Lola bent down, shaking her head. Her eyes rolled across the bloodied body until reaching the woman’s face. A cheek was gone, torn away to reveal the muscle fibers and teeth beneath.

Lola reached out with her good hand, brushed the woman’s hair out of her face.

“I’m so sorry.”

When the woman’s eye popped open, Lola screamed and fell backward. She tried to catch herself, but the pain in her hand exploded and she toppled over. Her other hand instinctively went for her gun, but she caught herself and crawled toward the woman instead.

Through the ragged ripped flesh on the woman’s face, her teeth moved up and down, clicking together as she gasped for air. She choked and spat up blood. Her breaths whistled and a faint, rattling moan seeped from her throat; her body shuddered, but she didn’t move. Except her eye, bloodshot and covered with burst blood vessels. It landed on Lola and stayed there for what seemed like a lifetime.

“B…b…”

Lola laid a gentle hand on the woman’s head. “We’ll get you some help. Just stay quiet.” She snapped her radio on, gave the address, and requested an ambulance.

“Buf…buffet.” She went into a coughing fit that sprayed an inkblot of blood onto the cabinet door beside her.

“What did you say?” Lola knew exactly what she was trying to say. It was something she’d known since picking up this woman’s husband from that restaurant.

The woman whimpered, let out a sigh, and lay still. Her eye rolled slightly and landed on the ceiling just past Lola’s face.

Help was coming. The dispatcher’s voice squawking from her radio, begging her for more information, was only background noise to her. She cut it off.

The Paradise Buffet. She pictured the restaurant full of morbidly obese creatures, skin bags of calories, just stuffing themselves to the point of ripping open and spilling out. Pictured her father in his bed, killing himself more and more every day, eating and eating until he couldn’t fit out of his bedroom door.

She imagined her town full of zombie-like, insatiable mounds of lard, lumbering through the streets, eating anything in their path.

It was like Daddy had escaped her nightmares and possessed them all. Spread his seed in the food and was transforming everyone into versions of himself.

Lola was in her own personal Hell.

The streets would run yellow with fat.

Chubby fingers reaching, grabbing. Teeth gnashing, grinding.

Lola stood and ran out of the house. With her gun in hand, she made for the restaurant.

And all the while, Daddy cackled inside of her head.

DESCENT

The parking lot light poles shone cones of yellow down onto the black, cracked concrete. The white stripes that blocked off individual parking spots were faded and barely distinguishable. Bugs danced and fluttered with the warmth of the light, powerless to resist the call of it. They slapped against the bulb, some plummeted down to the ground only to rise again and head right back to the glorious brightness.