A.D. 2015, Monday, the 19th, Martin Luther King National Holiday, Over the Moon diner, U.S. Route 40 and Middleton Road

“And Ezekiel saw the wheel.”

The grease rose from the deep fryer, bringing the pleasant odor of vaporized peanut oil and fresh cut potatoes to his nose. It was not surgery. But it was growing on him and might even bring enough money to pay for tuition at the community college. This sure beat working at McDonalds, listening to that mixed-race lesbian bitch at him as he fried the desiccated version of this dish, and the squat Mexican chick smirked at him as she applied the special sauce to burger after tasteless burger. These Greeks might be stingy, nitpicking, pains in the ass, but they served quality chow and he got to eat for free.

Such factors were important to he who lived in a cardboard box and showered at Planet Fitness until the membership ran out in a week through no fault of his own; who had been driven to that dwelling extremity by the lesbian McDonalds managing bitch that had fired him!

His ears burned with anger even as the uncomfortable icy-handed chill clutched at his heart; that fell sensation that had haunted him for almost exactly a year, since that dying loser in that crazy old lady’s kitchen on Wysteria had vomited Death up into his soul. Thence had begun the soul-eating dream creep that followed him within everywhere he went—especially in his sleep.

…He was a potato bud burrowing through the soil of the Emerald Isle—a root vegetable a thousand years or more ahead of his time, but really just a mental construct periscope for peeking into the dark ancient folds of his soul. Back through time he burrowed, seeking a thousand and nine hundred life-giving suns, back through a thousand hells…only to emerge in the body of a pissing, shitting, coughing, sweating, bleeding fear-wracked body…

His ears rang with the heavy blow that rattled the shield strapped to his back.

The great wolf hound that lunged for his face rolled away with his stupid looking dagger in its throat.

The big bastard that brought down the big wooden mallet toward his little helmeted head hesitated for a second as he shoved that arm length of steel sword up into those big reeking guts—teeth gripped his ankles, his hand, his helmet…

A spear ripped through the cheese grater flaps that were supposed to protect him from this big dirt-bag Stone Age biker that was running him through and sending him down into the snarling meat-munching mud…

“What the hell Vitto!” came the voice of the slutty violet-eyed, Greek princess whose daddy owned this diner. “Jose get over here and fry the steak cuts.”

Vitto was now looking into the eyes of the gypsy-looking bitch in the purple dress with the bangle wrist bracelets and ho hoop earrings as she glared at him. His mouth described an ‘O’ of surprise as he snapped out of the trance he had fallen into, and she cut off the word that was not going to emerge from his mouth in any case. “Bring it back here Vitto.”

She walked back behind the walk-in toward storage and the electrical room. In a panic that he was going to lose this job and never get out of that damned cardboard box he followed her, walking through the seductive scent trail of whatever ‘fuck me’ perfume she had bought on a Greek Town street corner and used to torment losers like him.

You have to say something jerk-off.

“I’ll buy the order Anastasia, and I’ll stay over and clean up off the clock.”

As he turned the corner she was turning the next corner, and he followed, sure she was giving him his walking papers. He turned the next corner in a hurry and she was stepping into storage, looking at him over her shoulder with a dark look in her painted eye—an eye festooned with inch-long fake lashes and somehow the sexier for it.

He stepped to the storage room door and saw that she was standing before the stainless steel invoice table on one high heel, the other foot up on the table, looking over her shoulder at him as her slinky dress draped her curvaceous hip and her dark kinky hair fell around her milky beige shoulders.

“Look, Ana—”

“Call me Anastasia Vitto. Shutup. You’re a shit cook. But my old man’s a shit father and I resent having to run his business for him while his fat ass sits out there counting the money.”

“Look Anastasia I—”

“Say it in my ear Vitto. We don’t have all day and I haven’t been disrespected since I dumped Joey on Sunday morning, so get to it—don’t even pretend you don’t want to.”

He had thought about this, but not here, not now, not like this—she was such a beautiful girl but such a bitch…

He had not expected to grab her by the throat—had never done that to a woman. And he certainly would not have imagined that she would like it, and no less insist he keep choking her as she snarled obscenities at him and talked about what a pig her father was—that mean old Greek who was sitting in a booth right now next to the cake case counting stacks of 20s, with a .45 auto on his lap…

Anastasia just kept snarling, “Get it you dago dog, get it!”

Dude, this is some kind of shit Ivan would do—but only in his dreams. You cannot be this stupid.

“Get it you goddamned greasy-haired wop, get it!”

Yes, I appear to be quite capable, in point of fact, of engaging in precisely this kind of self-annihilating behavior—whatever happened to medical school—Christ she could have an STD! Could! How about must. Imagine what Jose brought up from Mexico in his urinary tract! This is so stupid—stop, leave, run away!

“Harder, harder you fucking meatball—oooh I’m such a dirty slut.”

“Yes you are,” he snarled, and something cold and hard slammed into the side of his head above the ear and he began to fall sideways into a metal wall—no, a big hairy dog that was tearing at his lorica. The mud tasted bitter like iron.

No, I am already ages dead, and crawling up through your guts boy, to settle…

He had been a hopeful boy once, sitting in a diner booth with his parents as they discussed his plans for being a doctor. His mother seemed to have an added urgency about her ever since Dad had begun getting so thin. His mother smiled hurtfully and longingly at him across the table as Dad reached across with one big hand and patted him on the wrist even as the other big hand—starting to look claw-like now as he lost weight—gripped his mother’s thigh under the table.

This had made him nervous, so he had reached for his good luck charm, the fortune cookie paper he kept in his plastic change disc that read:

“It takes more than good memory to have good memories.”

Where are you Dad? I am lost and falling further. Dad?

He heard a thick voice submerged beneath a heavy Greek accent grunt, “Papa, papa! Papa of pain!”

A Flamenco dancer was fleeing from the concert hall squealing for the police as the drapes caught fire, the amplifier exploded, and the steel beam…