Work Text:
9pm was closing time.
Peppino flipped the OPEN sign in the window back over to CLOSED, heaving a sigh as another work day finally came to an end. He’d been working since six that morning, first prepping for the day, then actually working the day. And now, he was cleaning for the day.
He surveyed the small dining room; it was a cramped space, housing only four tables with three chairs each, plus four extra chairs at the counter, and just enough space between those tables and chairs for him or his coworker, Gustavo, to squeeze past with pizza in hand. It was already fairly clean, which simultaneously left Peppino relieved and troubled. On one hand, it was less work for him and Gustavo. On the other, it revealed the sore lack of customers they got.
Perhaps Peppino’s Pizza was not placed in the best spot in the city. It was out of the way, down a small side street that it shared with a few other stores, some apartments, and, for some reason, the swanky highrise headquarters of some other restaurant (Peppino had no idea why it was there, but it was). At most, only that street and the streets next to it knew of the restaurant’s existence. Peppino never advertised his business – he didn’t have the money to. He barely had enough to keep it running, even with only the two of them.
Day in and day out, they hardly got any customers. Most of them were regulars, there for the cheap but good pizza. Peppino was grateful for them, but it wasn’t enough, not for the long term.
Peppino thought about the bills piling up in his “office” – a repurposed breakroom, really, that was still used as the breakroom – and grimaced. Nobody said owning a restaurant would be easy, but sometimes he wondered why he bothered to in the first place.
He passed by the T.V on his way to the kitchen. A gaudy, cheery commercial was playing, an ear-bleeding tune filtering out of the tinny speakers. It was for some other pizza place, Peppino knew, because the stupid thing played at least once every hour. Pizzaface’s or Pizzahead’s or Pizzawhatever’s Pizza or something. Peppino stopped paying attention to it long ago.
Opening the kitchen door, Peppino found Gustavo cleaning the dishes in the large three-compartment sink. There was already a sizable pile of drying dishes beside him, which meant he was already nearly done with the dishes, much to Peppino’s surprise.
Gustavo Giallo was the best co-worker he’d ever had – and just about the only one he'd ever had. They’ve known each other for a few years by this point, having met at their previous job. They hit off almost immediately, and, before long, they were doing everything together; working, taking breaks, saving up money, and, finally, running a business.
His friend was a hard-working man. Kind, loyal, and smart, Gustavo was a blessing straight from heaven. Peppino felt lucky to have him; who knows what might’ve happened to his restaurant if he hadn’t had Gustavo?
It would have failed within the week, probably.
“Closing time,” Peppino called. Gustavo looked over his shoulder just enough that Peppino could see a small smile curl underneath the man’s mustache.
“Another long day, eh?” he said, pulling his hands out of the dish water. Bright yellow dish-washing gloves adorned his hands. “Did we get any more?”
Peppino would’ve liked to have trouble remembering just how many people came in, but, unfortunately, it didn’t take him long at all to recall. “Not a lot. Only one or two in the past three hours.”
Gustavo sucked air through his teeth. “Ouch. How’re we doing?”
“Bills will need to be paid next week.” Peppino scratched his head, doing some mental math. “I think we have enough, but barely.”
Gustavo nodded, his smile tightening. “That’s good.”
Peppino rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Yeah. We just have pocket change left. Gus…”
“We’ll get by,” Gustavo said firmly. “We always have.”
They have, but Peppino always wondered when they wouldn’t. When the customers would suddenly stop coming in and they would fall into a debt that they couldn’t pay. Mr. Stick was already on his ass for his late rent, and he was sure Gustavo’s landlord was much the same.
“Now, c’mon, we gotta clean up,” Gustavo said, turning back to the dishes. “I don’t want to stay here for another hour.”
Peppino heartily conceded with that. He walked to the cleaning closet and pulled out the broom, quickly making his way back out into the dining area. From the front door, Peppino started to sweep.
