The Source

Content warning: animal abuse

Sitting in the car, the engine humming quietly in front of us, vibrating around and beneath us, heightened by the fact the music’s turned off and nobody’s speaking. Reality is starting to set in.

Within the cocoon of the car, ‘no’ still feels like a possibility, but once those doors are opened…

        “Well,” says Gary. “Are we going to do this thing or what?”

        You know; what the hell.

How it came about was this: Atlas pizza opened in town about two months ago now and from the first time myself and everyone I knew tried it, we were obsessed. These pizzas were out of this world. I mean, literally breath-taking. With my first bite, I couldn’t quite believe what I was tasting.

This was transcendent pizza.

Before long, I was hooked on this stuff. So was pretty much everyone I knew. We had to keep it quiet at first though. It felt almost like a drug addiction or something, sneaking around so as not to upset Gary.

Gary’s dad has a pizza franchise, and most of Gary’s friends, myself included, have picked up shifts there at some point, whether working the ovens or the cash register or, like me, driving delivery.

        That had been a pretty good job, I’ve gotta say. The pay may not have been the best, but Gary’s dad was a sound boss and when there were no orders in, we basically hung out and played Playstation in the back or smoked by the cars. Much like any other time I hung out with Gary really.

        But Gary’s dad was struggling now. Of course he was. And it wasn’t just the pizza places. The Chinese restaurants, the kebab shop, the fried chicken place, and the chip shops were all noticeably deserted these days. A couple of places had already given in and shut up shop. The story was that even the fancy restaurants were feeling the competition from Atlas. Their pizzas were that good that people were abandoning their fine dining experiences in favour of it. Seriously.

        The first time Gary came to our place for a game and we were sitting there munching an Atlas, he was pretty pissed. Understandably so. But when we persuaded him to try it, you could see it in his eyes as soon as his teeth closed over the first bite. He got it.

        I’ve mentioned how good this pizza is, right?

        Double it.

So that’s a little bit of the history, without going into too much detail, such as the noticeable weight gain of the town as a whole. I mean, I think I’m about to move up a waist size for the first time since I was about sixteen. It’s pretty scary.

        Not scary enough to keep me away from Atlas, admittedly, but I have semi-seriously considered a boycott.

What happened a few nights ago, that lead us here, was when Gary and Darren and Myself had been to the cinema and we stopped off at Atlas on the way back to get some pizzas. Gary stayed in the car, of course. He’d resigned himself to the fact he wanted to eat their pizza now, but he couldn’t bring himself to step over the threshold. It felt, he said, like one betrayal too many.

        We went back to Darren’s place and hung out until late, eating slice after slice until we couldn’t physically force another down, at which point we’d vegetate in front of the TV until we felt about capable to squeeze another one in.

        “How?” asked Darren at one point, holding a slice above his face by the crust as he lay on the floor with a cushion under his head, the tip drooping agonizingly close to his mouth. “How is it possible to love something so much, and be so determined to destroy it at the same time?”

        Gary and I laughed, but it totally made sense.

        “At least it will always be with you,” Gary said.

        “Not always,” said Darren, to which Gary leaned back and rubbed his stomach, and again we all laughed. “Seriously though,” Darren continued. “And no offense to your old man here mate,” and Gary held his hand up to show it was ok. “But how can this exist and only be classed as food. It needs a whole new name.”

        “Like what?”

        “I don’t know. But it’s like… it’s like… you know, how a house is called a house, but a palace is called a palace, and not just a bloody big house. You know?”

        Silence.

        For a moment that made more sense than anything else ever. It was like all the disparate elements of human thought and belief had achieved a brief sense of alignment. The world was in a state of perfect equilibrium.

        Of course, what I actually said was; “Yeah.”

        And we fell into silence, and we talked crap about random things and made fun of what was on the TV. But through it all, I kept thinking about the pizza. Partly it was because there was still some left, and I wanted to eat more when I could physically manage it, but also it was because what Darren said kind of made sense and it shouldn’t. And later still, after Gary had fallen asleep for a bit and then woken up and eaten a slice of pizza, we talked about it again.

        “The toppings are just toppings,” said Gary, as if desperate to find fault. “They’re good and all, but they’re just toppings,” and he looked at us. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

        “I think so,” I said. “But the rest of it is epic.”

        “Magical,” said Darren.

        “I don’t know,” I said. “If it’s the dough, or the sauce, but it’s something.”

        “It’s the sauce,” said Gary.

        “You’re the sauce,” said Darren.

        “Shut up,” said Gary. “I’m serious. I grew up in the world of pizza, and I’m telling you it’s the sauce.”

