Part one of a Novelette Draft1

Day 1 — Reality Cracks

Static tuning humming in the ears from afar, sounds of a 50’s radio show, time seems to be lapsed in history, traveled to another world once gone.

“Tuning static.” “Do I even have a radio?” She thinks inside her head. Weather forecast for this week is devastating, impacting heat all over the country. Stay cool, hydrated and be safe if working outdoors. Upper 100’s for the remainder of the week. “Detuning of the radio splitting hisses in ears.”

Crusted eyes peeling apart built from sweat drained off her forehead. Drenched spot on the bed, so large as if she bled out her insides, died. Only the stain of a tormented sleep.

No energy to shower, no energy to eat, the heat creeps in, taking hold inside the home. Freezing the AC coils to dry dusty remnants of what once worked. “Fuck it,” she murmurs in the state of mind everyone knows, when everything is going wrong, a burst of adrenaline through the heart.

She just throws her yesterday’s food smell infused uniform on and opens the front door to a different looking world…

A burning abyss flames into existence, her entire body begins to warm to the point of not sweating, just red misery on the face. Foot drug in front of foot, the sidewalk radiates molds her sneaker rubber soles to a new form. But that’s not the odd thing she sees. This walk to work, you see everyone’s eyes passing glassy red and veiny, the blood bulging from the dilated heat of the day, showing desperate dissipation from the brain. Everyone looks insane, dysmorphed.

If ever there was a real apocalypse, this must be the scene. Death. They look like those traveling the Styx, but not with fear — with a strange excitement, hoping they can finally pass through the torment. Hunched over, labored breathing, dragging themselves forward, still chugging along, praying the devil might show mercy.

The longer the walk, the more of them appear.

Blankly staring into each other’s faces. One person not blinking. Another standing perfectly still, waiting for a crosswalk that never changes.

The next block brings someone drinking from an empty bottle, chugging invisibility.

No one notices the words spilling from his mouth. The frantic whispers. The invisible arguments. The world inside his head.

The redder the face, the drier the lips, the more the words dissolve into sounds nobody can understand.

Finally she reaches her place of employment. A heat-encapsulated pizza palace, 110 outside to a 600 degree oven inside. “Fuck.”

Instantly a gluttonous slob of a man walks in. “Hey, the owner around?”

Her head drops to her side, no energy to respond. No time to think of the thousand moronic small-town folks who come in asking for a 90-year-old man retired years ago, daily. Same question repeated, same answered response.

Sweat pouring down her red hair, drying her shirt white with salted crust.

“Nope, he sold it long time ago.” As she puts on the fake beautiful smile she’s perfected in the last 15 years, while internally muttering, “you fucking idiot.”

Turning her back she just leaves the front of house to get away from the idiot’s needs. She needs a cool off in the walk-in. Drop the body temperature. Cool the thoughts trying to seduce her. While she passes through the heat work box, you would swear it was a sweatshop of old times, unsafe conditions, hazy smog, look of fear and exhaustion on all the workers’ faces, almost a fear of if it will be their last day.

The metal door seals behind her, sound like a coffin closing. The walk in cooler, forty degrees colder instant shock to the system.

She leans against steel shelving, forehead to cold metal. Just starting her shift. Twelve hours of this hell ahead. “Why do I do this?”

In here, sound works different. Muffled. Just mechanical hum of the refrigeration and her breathing. And something else underneath. A frequency she’s heard fifteen years, every time she comes in here to remember what not dying feels like, what crying feels like, what failure feels like.

The shelves stacked wrong—fresh dough behind the old. “Fucking kids.” She starts reorganizing, autopilot, hands moving while mind drifts to that blank space where she doesn’t have to be anyone.

That’s when she sees it.

Behind the industrial tomato sauce can, tucked in the gap between shelf and wall: paper. Folded. Thick, expensive printer stock.

Doesn’t remember it from yesterday. But she’s reorganized these shelves a thousand times. What the hell is this.

Paper’s dry. Everything else in here sweats—walls, shelves, cans slick with condensation—but this paper bone dry, black with red lettering engraved…

She unfolds it…

Symbol. Hand-drawn red ink, precise lines, circles within circles, geometric patterns shifting if you stare too long. Center has marks, might be letters, might be design.

She’s seen this before.

Where?

The hum gets louder.

She folds it, shoves it in her back pocket.

Door swings open. The line cook, early twenties, shows up on time at least—sticks his head in.

“Yo, been in here ten minutes already.”

“What?”

“Manager’s looking for you. Lady freaking about her order.”

She checks her phone. Ten minutes became sixteen somehow.

“Yeah. Coming.”