The next hour was a flurry of cleaning; the floors were swept and mopped, the kitchen was cleaned and prepped for the next day, the money in the till was counted and stored, and the trash was bagged and taken out. Peppino felt a weary sense of accomplishment as the back door settled shut behind him, dusting the dirt from his hands. Gustavo was doing the same beside him.
“10:15!” Gustavo said cheerily. “Is that the fastest we’ve ever done?”
Peppino shrugged. Hell if he knew. He never kept track.
Gustavo clapped him on the back. “Let’s go, Pep. I’m about ready to sleep on the floor here.”
“Don’t do that,” Peppino said, following the shorter man to the front door. He flicked off lights as he passed them and shut off the T.V. “We just mopped them.”
His co-worker laughed as they stepped out into the warm summer night. It was a deep laugh, one you couldn’t help but join when you heard it, and Peppino found himself smiling along. Even the smallest things Gustavo did made him feel lighter, especially after a bad work day.
Gustavo’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Goodnight, Pep. See you tomorrow.”
“Night!” he called after him. For a minute, Peppino watched his friend’s retreating back as he stood outside the restaurant, up until the man disappeared around the corner. Peppino sighed, letting his shoulders slump. Another day tomorrow. Another several hours going by, simmering in anxiety because what if they don’t make enough money that day to pay rent next time.
Peppino looked into the darkened restaurant, squinting past the shine of the street lamps. He didn’t want to lose his pizzeria, especially after all the work that he and Gustavo had put into it. It was a part of him, a part of both of them, and losing it would be…
He couldn’t think of what it would be like. It would be…bad. He liked his restaurant. He liked to cook pizzas. He liked to make customers happy. He liked working with Gustavo. To lose that was something he didn’t like to think about.
Peppino turned away from the window, worried thoughts churning in his brain, and headed towards the scooter that was parked by the side of the building. A small, dinky thing, his scooter was one of his most prized possessions. Without it, he couldn’t make deliveries or pick up anything they forgot to order. He took care of it as best he could, but it still showed its age and wear. One of these days, Peppino swore it was going to fall apart right under him.
As he neared it, a sound pricked his ears. It was an odd tapping sound, like someone was rapidly hitting plastic against plastic, and it was coming from the alleyway between his restaurant and the highrise next door.
Curious, if cautious, Peppino followed the noise. He had no weapon on him, but he could pack a punch; despite appearances, it wasn’t just fat that padded out his body.
He hesitantly stepped into the alleyway, eyes immediately landing on something bright red in the midst of the dark gray concrete. All of his anxiety was swiftly replaced with confusion as he watched a pair of plastic teeth on feet hobble along with ground, mouth chattering away. It was such an odd sight that Peppino simply stood there, dumbfounded, as the teeth slowly walked closer.
“What?” Peppino asked aloud. He scanned the alleyway for any sign of someone else being there with him. Maybe some kid had set it loose for kicks, spending way too much time winding it up to let it roam far and wide.
Rolling his eyes, Peppino crouched down to pick up the toy and throw it in the nearby dumpster. “Some kids just have too much time…” he muttered, reaching for the chattering teeth.
The moment he leaned towards the teeth, however, the toy suddenly shot upwards, closing its plastic jaw on Peppino’s arm with a CRUNCH.
Peppino howled in pain, jumping to his feet. He flailed his arm around as he tried to dislodge the teeth, but the toy held strong. Even grabbing at it and pulling failed to do anything. Blood was beginning to drip down his arm, and it felt like the teeth were cutting through muscle with how hard they were clamped down. Peppino stumbled to the alleyway wall and began to smash the toy against the bricks, not stopping until the thing was shattered into hundreds of red and white shards.
The screaming pain in his arm thankfully stopped, dulling to a mere yell. Peppino let out a shaky breath, his heart pounding a mile a minute, as he stared at the broken toy.
What..the hell…was that?
Not only had it been a lost toy, it had been a murderous lost toy. Who in their right mind would make such a thing? He could’ve lost a finger or two to it! With how hard it was biting, it could have very well taken a chunk out of his arm – better than his fingers, but still!