        “Pizza world,” said Darren. “Awesome.”

        “Try it,” Gary continued after staring at Darren a moment to see if he wanted to make another contribution. “Like this,” and as he spoke he demonstrated. “Just get your nail under the cheese. Between the cheese and the base, and then lift it up. Then lick the sauce off the top of the base.”

        We did this. Naturally. And he was right. “Oh my god,” I said. “The rest of the pizza almost ruins the damn sauce.”

        “I know, right?”

        “So how do they make it?” I asked.

        Gary shrugged. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t keep buying from these bastards,” and he slapped one of the boxes.

        “Well then, the answer’s easy,” said Darren.

        “What answer?”

        “We should find out how they make the sauce?”

        “And how do we do that?” I asked.

        Darren was sitting up now. He looked more alive than he had all night. All week probably. “It’s so obvious,” he said. “We steal it.”

        “We steal what?”

        “The sauce,” he said. “The ingredients. The recipe. Whatever we find when we get there.”

        “Get where?”

        “You guys really don’t get it, do you?”

        “Get what?”

        He clapped his hands and picked up an empty pizza box and looked at it as if he was trying to find a hidden message. “We should rob Atlas pizza.”

And so now we’re parked in the alley out back where there’s not much traffic and nobody hanging around. It’s already gone two, so we have to move pretty fast. No way to say how long this will take. No time to contemplate the reality of what we’re doing here right now. The time for that was over the last two days as we drew up plans and bought utensils, cautiously assigning different people to buy different things and going to a number of stores for things we could have got all from the same place. We were being thorough and organized, secretive and deadly serious, like we were planning to overthrow the government or something. And if, through this time, I had doubts about the reality of us actually following through with this plan, I never said anything. Likewise, if the others had such thoughts, they kept them to themselves.

        Now it’s go time.

        Gary wants to smash the door in, but Darren’s got duct tape and he says to watch him do something he saw on TV and we agree, though I can tell Gary thinks he’ll still have to smash the door. He swings the sledgehammer casually by his side while we watch Darren, who has moved a bin to underneath a small window. He stands on the bin and covers the window in the duct tape. He makes sure the whole thing is covered and then he smoothes it down. Gary tells him a few times to hurry up while he does this, but Darren seems focused and keeps telling us he knows what he’s doing. He puts two layers; the first vertical, the second horizontal. For my part, I’ve taken a few steps back to get a good look both ways down the alley and am watching to make sure nobody comes. Finally, Darren adds a few diagonals of taping, forming a cross.

        Once the tape’s all in place, Darren leans back and admires it for a moment, runs his hand over it, then turns and looks down at us. “Watch this,” he says and hits the window with his elbow.

        The whole square falls inwards, cleanly, with no glass shards around the edges. There is a faint thud from inside, quiet enough that we probably wouldn’t have even noticed if we didn’t know what was happening. It’s fair to say Gary and I are impressed. Darren looks like he’s just solved world hunger or something.

        One by one we drop through the window onto a conveniently placed sofa. Gary is going to throw his sledgehammer through before he goes but I tell him to leave it outside. He looks at it, unsure, and I wonder if he was planning to do some serious damage, then he leaves it leaning against the wall next to the bin.

This must be where the staff and the drivers relax when they’re not busy. There’s another sofa along the back wall and a TV opposite it. It doesn’t have a Playstation though.

        The room has three doors; the one Gary didn’t have to smash, one which leads into a toilet, and the one we take to get into the kitchen area.

        We set to work in the kitchen, ransacking cupboards and shelves, fridges and freezer, all by torchlight. We stay low when we can, aware that beyond the counter is nothing but the dining area and floor, which lead to ceiling high glass running the width of the place. If we’re not careful, anyone passing by could see us.

        “I can’t find it,” says Darren.

        “It must be here somewhere,” says Gary.

        “Keep looking,” I tell them.

        But it’s no good. We find potatoes and we find various toppings, and cans and bottles of drink. The fridge and the freezer both have dough for the bases, and a couple of shelves have boxes of flat-packed pizza boxes and a couple more have assembled boxes. Darren finds tubs of those little plastic stands that stop the box from touching the topping and starts emptying one of them into his backpack. “I’m having these,” he says.

        “Why?” I ask.

        He stops and looks at me. “Why not?” he asks, and tips a few more in.

        Fair enough.

Besides the shelves and cupboards, the ovens, the big fridges and freezer and the counter along the far side, there are three doors. The first is the one we came through. The second opens onto the dining area. The third is a heavy door with a padlock. Gary’s bolt cutters make short work of it. “This could be it,” he says.

