A Meeting In the Devil's House by Richard Dansky

Author:Richard Dansky [Dansky, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Stories, collection, Contemporary, Jewish, Horror, Dark Humor
Publisher: Haverhill House Publishing LLC
Published: 2023-07-20T04:00:00+00:00

Three days later, David went back to the machine for another snack. He did not, generally, a snack by nature, but it had been a busy day, and he’d missed lunch, and besides, the Sky Bar had been exceptionally good.

Geoff was standing there, coins in hand, when he arrived. “Oh. Hi, Dave.”

“Geoff.

“I see they replaced your chocolate bars. Too bad.”

Geoff turned, mildly incredulous. “What do you mean? They’re right there.”

David peered in. The machine appeared to be filled with Watchamacallits and Zagnuts, Zero Bars and Charleston Chews. Nothing gourmet was in evidence. “I bought a candy bar the other day and there weren’t any more of your fancy ones to be had. They must have replaced them.”

Geoff shook his head. “They’re right there,” he repeated, and dropped his quarters in the slot. He hammered on the buttons--five, then seven--and something dropped to the bottom of the machine with a clunk. Grinning triumphantly, he reached into the machine’s dispersal slot, and pulled something out.

“See?” he said, and shoved his paw under David’s nose. In it, ineluctably, was a high-end chocolate bar. It had, according to the wrapper, cocoa nibs mixed into it.

David thought for a minute, then looked back at the machine. In slot fifty-seven, there were Bit-O-Honeys. He looked down at the chocolate bar, which Geoff was still holding, awkwardly, and reached out a finger to touch it. It was there. It was real.

“Weird,” he said, and stepped over to the machine. “Fifty-seven?”

Geoff nodded distractedly, already tearing the wrapper off his prize. “Yeah. Though they’ve got the ones with hazelnuts in fifty-nine.”

“I’m cool.” David fished in his pockets for a couple of coins, found them, and fed them to the machine. They disappeared down the slot and were gone, none of them bouncing down to the change return for whatever arcane reasons vending machines used to spit out perfectly good coins. And he hit first the five, and then the seven on the numbered pad.

Gears murmured. The metal spiral turned. Something fell.

And David fished out a Bit-O-Honey.

He stared at it for a minute. “Geoff?”

“Mmm?” The larger man had started to amble off, progress slowed by the delicate operation of unwrapping foil from chocolate.

“I just hit fifty-seven and got something completely different than you did.” David held up his candy bar. “See?”

Geoff didn’t even turn. “Musta hit the wrong button. Or there was one of yours behind one of mine. Or something. No big deal.” And with that, he ambled off, his thick legs slowly kicking into gear with the infusion of sugar and milk and cocoa.

David thought about that, turning back to the machine as he did so. There were still a couple of coins in his pocket. Thoughtfully, he fed them into the machine and pressed five, then seven again.

The candy bar he pulled out wasn’t Geoff’s expensive chocolate. Then again, he hadn’t expected it to be.

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