On New Year’s Eve, clients often make strange requests.
This one, however, was especially odd.
Ever order food from a hospital food court?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I was a delivery and errand boy for some shady people in Bridal Veil Lake. I often picked up at restaurants and casinos, bringing food and drugs to clients who’d contacted my boss. He’d text me the supplier and the drop-off, and I’d get an e-transfer after. It was the easiest job I ever had.
So why did I get such a bad feeling from the shawarma place in the hospital? Because people don’t order from a hospital food court. There are dozens of better restaurants closer to Tour Hill and the hotel clusters where I was headed next.
It wasn’t about the food this time. That’s what I told myself. The supplier had chosen this place for some other reason. You might think maybe it’s pretty lowkey, but you’d be wrong. Cops are at the hospital all the time. Regular food orders from here would be noticed unless the shawarma was super great or something.
But there were a lot of drugs in the hospital too. Maybe somebody was stealing and storing at the shawarma place, and the food was just a means of transferring the goods out inconspicuously.
Still a bad plan. As soon as someone noticed the missing drugs and the high volume of take-out orders from a hospital food court, the gig would be up.
But these concerns were well above my pay grade.
I picked up an order and hopped on my e-bike. The clients were waiting in one of the lakeside hotels, expensive and with a good view of the bridal falls on the opposite edge of the lake. Plus, it was far enough away from Tour Hill that riff raff and homeless folks wouldn’t wander by.
Delivery drivers were common in this area, but that didn’t mean I could just walk into the hotel. I had to wait in a designated reception area in the back where a security guard ran the door.
Because it was a personal delivery, I had to wait for confirmation from the buyer in their room. I waited and checked my phone.
That’s when the package started crying.
I stared at the warming bag, a rectangular sack the shawarma place had given me.
The security guard had left the desk before the crying started. It was just me and the bag. Not opening parcels was kind of important as a delivery boy. Most packages were sealed to prevent runners from skimming the product during deliveries. Any sign of tampering would be grounds for dismissal of the fatal kind.
Yet the crying continued, the wail of a hungry newborn. I don’t have a wife. Never had kids. But I know a baby’s cry when I hear one. What the fuck did the buyer want with a baby? I focused on what to do next to avoid the horrific speculation.
I had to open the bag. When I did, I hoped I was wrong and it was something else like a doll that cried. It wasn’t. A real, swaddled baby had been placed in the bottom of the carrier.
“Shh, shh,” I soothed, “it’s okay, it’s okay.” Its tiny hands grasped my index finger. The eyes weren’t open. This kid was probably only a few hours old. I understood the shawarma restaurant’s location. Babies were born in hospitals. Babies had high value on the black market.
That’s why security is tight on maternity wards. People steal babies if they can. It’s hard to get them out. Nobody would suspect the shawarma place of smuggling them if they only stole one. One might fetch a price in the hundreds of thousands or even millions if the client was desperate and wealthy enough.
The only part that made no sense was involving me. I was an outsider. My bosses must have known the contents, sure, and ensured a big cut for themselves. Keeping me in the dark felt like being set up as the fall guy.
I was panicking.
The kid had stopped crying when a weird looking guy in a suit appeared from the hallway where the security guard left minutes ago.
“You opened it,” the man said. He was young and fit and seemed like an artsy rocker or something. His long hair had been sprayed with glitter and brushed into huge waves framing his high cheekbones. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
“Whoa man,” I said, “hold on, wait a sec, the… it started crying… I-“
A cell appeared in his manicured fingers and he tapped out a quick text. He stared at me while he waited for a response.
“I wouldn’t,” he said when I glanced at the exit. His phone buzzed and he read the text. “Follow me.” The way he turned and just started walking confirmed my suspicion: Someone was watching outside.
I went to the elevator and went all the way to the penthouse with him. When the doors parted, a bizarre scene awaited.
Seated on a throne was a masked figure in flowing robes. Flanking him were four others in similar clothes. Each mask had bulging glass eyes full of smoke and the mouth parts were sealed with steel rods and a slender chain.
“Is this like a movie set or-“
The man on the throne held up a small key before I finished speaking. With his other hand, he held the lock at the end of his mask’s mouthpiece chains. After using the key on the lock, the others tugged the chain until the rod fell out. The mouth dropped open and within I saw singed skin around teeth filed into points.
The other masked people passed the key around, excitedly withdrawing chains and rods, revealing similar gruesome maws. They growled as they beckoned me to enter, their movements strange and wild.
“Put the package on the table,” the guy with glitter hair said.
The round table at the side of the room had been set for dinner. I looked at the baby, sound asleep again in the bottom of the delivery bag.
