Before you begin with the story Lord Dragonblood tells me that I should warn you all that there is SIMulated blood, violence, and gore in a few of the pictures. Nothing highly-detailed or anything, but just as a pre-caution. o_O
I happily dedicate this one-shot story to all the cheesy B-Movies I frequently would catch on late nite television as a young girl. By the way, beware of the cheese, there's plenty spread around. ^_~
He nearly missed the exit. Missing the exit wouldn't have hurt, and it might have helped. Missing the exit might have saved them all.
Harold Beaufort closed the driver door to his semi-truck. He took a deep breath of air as he lazily took in the atmosphere. Buxford was still a pretty nice place to live and grow, as the sign you see when you come into town says. The sun shines pretty on the lake and on the leaves of the trees, and on a clear day you can see all the way into the town from the top of the mountains. The display windows of the roadside cafe sparkled in the sunlight, and a dutch apple pie was laid out just waiting for someone to come and buy it. Harold glanced at the pie with approval, then went to the door. The sign hanging there read OPEN. As he did what the sign suggested, a small bell jingled over his head.
The inside of the cafe smelled of homecooked meals. It was filled with sunshine, and as he stepped in, looking around with interest, a clear thought came to him: He was hungry. In response, his stomach heartily agreed with a low and guttural sound.
A tall woman was just taking an order to a customer. Her uniform was splattered with all manner of food condiments one would find available in the local grocery store. Obviously she had never heard of the miracle invention called the 'napkin'. She looked up when the bell jingled and smiled at him. "Hello," she said.
Harold was put off his stride for a moment or two, and could only smile at the waitress lamely.
The waitress set down a platter of pancakes before Nettle Jereks, a woman that looked strong-the way a lumberjack with a huge axe looks strong. "Here you go, Nettle. One morning special with double syrup."
"It looks wonderful," Nettle said with a grin. "Reminds me of the cakes my mother used to make . . . and that was a very long time ago."
"Well, that's fine, then," the waitress said. "Enjoy."
While he waited for the waitress to come back, Harold wandered around looking at things. A framed sign on the wall by the door through which he had entered said that the cafe would be open from three in the morning until five in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturday-or, Harold thought with an interior grin, until those wild and crazy tourists and vacationers arrived again, waving their fistfuls of dollars.
"What'll it be cowboy?" the waitress asked, as she came to wait on him.
He took the nearest empty seat. "A cup of coffee should do for starters," Harold said, leaving a window of opportunity open for a sales pitch.
The waitress pounced on the opening like a madwoman."How about some pie to go with that? Home-made apples from McSherry's Orchard over in Sweden. Picked yesterday."
At least she didn't try to tell him she picked them herself, Harold thought. "No, thanks."
"Sure? Well then how about trying our mouthwatering house specialty, the 'morning special'? Warm and delicious pancakes crowned with thick maple syrup or your choice of fruit topping. The 'morning special' comes with two eggs, any style, served with two strips of bacon or omelet, and golden hash browns.
Harold's stomach answered before he could open his mouth to say, "Yes, that would be mighty fine." He blinked his eyes twice before bursting out into laughter.
The waitress smiled. "I'll take that as a 'yup' then. One breakfast special it is!"
The mornings at the diner were always busy. Aside from the townies that frequented his little roadside business there was always the tourists to count on coming in from the bustling freeway. Which meant that the little door bell on the front entrance would always jingle signaling the arrival of another customer. For the lead cook and owner of the roadside diner, Ted Willows, he wouldn't have it any other way.
Maggie quickly darted around the corner into the kitchen. "Ted! One B.S. at table five," she fired out.
"Hold your fannie, Mags. I'm just finishing a new batch of the omelettes. Mhmm just smell that delicious odor of magnificance!"
"Oh I smell something allright," Maggie smirked.
Ted snorted. "Smart ass. Now git. I'm serving this delicate piece."
Both the cook and the waitress walked back into the dining area. It wasn't unsual for the cook to come out from his kitchen to serve the customers. He liked seeing his customers gorge on his food and he loved hearing the compliments coming straight from their mouths. "Now what do we have here? A newcomer," Ted said rather bluntly as was his usual style.
Maggie nodded toward Harold's direction. "A mighty nice fellow. I'm Maggie, and the disagreeable fellow to my right," she said, as she waved non-chalantly in Ted's direction, "is the owner and cook, Ted."
