Black Sow Buffet
A grisly new tale by Cesare Weltschmerz
Sandra stood facing a mirror spanning the length of the wall. The mirror behind her cast her reflection back an infinite number of times. In the silence of that empty room, the illusion was unnerving, but unlike that morning, all these different versions of her stayed exactly the same.
She stifled a sob as she slung her gym bag over her shoulder and switched off the lights. Blake stood by the reception desk—the only piece of furniture left—to see her off. He wore a sheepish grin, rocking on the balls of his feet, his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“Well, I guess this is it,” he said with a cheerfulness Sandra found unbearably grating. “I still got a few things to take care of before I close up, but I could walk you to your car if you like.”
It took a great effort for Sandra to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Now he pretended to care about her safety and well-being.
“That's okay,” she replied. “I don't wanna keep you. It's not that late anyhow.”
Before he could try going in for a hug, she stuck her hand out. They shared a limp, impersonal handshake, then she walked off without responding to his awkward farewell.
Although the gym's closure was inevitable, it was a devastating blow. Helping others get in shape had helped Sandra in her own recovery. More than anything else, it was the routines she kept that held the temptation to relapse at bay.
The mall the gym was located in had grown more vacant and decrepit each year. Groups of thugs congregated in its shadowed recesses, and the sparse security was essentially useless.
Three months ago, Sandra had been assaulted while walking to her car. No arrests were made, and the experience left her in a state of constant anxiety and depression. This was when the temptation to relapse resurfaced with a vengeance.
Blake was of no help or comfort during this time, and it made Sandra realize what a mistake she'd made getting involved with him. He was handsome and charming, but terminally vain in the way some gym rats are. She sensed that in large part his disinterest was rooted in disgust. Despite the clean bill of health she'd been given after the assault, he saw her as damaged goods. Besides, for a guy like him, there was no shortage of fresh opportunities.
That was all bad enough, but when Blake decided to close up shop, the news destroyed her last psychic defenses. She'd only been informed the previous day, and Blake offered no explanation for this abrupt change of affairs.
After work that night, she stopped at no less than seven drive-thrus, inhaling these purchases in the car through a veil of tears. Before going home, she bought two pints of ice cream, which she shoveled down in the darkness of her apartment.
The shame that followed resembled a drunk's after coming to from a bender, and much like a badly hungover drunk, she was soon hunched over the toilet.
She passed the night on the bathroom floor, unable to sleep and too despondent to move. Worse than the relapse itself was the perverse satisfaction she got from indulging those old impulses.
As she prepared for her last day at the gym, her reflection gave her a terrible shock. Gone was the fit, pretty young woman whose supple body possessed all the vibrancy of good health. In her place was a creature scarcely recognizable as human— a swinish beast that was all cheeks and jowls and dangling neck. It was a face so much like her mother's she nearly screamed. This misperception—perhaps brought on by fatigue and crushing despair—lasted only a second but was enough to send her to the toilet one last time before resuming her morning routine.
Now Sandra made the final journey to her car. To her great relief, it would be the last time she'd have to pass the mall's food court. Passing the food court, with its greasy Sbarro and foul-smelling Chinese place, had always been her least favorite part of coming to or from work. While the rest of the mall was struggling, the food court was alive and well. You could always find a herd of morbidly obese patrons, slouched over trays laden with items from the food court's considerable array of offerings. Without a modicum of shame, they feasted greedily. They even projected an aura of smugness that never failed to disturb Sandra at her very core. It was worse than the loitering thugs or the general desolation of the mall itself.
She couldn't help thinking of the parents she'd lost before turning sixteen. A few years after her dad's painfully drawn out death, it was Sandra who found her mom on the couch after the final heart attack. She didn't need a shrink to explain how this had contributed to her own issues. So, when she'd walk by that food court and witness the gluttony on display, it was more than disgust that made her quicken her pace.
Her halfhearted attempts at self-reassurance were abruptly cut off as she made her way past the food court.
It was even more crowded than usual. Not a single table was empty—but that wasn't the strangest part. Normally, the food court's denizens would be absorbed in their consumption, paying no mind to anything else. Now they were all gazing at her, and the look in their eyes suggested an adoration that Sandra found both bizarre and unnerving. Doing her best to ignore them, she kept moving, resisting the urge to break into a run.
Another surprise awaited her as she approached the exit.
Two security guards—both as corpulent as the food court's regulars—blocked her path.
“Ma'am, we're gonna need you to come with us,” said a white guard with a grease-stained blue uniform and a large mole on his nose.
“What? Why?” asked Sandra. “We just have a few quick questions is all,” said the other guard, a bald black man with barbecue sauce at the corner of his mouth.
“What's this about?” demanded Sandra, visibly shaking. All she wanted was to go home.
The guard with the gross uniform grabbed her arm. His body odor was horrendous.
“Just cooperate with us for a few minutes, then you'll be free to go.”
