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The sound of shattering glass. Shrieks, human and inhuman alike. People stream out of the diner, and it begins to collapse, burning down to the asteroid foundation below.
Inside the diner, there is chaos. The tables flip and one very desperate, sweaty man runs around screaming and throwing milkshakes at the walls as if the liquid itself could stop the blaze. It won’t. It’s a gas fire, and this man is not very smart.
Record scratch. Freeze frame.
That’s right. That man is me.
Just kidding. He’s one of the biggest assholes in the galaxy. Tom Buchanan, the ex-husband of my dear cousin Daisy.
Anyway, this might not seem like an ideal situation, but I can personally assure you that I am actually quite happy with this outcome. Let me tell you how we got into this situation...
VHS rewind sound.
Big My Bricks Diner Emporium is the hottest diner chain in tri-galaxy area (including the Sombrero Galaxy!) and anyone who was anyone had to have tried their Bring The Boys To My Yard milkshake.
Naturally, I had to take my dear husband, Jay Gatsby, there for our bi-weekly double date with Daisy and her wife, Jordan.
The thing about diner chains nowadays is that they come and go like children to memes. Take too long to visit a new place and it might be gone and replaced with some new chain in just a matter of months. It’d been open for fifteen and a half weeks now. If it sticks around as long as the average restaurant chain, that would mean that we had about two weeks left before it was merely just another stain on our collective cultural memory.
The thing about Big My Bricks is that it claims to have the most historically accurate depiction of life in the 20th century. Since I’m no historian (given I have no inclination to have a mega chip implanted in my head to remember all that information), I really have no idea how accurate their decor is, but it’s been hailed in the local news as the closest thing since the 1950s themselves.
Jay and I get to the diner early, find a table for four, sit down next to each other, and start perusing the menu. Thirty minutes after we agreed to meet, Daisy and Jordan burst through the front door and spot us, somehow generating more hustle and bustle than two people should be able to create.
“You’re here early,” Daisy says.
“It was our turn,” I say.
We switch off between double dates. Last time, Jay and I were the ones that showed up thirty minutes late. It’s tradition. We have to do it. We all agree that even though we’re all fabulous it would be inconvenient if all of us were fashionably late or even fashionably early.
“What’s good?” Jordan asks, plucking the menu off the table. “Ah, Mint Chocolate Atom Death Bomb Supreme Nyan Cat. That one sounds like a good shake.”
Daisy makes a face and takes the menu from Jordan. “What about the Microtransaction Man Makes A Million Dollars A Microsecond shake?”
“Dollar?” Jay asks. “What’s a dollar?”
“Aren’t you in the business of money?” Jordan asks.
“It’s an old earth currency that those Amerikanyes used to use,” Daisy says, sniffing. “What strange folks.”
“Don’t diss the Amerikanyes,” I say. “My super-mega-great grandfather was from there.”
“Your loss,” Daisy says. “I think I’m going to get the Money-Maker Hypotenuse Silverfish Crisis Day shake.”
“What’s in it?” Jordan asks, leaning over her shoulder to look at the menu.
“Saltwater ice cream from the Grand Elvlovian Ocean and coconut powder from Venice 3,” she says promptly while fishing through her purse for her special milkshake straw. It is extra curly and meant for two people since Jordan likes to steal sips (gulps really but Daisy loves her and Jordan would always give her her Chikanye Strips anyway).
“Mmh,” Jordan says. “Sounds good.” She sets the menu down on the table and looks at me and Jay. “And what are you two going to get?”
“No clue,” I say at the same time Jay makes the universal “I don’t know” sound.
“You’ve been here for forty minutes,” Daisy complains. “And I’m hungry.”
“We could just get the Bring The Boys To My Yard milkshake,” Jay says quietly. “According to the critics, it’s the best thing they’ve got.”
Any sane person knew not to trust the words of a critic, but who was I to object to anything Jay said?
“Sounds good,” I say.
We hail down one of the waiters and place our respective orders.
A TV flickers on in the background, and several children appear on the screen. This “television” is a remnant of ancient earth technology. Flat moving pictures! Can you imagine how much work must have gone into taking the 3D and making it to 2D! I remember the math classes I took in post-secondary tertiary super school that was supposed to help me with my accounting degree, and I distinctly remember the math kids complaining about some transforms or whatever that would make the real pictures flat. Horrifying stuff.