Some blood dripped onto the pavement, dark red amongst bright, and, with a grimace, Peppino twisted his arm around to assess the damage that the toy had done to him.
His arm was a mess; pieces of plastic were mixed in with streams of blood, and he could see the deep indent that the teeth had made. Peppino hissed in pain, grabbing his arm and running towards the back door of his restaurant. He needed to bandage this up, quick, before it got any worse in the dark, smelly, disgusting alleyway he was in.
Oh, God. What if it got infected? He couldn’t afford to go to the hospital!
Peppino stopped at the door, fumbling with his keys. He didn’t care that he was smearing blood over them, he just needed to get inside. He’ll worry about clean-up later. Right now, he had to bandage his arm up.
Finally, after two minutes and nearly dropping the key five times, Peppino unlocked the back door. He swung it open and sprinted to the breakroom, where they kept their woefully understocked first-aid kit. Hopefully they had some gauze in it, or at least a couple hundred bandaids. And a ton of antibacterial cream.
He left a few bloody hand prints in his haste to grab the first-aid kit, making a mental note to clean those up before Gustavo came in tomorrow. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to have a heart attack walking into what looked like a crime scene.
Thankfully, there was a sizable roll of gauze and a creased tube of antibacterial cream. Grabbing both, Peppino made his way to the bathrooms, being careful not to bump into any of the walls.
At least his arm wasn’t hurting as much as it was before, he thought, as he pushed the men’s room door open.
Peppino washed his arm as best he could in the small sink, bending down and practically cramming it into the bowl to try and wash everything off. Plastic flaked off, blood was cleaned away, revealing…
Revealing a perfectly intact arm.
Peppino blinked, pulling his arm out from under the faucet. No, there wasn’t a trace of any bite marks outside of a ring-like scar. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore.
He twisted his arm around, eyes following the scar and searching for any cuts or bruises or anything of the like.
Nothing. There was nothing.
“What the…?” He did get bit, he knew he got bit. He could very clearly remember the pain of being bit. There were still bloody hand prints on the sink and faucet – he had been bit, and it had made a mess of his arm.
“It bit me!” he said, to the empty bathroom.
Yet, no matter how long he stared at his arm, it was still fine and dandy. It didn’t even sting!
…well, maybe it still did, a little bit. It felt a little funky, like it was on the cusp of falling asleep. He shook it, but the feeling didn’t leave. In fact, it seemed to spread, crawling up his shoulder and over his chest. That, Peppino thought, was a bit of a problem.
And gauze and antibacterial cream was not going to help him with it. He needed to get the first-aid kit again, and he quickly left the bathroom to grab it.
The full moon’s rays were shining down on the street, reflecting off of the windows of the buildings across from Peppino’s restaurant. Peppino crossed through the dining room to get back to the breakroom, but, before he could make it past the tables, he was suddenly struck with a wave of dizziness that sent him bumping into one of them.
Peppino steadied himself, but his head still spun something awful. The weird feeling that had been in his arm had now quickly spread to the rest of his body, his nerves buzzing and stomach turning.
He groaned. “Oh, I don’t…” he mumbled thickly. His body swayed, dangerously close to falling to the ground. He clutched the table like it was a life-line, fingers digging into the wood.
Peppino brought his other hand up to cradle his swimming head. The stiffness of a few of his fingers, however, made him pause. Through bleary eyes, he could see that his middle finger and ring finger were having difficulty moving, especially apart from one another. Every time he tried to move them, they only got closer to the other until they no longer could move independently.
That alarmed Peppino. He tried to pull them apart with his other hand, but, to his horror, the middle and ring fingers were the same way on that hand, too. Panicking, Peppino pulled at the fingers, trying and failing to separate them.
And then they started to fuse. The webbing of the fingers began to climb upwards, stringing between the two fingers until there was nothing separating them anymore. The fingernails of his fingers began to blend together as well, morphing into one single nail. In only a few seconds, the two fingers had formed into one, thicker finger on both hands, the size of which his other fingers were quickly beginning to match.
