I used to enjoy myself a lot on the second floor of the 24/7 McDonald’s on Main Street.
I started out with the babies. Once there was a tiny little girl sitting in a baby chair chewing fries as thick as her fingers. She had this messy pile of spaghetti looking red hair on her head, I just couldn’t hold myself. I squeezed seven full bags of ketchup on it. Voilà a nice little plate of spaghetti bolognese! She started screaming as the ketchup dropped down from her right temple. Then it was the mother. I laughed my head off.
Another time it was a pretty pair of brother and sister. I painted some Indian tattoo on the boy’s face with the girl’s mustard sauce, and gave some nice after-shower effect to the Princess’s curly blonde hair with his coke. I can’t forget how their faces twisted at the same time and the shriek they let out! Oh, even better the scolding from the parents! Parents, they were always so prompt to busy themselves getting mad at the little monster.
As I spent more time there I tried my hands on the adults. I liked them even less than the dumb young ones. I would flip their tray while they looked around for a seat; move their chair and give them a good fall; choke them while they drank. I reserved the last treat only for the ones that really got on my nerves.
Did I ever feel guilty? Oh god no. I mean look at these people! They were so occupied with whatever shit in their tiny little head they didn’t even notice what they were stuffing into themselves. I was doing them a favour. I gave them a nice friendly tap on the shoulder: “Hey, wake up!” That’s it.
Slowly people seemed to notice my existence. I saw fewer people coming to the second floor now. Since that meant less fun for me, I started disciplining myself. I limited my games strictly to the couple of hours after midnight, leaving the folks that came during the day untouched. At night I got some of the most interesting people around. That’s also the hours when people got most paranoid about things. Sweet!
One night I got these two junior high school girls. It was between one and two in the morning. They went straight into the sofa seats at the farthest corner. Both skinny thin, they were dressed in pressed white shirts with lace on the collars, mini skirts and white tennis shoes. I thought they were twins for a while, but they weren't really. For some reason I didn’t want to do anything to them. Just want to watch. After they had their burgers and fries, they each pulled out a little journal, one pink, the other one black, and started working on them. They’d stop every once in a while to whisper to each other, sometimes giggle a bit, then go back to their diary. Once they were done with writing, they tucked the journals back to their school bags. Now the one with long hair pulled out a brown glass bottle and placed it in the middle of the table. They smiled a tacit smile to each other as the short hair girl reached out and opened the bottle.
That smile told me everything! It all felt so familiar. Wasting no time I hit the bottle and scattered the pills across the whole room. They watched with wide-open eyes the pills fly and dance on the tables, the chairs, and the parquet floor.
They probably left afterwards but I couldn’t care. I was taken over by a fierce pain. A big hole opened up deep down at the bottom of somewhere my stomach should be. The hole was enlarging, tearing me apart.
It must have been a familiar feeling.
I started wondering where all these familiarities came from. For the first time I asked myself: where do I come from?
There ended my carefree life. I started to question everything. I wondered why I hated people so much. I wondered why I hated parents particularly. I wondered about my odd reaction to the two girls. And above all I wondered where I came from, and what I was supposed to do here. I wondered why I was the only one left here wondering and wandering on my own.
After the two girls I’d gotten a little more famous and now only weird people would come at night. But that did nothing to me. I got depressed and cared no more to play pranks on anyone.
Then there came a day when they showed up at my nightly theater. Inappropriately dapper and self-conscious about it, they stopped at the entrance of the staircase and looked around with vigilant eyes. I was alert since before they came up. I felt something was to happen. And the goddamn pain was back.
He strode over to a table in the middle and put down the tray. She stepped over to sit in front of him. She looked around in the way of searching for something in the mid-air. The man started eating. She bent over to whisper into the man’s ear:
“I can feel he’s around.”
The man glanced at her face and continued stuffing his mouth mechanically.
She tried to put the straw through the hole in the middle of the plastic lid of her drink, but her hand shook so much that she had to hold the straw with the other hand. Meanwhile she kept searching around with concerned eyes.
Suddenly everything was clear to me. Like a light being switched on, I remembered everything. Unspeakable painful feelings flew out from the aching spot down in my stomach like different funny sauces got mixed together. My guts twisted into one heavy lump bumping together with my heart.
I moved closer to my mother. Her eyes blinked with weariness. Her loose cheeks gave her ten years more, making her less hostile but more tolerant now. My father’s hair had gone grey. His thin wrinkles on the forehead made him a little less harsh than I remembered.
I kissed my parents and said “good-bye” to them again. This time in person. (END)
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