A Taste of Change
Sometimes eating meat isn't always a good thing. Especially if the food you thought you were eating, wasn't quite what it appeared to be. Take 22 year old Daniel Hayes for example. He would eat anything that was made of meat. Unfortunately that meant anything. As Hayes found out one day when he stopped to have a bite to eat- in the Twilight Zone!
"Order Up!" the cook behind the counter shouted to the waitress. Hayes had walked into the diner thinking this was as good a place as any to rest and eat, especially during a storm. He shook the rain off his faded coat and shoved his wool hat into the right pocket of it, then put it on the rack they had for jackets.
Sweeney Todd's Diner was a small building lodged somewhere between Fleet Street and nowhere; it was usually deserted except for a couple out of towners. It was a couple hundred meters away from Area 51, which is 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The location might explain all the peculiar rumors that circulate through Nevada about the diner. Or perhaps it's pure coincidence. But since Hayes was from Massachusetts, he had no way of knowing the rumors, or what would happen when he set foot in Todd's. On that strange day, in a strange diner, with the strange people, and most importantly, with the strange food.
"All right! All right! I'm comin'! Hold yer horses!" the waitress yelled back. She had a slight accent. Sounded English or Welsh.
"Well the…uh…burger is ready." The cook said. Stumbling over the word and gesturing toward a lone man in the corner. He was middle-aged and had dark, thinning hair and watery black eyes. The waitress was in her late thirties, had blonde hair that was piled high on her head and she had wide, pale blue eyes.
Strange eyes, Hayes thought as he sat down at the counter in front of the kitchen and read the afternoon specials on the menu, nothing I can put my finger on, but very odd.
"Well what can I get you hon? My name is Marjorie Lovett" the waitress said to Hayes.
"The triple deluxe hamburger with extra bacon and a coke." He said as he handed her the menu back.
The waitress raised her eyebrows slightly "You like meat do you?"
"Yes" Hayes answered with a laugh, "I love meat. I'm a natural born carnivore!"
"You like all kinds of meat?" Lovett inquired. A strange glint in her eyes."Then maybe you should go with our Special Meat Burger. It's to die for."
"Ok," Hayes said oblivious to the odd look "As long as it's delicious."
She smiled down at her order pad when the only other person in the diner went with the cook to the bathroom. "Oh it is. It sure is." She said when she wrote down his order.
Now, a smarter man would have run out of there before things could have escalated from strange to downright scary. But Daniel Hayes, like most people, was no Albert Einstein. He was only normal. Unlike some…
"Here you go. Our Special Meat Burger." Marjorie said laying the burger in front of Hayes 20 minutes later. "I guarantee you've never had anything like it."
Hayes inhaled the smoky aroma. It smelled like nothing he ever smelled before. And when he took a bite, he realized he never had had anything like it before.
"Good huh?" Marjorie said to Hayes as he ate the burger.
"Mmmhph!" Hayes attempted to agree.
But something was wrong. Something was in the burger that was just wrong. Hayes shoved his thumb and pointer finger in his mouth and extracted a whole fingernail. Not just any fingernail, this one was human!
There are no words to describe the blood-curling scream that erupted from Hayes when he found that fingernail. But the scream went on and on. Never ending. Just like the horror Hayes felt when he realized he had just eaten part of a person.
Hayes was still screaming when the cook dragged him to the back of the diner while Mrs. Marjorie Lovett watched with a twisted smile on her face. The cook stopped in front of a door and with one hand, held Hayes by the back of his t-shirt and with the other, fumbled for a key in his pocket. 2 minutes later the door was open and it revealed a man who was cranking the handle to an old-fashioned meat grinder next to a furnace.
"Got another one Sweeney." The cook said to the grinder man.
"Good job Toby, he'll make at least a dozen burgers. Not as good as the ones we made in London. A true shame we lost the barber shop. Also a pity we have to make these 'uns into burgers instead of meat pies." Sweeney sighed to the cook and gestured towards Hayes.
"Aye. People don't know good ol' English food when they see it," Toby said and wrinkled his nose. "Fish and chips. What in the devil is that? That ain't English food. It's poppycock!" They both stared at Hayes who had stopped screaming and was looking from Sweeney to Toby not quite comprehending what he was hearing.
"Yo-o-ou-ur Sw-w-weeney T-t-todd?" Hayes stuttered.
"Yes, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street at your service. Or you at ours seems more like it." Todd said with a crazy smile.
"Are you going to grind me?" Hayes asked Toby.
"No!" Toby scoffed. "That's Sweeney's job."
Faintly, they heard Mrs. Lovett talking to another customer and Sweeney smiled.
"I better get to work. That fellow out there will want food and he'll want it fresh." He said as Toby exited and locked the door behind him. Then Sweeney began dragging Hayes toward the grinder.
"Wait! Aren't your jobs mixed up? Isn't Mrs. Lovett supposed to cook me?" Hayes asked.
Sweeney shrugged "We decided to switch." He answered as he shoved Hayes in and began to grind.