Peppino stared in horror as it happened. He had to be hallucinating – there was no way that his fingers had just fused together. And there was no way that whatever just happened was spreading because now his arms were changing, his skin clearing and smoothing out, muscles and fat moving around until his arms were thicker, more uniform. Even his arm hair changed, condensing into what Peppino could only describe as lazily drawn squiggly lines.
This had to be a dream. No, a nightmare. This had to be a nightmare.
He choked out a gasp as his legs began to change, feeling the muscles shift and the bones move and crack beneath his skin. Instead of thickening, like his arms, they instead thinned until they were at least half the original size.
His clothes weren’t spared from the changes, either. Along with his legs, his pants had thinned down, too, practically becoming a second skin. They blended with his shoes to the point that Peppino could no longer tell where one ended and where one began. Both lost some details as well, just like his arms; no more pockets, no more laces, no more belt loops.
The stained tank top he had – he couldn’t even afford a proper apron, he was that poor – was no longer stained, and now fit closer to his body. And though he couldn’t see it, he knew that his shirt had to have been changed as well; it now clung a little too close to his skin.
Then his face started to tingle. Peppino’s eyes widened with fear; hadn’t he gone through enough?!
He braced for the inevitable as he felt the beginnings of the bones starting to shift. His jaw popped, sending static through his nerves, and he felt like his cheekbones were about to crack in two. His eyes felt weird and strained, almost like they were being stretched out. He thought they were going to pop straight out of their sockets, and for a brief, terrifying second, they felt like they were.
The bridge of his nose ached, like someone had just tried to pry his nose off. His eyes watered as the pulling sensation got worse and worse, refusing to stop even as he pleaded.
But these were nothing compared to his back. His spine clicked before compressing, causing the worst backache that Peppino had ever experienced in his life. Pain flared up his spine, and no amount of movement and stretching would relieve it.
Then, it was over.
The tingle faded from his face, though the aching remained. His stomach was no longer flipping and flopping from nausea, nor did his limbs feel strange and staticky.
Peppino inhaled sharply, slowly untensing himself. He was still alive (probably), still in his restaurant, still in the dining room. The moon's rays had shifted only by a few inches. One of the chairs had been knocked down, but nothing else had changed. Except for him.
He stared down at his hands, wiggling each and every finger until he couldn’t move the fifth that he no longer had. His stomach twinged as he tried and tried again because there was no way that he only had four fingers. It was impossible.
His arms were no better. Peppino’s heart thumped against his chest as he stared at the unfamiliar skin of them. They were too smooth, too perfect to be his. This absolutely had to be a nightmare. A really intense, very realistic, nightmare.
Peppino’s breath came out in quick puffs as panic gripped him, his heart beating painfully against his chest. He swore he could see it popping out from his chest, and, to his horror, it did.
He yelped, tripping over the fallen chair. His legs became tangled and trapped by it, causing him to fall to the ground with a THUMP that shook everything around him. Stars flashed across his vision, his breath being knocked out of his lungs with a wheeze.
For a moment, Peppino laid on the ground, wincing at the pain that radiated through his body. This was officially the worst nightmare he’s ever had. It was horrifying, painful, terrible…
Slowly, he pushed himself up to his feet, still listing every word he could think of that would describe this nightmare. Hand slapped firmly over his racing heart, he gingerly stepped around the chair, careful not to get tangled up in it again.
Then, from between his fingers, his heart jumped out again and again and again.
Alarmed, Peppino slapped his other hand over his chest, but it did nothing to deter his heart. He whipped his head around, trying to find something that could make it stop beating so hard. A hammer, maybe? Like Whack-A-Mole?
…no. No! What was he thinking?! That’d break his ribs! Why did that even cross his mind? Think about something else!
Something to…something to…wrap it! Like gauze, which was made for wrapping around things, and he knew where the gauze was; still in the bathroom, where he had left it.