Heat whips her face stepping out. Kitchen swims, vigorously hot. Exhaust fan broken. Ovens just heating up. Trapped. In a den of hell. Cooking alive… Vision blurs then sharpens wrong—every detail too clear.

Flour dust suspended in air, each particle visible. Sweat on the line cook’s face catches heat lamp light, looks like he’s crying diamonds.

Blink. Normal again. Just dizzy, hazy.

Customer at counter, woman fifties, hair yanked back tight, face stretched mean.

“—told that BOY I specifically ordered thin crust and this is clearly—”

Woman’s face melting, swirling into a morphed Picasso…

“No. Just makeup running. That’s all.” Foundation sliding, pooling in creases around her mouth. Except mouth seems wider. Eyes too far apart. “You’re losing it, keep it together.”

Blink. Normal. Just angry woman, bad makeup.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she hears herself say. Smile slots into place—fifteen years wearing it like a second face. “Let me get that remade for you right away, on the house.”

Woman nods. Smile always works.

She turns toward kitchen.

That’s when she sees him.

Table seven. No one sits there, too close to pizza ovens, summer heat radiating makes that corner uninhabitable.

He’s old. Ancient maybe. Skin like something left too long in sun—leather, driftwood. Wearing a coat. Heavy winter coat, dark wool, buttoned to throat.

Not sweating.

Everyone sweating—customers, staff, even flies around trash slow and dying from heat. But this man sits still, dry, watching her.

Never seen him before.

But acts with sudden certain, like he’s been coming here daily for years. He raises one hand. Not wave. Summoning.

“Hey.” The cook behind her. “Doing it again.”

“What?”

“Standing there. Staring at nothing.”

“Who’s that?” Points at table seven.

The cook looks. “Nobody. Empty.”

She looks. Man still there. Still watching. Still wearing impossible coat.

“Right. Heat’s getting to me.”

“Take another break. Manager left anyway, getting his AC fixed.”

Manager left? When? Saw him this morning. Or yesterday? No, this morning. Yelling about inventory.

Man at table seven stands.

Taller than should be. Ducks under a broken ceiling fan that hasn’t turned for three years, but his presence moves it in rotation. Walking towards her.

Footsteps silent. Dining room full of noise—register, customers, TV news—but his steps make no sound.

The cook talking but words are underwater, garbled, she’s too focused on this anomaly.

Man stops three feet away. Eyes colorless. Not gray, blue. Absent of light, like someone forgot to fill them.

“You found it,” he says. Voice powerful but wisps out of the building almost in an instant.

Hand goes to back pocket. Paper there. How does he know?

“Heat’s just the beginning. The opening. You understand, don’t you? Always understood.”

“I don’t—”

“You stayed. Everyone who could leave, left. But you stayed because you’re waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

Smiles. Too many teeth. Or right number arranged wrong.

“For it to open all the way.”

Blinks. Gone.

Table seven empty.

Other workers looking concerned. “Seriously, okay? Just blanked out full minute.”

“Fine.”

Not fine.

She starts, makes the thin crust. Goes through motions. Hands angry woman’s damn replacement, another smile. Woman leaves.

Checks phone. Same time as before.

Can’t be right.

Just made pizza, talked to that woman. Takes ten minutes minimum. Phone says the same time as coming out of walk-in.

Refreshes screen. No change.

Wall clock says different time.

Which one’s right?

The line cook slides past with dough tray. “Grab more pepperoni from walk-in?”

“Yeah.”

Goes back in. Cold hits different—sharper, deeper, reaching inside chest, inside each breath’s inhale.

Grabs pepperoni.

That’s when she sees the door.

Back wall. Between cheese shelf and empty box corner.

Door wasn’t there before.

Not walk-in door—smaller. Wooden. Old, like belongs in house, not commercial kitchen. Handle tarnished brass.

Slightly open.

Cold air pours through—colder than the normal walk-in, impossible cold. Can see her breath like winter time.

Should leave. Go back to kitchen. Forget it.

Pushes door open.

Beyond: darkness. Not lights-off darkness. Darkness where light never been.

That hum—heard fifteen years—coming from inside.

“Don’t.”

Spins around. Man in coat standing behind her. Inside walk-in. Kitchen door closed. Didn’t hear it close.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not ready yet.”

“Who are you?”

“You’ll remember soon.” Nods toward door. “That’s for day seven. Going in now just kills you.”

“Day seven of what?”

Reaches past, closes door. Looks again—gone. Just blank wall.

“You found the map.” Gestures to her pocket. “Follow it. You’ll understand.”