“Nope,” I said as I hit the door close button. The freaks in the room howled with rage and charged the elevator, robes swishing and chains jingling.
I elbowed the glitter-hair guy as he reached for the door open button, but as we descended, we wrestled and fought. He was surprisingly strong but I knew how to wrestle and box. I got on top of him and started pounding his beautiful face.
“You were going to eat it?!” I shouted as I delivered a severe beatdown. I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of failing to deliver. I was pissed. Fuck a universe that would allow such a horror.
The doors opened on the lobby floor while I was still punching him, and people gasped and freaked, about the blood I imagine.
I grabbed the delivery bag and was about to book when a searing pain exploded out the back of my skull. It brought me to my knees and blood poured onto the polished floor. I thought I’d been shot, but when I touched the spot it felt more like a big, gaping knife wound.
After a deep breath, I got up and rounded on the still unconscious guy in the elevator. Blood got into my eyes and started to burn, so I can’t be 100% sure of what I saw.
That guy’s hair appeared to move on its own. One of the big, wavy pieces coiled into a tight ball before suddenly relaxing again.
I didn’t stick around, obviously. With the kid, I went out the front door and slid into the back of a casino transport full of seniors. From there, I called up a friend and she took me and the kid back to the hospital.
While I sat in the ER, she brought the baby to the attending nurse and left without further explanation. She didn’t want to understand the situation and did not want to get more involved than she already had.
Wisely, she kept me out of it too, and nobody knew I had any connection to the baby. I was just another patient, waiting for care.
I watched as the police presented the infant to a severely fatigued father and a weeping mother who had just obviously been through labour. When that baby was placed into her arms, she sagged into her wheelchair and cried harder. Her husband hugged them both.
A happy ending for them and the New Year’s baby.
I had a lot of weird shit to process, and things only got weirder. The doc took a look at the wound on the back of my head after a nurse cleaned it up for me.
”There’s a big scar,” she said. “When were you injured?”
“Uh, a few hours ago. A scar? That can’t be right.”
The doctor poked and prodded a bit more. “Definitely a scar,” she said. “What happened?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I had to admit. I didn’t want to say anymore and risk having the police get involved. “So I’m okay?”
The doctor shrugged. “If you feel worse tomorrow, come back.” She headed out of triage and went to the next patient.
I left, and checked into a motel far away from Tour Hill and the lake. The days that followed were quiet and strange.
I couldn’t sleep; I didn’t feel the need to. I also didn’t feel hungry or have any desire to eat. At first, I figured it was just me trying to cope with what I’d seen and been through. Add the lack of communication from my bosses and I should have been hiding under the bed.
I stood by the window and watched the parking lot for several hours. I realized I hadn’t used the bathroom in days. My sanity became suspect.
Only the scar on the back of my scalp provided proof of the ordeal. I touched it constantly, and then, maybe weeks or months later - it’s harder to track days when you don’t sleep - it opened. The scar opened and my fingertips felt a hard edge. Further exploration found a wet, squishy meat sponge. I cried when I realized a mouth had grown beneath the scar, a functioning mouth on the back of my head. It licked my hand like a dog.
I wish I could say that’s where things ended. Maybe a few days later, I recalled the gawky movements of the masked cannibals at the hotel. I was leaning against the balcony railing when my elbows popped and I found my arms could bend the opposite way without pain or trouble. My knees and other joints underwent the same change shortly thereafter. I laughed that time. Clearly, I had lost my mind.
The urge to sleep returned one night in the summer. I awoke to the motel manager banging on my door. When I answered, he relaxed.
“I thought you might have died,” he said as he left. I slept for five days. Hunger returned after that but no matter how much I ate, I never felt full. Despite whole pizzas and boxes of wings, I began to drop weight and starve. I knew what I had to do, what I’ve been doing since, in order to survive.
I had to feed it.
Greedily, it feeds, using my hair - what was once my hair - like hands or utensils - it once caught a sparrow and dragged it into my skull when I fell asleep by the river in the gorge.
By next Fall, the mouth began to babble, and make whining noises. That’s when I gave up living amongst people and began living in the gorge. I don’t get cold or feel much of anything anymore. The mouth is satisfied with bark and leaves.
That is, it used to be sated by almost anything. Then it was December again, and the mouth said its first words, disturbingly articulate in its demands.
I re-entered society slowly, and in a hoodie, with no intention of giving it what it wants. The homeless are sort of welcomed at the public library. We can’t legally be kicked out unless we’re causing trouble. That’s when I saw your poster, AP Cleriot. You want weird stories from Bridal Veil Lake? I doubt any are weirder than mine.
But I need your help too.
I bet you can guess what it wants to eat, and it certainly isn’t shawarma.
I resist and await your responses and those of reddit.
Please hurry.