Peppino scrambled towards the bathroom, getting tangled up in yet another chair in his haste. He kicked it off of him as quickly as he could, getting back on his feet. What was it with the chairs that kept tripping him up?
He skidded into the bathroom, eyes immediately falling on the roll of gauze perched on the sink. Finally! Now to wrap it around his chest…
In the corner of his eye, he caught movement. He glanced over, and found himself staring into the eyes of a stranger. He looked frazzled, black hair sticking in wild directions, and his eyes were huge, larger than what was natural. His nose was long, his mouth was wide, and he was wearing a familiar hat. It looked a bit like his.
Peppino reached up to touch his hat, which the stranger mirrored. Peppino dropped his hand, which the stranger also mirrored. Peppino turned to face the stranger head on, and the stranger did the same. Then the stranger’s already wide eyes went wider, and Peppino suddenly knew what he was looking at.
He screamed, the mirror fracturing. It wasn’t a stranger at all; it was him! He’d been looking at himself!
What happened to him?!
The mirror burst into shards, which rained down on him. Yelping, Peppino covered his face as he escaped from the bathroom. A few shards were stuck to his arm, but left no blood or wound when he hastily brushed them off.
He ran to nowhere in particular; his brain was in a full-blown panic – he couldn’t think straight. Chairs and tables seemed to leap into his path, but he bowled them over like they weren’t there at all. His brain kept repeating the images in his mind, of his reflection, of his hands, of everything.
Peppino all but fell into the kitchen, breathing heavily. Whenever his anxiety got particularly bad, he would hide in the kitchen for a couple minutes to calm down. He didn’t want to break down in front of the customers. Gustavo understood, and would give him the space that he needed. Sometimes he would take over the front, allowing Peppino to take over the back once he was better. It was a system that worked well for both of them, most of all for Peppino.
Perhaps that was why he had run into the kitchen. It was a safe haven for him, even if he didn’t know what he was trying to be safe from.
Peppino ran his hands against the counters, trying to calm himself down. He had to think rationally here. This was all a nightmare, right? It wasn’t real, he just had to wake himself up.
But how? Pain wasn’t helping – it didn’t do anything to wake him up. Maybe he had to think really hard to get out?
He screwed his eyes shut, focusing his thoughts. He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave…now!
Peppino opened one eye. Still in the restaurant’s pizzeria. He let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in. That didn’t work. It probably did less than the pain did.
He paced the kitchen, racking his brain. If pain and the power of thought did nothing, then what else could he do? Was there anything else he could do? Oh, God, was he stuck here? In this nightmare? Forever?
So caught up was he in his worries, Peppino didn’t see the small puddle of water right in front of him. The moment he stepped in it, his feet flew out from underneath him, sending him head over ass towards the oven. He slammed into it with a loud SMACK, somehow not breaking the glass on the door.
Slowly, Peppino slid down to the ground. He blinked, rubbing his head with a groan, before letting out a yell as a steel pan, jostled from its hook, came crashing down. He scooted out of the way before the pan could hit him, stopping suddenly when his back hit the center counter.
He heard something move. Alarmed, Peppino looked up just in time to see a bowl begin to tip over. He jumped, landing on his feet, as tomatoes spilled onto the floor. They bounced, forcing Peppino into some fancy footwork as he tried not to step on any of them – they only had so many to work with in the first place.
Peppino stopped in front of the fridge, breathing heavily. He scanned the room to see if anything else was about to fall down onto him, but thankfully found nothing more than a few rolling tomatoes. Peppino let out a relieved sigh, his body slumping against the fridge.
Then one of the tomatoes hit a broom. Which then fell down and caught the handle of a pot that had, for some reason, been left out. Which then was launched towards the knife block. Which then sent all of the knives flying as the block toppled over. Towards him.
Peppino tried to run out of the way, but his feet never hit the floor, leaving him running in place. The knives shot through the air, and Peppino had to quickly jerk his body around to dodge them as they embedded themselves around him.