“Don’t understand anything—”

Walk-in door opens. “Damn line cook won’t stop bothering me,” him again. “Been in here twenty minutes. Manager’s back, pissed.”

Looks where man stood.

Empty.

“Did you see—”

“See what? Acting really weird today.”

“Fine. Heat’s just…” Trails off.

Grabs pepperoni, pushes past.

Manager there, red-faced, sweating. “Where the hell you been?”

“Walk-in. Getting pepperoni.”

“Twenty minutes?”

Checks phone. Twenty minutes passed, felt like two.

Rest of shift blurs. Makes pizzas. Smiles at customers. Takes orders. Keeps seeing things. Morning into Dante’s Inferno, thoughts become insane thinking, laughing uncontrollably at nothing. Hallucinating. 140 degrees in the kitchen.

“I’m going to die.”

Symbol from paper—scratched in oven window condensation. Drawn in spilled flour on prep counter. Traced in sauce on customer plate before serving, gone when looks again.

Man in coat, appearing, disappearing. Table seven. Corner by trash. Reflected in walk-in glass door, watching from inside though knows it’s empty.

Time keeps fracturing. Phone says one thing. Wall clock another. Customers leave, return, leave. And the damn cook keeps asking same question three times. Or once. Can’t tell.

Six PM—maybe three, maybe both—shift ends.

Beginning the walk home through streets emptier than should be. Sun setting but the entrapped heat from the earth raises the temperature as midday hits. No relief. No cool evening air. Just coals pressing down like a hand on top of the atmosphere.

Passing people moving wrong. Jerky. Too fast then too slow. Stop-motion. Faces blurred at edges, almost as if everything she sees is a photograph shaking in her hand.

Gets home. Apartment an oven. Windows won’t open. AC died weeks ago. Or years. Can’t remember. “What’s wrong with me?”

Collapses on bed, still in uniform. Sheets already soaked with old sweat.

Pulls paper from pocket.

Dimming light, looks at symbol again. Circles within circles. Strange center marks.

Words now.

Written underneath, small precise handwriting. Weren’t there before. Certain weren’t there before.

Says: Day 1 of 7

Turns paper over.

Back side, same precise hand:

The heat opens doors. Some should stay closed. By day seven, you’ll have to choose which ones to walk through and which ones to seal forever. Choose wrong and you’ll burn. Choose right and you’ll burn anyway, but you’ll understand why.

Reads three times.

Fourth read, words rearrange:

Are you alive? The heat is just reminding you if you’re dead.

Blinks. Reads again:

Day 1 of 7

Other words gone.

Imagining things. Heat exhaustion. Dehydration. Needs water. Sleep. Needs—

Radio on nightstand crackles to life.

Doesn’t own a radio. “What the fuck is going on?”

Static, then voice. Male. Old-fashioned cadence, 1950s broadcast:

“Day one complete. Six more to go. Stay hydrated, folks. It’s only going to get hotter from here.”

Radio silent.

Looks at it. Not radio. Alarm clock. Digital. No speakers.

Losing her mind.

Or something opening.

Or both.

Closes eyes and for first time in fifteen years, prays she doesn’t wake up tomorrow.

END DAY 1

Day 2 — Desire

Wakes to the smell of rot.

Not her apartment rotting. Her. Inside. Like something died in her stomach and is cooking in the heat.

Radio static again. Or alarm clock pretending to be radio. Can’t tell difference anymore.

“Day two, folks. Temperature climbing to 115 today. Stay indoors if possible. Reports of unusual behavior citywide. Heat-induced psychosis, they’re calling it. But we know better, don’t we?”

Clicks off. Except she didn’t touch it.

The paper’s on her nightstand. Unfolded. She folded it last night. Certain she folded it.

New words:

Day 2 of 7 — GLUTTONY

The heat makes you hungry. Hungry for cold. Hungry for relief. Hungry for anything that isn’t this. You’ll eat yourself hollow trying to fill it.

Stomach growls. Hasn’t eaten in… how long? Day? Two days?

Can’t remember last meal.

Gets up. Uniform on floor, crusted with yesterday’s sweat and something else. Sauce? Blood? Doesn’t matter. Puts it on anyway.

No shower. No water pressure. Pipes coughing dust.

Opens fridge.

Inside: rotting. Everything rotting. Milk curdled black. Lettuce liquified in drawer. Something in tupperware grown fur, pulsing like it’s breathing.

But she’s so hungry.

Time seems to be sped up, everything sped up…

Reaches for the bread. Molded green. Squeezes it. Soft, damp, warm. Brings it to her mouth—

Stops.

What the fuck is she doing?

Throws it. Bread hits wall, sticks there like wet clay.

