This time is gonna be different.
This time, when I walk up to the Fetish Burger front counter, I’m sporting a pair of freshly-grown walrus tusks down to my waist, plus a coat of iridescent blue fur and a set of gossamer dragonfly wings emblazoned with the company logo of a burger in chunky chains. It sure beats the last time I was here, clad in a Fetish Burger t-shirt, no pants, and a green foam rubber head like that of General Gimp, the company mascot. That time, as has happened so many times before, the online hacks I chose to ape were way out of date, and the order taker wouldn’t even look at me, let alone ask the question I longed to hear:
Would you like to try something from the Secret Menu?
This time is gonna be so different. I hop forward on one foot when the guy in front of me steps away. “Ello-hay ere-thay!” My Pig Latin is letter perfect. “Ay-may I-yay y-tray omething-say om-fray e-they ecret-say enu-may?”
My heart pounds like a tenderizing hammer on a wheel of mozarella. Finally, a reason not to give up on myself after. . . you know. The terrible thing I did.
Welcome, sir! You have altered your physiognomy sufficiently to access the Secret Menu! That’s what I imagine he will say, the sixteen-year-old kid in the peach-and-purple striped uniform with the aluminum foil cap.
Instead, he looks right through me. “Next!” Then smacks a big pink button on the counter, WHA-POW.
And down I go, a trap door releasing me into the churning sewer below the building for the umpteenth time. Once again, I know how a flushed turd feels.
Except a flushed turd doesn’t resolve to return to its starting point. Doesn’t swear that its quest isn’t over.
***
As you know, the Secret Menu at Fetish Burger is so special and hard-to-get, people started a religion about it.
Talk about a mystery cult. Though rumors abound of the glories to be found, the only ones who really know what they are refuse to share them…or perhaps must sign an ironclad NDA.
Or maybe the food is just that awesome. So very awesome that not even the wildest rumor or fiction can even come close to conveying its staggering wonders.
And even the dumbest, darkest mistake will be forever negated in its divine wake.
That, more than anything, is my kind of jam.
***
This time is gonna be different.
That’s what I say the next day when I return to Fetish Burger. Thanks to my pocket CRISPR genetic resequencer, I’m new meat from head to feet, just like the latest and greatest hacks all said I should be.
Not only am I free of fur, tusks, and wings, but I’m free of all hair and skin, stripped down to just muscle and bone. . . and that’s not all. I’m rearranged, too, with my head where my butt should be, my butt where my head should be, my legs where my arms should be, and vice versa.
Then there’s the choreography, a shimmy-shimmy shuffle spin from the door to the line at the counter. Waiting in line, I break off and juggle parts of myself while whistling the Fetish Burger theme from my butt and face.
This can’t miss, say the online experts. Time and again, this display has gotten Fetish counter-folk to yank out the Secret Menu faster than a 14-year-old whipping out a pen to sign over his soul to Satan for rock-n-roll stardom.
My turn comes! Using flaps of muscle as flags, I signal my request via semaphore code, a masterstroke if ever there was one.
Secret menu please!
Still, the young blonde at the counter looks right past me. “Next!”
Her hand goes for the big pink button. . . but I’ve wised up and sidestep the trap door as it swings. Then I clamber up onto the counter and signal again with my muscle flap flags: Secret menu! Secret menu!
She hits a different button, and a panel in the ceiling slides opens, revealing a gaping vent. I know what’s coming even before it sucks me up off the counter.
I’m not at all surprised when I find myself bobbing in the sewer again.
***
This time is gonna be different.
I think I finally have it figured out. I’ve thrown out all the hacks and come up with a novel approach that I believe will succeed. Soon, I’ll be wrapping my palate around a chicken-fried hackey-sack, pangolin under glass, baked and buggered fonzarelli, or whatever unimaginable delicacies await on the wondrous Secret Menu.
I enter clad in brown homespun monk’s robes, hood all the way up to hide my features. I take a seat by the window in the rear of the dining room as the Chideshare woman I’ve hired gets in line.
I should have thought of this sooner. If Chideshare proxies can be paid to shoulder the blame and take the heat for a client’s wrongdoing, why not send one to game the Secret Menu system on my behalf?
I hold my breath as my Chideshare proxy reaches the counter. Will the gangly young order dude on the other side look right through her? Will he snap out Next and smack the pink button that sends her plunging into the sewer like a turd?
The answer, to my delight, is decidedly no.
Talk, gesture, gesture, talk, shrug. I’m too far from the counter to hear what the Chideshare proxy says, but all I really need to know is she hasn’t been trap-doored yet.
Talk, smile, gesture, chuckle, nod, goes the dude behind the counter.
There’s a pause as the dude leans forward, narrows his eyes, and gives her a long, cold stare. I’ve seen this before with other Fetish Burger flunkies and Secret Menu pilgrims—a final assessment of fitness to enter nirvana, as if they can gaze into your soul and see if you’re pure or you’ve stolen from orphans or cheated on a spouse
or murdered someone for a foolproof hack guaranteed to land the Secret Menu in your clutches because yes you are just that pitiful, your life is that sad, and it didn’t work anyway, the murder was all for nothing
and when they glimpse a stain within you they’ll never give you access,
not unless you’re smart enough to hire a Chideshare proxy like I have, then use a black market brain shunt to swap your mind with hers right after the gangly dude nods and hands over that fabled Secret Menu
KA-ZAP!
so now I’m looking out of her eyes at the print on the laminated card,
salivating from the corners of her mouth with anticipation of devouring shinsplint fricassee with a side of Spanglish Fly poutine and bubble wrap bourguignon,
followed by a haggis crème brûlée, extra baby powder please,
even as I get the feeling in the back of my mind in the front of her head
that I might just end up being empty, so very very empty again an hour later
and for the rest of my life.
Robert Jeschonek is an envelope-pushing, USA Today bestselling author whose fiction, comics, and non-fiction have been published around the world. His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Pulphouse, Escape Pod, and many other publications. He has written official Star Trek and Doctor Who fiction and has scripted comics for DC, AHOY, and others. Visit him online at www.bobscribe.com.