“We’re lost,” Alexa gushes, as rain slaps the pavement.
We’ve been lost for hours, truthfully—probably even since the moment we started out. Hopelessly circling the great park we entered this morning, before the weather turned down.
“What time is it?” She asks, and I bite the inside of my cheek, “My phone died an hour ago.”
“Perfect, just perfect.” She steps into a puddle, and stops walking. “Wait — do you see that?”
“See what?” I ask, before it slides into a gap between two trees. “Oh thank God, it’s a diner!”
The building is mostly obscured by the rain, but we can make out the dim shape of the building: set in the center of a grassy field.
“What’s it doing in the park?” Alexa asks, but I am already walking toward it. The rain assaults me every step of the way—the torrent nearly washing me off my feet.
“Is it open?” Alexa asks behind me.
There’s no sign indicating as such or otherwise. I check the name—“Local’s Diner,” I read back to her. “Maybe the hours are online?”
She joins me at the entrance—at least, what looks like an entrance, amidst the blurry wash of rain.
She takes out her phone and opens the internet.
“Local’s Diner,” she mumbles, tapping at her search bar. “Hours listed …ten to nine.
“So, then it should be open,” I say, tugging at the locked door. “Maybe they’re closed from the weather?”
“I’ll try calling,” Alexa sighs.
I cup my eyes to the glass, peering inside the vestibule, and through the dusty window on the interior door. “I think…someone’s in there.”
“Yes—hello?” Alexa suddenly speaks into her phone, plugging her other ear from the cacophony of rain. “Can you hear me? Yes—hello,” she shouts, “Are you open for business?”
She stands there a moment, holding the phone against her ear, before finally lowering it to her waist.
“It’s dead,” she says, smacking the wet, black screen.
“Did you get through?”
She turns to face the window. “They said they were open,” she says. “And that we should come in.”
I try the door again, and this time, it opens easily in my hand.
“Must have just been jammed,” I mumble lamely. “Maybe…we should go in for a coffee, and get out of the rain?”
“That would be the obvious decision…” Alexa says, staring uneasily past the doorway. “Did you say you saw someone?”
“There,” I say, pointing out the figure inside: standing just past the entryway. I give a short, courteous wave to the stranger—when Alexa pulls down my arm.
“Mark,” she whispers, “I think that’s a cut-out.”
“What?”
“Look closer,” she says, “That’s not a person,” I start to notice the perfect stillness of the silhouette.
“It’s a cardboard cut-out.”
It suddenly dawns on me that the cardboard cutout is the first person I’ve seen for hours, besides Alexa.
“Come on,” I say, taking the first step inside. “Let’s get out of this god-damn rain.”
We stomp our shoes off in the vestibule, and then venture through the second set of doors.
The first thing I notice is the cut-out: a man wearing a bright smile, and holding a bottle in his hand. The words at his waist read: Drink Bobby Cola!
“Have you ever heard of this ‘Bobby Cola?’” I ask. “My god, it’s dark in here.”
“Hello!” Alexa calls out. “Paying customers, here!”
She steps up to ring the bell, but no one responds. The diner is quiet besides the hum of some hidden generator.
“Let's just leave,” she huffs. “It’s getting late—and we’re probably not supposed to be in here.”
“If we’re not supposed to be here,” I say, stepping around Bobby, “Then why’d they leave a pot on?”
I reach over to grab the pot of coffee, then take a seat at the counter. “There’s mugs here—one each.”
“Fine,” she says. “One cup, and then we go.”
“Friendly, efficient self-service,” I hum, filling our mugs up with the steamy black liquid.
“Tastes burnt,” Alexa says, after taking her first sip. Then she shrugs, “At least it’s warm.”
“Mine’s delicious,” I smack my lips together. “Tastes chocolatey, almost.”
Alexa looks at me like I said the sky was falling. Which it is, essentially; in the minute since we stepped inside, the rain is falling tremendously harder. We can’t see the world outside the window: only a wall of water.
“Can we please go?” Alexa whispers. “This place is giving me the creeps.”
“Just a second,” I say, scooting closer to the glass dome of cherry pie. “How long would you reckon that’s been sitting there?”
“About a decade?”
“Let’s see if it’s still good to eat — ”
“Wait—” Alexa shoves her mug away, and stands up from the counter. “This is wrong,” she says anxiously. “Somebody should be here, it shouldn’t just be us!”
“Calm down—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down—it’s pouring rain, in the middle of a park,” she says, raising her voice, “So why is there a diner here—and listen: when I called on the phone, and someone answered…”
Her voice trails off.
“Well?” I ask. “They said we should come in.”
“It’s just…” Alexa shakes her head. “They said it desperately.”
“Huh,” I look down at my arm. “Goosebumps…”
“I’m leaving—” she starts, when a crack of thunder makes her jump back into her seat. Outside, the weather has turned violent: the windows showing bullets of rain, then another flash of lightning.
“Let’s just wait in the vestibule,” I suggest. “It’s getting crazy out there.”
We stand in the small chamber at the diner’s entrance, waiting for the first sign of a break in the weather to leave.
“I’ve never seen weather this bad,” I mumble, engrossed by the raging storm breaking against the thin glass pane.
“It got dark so fast,” Alexa says, her teeth chattering from the cold. Outside the window, it’s darker than midnight. “I’m so tired,” she yawns, glancing back into the diner. “The cup’s still steaming…”
“Go drink some,” I say, “It’ll wake you up.”
Alexa considers it for a moment, then shakes her head. “I’m just realizing…we didn’t pay.”
I pat my pockets, suddenly realizing I forgot my wallet at home. “Hey, look at that,” I notice the coat rack beside us: hanging with two jackets. “Maybe we’re not the only ones here?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Alexa mumbles.
“They’re probably in the bathroom,” I say, realizing a moment later that Alexa’s right: it doesn’t make any sense. “Let’s check the pockets, anyways.”
The first jacket is dry, its pockets empty. The second coat is so stiff, the leather nearly snaps in my hand.
From the inside pocket, I pull out a black wallet.
“Curiouser, and curiouser…”
“What is it?”
“James Richardson, 5’11, blue eyes, brown hair—”
“Stop fucking around, Mark.”
“—Expiration Date: 1972.”
“You’re telling me,” she gulps, “That jacket’s been hanging there…for fifty years?”
As the words leave her mouth, something kicks on loudly in the back room—and the lights flicker on.
“Look,” I gasp, watching the diner transform into a haze of lights, beckoning us back in from the vestibule. “There’s even a Christmas tree,” I notice, as its twinkling colors have turned on with the generator.
“Let’s go back inside.”
“No way,” Alexa says, but there’s no longer any power behind her voice—and I’ve already re-entered Local’s Diner, reclaiming my seat at the cup of steaming coffee.
“Look at this pie!” I laugh, seeing it better in the light: with bright red bulbs of cherries oozing out of a perfect slice. I lift the dome-lid and scoop it up into my hand, taking a candy-tart bite. “You’ve gotta try this, Alexa!”
I turn back around, and she’s not there. “A-alexa?”
Silence. I limp over to the vestibule, but it’s empty. Nothing but night out the window, beyond the black wall of water.
It occurs that she has probably left the diner, and ventured out into the storm—but strangely, it’s secondary to the notion that she has simply disappeared.
I step towards the doorway, but the floor seems to lengthen as I cross it—stretching endlessly, like taffy being pulled to its greatest extent: distorting the dimensions of the tiles, until I’m walking what looks like an endless desert of increasingly distant lines, with the exit on the other side of infinity.
I turn back, and the diner is still there: my cup still steaming, and the seats now full of elders: all watching me, waiting for another one to come in from the rain.