Harold smiled as he tipped his head in respect. "Harold Beaufort, sir. I'm traveling across the states hauling a special load from Edwards."
"Edwards Airforce Base," Ted clucked.
Maggie was impressed. "Now I knew there was something special about y'all. What are you carrying? A top secret military vessel? A piece of a space shuttle?"
Edwards Air Force (*a military base*) began as a stark and remote bombing range in 1933 and went on to become a major bomber training base in World War II. The Air Force Flight Test Center originated during the darkest days of the war, and has since achieved more major milestones in flight than anywhere else in the world.
"Nothing like it, ma'am," Harold said as he blushed at the sudden amount of interest. "The Weird, The Wild, The Wonderful is what Edwards is about I hear but my cargo is just some junked remains of an old aircraft fighter."
"Really? Well it still sounds pretty important to me," Maggie smiled.
"Of course it's important," Nettle piped into the conversation. "This heah man came from the airforce base that employed mankind's first gliding descents from outer space. I think it's mighty special to even know someone that has set foot upon the base."
"Why thank you ma'am," Harold nodded. "I appreciate this town's fine courtesy."
"The best in all the world and don't you forget it," Ted chuckled before heading back to the kitchen to prepare the meals. "Now enough yapping and more eating. I want to hear the sounds of a satisfied stomach in the next ten minutes or else I'll be thinking the foods not good enough to eat!"
The weird, Wild and Wonderful, Ted repeated in thoughtful amusement. He flipped the pancakes with expertise. A single drop of batter was not wasted with this experienced cook. Now he has definitely heard it all. Next customer will most likely be a green alien with little billybobs on their heads claiming to be from a crazy city like San Francisco. Now those people were the very definition of weird, wild, and wonderful!
As the minutes passed on the meals were brought out in order of acceptance. The first customer Michael, who went by Mike because there were seven other guys in his school named Mike, although three of them went by Michael also, looked at the scrumptious plate before him in his messy yet extremely fashionable slob shirt.
"Ahhh this looks sooo good."
The pancakes were dripping with warm maple syrup. Large pats of butter sizzled in fatty happiness ontop of the piping hot pancakes. One could even see the tiny wisps of steam lifting from the plate. A sight that would bring any hungry person to their knees in anticipation of that first bite.
"Come to papa," Michael said as he stabbed his fork into the largest pancakes on his plate. As he brought the fork to his mouth he heard a strange 'hissing' sound. Michael's fork dropped to the table. He frowned, picked up the fallen bit of pancake, looked at it, then put it back down again. There was a sudden low rasping noise, like a locust. Mike felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen, thinking it was something caught in the door. Then the smell hit. A mixture of ether and overripe bananas, like the starter-fluid you shot into your carburetor on a subzero morning.
Suddenly something him at just that moment, hit him with terrifying force, knocking him forward. Michael grabbed at the edge of the table in a last-ditch effort to maintain his balance, but it toppled over in a metallic clatter. His sneakers slipped and he went sprawling forward onto the floor like a man blown out of an ejection seat. Something wet and heavy landed on Michael's back. He screamed, chin lifting from the tiles, eyes bulging. The thing lay sticky and hot and heavy from the nape of his neck, then suddenly another hit upon the small of his back. And now these things began to utter a feverish high-pitched chattering noise, the sound of a rabid monkey. Michael opened his mouth to scream but by that time he could never scream again...
At the same time Nettle screamed like a banshee. The sounds ripping from her throat in a high-pitched shriek that might have shattered the windows were they not sound-proof. "Ahhh A ahhhhh!!!" The things on her plate were alive and reeked of oil and ether and methane gas. "Someone help me! HEEEELP!"
Some woman had began to shriek. They were amazingly loud, those shrieks, and so full of terror they made Harold feel like shrieking himself. Then he saw what was upon his plate.
Harold felt a sudden atavistic terror invade him . . . except it actually seemed to rise up from inside, somewhere deep inside. All at once his spinal cord felt like a column of ice. He saw more clearly now. He was hyped on the clarity that sometimes comes to the completely horrified mind, and in that state wished he hadn't slammed on the brakes and swerved the truck with the cargo from Edwards Airforce Base toward the exit. He should have missed it.
