DONUT DEATH
by J.P. Mienfalke


    The donut shop looked empty when Joe stomped inside at 4 am, shivering and rubbing insensate hands together. As he'd rolled up in the arctic freeze outside, looking at the place, the thick layer of frozen condensation on the windows had created strange, distorted images behind the glass - weird ectoplasmic forms writhing about. But that was mere illusion of course, as Joe could see once he hauled the doors open and stepped in. His supercooled eyeglasses frosted almost instantly, cutting him off from further inspection. He gingerly removed the hoary white visual impairments and, dangling them in one hand, waded in his clomping big boots through a myopic blur to the counter, tripping on the mat and making a complex, ungainly leap at the end.

    There was nobody behind the counter and no-one to see his discomfiture. Joe leaned on tiptoe, squinting over the arborite and glass display, hoping the donut girl would be hunched asleep on a low stool out of sight as she had been once before. She wasn't there. Joe was often out in the wee hours and was inured to finding 24 hour joints deserted - for instance, at the all night gas station, Ricky the big slow attendant would usually be fast asleep on the filthy floor, unresponsive to the pump bells. Joe would step through the back door over the recumbent, drooling form, push his own buttons and leave Ricky to presumably sweet dreams while he filled up.

    Joe always paid for the gas, of course.

    After peering to find the washrooms dark and unoccupied, ringing a coin on the counter and calling several times, "Hello?" Joe used a serviette to polish his glasses and put them on. Right, nobody around. There were several donuts, however, sitting uneaten upon tables, and even one danish visible on one of the plastic seats. Maybe the donuts were bad tonight. Joe had a slight cold and couldn't smell anything funny in the place. Just the usual burnt coffee and pungent artificial flavourings. None of the abandoned donuts looked bitten into, though. Joe wondered how the purchasers of the donuts had determined that they were unworthy of ingestion. Dead bugs studded in the icing like raisins? But the donuts all looked fine. Flawless and pristine, like plastic models of the ideal. Very strange.

    Deciding at last that nobody would serve him, Joe went around  the counter, poured himself a coffee and took a large gooey donut.  Then he totaled it all on a serviette, calculated the tax and counted out the amount in coins. No tip, though, the service sucked tonight. Also the coffee seemed thick as glue, it would be no joy to drink - unless one enjoyed straining lye through one's teeth. But if Joe hadn't been a coffee freak and desperate for the stuff he wouldn't be here. He took the newspaper off the nearby counter and went to one of the tables. He almost sat on the danish before remembering it was there. Whoo! Sure would be embarrassing going 'round with a danish stuck to his bum, he thought, jerking upright just in time and splashing some coffee around.

    He sat at another table, listening to the screaming winds battering the ice-glazed windows, warming his hands on the coffee cup and contemplating the empty tables with their donuts on them. There was a wallet sitting beside one donut, and a pair of glasses beside another, also a newspaper. Before getting up to put the wallet on the counter Joe yielded to the irresistible urge to check out the Sunshine Girl. Ugh, what a disappointment, he thought. She looked like the Prime Minister in a wig. He dropped the page and went over to get the wallet.

    What was THAT...? the winds screeched at him... had there been a clutching motion by his wrist just as he got up... ?

    Joe spun around to look. A tendril of donut goo appeared to twirl in the air like a tentacle and then - foop! - sank back into the donut.

    Joe blinked. A shiver ran down him. He really needed that coffee, he told himself. He proceeded onward, over to the table with the wallet, and started to reach for it - the nearby donut made a sudden indistinct movement - Joe jerked his hand back. No, the donut couldn't have stirred, Joe decided. It looked like a perfectly innocious blob of carcinogenic sweet goo just like any other donut. Joe stared hard at the pseudo-chocolate shape. He didn't have to trust it, though. He had lightning-quick reflexes which he'd honed by catching houseflies one summer. Moving "swift as an Arab boy", he shot his hand out and snatched the wallet. The donut blurred - with a "flup!" it was suddenly gone from its square of wax paper. It sat instead, glistening innocently, on the spot where the wallet had been.

