Anyone who road trips knows about the dry stretches. Miles of road, devoid of any civilisation, pockmarked with nothing but diners and McDonalds–shaped time capsules from 1965 (authentic transphobia included!). When I’m on a dry stretch and need food, I always pick McDonalds. Sure, I get frosty welcomes there, underpaid cashiers’ suspicious eyes trailing over my short hair and oversized hoodie. But in diners the waitstaff smile, passive–aggressive grins simmering with all the things they’re itching hto spit at me. Yeesh. I’ll take the open bigotry any day.
As luck has it, I get hungry right after I pass the exit which leads to the last McDonald’s for eighty miles. Now I know what King Arthur felt after he failed to find the Holy Grail––except my Holy Grail involves not sitting in a Formica chair while a waiter bares his teeth at me and calls me Ma’am in a way which suggests he’d rather use a less polite word. Still, I brace myself and pull into the next exit, where a sign for Circe’s Diner peeks out from behind a sea of pine trees.
The diner’s parking lot consists of a single narrow space with a placard reading PRARK HERE. I turn off the ignition, send up a murmured prayer to whoever’s listening, and push the diner’s door open. A little jingle overhead greets me, but the woman behind the counter, triangle of blonde curls bobbing as she hums and wipes down a glass, doesn’t spare me a glance.
The inside of Circe’s looks like the set of a film which can’t decide its genre. The furniture looks new, long rows of jaunty peppermint seats which look like they belong on the set of an old musical. Life–size dolls, straight out of a horror flick, line the walls. “Wow,” I say out loud.
Now the woman turns. “Hi there, welcome to Circe’s Diner! What can I get ya? Hotdish is on special tonight!”
Something about the way she beams unsettles me. It’s… elated, a little manic. Kinda makes me want to sprint back into the Prarking Lot and hightail it outta here. But I’m hungry, so I tamp down my anxiety and smile back. “Hotdish sounds good. Are you… Circe?”
“Ha! Do I look that old? Nah, I’m Ellie. My daughter renamed this place after her father left. Circe is her favourite story.”
Her smile inches toward stretched, unnatural. “How old is your daughter?” I scrabble for normalcy.
“Oh, about your age, I should think, hun. She’s the one who made the parking sign.” Ellie darts a glance toward a door behind her, marked EMPLROYEES ONLY.
“Did she make those dolls, too?” I ask, to fill the electric silence.
“Nah, I did.” Ellie leans forward, her embroidered apron dimpling against the counter. “Hey, hun, I got a question. You’re… a girl, right?”
There’s the million-dollar question. I could lie, reassure her, yes Ma’am I’m a woman all right, but–– “No,” I say.
Her eyes go wide. “You’re a man? I thought for sure… you look so…”
“I’m not a man either,” I interrupt. “I’m… both? Neither. Outside the binary. Non-binary.”
Ellie blinks.
There are soft footsteps. The EMPLROYEES door bangs open and someone new appears at the threshold.
“Hiya, love,” Ellie chirps. “Supper today, or playtime? This is my daughter!” she adds, for my benefit.
My first thought is that Ellie’s daughter looks nothing like her mother. My second thought is that she looks nothing like most humans I’ve ever seen. Her skin is rough and her features are lopsided, as if she’s been sewn together. A piece of cotton stuffing hangs from her ear. I realise: she is sewn together.
“I make dolls,” Ellie says, as if that explains anything at all. “Started just about the time her father passed on. Awful man, dontcha know.”
“Passed?” My heart flutters. “But––you said he left––”
Ellie smiles. I feel queasy.
“My daughter gets real lonely,” she says. “Ladies make lovely companions for her. But men? Psh. They’ll eat you alive if you don’t do it first.” Her voice takes on a sickly cooing quality. “You learnt that from Daddy, didn’t you, love?”
Companions? Dolls along the walls. Less police procedural, more Coraline.
“So. She kills men and you… what, put them in the hotdish?” I’m babbling. Piecing together a story from urban legends, crime shows.
Ellie giggles. “Nah, the hotdish is beef. But my baby, she needs her supper. She likes it rare.”
Ellie’s daughter shuffles around the counter, draws close. Canvas–cotton pumpkinhead flops to the side, a perfect caricature of puzzlement.
“I know this one’s confusing, love, but you gotta pick,” Ellie says gently.
Gotta pick. Where have I heard that before? “What if… she can’t?” I ask, grasping at straws. “Women make good companions. Men are dinner. I’m neither. Where does that leave me?”
Ellie’s daughter takes a step back. Steps forward again, a jerky dance of bewilderment. Its head quivers in indignation at this open defiance of the once-clear line between Man and Woman.
In spite of the icy terror clogging my veins, or maybe because of it, I let out a strangled hyaena giggle. Wow. This is the first time someone’s hesitated to lash out because I’m non-binary.
“Baby?” Ellie sounds nervous as she glances toward her daughter.
One of the stitches on the doll’s head comes loose with an understated pop. Ellie’s eyes widen.
My lips twitch into a grin. Well, ain’t that interesting.
“Try freeing yourself from the gender binary,” I say, winking. “It’s mind-blowing.”
The next minute is a blur. Pop, pop, a blizzard of cotton. Canvas scraps rain down like shrapnel. Ellie wails. Hidden by the flurry, I bolt toward the door.
“What have you DONE?” The remains of her daughter sit atop Ellie’s hair like a crown of dandruff. It’s almost funny, except for the part where she’s screeching and lunging toward me like a dumpy coiffured bat out of hell.
But I’ve already escaped, flailing wildly into the Prarking Lot and slamming into the sweet refuge of my car before Ellie can grab me. She stands framed in the doorway, receding into a doll-sized figure draped in the shrapnel of her unholy daughter as I peel out of the lot at the speed of light.
I’m typing this up eighty miles from that den of horror, in a different and frankly much more welcome den of horror. Cold fries served with a side of sneering once-over. A bathroom rank with the products of a million undercooked burgers.
Sweet Satan’s knickers… McDonalds feels like heaven.
I wrote about another, um, interesting experience I had here: Free Pepsi