Somehow, none of the knives hit him, instead pinning him to the fridge by his clothes. If he hadn’t been so terrified, he would have laughed.
He shoved himself off of the fridge, pieces of his clothes tearing off and remaining stuck to the appliance, and booked it out of there before anything else went wrong. His heart thumped wildly against his chest, his whole body shaking. He didn’t even care about anything anymore; he just needed to get out.
Peppino stumbled over tables and chairs as he ran out of the restaurant, smashing through the front door without a second thought. He skidded across the road as he tried to turn down the street, crashing into the store across from the pizzeria. At this point, he was too far gone in his panic to register what had happened, and picked himself up and out of the rubble as quickly as he possibly could.
He ran down the street, mind on auto-pilot as he swerved around cars and people. The wind whipped across his face and it felt like he was riding on his scooter. Distantly, somewhere in his brain told him that that was impossible. He wasn’t riding his scooter, he was running. It hadn’t even been windy at all, either. Something was wrong, but he didn’t stop to think of what.
He turned another street, then another, and, before long, he was running up the steps to his apartment, surprising a few of the tenants as he blew past them.
Peppino slammed open his door, breaking the lock. The door slammed back closed, or as closed as it could be, startling Peppino just enough to make him stop running. He slid across the carpet, tripped over a pair of shoes he’d left in the living room, and subsequently sent himself flying headfirst into the wall.
Peppino woke up to the muffled beeping of his alarm. Squinting against the sun streaming in from the window, he slowly sat up, wondering why his alarm sounded so faint, and why his bed felt so hard.
He blinked the sleep from his eyes. Ah, that was why. He wasn’t in his room at all; he was in the living room, on the floor. No wonder his back felt like hell – the floor was no softer than a wooden plank. Why did he decide to sleep here, anyways? He was way too old to be sleeping on the floor.
Grimacing, Peppino pushed himself up, his knees popping as he did so. He stretched, his joints cracking. Jesus, the floor did a number on him. Not to mention the killer headache that he was nursing. It was like someone had taken a hammer to his head.
And that strange dream that he had, too. It had felt so real, with pain and everything. He could almost believe that he’d been bitten by a pair of walking plastic teeth and turned into some weird cartoonish version of himself. Thankfully, it had all just been some fever dream that his mind cooked up; there was no way any of it had actually happened.
Peppino shuffled into his room, wincing at the shrill beeps coming from his alarm. One day, he was going to toss the damn thing out the window, but today was not that day.
He clicked the alarm off, and then looked at the time.
“Damn it! I’m gonna be late!”
Peppino rushed around his room. Luckily, he was still in his work uniform. He must have been dead tired last night if he not only slept on the floor, but also forgot to change out of his uniform. He ran into the small bathroom across from his room, checking to see if he was at least presentable.
His hair was a little mussed (what else was new?) and he needed to shave, but otherwise he looked…fine. His clothes were a little creased and dirty, too. He couldn’t do too much about those, so he didn’t touch them.
He, however, reeked. Pizza combined with working long hours did not lend well to good odor. As he reached for the deodorant on the vanity, Peppino glanced in the mirror.
And saw a ring-like scar on his left arm.
Peppino froze, his heart skipping a beat. It was exactly where the teeth had bit him in his dream. He hadn’t had a scar there before – he would have definitely remembered getting one like it. It was huge, around the size of his fist, and was darker than the surrounding skin, making it very hard to miss.
Unnerved, Peppino quickly put on the deodorant and left the bathroom, shutting the lights off with more force than was needed. If he wasn’t running late, maybe he would have looked at it closer. Or maybe he wouldn’t have.
He didn’t have time for breakfast, so he just ran out the door, trying and failing to close it. In the end, Peppino gave up, closing the door as tightly as he possibly could and ran down the hall, pounding down the stairs.
His scooter wasn’t outside when he stepped out into the early morning air. He couldn’t remember if he’d ridden it home or not, or if someone had stolen it. He was betting on the former because even he wouldn’t steal his scooter, much less anyone else.
