No More Sleep Deprived Fridays

I've come to the end of Roxanne Snider's eight week, Thursday night writing workshop. One of the last assignments was to write a story about the person in the above picture. Other people have brought in stories about this woman and murder, rape and child abandonment. I had a different idea.

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      It happened like this. Jennifer and I were on the subway headed downtown. We were just pulling into a station when I felt something hit me, like with a pillow. Jennifer said I let out a yelp then I jumped up and slumped down in a seat across from her, my left hand to my head, my right hand holding my middle.
“And your eyes were twice the size of normal," she said, "you looked crazy."
         I felt crazy. There was like this voice in my head. It was telling me to get off the train.
“We’ve got to get off,” I said to Jennifer. I grabbed her arm really hard. I was super strong, like not normal strength at all.
“OW!” said Jennifer, “Let the fuck go of me. What is wrong with you?”
“Come with me NOW,” I said, sounding mostly like me, but there was something else. The train stopped. I dragged Jennifer with me and practically ran up the station stairs. I felt super amped like I’d taken a million hits of cocaine. 
  And I was starving. Fucking famished. Like I could eat a boxcar of Big Macs. But not Big Macs. I needed pizza. 
“Have you got money?” I demanded in my new, mean voice.
“Ya. I got money. You do too.”
“I do?” 
Jennifer told me it was like I didn’t know myself, or her. Like whatever had grabbed me brought her along in case she had something it needed. We charged down the sidewalk and found a pizza place half a block from the station.
I ordered all the pizzas under the heat lamps in the window and ten more extra large. More than $300 worth. I ate for what seemed like hours stuffing slice after slice into my mouth. Jennifer hung around and watched me. I don’t remember breathing while I ate.
But as soon as I’d swallowed the last slice, I felt the thing inside me, like, dissolve. It came in with a wallop, but left with a sigh. And I think it took its pizza with it. I felt hungry.
“What just happened?” I asked. 
One of the kids from behind the counter came to clean the table, a murder scene of tomato sauce and gobs of cheese.
“Robert says it’s a hungry ghost,” he said. 
“Who the fuck is Robert?” Jennifer asked.
“He works here. His folks are from China.The last time this happened he told them and they said it was a hungry ghost.”  
“The last time this happened?”
        “Sure. Couple of weeks ago. Guy comes in, eyes like small moons, orders all the pizza in the window and more. Eats it all and then acts like he’s just woke up from a dream. But he couldn’t pay the bill. That’s why we got you to pay up front.”

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Ancestry.ca connections: Me and Daryl Hepting.
 We share great-grandparents on my maternal grandmother's side.