    Joe stared at the donut. Bending with care to the level of the table, keeping his distance, he looked for threads that might have been attached between donut and wallet. Then he was struck by a horrid notion. He straightened suddenly, raising the wallet to the light where he could see it. A perfectly ordinary, cracked and worn leather billfold. Bait? Joe shifted grip, holding it by his fingertips like a hot potato, and ran to the counter. He flung the wallet near the cash register where it slid to the opposite edge and flipped from view. Ignoring that, Joe backed away, staring at his hand, flexing the fingers. With sudden revulsion as for a particularily sticky slime he shook the hand wildly in the air, wiped it several times on his pants, then stiffly raised the endangered appendage. Studied it with gaping worry. Nothing. Just the usual callouses and stuff. A little ink, some magic marker spots along one fingertip. No entry holes from Alien spores burrowing their way in. Unless those had closed already ...Joe's scalp crawled.

    He started towards his table, nursing the hand; then, struck by a sudden suspicion, stopped and eyed the donut he had served himself. Dare he touch it? Even go near it? He leaned against the closest table then drew away from that too, checking anxiously for any baked goods lurking near. Nothing on the table. Joe listened to the wind's hair-raising shrieks and decided he was being too imaginative. Whatever was wrong with the donuts, at least he would have his coffee. None of the empty tables had coffees on them; the coffees were probably safe. Joe trod uncertainly to his table, reached with slow trembling fingers for the cup...

    The donut shot out a tentacle. Joe leapt back.

    Cripes! He really wanted that coffee. Joe rubbed his prickly cheeks with both hands. Maybe he should just go pour another. There was a brewer on the other end of the counter, safely away from the donut display. Joe went there and served himself another cup of coffee. Then, checking carefully before he sat, he eased himself onto a stool and looked at the coffee. A suspicion was growing in his mind. Could the total absence of any coffee cups have some horrible meaning? Perhaps the donuts grabbed you while the coffee cup...? Joe pushed the steaming ceramic thing, its glistening whiteness now fraught with omen, away with a nervous extended finger. He was feeling quite warm enough and didn't really want it now. Maybe he'd go to the Coke machine at the next gas station, get something safely sealed in a can that had the caffeine he craved. Joe stood. And froze.

    The danish was on the floor between him and the exit.

    Joe looked around. The other donuts were still where he had last seen them, as far as he could figure anyway. This danish must have some special initiative the others didn't. Remembering how he had almost sat on it, Joe shuddered. Horrible! His gaze, darting about for succor, fell on the floor mat he'd encountered earlier. It was thick, heavy, rubberized. Joe eyed the dread pastry, his mind racing, planning his moves. He would bend and grab the mat, sling it out over the danish, make a run for the door.

    Just then the danish stirred. Its glob of gelatinized guck at the middle began to expand and rise like the future cop from the Schwarzenegger movie assembling from blobs of mercury, or like one of the Aliens bloating out of someone's stomach. It swelled, became a long jam-flecked muscular arm. Joe backed away. There was the other exit, over to the side, the one that was locked. The path was clear, no donuts visible between here and there. The arm, its clutching fingers curled, stretched towards him like some horrible ectoplasmic thing from the movies... Joe ran to the side door and struggled with it. The lock was frozen, the metal knob coated with condensed ice. Joe hit it with his fist. Some of the ice dropped away. His pulse raced. Joe pounded frantically.  He could hear eerie bubbling voices above the throb of blood and shriek of wind, the moaning of donut machines and the cracklings of ice. "Why bother with HIM? He's really stupid, wouldn't be any use to us. Notice how he paid for his donut?" "But vitality - remember his entrechat? and the way he went straight for the Sunshine girl?" "Vitality isn't everything." Joe, feeling extra vitality shooting through his veins, pounded harder. With a loud crack! he got the lock turned, the door open, and was out into the night, windmilling across the sidewalk where they hadn't salted it. The frigid wind howled.
 
    Through the dribbles and curtains of ice down the coffee shop window Joe could see weird, indefinable inhuman forms writhing within. Barely keeping his feet in the shrill biting wind, eyes streaming, Joe scrambled for his car and tore it open. Slammed inside. Cranked it several times until it roared into life. Skidded past dark shrouded cars out of the parking lot and headed for the gas station.

    When he stopped under the flickering lamps beside the Texaco he took several deep breaths to calm himself, staring through the whirls of snow at the Coke machine. His exhalations frosted the glass to a red-lighted haze. His fist throbbed. Whew! That had been a close call. He finally wrestled the car open against the banshee-wailing blasts, got out, and went to the machine, feeling in his pockets.

    Cripes! Those donuts were right! He really WAS stupid.

    He'd just spent his last two dollars at the coffee shop.


                        © Joe Palooka (J.P.Mienfalke) Jan 1993