Brad put the car in park and turned off the engine. Linh sat in the passenger seat and Pathik was in the back. The three of them stared out through the windshield at the restaurant, Osaka-Ya, that rose up before them.
“Why'd you bring us here?” Pathik asked from the backseat. They were in Brad's sedan, a 2004 Mercury Milan, silver, that had a rough ride and low tire pressure. The drive from the warehouse on the other side of town had been quick, silent. Brad had barely paid attention to the streets and all three had tuned out the constant screech of loose belts. Pathik had thought the absurd thought, as Linh pushed him into the backseat when they had all climbed down the ladder from the roof, that it was ridiculous Dick and Debra paid for everything else but to fix Brad's shitty old car.
“We gotta regroup,” Brad turned in the driver's seat and looked back at Pathik and then looked across to Linh. “Get our story straight, ya know, before we go home and talk to anyone.”
“But why here, I mean, the res--”
“Shut up! I don't see you making any plans.”
Pathik rolled his eyes and opened the car door. He got out and slammed the door shut behind him, looking up at Osaka-Ya with disdain. His last memories here hadn't exactly been great, but then, Levi had been there. And Mags. Pathik swallowed hard. The others got out and together they walked inside.
It was an early dinner hour, but the restaurant was relatively busy. There was a low buzz all across the dinning room of conversation and the sharp sputter and crackle of meat on the grills. The three seated themselves in a booth along the front windows. Both booths before and after their own were seated with people. They would have to talk low, or perhaps, the general noise would be enough to cover their voices. Pathik didn't want to talk. Linh didn't want to talk. Brad wanted to order a 40 of Asahi Super Dry and a platter of meat and eat away whatever feelings he had left.
Brad sat on the far side of the booth, Linh slid into the other side and Pathik slid in after her. Together they sat in quiet shock.
Brad pulled a laminated photo off of the wall, leaving behind remnants of the putty that held it up. He looked over it's blue tinted photos of various plates of the raw meat and vegetable platters offered for grilling. They hardly looked appetizing but Brad felt his stomach grumble all the same. Behind him a table of three teenage girls giggled over their own meal. One was struggling to lift a slab of beef, marbled with white fat, onto the grill in the center of the table with her chopsticks until her friend reached forward and stabbed it for her and dropped it onto the flames. They all laughed. Pathik stared at them, unwatching, lost in the sensory overload all around him.
Padma came to their table with menus and a round of waters. Linh recognized her. She wore the familiar uniform that Linh had seen Kelly in countless times across the span of their young relationship. The dress hung loose on Padma, she had smartly ordered a size too large, and it hung well to her knees. Why did they have to wear that stupid ass uniform, Linh wondered. For all the good being in the cult did them.
“Linh!” Padma set the menus down on the table and leaned over to speak in a low whisper to Linh. “Have you heard from Kelly? She didn't show up for her shift, it started an hour ago. I'm dying here. Tracey went off the deep end, the boys are...busy...Kelly was supposed to help me out tonight.”
Linh stared blankly at Padma for a lingering moment, unsure of what to say. Her mind was lost and empty. She softly shook her head. “I—I don't know.”
Padma scrunched her eyebrows and looked from Linh to the two boys with her. “Are you guys okay?”
They were all in various states of disarray. Linh's hair had mostly fallen out of it's ponytail but still a few chunks hung on, the rest framed her face in a frizzy, knotted mess. Her jeans were all scuffed up and there was paint splattered on one sleeve of her hoodie. Pathik wore his jacket still with his hand stuffed into the pockets. His eyes were puffy and red from crying, his shoulders constantly shivered as if he'd never be able to get warm. Brad was the opposite, sweaty and out of breath. He wore just his t-shirt and jeans, there were definite brown, suspiciously bloody, stains across the abdomen of his shirt, and he had paint splattered up his arms, on the back of his neck, in his soft sandy brown hair.
“We're fine,” Brad said sharply. “Can we get—uh—platter number 6 please, and a pitcher of literally anything.”
Padma stepped back. “Alright, anything else?” Her question lingered and the three of them sat silent.
“No,” Brad said simply. Padma reached down and clicked on their grill. It flared up and then died to a low, steady burn. She turned on her ballet flats and left, mouthing a silent well fuck you, too then.
Brad pulled three sets of chopsticks from the box at the far end of the table and spread them out for Pathik and Linh, fiddling with his own—pulling them out of the paper wrapper and breaking them apart to pick at the splintered wood. Pathik watched him with growing disgust. How could he eat? How could he be hungry? Forget about grieving differently, Brad was an indifferent asshole. He only wanted to get his story straight and save his own ass. There were the bloody remains of at least two corpses festering inside the overflow warehouse of Miller Industrial Paints and Chemicals. They had destroyed whole racks of inventory, too. Everything had their stench on it, everything pointed to the four filmmakers and their fucked up cast of characters and their strange, strange horror script. How could they ever explain any of it away. Levi was gone. Maggie was gone. Kelly was gone. That guy, he was gone. Four people can't just disappear, you can't clean it up like that.
“So,” Brad started. Linh stared straight ahead into the brown polyester fibers of the back of the booth. Brad's voice began to drone on and Pathik heard not a single word of it. The two people he cared for most in the world were dead and gone. And what was the point? Levi had asked, for all that death. Pathik glared at Brad as he talked on, and he figured that this was the point.
Rage, sitting cold at the bottom of your stomach after a long, long day. Rage fueled by a constant fear of very real monsters. It settled into place in his gut as if he had always known these truths. It's not a distraction, it's a reflection. And you had to kill the monster, in the end, because it couldn't get away with your blood on its teeth. Because you were bigger than it, in every way. Because you owed it to all the monster had slain along its way.
Pathik straightened his shoulders and pulled the handgun out from the front pocket of his jacket. He held it tightly in his hand and looked down at it. He saw his lavender painted nails and thought of Maggie, and he strengthened his resolve. He clicked off the safety. Without another thought he raised the gun and took aim at Brad's head right across the table from his own.
“Shut the fuck up, Brad.” Pat pulled the trigger. Brad's head flew back with the force, blown apart onto the table behind them. There arose a cacophony of shrieks and screams, and just behind the sound of their fear, low and unimaginable, the distinct sizzle of pieces of Brad's brain cooking on the grill.
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