I tug listlessly at my seatbelt. We’ve been driving for ages now. The droning whir of the AC has coated my mind in static agitation; and yet, somehow done nothing to ease the unusual heat of this late May. A flurry of kicks pummels my seat back and I scowl, twisting back to aim a glare at my brother. He plays dumb, laying it on thick to portray the perfect vision of innocence. Beside me, Celia, (Silly), scribbles at her Strawberry Shortcake coloring book with a manic furiosity. She sticks her tongue out with the effort, and I’m on the edge of telling her if she keeps it like that a fly’ll land on it for sure- when we finally pull to a stop, the car rattling like it was on it’s last breath.
“Right, this is the last stop for a good while” My father grunts. My mother nods affirmingly. “Silly, don’t you forget to use the facilities, and mind your sister” “Blah blah” I sigh as I clamber out of the suburban, pulling Silly with me by the wrist (Somewhat gently). Silly and I are the designated snack crew, most of our road trips, really. It’s tradition, practically. I stretch, and the warmth outside of the car hits me like a wall. It’s hot and sticky, and makes me realize that the AC has, in fact been useful.
Ahead of us is the rest stop, sprawling across the worn parking lot, four buildings in total: A rather shabby gas station, a tiny coffee shop, a fluttering white canopy that housed rows of picnic tables, and beside it a long refurbished barn that appeared to be a restaurant or store of sorts. A faded sign plastered above the entrance announced the name- ‘Clearview Eat ‘n Go’ in chipped, red, flaking paint. Silly pouts huffily as I drag her across the pavement. “Come on” I chide. “I know you’ve got to be hungry, Sills” “For McDonald’s” She whines. Silly perks up a great deal though, once we’ve stepped through the white painted barn doors.
My mood lifts too; the cool air smells like an ice cream shop- which I trace to a mint green counter with a glass front showcasing pastel buckets of ice cream. The whole space is set up a bit like a food court at the mall, separate stalls arranged around the central aisle, advertising fried goods, soda pop, and other delights. Silly beelines for the ice cream counter, nearly bowling over some poor woman with a stroller. I hurry over to apologize for her. “Sorry Ma’am, she’s a wild one, I hope she didn’t wake the baby?” The mother only stared blankly. I peered into the stroller, hoping to find some distinguishing feature to remark on, maybe a compliment to her babys bright eyes or something would smooth things over. I nearly threw up. The thing- the baby, had two enormous empty sockets where it’s eyes should’ve been, where a normal infant’s would have been.
They were dark as pitch, like the skin had been pricked and what shone out was not blood, nor flesh and bone, but the center of a black hole. As I stared quite rudely, for which I was ashamed, it turned those twin tunnels of emptiness on me and I yelped, darting away. Poor thing was probably sick or something, must be. I didn’t want to catch it, that’s all. Poor woman, taking care of that very sick baby. Meanwhile, Silly had been getting up to more fun then I had.
She’d just finished rattling off her long list of ‘Essential’ ice cream toppings to the pleasantly cheery middle aged server. I stood behind her awkwardly. Silly thrust a sweaty wad of cash at the server, a grin the size of Texas on her small rounded face, as her cone was handed over the counter. “Thank you!” She squealed. “Now, is this your sister? What’ll you have, young lady?” Her smile seemed outwardly warm; yet it didn’t quite meet her eyes. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, I just stare at my Mary Jane’s on the concrete floor.
The air feels claustrophobic now, the ice cream from in the cooler smells too sweet, other children and adults too loud. I feel like a little girl, lost in the crowd at Disneyland. Whirling around, I scan for the exit. I steered Silly and her ice cream monstrosity to the door, only to find that it…. wasn’t there? “The other end then, I must’ve misremembered?” I muttered, towing Silly in my wake.
We sift through the growing crowd, reaching the far side of the barn. Only, when we butt up against it, it’s just solid, white walls, littered with flower festival photos like there hadn’t, only minutes ago, been a door. Except now I wasn’t all that sure it HAD been only a minute. Time felt slippery and foreign, like the sour skin on melted ice cream. Panic stabbed at my stomach. I turned to ask Silly if she’s seen a door, maybe on the side walls? But she’s gone, disappeared into the bustling aisle. I spin in a circle, she can’t be far. It’s a small building, it was a small building? Now it seems to extend several football field lengths longer, the other end blurry and far off, as if I was looking through the wrong end of binoculars.
“Silly, come out!” I hiss, still searching the crowd. Silly liked to wander; surely she was just beyond that soda fountain, or that stack of red plastic chairs. I was rapidly growing more afraid. Behind the next swell of the crowd, that first pastel wonderland of an ice cream case shone, an oasis. I scurried up to it it, sweaty palms grasping for purchase on the cool marbled countertop. The same woman from before was working it, and she gazed blandly at me as I steadied myself. I turned my bleary eyes to her name tag. It read, in simple block print, ‘Margaret’. Maybe she’d be able to show me to an exit, or know where my ridiculous, stupid, lost sister had gone. “Ma’am, Margaret, have you seen my sister? The little blonde girl I came in with?” I ask, urgently gesturing an approximation of Silly, sweet Silly’s height. Margaret smiles sickly sweet, adjusting her pink and white striped uniform. I feel like I’ve shrunk, or had the counter grown taller? Margaret leers down at me, displaying a mouth filled with black and rotten teeth. She gives me a leisurely nod. “‘Course I’ve seen her. She’ll do” I shiver. This all felt wrong, nightmarish. Margaret’s eyes are cold and unknowable, resembling that sick baby’s. They bore into me, as if daring me to ask.
With a shudder, I comply. “Do for what?!” The woman grins, a jarringly red tongue dancing over her rotten clumps of teeth. She leans in. A rattling, halting hiss drained into honeyed superiority. “Our new and improved strawberry ice cream. It’s packed with protein!” It’s then that I notice the dark red swirls crisscrossing one prominently displayed ice cream tub- and the plastic Strawberry Shortcake hair clip. It was partially buried, but Shortcake’s sparkly animation eyes stared up at me from between swirls of thick, syrupy, red. I ran.
I’m ashamed of it to this day, running away like I did. The shame muddied just how, exactly, I escaped. I remember stumbling into my mother’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. I remember the scream that tore from her throat. My father’s gutteral wail, my little brothers, all three, staring dazedly out the window, sequestered safely in the car. I remember the shrill sirens, can recall the blue and red lights cast on my face. It had been minutes, they said. The cops said that the Clearview Eat ‘n Go’ was long abandoned, wholey empty. In fact it’d never been approved for zoning, they said. No record. No trace of Silly. My tale was chalked up to a teen’s feverish imaginings in the face of some unthinkable trauma, a kidnapping probably, that was the popular theory. I know that’s not true. Stay safe, and whatever you do-? Don’t go to to Clearview Eat ‘n Go’. It might eat you.