Excerpt from my WIP

For some context, the novel at this moment is about a girl wrapped up in the whims of the eldritch being that lives within the ceiling of the pizzeria she works at. Themes include- loss of identity, losing oneself within the moment, sacrificing oneself for the moment, sacrificing identity for an unsure future. If dissociative or horror themes trigger you, this is your warning!

It’s hard to continue working, to pretend everything is normal. The way that no one has commented on the increasing heat of the establishment, the way my coworkers’ and boss’ eyes seem to slip from my frame like the black ice on the road that’s built up from the warming and cooling weather, it all makes this feel so extraterrestrial. Now it’s followed me home with how my hands don’t scrape or peel, the so-far eternal perfection. What else was I supposed to do except find refuge in the thing I couldn’t escape in the first place? It works out anyway, my shifts always end with three hours alone, for no reason I can decipher except for its will.

Sweat keeps dripping off my back in rivers as I lay each disk of ham out onto a pizza, no one willing to meet my eyes here anymore. Before, I used to be the one keeping my head down, looking at the corners of peoples faces or the tip of their nose to avoid the baring of my soul during eye contact. Now, I end up having to look up, and it feels like I am the only one in this kitchen who is aware that everything has shifted so dangerously. Gazes existing downwards, somehow the neurons in their brains have been simply redirected around certain roads of common sense. I imagine it’s tongue lavishing over the folds in their brains, that everybody inside of this shop is now under the influence of a being making his idea of a utopia for me. That’s what I have theorized is even happening, if that assumption in of itself can even be trusted. My mind shies away from the desire for comfort like someone unacclimated to the sun. Now, it’s blue-tinted fluorescent lights, those tubes suspended in the ceiling that illuminate everything that keeps my body unflinching. The tips of my fingers pressing and folding the evidence of my perfect fingerprints into the crust of someone’s extra-large all-dressed on a Tuesday afternoon. I’ve pushed back the screaming pieces of my soul out into these pizzas too, trying to totally envelop all the fear into something mundane. Make the pizza, put it in the oven. Slice and slide it into the box, fill a sauce container and add it into the bag with the garlic bread. Stay blissfully unaware of anything more.

Which is actually easier than suspected, given there’s been no sign of it, no glints or sharp flashes of light or wafts of not-quite-strawberry. I’ve tried staying far away from the bathroom, the ritual strained and tenuous since that night when things happened that I firmly push into the dough that’s resting in the pans to rise. Instead, when the urge clings to my ribs and climbs up to make itself known inside my own mind, somewhere distant and fluttering; a field of tall grass obscuring the earth, twilight in a periwinkle mood of limbo, I bring myself to the door nobody goes in anymore. In this place, I try not to wonder where they could be using the bathroom, if they even do anymore. Instead of thinking about any of this, I shove pizza crusts drenched in spicy buffalo under the door like a maniac. Some semblance is left in my mind, I still wait until everyone leaves, although I’m starting to think it doesn’t even matter anymore. Breath tries to grasp my teeth and tongue to slow down for just a second, but I continue to spray spittle all over the floor as I hyperventilate . My fingernails don’t bend, instead they mar the bottom of the door frame with scratches and gouges, as if I was trying to get out of the kitchen through torn up pieces of bread. I am acting like some kind of fanatic, hoping to appease it while appeasing this gnawing at the base of my spine. Sauce buries itself under the paint, it leaves gory smears along with crumbs that I don’t know if I should clean up. When I get through all the crusts from my own pizza, I am tempted to reach for a botched order from the fridge when suddenly, the bell rings above the door. 

Remembering the neon strips, remembering this is a shop that real, unaltered human beings come to, I scramble off the floor and stand stupid for just half a moment. A soft, feminine voice echoes past the window near the oven, and I go to wash all the sauce and dirt off of my hands. Quickly letting out a call of apology and promise to only be a second, I comb my hair down with water and jog to the front.