Well, damn. It looked like he was running to work, then. Grumbling, Peppino took off down the road.
He was winded by the time he got to the second crosswalk, but nonetheless pressed forward, pushing himself to get to the pizzeria before Gustavo began to get worried. Briefly, he wondered if he should stop and call the restaurant from a payphone, but decided to continue running instead. Gustavo wouldn’t mind if he was a little bit late, wouldn’t he?
By the time he made it to the street his pizzeria was on, his lungs were burning and his legs felt like jelly. Just a few more feet, and he would be there.
And…
And there were cops outside his restaurant.
Panic gripped his heart in an icy grasp; what happened? Why were there so many cops? Did his restaurant get vandalized? Were there drugs? Did someone get murdered?
Peppino sucked in a sharp breath as an alarming thought came to mind. Was Gustavo okay?
Ignoring his burning lungs and weak legs, Peppino ran towards his pizzeria, praying that nothing had happened to his friend. What if it had been because he wasn’t there to help Gustavo? What if someone had broken in and attacked him? What if he’d slipped and fell and hit his head? What if he was dead?
Panicked thoughts and what-ifs filled his mind, and he was well on his way to a panic attack when he spotted Gustavo in the midst of dark blue uniforms, completely fine and looking worried.
Peppino was flooded with relief. “Gustavo!”
Gustavo’s head whirled around instantly, eyes lighting up the moment they landed on Peppino. “Peppino!”
They met in a hug, to Peppino’s surprise. Gustavo threw his arms around him, holding him tightly. Automatically, Peppino’s arms closed around Gustavo, pulling him closer. They stood there for a few moments, saying nothing as they embraced.
Gustavo pulled away. “Peppino, you’re alright! When I saw the blood, I thought…”
“What blood?” Peppino asked, alarmed. Images of bloody hand prints and broken plastic passed through his mind unbidden. But those had happened in his dream, not here.
“The blood in the alleyway and on the walls!” Gustavo said. He pointed towards the alleyway. “There’s a few puddles over there with a bunch of broken plastic. And- and hand prints on the walls!”
Smashing the teeth to pieces against the alleyway wall. His arm cut up and torn. His stumble through the halls to get the first-aid kit. The tingling.
“The dining room and kitchen are both trashed,” Gustavo was saying when Peppino tuned back in. “There’s glass everywhere in the men’s bathroom. It was like a murder scene, Peppino! When I saw your scooter, I thought- I thought…”
Gustavo trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence for Peppino to understand what he meant.
Peppino let out a shaky breath. “I’m alright, Gus. I wasn’t there.” He wasn’t. He hadn’t been there, spilling blood everywhere from a wound that closed up within a minute. He hadn’t been there, going through a horrific transformation. He hadn’t been there, he hadn’t-
One of the officers came up to them. “Mr. Giallo? Is this Peppino S-”
“Yes!” Gustavo said. “Yes, it is. He’s alright; he wasn’t in there!”
The officer nodded. “We’d like to ask you a few more questions, Mr. Giallo, for you and your co-worker.”
Gustavo nodded. “Of course. Yeah, of course.” He shook his arms out. “Sorry, I’m a little jittery. Every. All. Everything is just…a lot.”
Peppino didn’t blame him. He was jittery himself, but for different reasons. More and more evidence was being stacked against his belief that last night had been a dream, and that terrified him; what did it mean, and what would happen if it was real?
The officer led them closer to the pizzeria, giving Peppino a closer look at the damage.
His eyes caught on the small puddles of blood with plastic shards. The puddles of his blood with plastic shards. His arm twinged as he felt the bite of phantom teeth tearing into his skin again.
And the dining room – Gustavo hadn’t been lying; it was a mess. Tables and chairs were upended, tables and chairs that he had tripped on and that he knew that he tripped on. Then there was the front door; a clear silhouette of a man had been cleanly cut out of it. The glass hadn’t even shattered.
Speechless, Peppino could only stare as his stomach sank to his feet.
It hadn’t been a dream after all.