Too exhausted and demoralized to protest, she let them escort her to the elevator.
The doors opened, revealing a wheelchair and two rolls of duct tape on the seat. The black guard restrained her, using the advantage of his bulk to get her into the chair.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am,” said the white guard, using the duct tape to fasten her to the chair. When she began to scream, he used a piece to cover her mouth.
Sandra's mind flashed back to her assault, and the tears began to flow. The black guard placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Don't be upset, ma'am. We ain't gonna hurt you.”
The white guard removed a panel under the elevator buttons, where there was an additional, unmarked button. He pushed it, and their long descent began.
They were released into a crude tunnel, with light bulbs strung every few feet from the dirt ceiling. Sandra was wheeled into an open space lit by black candelabra. Twelve or so large figures waited, standing in front of a rectangular altar, its ebony surface glowing in the candlelight. Behind the altar hung a black drape.
The drape shifted, and a figure on a mobility scooter emerged. His features appeared shrunken within the doughy bulk of his face. The gray hair he had left hung well past his shoulders. Sweat glistened in the stubble of his numerous chins. After a few seconds of wheezing, he began to speak in a voice like the gurgling of a fetid swamp.
“We're very sorry to have frightened you like this, but it was necessary. I know it's difficult for the uninitiated to appreciate what we're trying to accomplish, especially someone like you. Oh yes, we know all about you. We're well aware of the disgust you harbor towards our kind and what drives it— it's what makes you perfect for this. Your whole life, you've tried to fight the hunger we know so well. You've considered it evil because you don't understand. I was like you once, but fortunately I was enlightened. This hunger we share isn't born of mere survival instinct like with most of the dumb, unfortunate creatures of this world. Ours is a sacred hunger, the hunger of the Great Mother who birthed us all. She has many names, but none do justice to Her splendor. This is sacred ground we stand upon, for one of Her incarnations slumbers below us. It is our intention to awaken Her, so that our race may know Her loving embrace once more. But first we must appoint our priestess, someone with whom she can commune directly. None of us could survive such an ordeal, but you on the other hand...She showed you to us in our dreams. It's no coincidence that you took a job here, neither are all the circumstances that have brought you to this very moment, child. How I envy you. Let us begin.”
One by one, the congregants went behind the black drape, each taking a candle on their way. Her muffled screams went ignored as she was brought in after them. The sight facing her now was something neither her abduction, nor her subterranean captivity, nor even the insane speech to which she'd been subjected could prepare her for.
From the floor of this chamber grew a twitching pink protrusion, bristling with coarse black hair. The twitching grew more intense, as though the thing could sense what was about to transpire. Sandra was brought closer. The man with the gray hair held a black bowl beneath the thing's bulbous tip. A viscous yellow liquid began to ooze out, first in a dribble, then in a steady stream. Once the bowl was full, the man raised it in supplication. The congregants began to chant incomprehensibly.
A middle-aged Hispanic woman removed the tape from her mouth, then pinched her nose shut. Another pair of hands tilted her head back and held it in place. With her first gasp for air, her jaws were held open, and the gray-haired man poured the contents of the bowl down her throat. She was shocked to find the taste in no way disagreeable, though the texture was unpleasant. Now the congregants left as they had entered, leaving Sandra by herself.
She could feel the noxious beverage worming its way down to her stomach. Within a few minutes, the effects of what she'd ingested became vividly apparent. The tomb-like chamber took on vast, cavernous proportions. That vile, twitching appendage loomed over her a thousand feet tall. Instead of milk, it discharged a sludgy, star-encrusted blackness that consumed everything, until there was only the perfect stillness of a nocturnal firmament. One star loomed larger than the rest, shuddering as it began to turn and reveal its true face. It was an unveiling that annihilated everything Sandra was or might have been.
Sandra's new family anxiously awaited her rebirth. They had no idea what to expect, or if she'd even survive. The elect were seated at the altar, eyes fixed adoringly on the idol at its center. The figure was carved from the same nameless substance as the altar itself, a thing not seen by man for countless eons. It squirmed in the candlelight, a fat, grublike body reared up by a procession of spindly limbs and hooves, its many eyes glaring above a great snout and a cluster of hairy, swollen teats.
After an hour had passed, she was taken from the inner sanctum and brought to her appointed end of the altar. Her expression was blank and uncomprehending. The altar was heaped with dishes of every imaginable sort, from the gourmet to the most rancid slop. Some of what sat steaming at the altar was only fit for appetites gone truly depraved. Despite their ever-present hunger, Sandra's family displayed elusive restraint in leaving their fare untouched, eagerly awaiting some signal from her.
She remained unresponsive, her head slumped over her plate. Gradually, signs of life began to return. It was all those smells commingled that finally brought her out of her stupor. Before today, she would have been sickened by such sights and scents, but now she was famished beyond all reason. She seized the two nearest offerings—a spiral ham and a tray of donuts—and laid into them without remorse. Having received their sign, the rest followed suit.