DON'T EAT HERE

March 24^th, 1997

The obsolete neon sign came flickering into view while Leah was walking towards her workplace.

THE DUMPSTER DINER.

“You’re late,” a voice hissed when she entered through the staff entrance a few minutes later.

She turned to glare at Bartholomue, “dude, it’s 9:57 AM. I’m literally 3 minutes early.”

“Do you not know how atrocious that word is? This generation’s linguistic degradation is deeply concerning.”

Leah sighed, frowning as if she is deeply sorry for her colleague, “Bart, I hate to break it to you, but uhm… you know we’re the same age and that you’re 20 years old… right?”

He blinked, as if he was having a grand revelation, eyes screaming hell no.

Shaking his head back into reality, he turned back to where he was cleaning the cups, but before he reached the door, he stopped.

“My name is Bartholomue Gingersnap III, peasant,” he snarled. In middle school, when the two were classmates, he had started to use a fake British accent, which he now, at 19 years old, still uses. Poorly. It sadly didn’t end with the accent though. The boy has now grown to despise anything contemporary, speaking ancient English, utterly convinced that everything was better in the seventeen-hundreds.

Leah rolled her eyes and went to the bar. This was going to be a long day.

She had been working here for 5 months, but after basically saving the diner from lawsuit and bankruptcy multiple times, it might have been 5 years. She didn’t really know anymore.

After graduating high school, she was supposedto go to university. She was supposedto be studying theoretical physics. She was supposed to leave this town. Not to be working in this… Dumpster Diner with a Dumpster Zone 2000 and a literal dumpster of a kitchen.

Out of the kitchen in question Cornald Dump, the manager, appears followed by the Hollandaise children that worked as cooks. Yes, children.

“Well, well well. How are y’all doin’?” he walked towards Leah and Bartholomue, “you guys know it is a very special day today, right?”

The five employees looked at eachother in confusion at the mystery of the manager’s words.

“You really don’t know? Take a guess, you’re gonna like it…”

“Is it my birthday?” Frank asked with a hopeful glimmer in his eyes.

Hank shoved him, “No, dumbass. It’s mybirthday!”

“You two have had your birthdays literally last week,” Bartholomue muttered to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Oh! I know what it is!” Spank said.

“Yeah?” Cornald could burst of excitement any moment now.

“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!”

Cornald froze, burying his head in his hands.

“Spank, your birthday is in 8 months…” Leah whispered to the 12-year old, the youngest of the three siblings.

She turned her gaze back to Cornald, who is growing increasingly impatient, “Please tell us already…” she pleaded.

“Okay, Okay,” he dropped his hands from his face, then rubbed them together and clapped, slowly, while a mischievous grin started to appear on his face.

“Hank, Frank, Spank, you know how we’ve been fantasizing about that Michelin star lately?”

The children’s eyes went wide.

“It won’t be a fantasy for far longer!!!”

The four erupted in celebration, screaming and hugging eachother.

Bartholomue and Leah stood still.

“What are you trying to imply, sir?” Bartholomue asked, squinting his eyes. Leah immediately understood that they were thinking about the same thing:

This can’t be good. At all.

“Well, you know how today is health inspection day, and the health inspector knows the cousin of a guy from Michelin-”

Leah’s hands immediately shot towards her temples, her eyes wide, “Jesus Christ.”

Cornald.

Leah always struggled to fathom what was going inside his head. How had the diner even survived 7 years before she came to work here? It’s like all consequences of his actions are only now catching up, but not to him, but to Leah. As if she ended up on the wrong bus and found herself in a completely different location than where she was supposed to go, and was stuck there.

Health inspection day it is.

The ringing of the entrance bell came around noon, just before lunch traffic.

When she saw the man walk through the door, she felt like she recognized him from somewhere.

That hair, those eyes…

Cornald walked up to him, arms spread welcomingly, as if this is a perfectly normal diner, “Mr. Hollandaise! What a pleasure to have you as our health inspector today!”

Oh god.

“Where are my angels? In the kitchen I suppose?” he asked, looking around the diner.

It was undeniable.

Judging by how Mr. Hollandaise has raised his children to be, and how he is practically running to the kitchen, shouting “daddy’s here!”, the diner might live to see another day, Leah concludes.

She sighs.

She doesn’t know if it’s from relief or dread. It’s a mystery.

The inspector leaves the kitchen and walks over to the toilets. Oh that’s gonna be good.

Leah has seen many people go to the toilets and exit them 10 seconds later with a look of pure horror.

Mr. Hollandaise doesn’t exit. He only does so after 10 minutes, looking like he has just inspected a normal toilet.

