Carrion
Stephen Harrington
(1999)
It was seven-thirty when Harold walked nonchalantly into the restaurant. His debonair suit and blow dried hairstyle were only matched by the stench of the sodden, rotting corpse that walked in on his arm.
The restaurant clientele gasped in union. A young lady, gallantly feasting on a dish of fried prawns and a side salad of lettuce, onions and mayonnaise, leaned over to her lover and regurgitated her Gazpachio soup into his lap.
Her lover briefly thought about a past dry cleaning bill and the long journey home, before vomiting over the bowed head of his girlfriend and the neatly arranged table-cloth in front of him.
Similar scenes could be seen replayed throughout the restaurant.
"Table for two, please?" said Harold to the waiter, who was slightly short-sighted and mentally constricted, due to the two LSD tabs he'd been chewing previously. To him, Harold's date looked like an overripe, out of date fig. But there was no way he was going to mention this to Harold. Fifty percent of his wages were made up in tips, and Harold's debonair suit and expensive aftershave had already blinded him with pound signs and had him thinking of weekends in Torremolinos.
The waiter, whose name by the way was Eric, led them through the maze of tables and vomiting customers to a romantic candle-lit table at the back of the restaurant.
As she followed him, Harold's date (Mabel) had a small accident and bumped into a table. Her vision wasn't too good, due to the bad cataracts that covered her rotten iris'. At the touch of the Formica table-top, the flesh beneath her pretty lace dress decided that enough was enough and fell to the floor in a sickening, trifle inspired splash.
"Oops!" she giggled as three people fainted and the remaining twelve ran screaming from the restaurant.
Harold watched them go, wondering what all the fuss was about.
"Here is the menu and the wine list, sir." said Eric, who was totally unaware the there was nobody else in the restaurant. As far as he was concerned, the restaurant was populated by fourteen watermelon singing; "We wish you a merry Christmas!"
Harold and Mabel glanced at the menu, their eyes meeting briefly over the candle.
They decided to have the pate, followed by the duck and to choose dessert later. They order a bottle of St. Emilion '96 almost as an afterthought.
Eric took the order and headed off to the kitchen to tell Reno, the chef, to microwave another duck.
Eric and Reno smoked a cigarette each, then Reno prepared the pate. Eric took it through. He opened the wine whilst Harold and Mabel nibbled at their food. Mabel had to be very careful; her tongue had completely rotted away and there was a large hole in her cheek. If she wasn't careful, the food would fall out and make her dress even messier.
Harold tasted the wine and pronounced it excellent. Eric filled their glasses as three policemen broke the door down and rushed in.
The police didn't have to break the door down, this was a restaurant. Its door was open to anybody with enough cash to spend providing they were wearing a loud and embarrassing tie. But Sergeant Wilson, the leader of the trio, had had a particularly bad evening and ridiculous stories about zombies in restaurants were all he needed.
"Right! What's going on 'ere then?" demanded Sergeant Wilson loudly, as the two deputies created large pools of vegetable soup on the floor.
Their noises interrupted Harold, who was trying to tell Mabel what beautiful skin she had.
"Do you mind?" he said to Sergeant Wilson, who had meanwhile noticed the degenerating pile of flesh in the corner.
"Oh my Gawd!" he cried, pointing in horror at Mabel as part of her cheek fell onto her plate.
"It's true! It's a zombie!" Sergeant Wilson had seen hundreds of horror movies in his time, but had never actually come face to face with a walking talking zombie, even though this one was sitting down.
Harold asked Sergeant Wilson if he was feeling okay and took another sip of his wine. Sergeant Wilson didn't reply, but stood there exclaiming as many different variations for the word sex that he could think of.
When he had calmed down, he followed the only option that he could think of, which was to have his deputies arrest Mabel and take her down the station. He wisely decided to take Harold himself.
At the station, Sergeant Wilson spent a sweaty three seconds wondering what to charge Harold and Mabel with. He decided to charge Mabel with disturbing the peace and, after Harolds insistence that there was nothing wrong with Mabel, to phone a psychiatrist to evaluate his mental state.
The police brought tea and biscuits to Harold on three occasions. They only brought tea to Mabel once; watching it flow out of her cheek and down her dress was just too much.
Fingerprinting was another problem. Instead of the ink sticking to Mabel's fingers, her skin stuck to the inkpad.
They had more trouble with Harold, though. He was getting so wound up with being imprisoned that he tried to perform a frontal lobotomy with the inkpad and Sergeant Wilsons head. He was immediately restrained in handcuffs and fell up a flight of stairs, three times.
They tried questioning Harold, but he insisted that there was nothing wrong with Mabel and that she was a perfectly normal, thirty-two year-old brunette.
Harold was taken to a special cell in the station. The one with no light bulb and comfy quilted walls.
Mabel, however, was more forthcoming. She admitted that she was a corpse and had been raised from the dead by a satanic circle of merchant bankers from Chipping Ongar. Her sense of humour was excellent and, after the policemen had got used to her shocking appearance, she was able to make them laugh by reciting a seemingly endless supply of leper jokes.
The police had no option but to let her go.
The next morning, reporters were practically breaking the door down to her North London maisonette. She had no qualms about letting them in, even those from the lesser presses, as long as they had their chequebooks handy.
Mabels interviews were a stunning array of witticisms and anecdotes about her father, a catholic missionary, and her childhood in Zimbabwe.
Her stories of family hardship touched the hearts of the reporters and the nation, but everybody was equally impressed by her wit and her controversial views on archaeology.
Harold, meanwhile, was transferred to a local mental asylum to evaluate his hallucinogenic tendencies.
Elwin Von Drumm, his doctor, thought that Harold was a paranoid schizophrenic with Christ-like tendencies due to religious oppression as a child. Consequently, he was committed for life to the asylum. Or until he recanted straight out that Mabel was a corpse.
At his first opportunity, Harold loudly recanted to anybody who would listen. He recanted so much that he had to be sedated and put to bed.
Recanting helped Harold not a bit. Elwin Von Drumm assumed that Harold was merely recanting in order that the doctor would set him free.
This was absolutely true. As far as Harold was concerned, Mabel was still a rather sexy, thirty-two year-old brunette.
Meanwhile, Mabels story was being reprinted as an exclusive mini-series in a national newspaper, and one of the tabloids had her giving away the prizes to Lucky-Lotto winners.
She made three television interviews in as many days, and made numerous radio appearances. By the time the BBC gave her her own chat show, Harold had undergone fifteen sessions of electric shock therapy and a rather botch lobotomy. The passionate part of his brain had been wiped away, along with the part that did most of its thinking. By the time he saw her appear in "Mabel" (which went on the air three times a week), there were only two words left in his vocabulary.
One was "Earag", which is just a sound when you think of it. The other, he would endlessly murmur throughout her show.
"Pate."
The End
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Last modified: April 4, 2002