Super Meals: Party Thirty-Seven

What was he thinking?

Doctor Ralph looked at himself in the bathroom mirror of his hotel room and, for the first time in a year, he honestly questioned himself.

This isn’t like me, he thought. I’ve killed people worldwide in the name of science. Why do I care about Subject 189?

“Because he’s the first one who’s ever survived one of your meals,” he said aloud. He stood up straighter and leaned forward until his face was almost touching the glass. “Because even though you’ve figured out how he does it, you have no idea why, and it drives you mad to not know something.”

You are a brilliant man, he thought. You have PhDs in four disciplines. You are more powerful than the CEO of your company – one of the top fast food chains in the world rests upon your shoulders because of the masterpieces you create. You are an artist and a scientist. You have money spread across more accounts than you even remember at this point, and identities in six countries. Whoever this man is, he is nothing compared to you.

He splashed water in his face and took a deep breath.

Then he said, “But he survived the meals.”

Walter, Mimi, and Adam were sitting in Walter’s dining room. There was a first aid kit tossed open on the table and Mimi was dabbing at Adam’s head with a folded piece of gauze. He was wearing one of Walter’s old t-shirts, a pair of Walter’s jeans, socks, and shorts.

Walter outweighed Adam by a good fifty pounds, at least, which meant that nearly everything was loose and draped on Adam, and he looked like a hobo who had suddenly shrunk.

While Mimi bandaged Adam’s head, Walter had an icepack held on the back of Adam’s neck. Adam himself clutched another icepack to his chest, and he had also shoved a bag of ice cubes down the front of his pants.

“I can’t believe none of that is affecting you,” said Mimi, as she applied butterfly bandages to the gash on Adam’s head.

“Hell, if anything it’s helping. It actually feels really good,” said Adam. He pulled the pack away from his chest and shook it to find a cold patch, then pressed it back to his skin and sighed.

“Why did we decide to come to my house, again?” asked Walter.

“Because I’m not about to take you fuckers to my house,” said Mimi. “I don’t want you knowing where I live.”

“After everything we’ve been through together?” asked Walter.

Mimi leaned over to look at him over Adam’s shoulder, and even Adam turned his head to throw a stare at him. Mimi said, “You mean the, what, 24 hours we’ve known each other? Yeah, we go way back, you and me.”

Adam snorted and said, “Dumbass. Even I know cops don’t ever let people know where they live. Too much of a damn hassle having to worry about someone coming to look for you when you’re off duty or something.”

“See?” said Mimi. “This guy gets it.”

“And we can’t go to my place,” said Adam, “because it blowed up, remember?”

“Yeah, I know – I wasn’t talking to you, though,” said Walter.

“Why not? You think I wouldn’t live in a nice place?”

“You just said it blew up last night!”

“You didn’t know that!”

“You told us!”

“But I only told you that after we decided to come to your place,” said Adam. “I had a nice house. All my stuff was there…” He trailed off into silence, then muttered, “Fuck.”

“Yeah, speaking of which,” said Mimi, “if you survived that blast, someone’s gonna want to know about it. We should take you…” Now it was her turn to trail off.

“Yeah, take me where?” asked Adam. “My house blew up with me in it. I’m supposed to be dead, remember? What do you think is gonna happen when people find out I survived that blast?”

“Probably the same thing that’d happen to me if anybody found out what happens to me when I eat fast food,” said Walter.

Adam turned in the chair to look at him and said, “Yeah, what does happen to you?”

“I don’t really know,” said Walter. “How’d you survive that explosion? Do you even know what caused it?”

Adam’s head dropped. He’d honestly thought about the previous night quite a lot, but hated doing so because it always came back to the same thing; he’d destroyed his house and killed two cops doing it.

“Adam?” asked Mimi.

He didn’t move.

She reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay. You’re safe here.”

“No, I’m not,” he said.

“No, you really are,” said Mimi. “You can stay here as long as you like.” Walter quietly but frantically shook his head and Mimi shot him a look that stopped him. “And whoever blew up your house thinks your dead, so it’s not like they’re gonna come looking for you.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I did it.”

“What?” asked Walter.

