The Dare

The half illuminated pink neon sign hanging from the ramshackle building across the street had an ominous feeling about it. The small windows were blacked by filth and pieces of trash were tumbling around the entrance, blown by the evening wind. I had been staring at the sign which consisted of a quarter of a lime dangling from the word PINK for the past haft hour with disgust. Only a crazy person would want to set foot in that restaurant. You would have to be starving for weeks to even think of going in there. As I crossed the street, I realized I was one of those crazy persons. I tried to stop myself before reaching the door, but my feet had a will of their own. With sheer horror, I saw my hand stretch out towards the doorknob against my better judgement and within seconds, I entered Pinklime, the lowest rated restaurant in this side of town. The inside of the restaurant was as revolting as its exterior. The dim light couldn’t even hide the molding seats or the stench of incense that waltzed around the odd-looking customers who were engulfing their food like hungry wolves, their eyes crazed by something dangerous. Some of them looked like they haven’t left the place in days.

“Welcome to Pinklime darling”, said a voice behind my back.

I jumped out of fear and turned around to find an old lady smiling at me. She had a pink and white apron tied around her alarmingly thin waist.

“Hum…hi. I just…I saw the sign and —”

“Its okay sweety. Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll go and get you a menu?”, she said without giving me a chance to finish what I wanted to say.

“Oh it’s really not necessary. I was just about to leave…”

“I insist”, she said with a sudden harsh tone.

Without a second to spare, I hurried to the nearest table and ended up at the one with the ripped seats. What was wrong with that woman? Her voice just now sounded really creepy. A man sitting across from me smiled in my direction while shoveling food into his mouth. His beard was covered in brown sauce with little pieces of what looked like broccoli. A shiver of revulsion ran down my spine. What was he eating?

“Here you go”, the waitress said with a stickily voice.

She slammed the menu in front of me which made the dust on the table swirl like miniature tornados.

“Don’t take to long. I have other customers ya know?”, she added with a click of her tongue.

I nodded and proceeded to open it, afraid that something bad would happen if I didn’t listen to her. As I was skimming through the first page, my vision started to blur and the words suddenly became a jumble of black lettering. Some letters were popping out of the corner of my eye whereas others were sliding from one side to another. Was I going insane? Did they drug me? I looked at my untouched glass of water and then lifted my head to observe with suspicion the ventilation in the room. I once read in the newspaper that a company tried to drug their employees through the ventilation system in the hope that they would want to work eighteen hours a day. Needless to say, it didn’t work. The CEO was thrown in prison after being forced to pay millions of dollars to his employees. In Chemical City, that sort of thing happened all the time so I didn’t think much of it when it was all over the news, but it was different when it happened to you. I started to frantically comb the room for any clues suggesting that I was being drugged. I knew in my gut that Pinklime was hiding something. In a city built on pure capitalism, no restaurant, even in the Sewers, could withstand five years of bad ratings. The dying rays of sunlight filtering through the half-opened blinds suddenly caught my attention by briefly illuminating curls of smoke swirling out of a little wooden box near the cash register. “It’s the incense”, I told myself with disbelief. It was the only logical explanation I could think of. The man with the beard started laughing, the sauce dripping from his mouth to the floor. Did he know about the drugs too? 

“What’s your order?”, said the waitress behind me.

I nearly fell off my seat, spooked by the waitress overshadowing me. How long has she been standing there?

“I…I guess I’ll take the special of the day?”, I said with unease, still staring at the incense burner. 

“Good. Your’ the first client to pick that one”, the waitress said with a smile. “It won’t take long.”

