The door doesn’t give us trouble this time; it’s asleep I think. Doors love their sleep.
We go to see Nan and Gin — hands folded together on two chairs that secretly molest their butts.
“How’d you get here?” Mort asks Gin.
“Lenny drove,” Nan answers for undead Gin.
“Where is that nerdy then?” Mort asks. “I missed him at the show.”
“He’s outside,” Nan says. “He refused to come inside on the count of his vegan-straight-edge-in-your-face attitude.”
“I’m gonna go be vegan with him,” Mort says.
He leaves the conversation and then the restaurant. A faint odor follows behind, breathing through the flex-kindly door, which was born in the kitchen’s refrigerator.
Satan slups on his queer grin.
Then he aims this grin at Gin and Nan, striking them with happy-laced words, a motion that he has practiced for days: “Welcome to Satan Burger.”
Nowhere and oblivion were completely different things/places to Richard Stein. For him, oblivion is when something goes into nothing and nowhere is the place where something can come out of nothing.
Out of nowhere, I cry: “Don’t order, Nan.”
And there is silence and eyes.
Richard Stein said that some people are allergic to being looked at. I am one of those people. I like being considered a shadow for this reason. If I don’t talk people won’t look at me, and I won’t get an allergy attack — also known as a panic attack.
“What would you like?” Satan asks them.
Christian says, “You’ll lose your soul if you eat this food. Don’t order.”
Slamming fists, mad. “You’re killing my business,” Satan says to Christian. “Why did I hire you people?”
“She’s a friend of ours,” Christian says. “I’m not gonna just let you take our friends’ souls.”
Nan doesn’t understand. She shrugs and makes a smacking noise with her lips, tough guy trying to be cute again.
Christian takes her aside and discusses the situation, and I watch a table mounting a peanut. She doesn’t like him pushing her about, even if it is important, so she elbows his hand away. He tells her Satan’s story and she tells him about Gin’s condition, and they both feel the serious weight of the situation weakening their shoulders to the ground. Apparently, Gin is living proof of what has happened to the world. And even without feeling his beatless heart, Christian can tell Gin is dead. He looks like a zombie, or more like a vampire — like Vod. Now they believe Satan’s story is Truth. Nobody is going to Heaven and nobody is going to Hell. Our boring life is eternal.
Then Christian introduces them to Satan.
Satan shakes Nan’s hand. “Hello, Nan.”
And he shakes Gin’s hand. “Hello, Gin. You are another of my landlords.”
However, Satan doesn’t realize that in shaking Gin’s hand a blue light quietly sparks, turning it into a living creature that eats, breathes, thinks, poops, and sleeps. Neither Gin nor Satan realize what they’ve done, and I don’t feel up to telling them.
Mort comes back alone.
“Lenny’s not there,” he says.
“What? He just disappeared?” asks Christian.
“I don’t know,” Mort says. “I saw his truck, but Lenny’s not there.”
Nan mumbles this: “Where’d that faggot go?”
She does not realize that Satan is a homosexual, and was very offended by that remark. He already hates her. Satan usually hates all girls anyway. They always steal men from him.
“He was out in the parking zone?” Satan asks.
Nan looks to him. “Yeah, why?”
“The Silence,” Satan says.
Nobody questions him.
“The Silence took your friend.”
Nobody says What’s the Silence?
Satan Says, “It is a creature that came out of the walm. Large as a lake, this creature, but it’s not made of water. It is made of sound. And it feeds off of sound, or anything that makes sound, or anything that can hear sound. It will empty this entire world of sound if we let it. It claims this side of town its territory. Anybody that’s out on the street is at risk. It will eat anything that it hears and your friend must have been something it heard. He will never come back. Nobody ever escapes from the stomach of Silence.”
Satan is wrong about that last statement. I have been to the stomach of Silence, and I have escaped. (Then again, I consider myself nobody.)
We decide to eat some sandwiches, which is my favorite style of food. We wanted to eat Satan Burgers, but Satan tells us that it is impossible. If we eat Satan Burgers our souls will fall out of our bodies and the walm will chop them up and turn them into sillygo to make itself go. So sandwiches are fine.
The sandwich is one of the most important foods ever invented. Named after John Montagu, 4thEarl of Sandwich, who also had a pet bulldog named Sandwich. The bulldog had a silver collar that said “Bulldog of Sandwich.”
The sandwich was invented all by accident. Someone dropped a food tray at John Montagu’s birthday party, which was on a fun-Sunday. The food tray had small pieces of bread, pieces of cheese, and pieces of meat.
Then Sandwich, John Montagu’s bulldog, ate all three of them at once. And some woman cried, “What a disgusting bulldog. It ate bread, meat, and cheese all at the same time. Bulldogs don’t have any manners at all, do they?” Bulldog just sat there and farted.
And from that day on, Bulldog of Sandwich would not stand for eating anything less than meat and cheese on two pieces of bread.
John Montagu told his bulldog that nobody liked his disgusting eating habits, and that he should eat the meat, cheese, and bread all separately, but Bulldog of Sandwich would not give in to the immature ideals of high society. So he went on eating his food in his own way, and later went on to market this style of food to the public. He called it the sandwich.
“How dare you name a disgusting food creation after me?” said the Earl of Sandwich.
“How dare you name me after a disgusting creation like yourself?” said the Bulldog of Sandwich.
Then John Montagu became so angry with his bulldog that he killed him and ate him between two slices of bread just to prove how disgusting a sandwich was. Surprisingly, when John Montagu finished eating his bulldog, he said, “My Sandwich was a genius,” but by now, the genius was already digesting in his master’s stomach.
When Gin tries to eat, he notices that one of his hands doesn’t work right. He looks down to see if it is still there, and it is. But it’s moving like a frantic spider, crawling up his side and attacking his other hand.
“WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO MY HAND?” Gin screams, crashing backwards to the floor-sickness, sandwich scatters everywhere.
We all look.
The hand is rummage-running all over the floor, slipping in the sandwich mustard and mayonnaise, trying to detach itself from Gin’s body. Gin’s shock takes control of him and his body flop-jerks crazy. His dreadlocks get covered in sandwich, and his hand eats a piece of tomato and onion.
“What’s wrong with him?” Satan yells. “Is he spazzy or something?”
Nan grabs hold of Gin and tightens him in place, trying to stop his hand from eating his sandwich. “It’s alive,” Nan says.
“What?” Christian screams, examining with wire-eyes.
They think about it for two seconds.
“Satan,” Christian yells. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Satan replies. “Just because everything I touch comes alive doesn’t mean I have anything to do with his hand. I’ve touched all sorts of people in all sorts of places, but their parts never come alive like that. I make inanimate things animate, not animate things animate.”