Burnt Tongues by Chuck Palahniuk

Author:Chuck Palahniuk [Chuck Palahniuk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Medallion Media Group
Published: 2014-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

I worked at a greasy spoon called Gary’s Diner my senior year when I was seventeen. It was a dirty place to eat and work, but they were hiring, and it was twelve miles away in Centralia, where they had a Walmart and two banks. The diner smelled like the rich kids in grade school when they’d get out of their parents’ cars in the mornings with their McDonald’s sack lunches and fancy Trapper Keepers.

I worked with Glenn, who would rather work at Gary’s with me than try to find a better job, since the community college was too tough for him to handle. In the Eric-less years that followed, the scars faded and became a part of me, and I started training myself to not see them. Glenn would talk about girls as if I looked normal. And I did for the most part. I had my ears and nose and one perfect side, but the right part of my jaw had crooked lines from surgeries and pocked skin from grafting, a permanent road rash of sorts, all twisted together, hard in some places, swelling with infected hairs since the days that puberty hit.

I was washing dishes in the back when Glenn came from his post in the grill area. He looked suspicious and angry, like he was swallowing pride.

“What?” I said.

“Just stay here,” he said, and I knew. I tried to get past him, and he wouldn’t let me, but I looked over Glenn’s shoulder and saw Eric at the service counter. The manager was kicking him out—don’t know if he did anything to get kicked out or if Glenn was simply grown up now and trying to make sure there wasn’t a scene by telling the manager that Eric had to go or shit was going to hit the fan.

Eric was tall, filthy, unshaved, and looked like an ex-con, which he was. Battery, theft, drugs—he’d become a repeat customer for the state’s version of hot meals and accommodations and all this at the age of twenty. I knew because people told me about his arrests, about the current events of Eric’s existence. As if they were doing me some sort of favor. As if they were cheering me up.

Eric caught my eyes, and he was shocked. He wasn’t seeking me. He just wanted a hamburger, and here we were. “He knows I didn’t mean it,” he screamed, words we’d both heard in our heads in the years since. “We both know what happened.” Not anger but hurt. He couldn’t struggle against the lie, but he, of all people, had the truth on his side. He pointed and walked past the counter, coming for me.

Glenn left me unguarded and sprinted toward Eric. Eric was much bigger and taller than Glenn, who stayed short and stout even at twenty, yet Eric still ran when he recognized him. I looked out the drive-through window, gawking, frozen again. Glenn chased him when I should have, but Eric had huge animal strides.

Seeing Eric again, feeling myself not moving made everything inside me come open, fresh.

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