Stomach eating itself. Gnawing. When’s the last time she felt this hungry?

Can’t afford food anyway. All money goes to rent. Rent and nothing. Just existing. Just surviving. Fifteen years of just surviving and for what?

Leaves apartment.

Outside worse than yesterday. Heat’s thick now. Visible. Wavy distortions like looking through grease. Sky yellowish, sick.

Sidewalk melted in places. Shoes stick. Every step pulls, sounds wet.

People on the street different today.

They’re eating.

All of them eating. Old woman cramming something into her mouth, can’t tell what, brown and dripping. Man in business suit sitting on curb eating directly from a dumpster, hands filthy, face ecstatic. Teenager tearing into raw meat, blood on her chin, doesn’t care.

Everyone eating like starving, like never eaten before, like nothing will ever fill them.

She walks faster.

Passes a storefront. Window reflection shows her.

But it’s not her.

It’s her but wrong. Mouth too wide. Stretched. Like unhinged at the corner. Teeth too sharp. Eyes hungry.

Blinks. Normal reflection. Just her. Exhausted. Hollow.

Reaches the pizza palace. Work finally.

Door’s propped open. Never propped open. Lets heat in, ruins the ovens, manager would kill anyone who—

Inside: chaos.

Customers everywhere. Too many. Packed in. Shouting orders. Demanding. Grabbing. Fighting over slices.

And they’re all eating wrong.

Tearing into pizza like animals. Sauce on faces, cheese hanging from mouths. Not chewing, just swallowing. Whole slices disappearing down throats. One man’s on his fourth pie, crying while he eats, can’t stop.

Woman at counter screaming: “MORE! I PAID FOR MORE! WHERE’S THE REST?”

Has three pizzas in front of her. Demolished. Boxes empty. But she’s screaming like she’s starving.

The cook at the register, eyes wild. “Thank fuck you’re here. Been like this since opening. Can’t keep up. Can’t—”

Customer grabs his shirt. “WHERE’S MY PIZZA?”

“Five minutes, I said five—”

“I’VE BEEN WAITING FOREVER!” She lashes out at his face, scratching blood from his skin.

Clock says 9:15 AM. Store opened at nine.

She pushes to the back. Kitchen’s worse.

Manager’s gone. Just the line cook and two other kid cooks, can’t remember their names, moving frantic. Ovens all running. All six of them. Spewing heat. Temperature in here must be 140, 160.

Prep table covered in orders. Tickets everywhere. Hundreds of tickets.

But there aren’t hundreds of customers.

Are there?

Looks back at dining room. Counts. Twenty people. But they’re eating enough for hundreds.

“Start making dough!” someone yells. “We’re out!”

“We got delivery yesterday—”

“GONE! ALL GONE! THEY’RE EATING EVERYTHING!”

She ties apron. Moves to prep station. Starts making dough.

Hands moving automatic. Flour, water, yeast, salt. Knead. Roll. Stretch.

But her hands are shaking.

And she’s so fucking hungry.

Makes pizza after pizza. Loses count. Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

Every time one goes out, three more orders come in.

Customers eating faster than they can make them.

And the smell.

God, the smell.

Cheese burning. Sauce caramelizing. Crust crisping. Pepperoni sizzling.

Her stomach twisting, cramping, screaming.

When’s the last time she ate pizza? Works here fifteen years, can’t remember last time she ate the food.

Too expensive. Employee discount doesn’t matter when you’re broke.

Makes the food but never eats it.

Burns herself. Oven rack. Hand. Doesn’t feel it.

Just keeps making pizzas.

Customer appears at the kitchen window. “WHERE’S MY ORDER?”

“Two minutes—”

“YOU SAID THAT TEN MINUTES AGO!”

Did she? Can’t remember. Time’s wrong again. Clock jumping. 9:45. Then 10:30. Then 9:52.

Customer’s face pressed against window glass. Mouth open. Drooling, oozing all over the glass, thick like dried coughed blood.

“I NEED IT NOW!”

“Sir, please—”

“I’M STARVING!”

He’s not starving. He’s fat. Enormously fat. Gut hanging over belt. Three chins. Sweat-drenched. But his eyes are hollow. Empty. Starving eyes in a glutton’s body.

“I’LL DIE WITHOUT IT!” he screams.

Won’t die. No one dies from not eating pizza. But he believes it. Really fucking believes it.

She hands him the pizza. He rips the box open right there, starts eating. Doesn’t wait. Doesn’t breathe. Just consumes. Manages to inhale parts of the box itself.

She turns back to prep station.

The man in the coat is standing in the walk-in doorway.