Her acrylic nails slid against the table as she took the menu away from me. What was that suppose to mean? Why was I the first one to order it? I only said that because I couldn’t read the menu since the words kept melting out of my reach. Did I just order something utterly disgusting? I realized too late that I shouldn’t have accepted the dare. Skyler was probably laughing his head off by know knowing I was eating at Pinklime. “Ugh. I swear when I see him I’ll wipe that stupid smile of his out of his face”, I muttered to myself. It wasn’t in my nature to back down from a dare, but that restaurant was creeping me out. I caught a glimpse of my face in the cracked mirror hanging from the back wall and almost didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me. Her glazed eyes were filled with only one thing: hunger. I shook my head, my short hair brushing against my jaw. “That’s it. I’m leaving”, I thought to myself. I didn’t care about the dare anymore. I tried to get up, but something stopped me from doing so. It felt like I wasn’t in control of my body anymore.

“Leaving so soon?”, the waitress said while setting a huge plate filled with a colorless mixture in front of me. “How rude of you. Here, eat up. A Doll like you still needs to eat. The Sewers are a dangerous place for starving girls like you.”

The waitress gave me a knowing smile before tending to another customer. How did she know? I’ve never been on this side of the river until tonight and I even made sure to cover up my tattoo. She knows. I started to panic. But how? The door suddenly swung open and Skyler appeared out of thin air, his figure blocking the streetlamp's light from reaching the back of the restaurant. Once he spotted me, he charged towards me with long strides, grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

“Let’s go Misty!”, he said. “Forget all about the dare.”

To stung to speak, I followed him outside, the stare of the waitress burning holes in my back. We ran like crazy and didn’t stop until we crossed the bridge to the other side of the Sewers, our footsteps leaving a trail behind us in the newly fallen snow.

“Thanks”, I murmured breathlessly. “Pinklime is a madhouse.”

Still holding my hand, Skyler let out a shaky breath which hung a few seconds between us in the cold winter air. 

“What’s wrong?”, I probed. “Why do you look so distraught?”

“The waitress is a Mingler”, he said with an angry voice. “I didn’t know, I swear. If I did I would have never asked you to go there. You have to believe me.”

She was what?

“What did you just say?”

I suddenly felt the blood drain from my face.

“Misty. Please, forgive me. She’s a Mingler okay? Jacky told me after you left. She thought we knew.”

I pulled out my hand from his grasp and started pacing back and forth. That explained a lot. A Mingler had power over your mind. The longer you stayed near them, the stronger they got. That’s probably why she knew what I was.

“Did you eat anything?”, Skyler asked me.

I could hear the fear in his voice.

“No”, I said, stopping in front of him.

“Okay. Good.”

The tension in his jaw relaxed and relief washed over his face. We all knew that a Mingler only fully gained access to your mind once you ate their food.

“But she…she said something…” My voice trailed off, leaving my sentence unfinished.

“What did she say?”, Skyler asked while leaning towards me. Our foreheads were almost touching now and his dark eyes were staring at me with an emotion too subtle for me to pick up.

“Never mind”, I said.

I turned my back on him and started walking in the direction of the inner part of the Sewers, which was the poor side of Chemical City. Skyler didn’t know I was a Doll. He didn’t know that at the age of twenty, I had no choice but to become one in order to survive. A Doll at the mercy of greedy men. That’s what I was. Would he still be my friend if he knew the truth? I doubted it.

“Hey! Wait for me!” Skyler shouted behind me.

I let him catch up with me.

“Do you want to go to Silver’s? My threat”, he said while putting an arm around my shoulders.

“Okay”, I conceded with a soft smile.

Maybe one day I would tell him, but right now I just wanted to selfishly keep him by my side a while longer. Weren’t we all at the mercy of Chemical City anyways? Skyler had secrets of his own and I had mine. I guess we both didn’t want to show our true nature and that was fine by me. The darkness swallowed us as we made our way towards the bar, our footprints quickly disappearing under the cold snow falling from the sky. Chemical City was merciless, but sometimes, it was truly beautiful at this time of year when everything turned white, even the Sewers. I liked the snow; the cold numbed my heart and that’s what I needed. To be a Doll, your heart had to be as cold as ice and mine was too warm. “It’ll come”, I told myself. Chemical City had a knack for making you into exactly what it wanted you to be. “It’ll come soon enough”.