The subject of this TV appears to be several ancient earth children busting out some strange moves. It’s weirdly impressive. Two sets of words flash on the screen. “Fortnite Dances” and “Win Big or Die”. The Amerikanyes had some weird fixation with high-risk death games.
“Isn’t that an OSHA violation?” Jordan asks.
“Isn’t OSHA for food companies?” Jay asks. “Not TV shows, right?”
“They expanded and bought the rights from Disney,” Daisy says.
That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about OSHA to dispute it.
The milkshakes arrive a second later and we all take our respective slurps. They taste like crack cocaine. The exact recipe for crack cocaine has been long since lost, but the stories of how addictive it was have spanned generations. It must have tasted really good.
We continue to slurp away in relative silence (not including the slurping) until a stranger sidles over to our table.
“Hay gurls,” we hear in a strikingly familiar valley girl accent.
“Tom,” Daisy growls, standing up abruptly from her seat, almost knocking over the table. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t yah know?” Tom asks with a dramatic flourish. “I, like, totally own this chain.” He proudly whips out four bright neon business cards and attempts to hand them to us.
Daisy spits out her milkshake, and we all quickly follow suit. If anyone could find a long lost recipe for crack cocaine, it would be Mister Poopy Pants himself, Tom Buchanan, and we didn’t want that stuff in our bodies. It might have possibly tasted good, but it also exploded your brain. Prestigious historians and archaeologists believe that crack cocaine could literally cause one’s head to explode and was only taken as a form of extreme sports.
“How did you of all people find the recipe for crack cocaine?!” we all yell in chaotic unison.
“What?” Tom asks, seemingly befuddled, but you couldn’t trust an expression on that guy’s face. “Nah, I found the recipe for molly ecstasy. But that won’t be released until next week.”
I don’t think that makes things any better. We’re in an awkward situation, to say the least, and, really, the best course of action would be to just get up and leave. I look over to Daisy to try to convey this message with my eyes, but she has a glint in hers. Ah.
Daisy looks at Jay and nods. He nods back. I take a deep breath. Whatever it is they choose to do, I’m fairly certain I won’t get out of it without a trip to the hospital.
Jay flips the table.
Suddenly three strange men in ancient earth cosplay (not very accurate but who am I to judge) stand up from a table in the back of the room. One of the men has short hair in the traditional earth style, the next has a mullet, and the final one is wearing a long, tan, trench coat.
“Demonic activity!” one of them shouts--I’m not sure which one, they all look so similar--and a different one takes out a whole ass vintage gun.
“Um,” I say. No one hears me.
The whole cafe erupts into chaos. A dark figure jumps out from a blindingly bright corner and dropkicks Tom.
Mothman????
As soon as he makes his cameo, though, he flies straight out the window with a strange hawk-like screech.
Because no one in this entire diner seems to know anything about conflict resolution, another patron takes out their own proper, up-to-date space gun.
“Put the gun down, boys,” the patron says.
“They’re salt bullets,” one of the strange cosplaying men says. “Humans will only feel a little sting.”
“There’s not many humans in this here damn diner,” the patron says. “I’d even say some of them allergic to salt.”
“Demons!” one of them whispers.
“There ain’t no goddamn demons!” the patron says.
“Actually, I’m a card-carrying member of the Demon Golf Club,” Tom pipes up.
Demon, of course, coming from the Renin word “denona” meaning “five tree clearing”, but the strange men don’t seem to have any concept of this.
Just as soon as he says this, the man with the antique gun pulls the trigger while the patron fires his own shot.
The salt bullet burns up in the blast of fire from the space gun, but so does the structure of the diner.
“Fire!” another patron yells.
“I think it’s time for us to go,” Jordan announces, as the fire starts to spread to the kitchen and the telltale smell of natural gas starts to creep into the air.
Daisy grabs one last Chikanye strip and stuffs it into her purse (after having wrapped it in a napkin. She is a lady after all). “It was nice seeing you again,” she says, handing Tom’s business card back to him.
We all file out of the diner without paying as Tom panics over his burning property. He stands still for a second before leaping into action, grabbing peoples’ milkshakes off the tables and throwing them at the fire, all to no avail.
The strange men are nowhere to be seen and the patron is also mysteriously gone.
Outside the diner, it’s life as normal, save for, perhaps, Mothman circling above the burning building, shrieking into the night.