Death Screwed Up

Cookie Me

"I'm telling you guys, scrambled eggs are disgusting," I screamed across the table to Liz. I mean, seriously, who would want to puncture the yellow piece of heaven right at the center of the egg?

"No Sam. You're the disgusting one here." Rachel narrowed her eyes at me while the rest of our friends laughed at our antics. After years of knowing her, I could read the little twitch in her lip and tell that she was just playing around. Hiding a smile, I let out a huff and glared at her long enough to get a few more laughs.

Crazy stories filled the air while we waited for our usual order of pancakes. Liz went on about her latest horror story from work, and when we found out that toilet paper was being guarded by cops, Payton wound up spilling her milkshake all over the table. It was always like this when we ate here, too carefree and busy laughing to pay attention to anything else in the world. The milkshake spill was a pretty big loss in her book since Remington's always had the best milkshakes in town.

"Payton! Oh my god, it's so sticky!" I laughed when it started pooling around my plate of eggs.

A chorus of "ew Payton"s joined me from the rest of the group. Shaking my head, I kept laughing and went to the bathroom to get some paper towels - we came here too often to leave a mess for the waiters.

It wasn't until my hand was on the door to leave the bathroom, arms laden with piles of towels, that I felt something touch my shoulder. Every muscle in my body froze. A wave of panic hit me. There was no one else here except me, I knew that much for sure. Then I felt the pain. Icy cold ran through my body from the top of my shoulder all the way down to my lungs. I hunched my back in pain, and now I started to realize why my mom always told me to wear gloves in the cold. Letting out a gasp, I turned around.

In front of me stood a tall, lean hooded figure wielding a matte black, curved scythe. The whole length of the blade was covered in harsh engravings that looked like chicken scratch. Lower on the shaft, his bony hands clutched the scythe tightly, barely visible under his billowing robes. I cringed when I saw the fleshless bones that gleaned up at me and felt a wave of bile rise in my throat. I curled my toes inside of my shoes to steady myself.

Plastering on a fake smile, I pushed the hand off my shoulder. Immediately the painful bite of cold was replaced by the semi-humid air of the bathroom. I was utterly terrified so I resorted to my best defense: humor.

"I'm sorry, but I don't like bony men." The second I finished saying that, I ran out of the bathroom as if my life depended on it, only to freeze again. This time, it wasn't because of someone touching me, and it wasn't even because of someone saying something. It was because of the complete and utter silence.

Everywhere I looked, time seemed frozen. Across from me, my friends stood mid-laugh while Rachel held a wad of paper towels over Payton's head. Outside the window, behind the allergy-inducing cherry blossoms that I always hated, I could see that a car stood still in the middle of an intersection. Turning my head back to the kitchen, I found that the constant chatter from the waiters and cooks had also died out.

All I could utter was, "What the crud-cake."

While I stood there having a completely internal mental breakdown in the middle of my favorite Sunday lunch spot, the hooded figure walked up next to me and looked around. If I were anywhere near normal brain functioning, I probably would have laughed at how normal he was acting. With a fancy flourish that seemed all too unnecessary, he held a cookie in his hand and lifted it into his hood to what I could only assume was his mouth.

Panic attacks were something I had been taught about in school. I guess I could say I was lucky, I hadn't ever experienced one, but right now I was starting to think I was going to have my first Panic Attack. Meanwhile, after taking a bite into his cookie, The figure finally decided to talk. "First of all," his deep voice grated out. "I am not bony. I'll have you know I'm sexy as -"