The Cannibal House

3. Down, Down

They stepped through into a bar, basically. Right ahead was the bar with lots of vinyl seated stools. To the left and right were three booths each that looked out at the road. The bar had nobody behind it, but two cash-registers and a kitchen behind a rectangular window. It looked like something out of an old '80s movie where the teenagers hang out at an old diner. But less clean, more ghetto. Lee looked right and saw a bathroom door. He said, "Be right back." and went to the bathroom. The door which opened outward, not inward and he looked back at Angie, but she wasn't looking towards him. Lee shrugged and went into the bathroom.

Angie went to the bar and tapped a bell. She waited. The silence absorbed her. She couldn't hear anything. There was nothing on in the kitchen. She wondered where everybody and anybody was and tapped the bell again. She couldn't even hear Lee in the silence. She turned and looked out at the road.

Nobody. Vacant.

She turned around and the old man was looking at her. He had nose hair touching his upper-lip and he was bald with bushes of hair on the sides of his face. He looked unhealthy and very skinny, and he was shaking. His fingers were mangled with arthritis. He said, "Hello."

Angie said, "Hi, are, are you. . ." she looked around, "open?"

"Yep." he said, "what can I git ya?"

"Do you have a menu?"

He leaned down and got something from behind the bar and put a menu on the bar-top. Angie put her hand to it and flipped it open.

The menu was blank.

Angie looked up, screwed up her eyebrows and said, "Is this a?"

The old man was gone. Angie leaned over the bar and then turned and looked up in horror. She opened her mouth to scream, but the cloth went to her mouth, her eyes got heavy and she fell asleep under the might of the smell in the cloth. The thing of her horror took her to the left into the janitor's closet.

And down.

* * *

Lee came out of the bathroom. There was nobody in the place. He looked around, leaned over the bar. Nothing. He looked out the window of a booth and looked towards the car. She wasn't there. Lee smiled, "Oh. I get it. This is some Texas Chainsaw shit right?"

He walked towards where the two doors were.

"Angie."

Lee's jaw tightened.

"Angie?"

He leaned over the bar, looked in the nooks and crannies. He looked at the six booths. She wasn't hiding.

"Angie!"

No response. Lee looked around. He put his hands in his hair and felt like tugging. He thought about his whole life to that point. In first grade a bully asked Angie why she didn't have breasts and Lee knocked three teeth out of the kid's skull. In high-school some knob had groped at her at the lockers and got his nose broken courtesy of Lee. And Lee knew the guy that knocked her up was still in the hospital.

He looked around Road House and thought that he had finally failed. He stepped out for two minutes, literally, just to pee. And she was gone. He put his hands to the bar and tapped a bell. He tapped it again out of frustration. And then looked at his hands on the bar, looked up, jumped and said: "Damn!"

The old man just looked at him, "Menu?"

"Where the hell is my sister?"

"Who?"

"The woman that was standing right where I am now. Where'd she go? Gordo come and take her downstairs or something? Is this some Hostel shit or something, man? Are you gramps from Texas Chainsaw? Talk to me."

"I don't like yer tone."

"Yeah, well, let me show you my music box." Lee made a fist and then pretended to wind up by his thumb and slowly brought up his middle finger, "Where is she?"

"That her? By yer car?"

Lee turned and stared in horror at a neck. A hand grabbed his head and slammed him into the bar, knocking him out. The thing of Angie's horror dragged him to the janitor closet and took him down.

Down, down.