Mimi tried to wave him away, but Walter ignored her, pulling his chair closer to Adam and leaning in. “Adam,” he said, “it’s cool, man. You can tell me. I’m…special…too, remember? Believe me, if anybody understands how you feel, it’s me.”

Adam looked up at him and stared, hard, for a long time. Finally he said, “You got a smoke?”

Walter jerked in his chair and said, “Huh? Oh, no. I, uh, quit. A while ago.”

“So you do or you don’t have any smokes?”

Walter sighed. “Nah, mate. Sorry. I stopped buying ‘em ‘cause I’d smoke ‘em. I just bum off of people if I really want one.” He saw the look in Adam’s eyes and took a chance. “Hey Mimi? Can you run down to the store and pick us up a pack?”

Now it was Mimi’s turn to look startled. “Huh?” she asked.

Walter took a wad of bills out of his pocket and handed them to her, saying, “There’s about eight bucks here, should be enough for a pack of Spirits. Head down to the gas station or the Pinnacle Mart and get us a pack of cigarettes, would you?”

She pursed her lips, but took the hint and stood up, snagging the money as she did so. “I’ll be back in a few.”

“Take your time,” said Walter.

She was out the door and driving away before Adam finally said, “I did it.”

“What?” asked Walter.

Adam stood up and patted the bandage on his head, wincing at the pain and saying, “I did it. It was me.”

“What was you?”

“My house, all right, fucker? I blew up my goddamned house. You happy now?” He threw the icepack at the wall above the sink, where it splatted open, spraying water across the counter.

“Well, thanks for aiming at my sink, at least,” said Walter.

“I’m not a dick,” said Adam.

“But what do you mean it was you?” asked Walter.

“Look, please don’t tell the lady cop because I don’t want to go to jail or get turned into a human lab rat or whatever,” he said, “but I blew up. I mean I blew up my house. Me. I did it. I mean…”

He was pacing now, and as he grew more agitated his wet skin started to steam.

“Hey, calm down, man,” said Walter. “Just tell me what happened.”

Adam moved towards the front door and opened it, feeling the breeze that blew across his face and then saying, “Some guy brought me a burger. Said it was part of their new delivery service. It was good, but it was hot – like spicy. Lots of peppers and spicy mustard, that kind of stuff. Honestly, I don’t know what all was on it because I couldn’t even finish it. I got about halfway through and the heat was just fucking insane. So I go to my kitchen and turn on the faucet to have a glass of water, and when I put my hand under the tap, the water’s turning to steam as soon as it touches my skin. My hands are getting hotter, I’m sweating like a whore in church, my tongue is hanging out and my mouth is bone dry and I just need to cool off, so I grabbed the spout itself and the metal goes red hot in, like, a second, and the water stopped coming out entirely – the damn thing’s just shooting steam into the sink. So I take my hand off of it and now my skin’s getting red, like glowing, and I smelled something burning and I look down and realize it’s me. My shoes have melted, my clothes are falling off, I’ve got two black footprints in the floor of my house and then…white. Like a supernova behind my eyes. It was like the flashes you get from a migraine, but all balled up into one, right in front of my eyes. And then dark. Everything went black. Next thing I knew I was waking up in…the morgue, I think. It was a drawer – I was in a drawer, naked, on a tray. I slid myself out of there and swiped a lab coat or something and found the exit.”

“How did you get all the way to the campus?” asked Walter.

“Probably looking like a drunk jackass,” said Adam. “When I got out of the morgue I ended up in the alley on that block between Alder and Poplar, just hiding in the trash. I guess I stumbled over to the college and fell into the stream, where you guys found me.”

Walter saw out the front window that Mimi was pulling up, so he asked, “You said someone brought you the food, right?”

“Yeah, some delivery guy,” said Adam. He saw Mimi coming up the walk towards the door and backed away. “Look, don’t tell the cop, okay? Please?”

“No, man, look, you gotta tell her about this. She can help you.”

“How can she help me?”

Walter held up a hand to silence him as Mimi walked in and tossed the yellow pack of cigarettes to him. Walter caught them and said, “Detective? You got that picture of the guy who jumped me?”

“Yeah,” said Mimi, digging her phone out of her pocket. “Why?”

Walter waited for her to find it, then snatched the phone out of her hand and held it up in front of Adam, asking, “Is this the dude who delivered your food?”