He must be used to this at home, she figures.

He walks back to the kitchen, opens the door, but stops at the doorframe, “what-”

Leah comes to see what’s going on, but also stops, horrified at the scene unfolding before her.

Spank is running through the kitchen, chased by Frank, holding a piece of raw beef, attempting to spank him with it.

Hank is preparing a burger bun, adding a mountain of raw onion, when he notices his father and Leah standing in the doorway.

“Just preparing a veggie burger, almost done, we just need to finish preparing the meat!” he gestures at the raw chunk of beef Frank is swinging at his brother’s ass.

The spring evening was starting to creep up, the diner slowly shifting to night mode. Warm lights illuminating the space, while the smell of burnt food from the kitchen and cigarettes from the customers mingled in the air.

The diner was well-filled up tonight, even though most people were packed into the Dumpster Zone 2000, a space that took over a third of the diner’s area. It mainly consisted of broken arcade games and sticky tables and plastic chairs, but Leah had to admit, it was pretty cool. Especially the wall that has been completely covered by TV’s: the TV walls. She enjoyed watching movies and documentaries on there when there was nothing to do. There was always something for anyone on there: one person might be sitting on the edge of their seat, watching a goal being scored by their favourite soccer team, while another person might be crying because of a sad dog movie. It was always an interesting sight, seeing so many people crammed together but immersed in completely different worlds.

A dark-haired girl came up and sat on one of the bar stools.

Leah stopped wiping the counter, her look lingering for a second too long before she squeezed her eyes and asked, “What can I get you?”

“Uhm, I’ll take a Veggie burger and some fries?” Leah noticed the girl’s earrings, bronze abstract shapes hanging off of her ears.

She quickly awoke from whatever that was, though, “coming right u-”

She was mid-sentence, when she remembered what had happened in the afternoon. She couldn’t risk it, there was a great chance that those events would repeat themselves. She learned that from experience.

She had already given up protecting the customers from the diner’s monstrosities in her first month of working there. It was happening too often, and they did have to serve customers and not have to give a refund at the end of the day. They had a job to do, which technically was making the customer as happy as possible, but those rules don’t apply here. Just like hygiene rules, and age regulations for employees.

This was the wild west, and Leah arrived there as a fancy suburban and turned into a cowgirl.

But something in her didn’t want to let her own bitterness traumatize the girl before her.

“Wait,” she shot her a warning look, “you don’t want that.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion, “what?”

Leah shook her head, “sorry, I just-” she sighed, surprised at her own awkwardness, “It’s the kitchen. The cooks. You do notwant a veggie burger right now.”

She slowly nodded, but her frown remained, “what’s up with the kitchen?”

Leah looked around to see if anybody was eavesdropping, the sighed and bent over the bar. She whispered, “The cooks, who are all under 16 years old, are convinced that you are supposed to prepare a veggie burger with raw onion and beef, which you allegedly prepare by spanking your brother with it, who is ironically also named ‘Spank’.”

Leah pulled back, noticing her heart pounding in her chest. This place is really stressing me out, huh?

The girl blinked, face unreadable.

Leah suddenly realised that even though this has become normal for her, it doesn’t apply to everybody. She could practically feel the blood flowing to her cheeks and ears from embarrassment, “I’m sorry, too much?”

The girl stayed silent for another moment, then replied, “no, no-it’s not- well, it isa lot, but no, it’s okay.”

She scratched the back of her neck, “are you being for real though?”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Wow.”

“Wow, indeed.”

“You’re right. I don’t actually want a veggie burger. I’ll just take the medium fries and a soda.”

“Perfect, I can’t guarantee anything though.”

She shot a thumbs up and gave the prettiest smile, “I’ll take the risk.”

Leah smiled back, aware that she looked redder than the mushy tomatoes in the pantry, and went to the kitchen.

“MEDIUM FRIES AND A SODA!”

“COMING!” Frank shouted back.

She turned back towards the bar.

“Name’s Val, by the way,” the girl said when Leah came back to her usual spot at the bar, in front of her.

“Ah, well, I’m Leah, nice to meet you.”

“You too! But did I just see two cooks cutting potatoes directly on the floor, while the other was on the counters, mopping them?”

Leah’s brows shot up, and she paced to the kitchen door, peeked through the round window, and walked back.

“Shit. I didn’t even notice.”

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad. Guess I’ve gotten used to it by now, though.”

A comfortable silence fell between them, a soft bubble in the midst of all the chaos coming from all sides, the customers usually weren’t any better.