Imagine that someone had used the trashfish to dispose of a human skeleton, and shards of bone were poking through the bag.

   I vomited. The thing turned its head, giving me a view of the grease burns running down its chins. In a flash, it leapt towards me. Instinctively, I threw a punch, connecting with the thing's head. It was like punching putty. I stumbled back. The thing's head looked half-deflated as it kneeled down and starting lapping up my puke.

"So... hungry..." It looked up at me. One of its eyes had popped, vitreous fluid leaking down onto its burned chins. It opened its mouth. Maybe it was going to say something. I'll never    know. I stabbed the fucker with its own metal leg.

 It burst like a water balloon. A water balloon, except what was inside wasn't liquid. A normal balloon then I guess. Whatever. What's important was what was inside.

If a lamprey, a tapeworm, and John Carpenter's Thing had been put into a blender, and the resulting slurry had been poured into a barbed wire-shaped mold, it might look something like the abomination before me. Make that abominations. There appeared to be around 3 of the fuckers squirming around. One of them was slithering towards my leg. I stomped on its head and it let out a horrifying shriek and wrapped itself around my leg.

Now it was my turn to shriek. It felt like burning needles were being driven in to my skin, and then dunked in acid. Like an Indian burn from God.

  "JESUS SHITFUCKING CHRIST," I screamed. While I writhed in pain, the little fucker had crawled toward my face. Its spines brushed against my neck, triggering another burst of pain. I screamed again. Seeing an opportunity, the razorworm rushed into my mouth. I did what any sane person would have done in my position. I bit down.

  My teeth cut straight through the damn thing, bisecting it. Salty blood filled my mouth. I spit it out and watched the worm squirm on the ground. I grabbed an icicle off a shelf and stabbed it until it stopped. Already my leg was feeling better, although that might have been a result of wearing summer clothing in a meat locker.

  Wait. Weren't there more of them? I turned around and saw a spiky body sliding out the door.

 

Fuck.

 

I burst in to the kitchen.

 "SHITFUCKSHITHANNAHHAVEYOUEVERSEENSLITHER?" Hannah ran into the kitchen

 "Oh my God Ted, are you alright?" She asked. I realized I probably looked pretty bad, limping and covered in frost.

"I'm fine, I think," I replied.

"Great," she said," Now what the FUCK just happened? And why did you ask if I've seen Slither?"

"Well have you?"

"No," Hannah sighed. "It's been on my list, but our library has about 3 DVDs, and two of them are The Birth of a Nation, It's never on TV, and I can't stream it because my internet is- Wait, why do you care? And what happened to your leg?"

"I'll Explain later, do you at least know the plot?"

"Yeah, it's the one with the worms right? Because worms slith-"

 Like some kind of Body-snatching Beetlejuice, the worm took us saying its name as a summons, and leaped out of... somewhere. There was a hiss, and suddenly I was blind.

 There's a reason you shouldn't use pepper spray in an enclosed space. You'll hit your assaulter, along with everyone else in the room. So when Hannah tried to stop the worm, it got me as well.

 While I was curled up on the floor trying to ignore the feeling my eyes were melting, I heard the beeping of our ancient microwave and the sound of something splattering inside it.

Eventually I realized my eyes no longer felt like they'd been dunked in lye, and got up.

Hannah grabbed my arm, face pale.

"What the FUCK was that?" she asked, voice trembling. "Was that why you were asking those questions? Christ, it was... just... fuck!"

 She was clearly terrified, and I wasn't faring much better. This whole night been a clusterfuck, from the assholes here earlier, to our fry cook walking out on us, to my stumbling across the thing in the freezer...

 I shook my head. We had bigger thing to worry about.

 "It gets worse," I said. "There were three, and I've only seen two killed."

"Well fuck, what should we do?" Hannah asked.

"We should probably warn Amy, I replied.

 

 

(For those who think I'm being oddly casual for having almost died twice in that many hours, may I remind you that shock is a hell of a thing. I'd also tell you to go fuck yourself, but people who nitpick internet stories tend to have masturbatory sex lives already)

 

 I don't think I'll ever forget the sight that awaited us inside Amy's office. Her monitor had fallen over, and was displaying what appeared to be an anthropomorphic echidna having sex with four separate phyla at once. Watching her fight the worm was pretty scary as well.

She was wielding a broken beer bottle, presumably taken off the rows of bottles that lined the walls of her office, and was thrusting it like a lion tamer whenever the worm came close. I don't think neither Amy nor the worm expected me to start throwing bottles. Now, I'm not the best pitcher, and I probably doused half the room. While the worm tried to figure out why it suddenly smelled like various fermented fruits, Amy acted. She pulled out her lighter, flicked it on, and threw it.

What I was expecting was a giant fireball that would incinerate the worm. What I got was more of a lake of flames. No matter where it ran, the floor was on fire. After a few seconds, both the fire and the worm died. Hannah burst in, having liberated the fire ax from behind the building. We all stared at each other for a minute. Then the fire alarm went off.

"I need a raise..." I began.

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