Just standing. Watching. Still wearing that impossible coat. Still not sweating.

“Second sin,” he says. “You see it now?”

“See what?”

“What they’re really hungry for.”

Looks at customers. Really looks.

They’re not eating pizza.

They’re eating everything. Eating experience. Eating life. Trying to fill the emptiness inside with anything, everything, never enough.

Like you.

Fifteen years eating this job. Consuming her own time. Swallowing days whole. Gorging on survival. And still empty.

Still starving.

“You’re one of them,” the man says.

“I’m not—”

“You knew that before you found the paper. That’s why you were the one who found it.”

“Shut up.”

“By day seven, there’ll be nothing left. You yourself will be evaporated in the heat.”

He’s gone.

But smell remains. Not pizza smell.

Rot smell.

Looks at the prep table.

Dough she’s kneading is wrong. Gray. Spotted with mold. Has been for hours. She’s been making pizzas from rotted dough and no one’s noticed because everyone’s too hungry to fucking care.

Or everyone’s eating rot already.

Or she’s seeing wrong.

Can’t tell.

Makes another pizza. Sweat drips into the sauce, a speciality today.

And another. Another, another, the pattern for her life.

Shift never ends. No breaks. No time. Just orders. Endless orders.

Customers never leave. Eat one pizza, order two more. Eat those, order four. Multiplying. Consuming.

She’s trapped behind the line, making food for people who’ll never be full.

Around 3 PM—maybe 1, maybe 5, clock’s useless—the other cook collapses.

Just drops. Face hits prep table. Out cold.

Other cooks don’t notice. Keep working. Machines.

She shakes him. “Wake up!”

Eyes open. Blank.

“Can’t stop,” he mutters. “Can’t stop making them. They’ll starve. They’ll die.”

“They won’t die—”

“WE’LL DIE!”

Scrambles back up. Starts making pizzas again.

She steps back.

Looks at the kitchen. Really looks.

Everyone’s moving wrong. Too fast. Jerky. Mechanical. Like they’re being operated.

And they’re all thin. Skeletal bones poking out of them. When did this happen?

Looking back at the cook, he was chubby yesterday. Now ribs showing through shirt, head bleeding from the fall.

Other cooks look like corpses. Skin tight over bones. Eyes sunken.

But they keep making food.

Feeding everyone but themselves.

She looks at her hands. Bony. Fingers like sticks.

When did that happen?

Customer at the window: “ORDER UP!”

She hands it over. Looks at the customer.

No face. Just mouth. Giant mouth where face should be. Opening. Consuming. Swallowing pizza, box and all.

Blinks.

Still no face.

Losing it. Definitely losing it.

Tries to go to walk-in. Needs cold. Needs break.

Can’t. Orders keep coming.

Makes pizzas for hours. Days. Centuries.

Finally—clock says 6 PM, says midnight, says 2 AM, says all of them at once—customers thin out.

Dining room empties.

She’s alone.

Kitchen destroyed. Flour everywhere. Sauce on walls. Cheese burned to every surface. Ovens still running, still hot, always hot.

The other cooks gone. When did they leave?

She walks to dining room.

Tables covered in carnage. Empty boxes stacked high. Plates licked clean. Floor sticky with grease. Slobber, sweat, blood stains from who knows what.

But in the middle a surprise: a full pizza.

Untouched. Perfect. Steam rising.

Her favorite. Pepperoni, extra cheese.

She’s so hungry.

Hasn’t eaten all day. All week? Can’t remember.

Sits down. Pulls the pizza close.

Picks up a slice.

Brings it to her mouth.

It smells wrong.

Looks down.

Pizza’s covered in mold. Green, black, pulsing. Moving. Maggots.

But she’s so hungry.

Opens her mouth wider.

“Don’t.”

Man in coat, sitting across from her. When did he sit down?

“That’s not food,” he says. “That’s the sin eating itself. You eat that, you become it.”

“I’m starving—”

“No. You’re empty. Different thing.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Starving can be filled. Empty is forever.”

She looks at the pizza. Then at him.

“What do I do?”

“Survive day two. Six more coming. Each one worse.”

“I can’t—”

“You will. You always do. That’s your curse.”

Stands. Walks away. Fades into shadows that shouldn’t exist because the god damn blistering lights show every part and corner of this life.

She looks at the pizza.

Puts the slice down.

Walks out.

Streets empty now. Night. Or day. Sky’s the same color regardless. The sun’s still out 2 am, the horizon looks like the ocean, but flames, or fumes seeping out.

Got to get home. Get home.

Paper’s on her bed. Unfolded again…

To be continued…