We all feel kind of epic.   

The door opens onto a dark space. Concrete steps lead down out of sight. Gary and I stand side by side, shining our torches down, but we can’t tell anything.

        “What can you see?” Darren asks, trying to look between our shoulders.

        “Shush,” I tell him. “I think I can hear something.”

        “What?”

        “Be quiet,” I tell him, softly but firmly. “And maybe we’ll be able to tell.”

        “Hello?” he calls down and I nearly hit him with my torch.

        Nobody answers, which is no more than to be expected. It is also a relief. There is a definite scuffling noise down there though.

        “Could be mice,” says Gary. “Or rats.”

        “Or pizza elves,” says Darren. “Working through the night.”

        “Shut up,” says Gary.

In the darkness, the basement manages to feel expansive and claustrophobic at the same time. The weak beams show nothingness, black and solid, looming around us. Then, suddenly, a shelving unit or a workbench or sink springs out as if it’s been stalking us.

The torches were chosen specifically because the beams are weak, meaning we’re less likely to be spotted from outside, but down here in the basement they’re making things difficult.

Something moves into me from behind and I swing round, my torch held like a baton. Gary and I are face to face, both torn between fight and flight, our faces carnival monstrosities in the dancing light of our brandished torches. Jedi we are not.

        Gary holds my arms and rests his head on my shoulder. My breathing is hard and fast. We start to laugh.

And then we hear a noise.

        It’s probably Darren, but we both fall silent.

        There’s someone there.

I can see a patch of darkness within the darkness.

        It looked like a movement. Maybe. If shadows had shadows.

In perfect synchronicity, we point our torches where the sound came from.

He looks big but hunched. Probably old. He looks right at me and his eyes glow as they reflect the torchlight. I swallow a scream and stumble backwards. I don’t see Gary, but I hear the sound of a collision. I think he’s making for the stairs.

The room is suddenly bathed in light.

I shield my eyes, blinking and trying to get focus, swinging my torch in front of me to ward off… whatever. “I found the lights,” Darren says.

        “What the fuck is that?” Gary asks, over to my left somewhere.

        “There’s someone here,” I say, pointing and turning to the hunched man.

        Only it’s not a man.

        “What is it?” Gary says again.

        “It’s a monkey,” says Darren, walking past me towards the cage with a big grin on his face.

        “It’s an orang-utan,” I tell them.

        “That’s a monkey,” says Darren.

        He’s at the cage now and he pats on the bars. The orang-utan looks at him disinterestedly. It looks tired, depleted. The trademark orange fur that was how I recognised it is ragged and lank. Patches are missing. It smells. How did we not notice that smell?

“It is a type of monkey,” I say to Darren, moving towards it as if hypnotized. “And this type is an orang-utan.”

        “Same difference,” Darren says.

        “Hardly,” I tell him. “Details are important.”

        “Sorry professor.”

“Where the hell did they get an orang-utan from?” I mutter.

        “Will you two shut the fuck up?” Gary asks, or maybe tells us.

        I’m at the cage now, beside Darren, looking in, and I swear the orang-utan is crying. His mouth is slightly open and a long strand of drool hangs down. I notice then that there is a tube in the opposite side of his mouth to the drool. I follow it up and across into a clear plastic bowl. In the bowl are what I think at first is a chopped up carcass, but as I look closer I see that it is small chunks of tomato in their juice, mixed with bits of leaves, presumably herbs.

        I pay more attention to the cage now. It is small. Small for the orang-utan at least. He sits in it on a large dirty cushion and his head almost touches the top. There’s no way he could stand up. I notice too now the other tubes.

        There are two tubes which look like they’re coming out of the orang-utan’s stomach. They lead in different directions and pass through the bars on either side of the cage. The one on the left, as I face it, is attached to a drip, which has a yellow-green viscous solution passing out of it and along the tube, into the orang-utan’s stomach. The second one is pushing a lumpy red substance from the stomach, along the tube to the right, into a clear plastic tub which sits on a table lower than the cage. The tub is currently about a quarter full. That little window seems so far away right now.

        “What the hell is happening?” asks Gary.

        “Why do the tubes have to be see-through?” Darren asks. “It’s gross.”

        I don’t answer either of them because both answers seem too obvious. They’re only asking because they want me to tell them that what they’re thinking is wrong. Well, maybe Darren really doesn’t know his answer, but I don’t care about that.

        “What should we do?” Gary asks.

        “I don’t know,” I tell him, a distant voice I have to strain to hear, and I agree with it even though it’s saying nothing helpful.