It couldn't have hurt and it might have helped.
For a moment Harold was frozen with a hundred childish horrors, things under beds and things in coffins, squirming bugs beneath overturned rocks. Every bad thing he had ever suspected was now coming toward him, not on a pale horse but on a white platter stained with mounds of maple syrup.
"Oh fuck," Maggie screamed. Her left hand crept to her mouth, which was for once without a piece of old chewing gum in it, and covered it. Above her hand, her eyes were wide and wet. 'Ooh, fuuuuck, FUCK!"
"OH FUCK!' Maggie screamed yet again. Almost sobbing. "What is happening? What's going on?! I don't want to see this, Jesus- I can't see this!"
There was a loud shuffle on the plate as the things plopped up and down, chittering and chattering irritably and the room immediately filled with an eyewatering aroma of excrement and airplane glue.
Before sensible thought could even enter her frantic little mind. The breakfast special leaped at Maggie, showing off a a packet of bone needles. Far away, in some other universe where there still might be sane life, Harold was calling her name, but Harold was late, Harold was way late.
The thing that had been breakfast landed on Maggie's chest with a smack. It smelled, it SMELLED!. Its head darted forward and its teeth closed on Maggie's nose. Screaming, beating at it with her fists, Maggie fell backward onto the tiled floor. She dropped ass-first with the pancake thing chewing her face...
"Maggie! Mags, what?" Nettle screamed. She had just managed to grab the napkin dispenser. She brought it down hard upon her plate of squirming pancake-things. She squashed them until all that was left were mushed puddles of ooze and syrupy clumps. Suddenly the pancakes that were attacking Maggie whipped around toward the sound of Nettle's voice, and Maggie saw her old friend through a haze of blood, and with dimming eyes: Nettle standing slack-jawed. Friendly and happy, Nettle, standing there utterly defenseless in her shocked horror. This pancake-thing's next meal.
Harold could stomach the horror no more. He bolted for the front door hoping to the Almighty that it wasn't mysteriously locked like in those black and white thriller movies. Good luck was on his side as the door was thrown completely ajar showing the way to freedom and safety.
He reached his white truck and fumbled for his keys in his right pocket. "Wait, wait," the owner screamed. Somehow he had made it to the front porch of the roadside diner. Upon his back the batter-made creations chomped on his arms, his legs, and where ever else the tiny teeth could take a bite. Harold's instinct to survive kicked into overdrive. He wanted to help but there was nothing that he could do. The pancake-things were far too much for him to handle. The trucker jumped into his vehicle, turned on the engine, and screeched away --
He wanted to leave the nightmare behind. The thoughts of all the poor people that were killed in the diner hammered constantly against the last shreds of sanity that held him together. Help, he thought frantically, he had to get help.
SFX: THUMP, THUMP, THUMP
Suddenly the nightmarish pancakes plopped onto the hood of Harold's truck. He swerved sharply to the left and then to the right to try to lose them. However the maple syrup the pancake-things were covered in from top to bottom had held them steadfast to the surface of the hood. This was one time that Mrs. Butterworth's 'thickest' syrup was not helping matters at all. >_<
"NOOOO," Harold screamed. He had wanted to leave it all behind him. He had thought that he had managed to get away. If only he hadn't swerved for the exit offramp... The chitter chattering of the pancake monstrosities became louder and louder. All Harold could do was scream in horror as they chewed through the wires of the truck and right into the interior. Through a haze of blood, and with dimming eyes Harold felt and saw the cold teeth of hellish pancakes rip into his soft flesh. Soon he lost control of the truck which veered to the right and directly off the hillside. The truck bounced, rolled, and flipped down the side of the desert mountains before coming to an explosive halt throwing bits and pieces of debris, Sim, and batter, every way and all.
So the next time that you decide to take a "
chance" remember the story of the 'Pancakes Gone Bad' for risk-taking can cost you.
The End.
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Credits
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Lord DragonBlood: for building the Double-Wide Paradise found at
SIMplicity-Lane
MTS2: For all of the outfits used in the story.
Parsimonious: For the interior walls and table/chair meshes.
Holy Simoly: For the exterior siding used on Double-Wide Paradise.
Thank you for reading this short story which was heavily influenced by Stephen King and many B-horror movies I caught late at nite as a youngling. I hope that it was a fun if not a bit creepy
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