More Crossed Wires, for your enjoyment

The following takes place right after the last posting of Crossed Wires.

Chuck came closer to the door and his partner, who had now dropped back down to all fours and had quieted to a low growl, and said: “What the f*** was that all about, ol’ buddy? You thought maybe that fuckered up cowboy guy was back again?”
It seemed like Nixon cringed when Chuck said that string of words. Chuck definitely did.
“The bastard said he’d be back. But that was weeks ago. S***.”
And with that final word, Chuck checked the lock on the door and headed back to the latrine almost as quickly as he’d exited it. S***! I am truly f*****.

Meet Sarah
Ever since she had left the V.F.W. in Roanoke and found a better job at a Max’s Diner further West, almost to West Virginia, Sarah Diamond felt like she was getting just that much closer to her dream of escaping Virginia entirely and even the teensiest bit closer to achieving her grand plan of ending up in California where she would most certainly become a star. It seemed to her that everything had been falling into place much more quickly since she had dumped her abusive boyfriend in Virginia Beach and had taken everything she saved to get as far West as she could. Roanoke had been okay, but there were too many drunken reminders of her ex-boyfriend and him floating around, especially at the V.F.W. post where she both tended bar and waited tables six nights a week for almost seven months. Here at Max’s, a small diner in a small and neighborly town, she felt better than she had in a while.
Sarah wasn’t the most trusting of people in the world—her childhood had made her wary for a number of very good reasons—and she didn’t make friends quickly. She was, however, a very attractive young woman, in an unassuming way, and people warmed to her pretty easily. The day the big, ruddy-complexioned guy with the dark black hair and the wiry salt and pepper goatee came into Max’s, she was in one of her more effervescent moods. The man warmed right up to her in no time.
The man wore dusty blue jeans and a fleece lined leather vest, the “watch” pocket of which had the tell-tale circular wear-mark of many tins of snuff having resided there over time. To say that he was handsome would be a long shot, thought Sarah, but something about him was magnetic, almost feral. Historically, she had a thing for feral men and unfortunately today was no different. As if on cue, she was right there with the coffee pot, smiling brightly when he saddled up to the diner’s counter. She had put on her best aw-shucks look and instinctively tuned up the Virginian twang in her voice when she greeted him.
“How are you today, honey? Like a cup of coffee and a menu?”
He looked up at her and ticked his head to one side, almost like a dog listening for something in the distance.

“Coffee would be fine,” he said, his voice low and deep. “Black, please. Nothing to eat.”
As she turned his cup over and started pouring, she felt something funny tugging at the back of her mind. Don’t do it, it seemed to say. Don’t pour the coffee and run away, now!
Now where did that come from? she wondered.

Still smiling, she hesitated only briefly before filling the cup. “Sure there’s nothing else I can get you, sweetie?”
Again, the man cocked his head. He seemed to sniff at the air again, and then squinted obliquely at her. It was almost as if he were asking with his eyes, do I know you?
“No. Not now,” he growled, sounding suddenly irritated.
Things started to come together for Sarah then. This guy ain’t’t right, she realized. She turned away from him and went down a couple of seats to freshen up a young couple’s cups. The pair seemed oblivious to the odd vibe that Sarah was starting to feel.
“You guys okay?” she asked. She thought to herself, Ain’t love grand? and found herself becoming unreasonably scared at the same time.
The polite couple nodded their heads and smiled as if sharing some wonderful secret between them.
As she was turning around from the counter to head to the order window, she heard Jorge, Max’s long time chief cook and bottle washer, suddenly start cursing violently in Spanish. Normally a quiet, respectful older Mexican immigrant, Jorge (pronounced ‘Hoar-Hay’) was raising holy hell from somewhere in the back of the kitchen. From what Spanish she understood—mostly curses—Jorge was really in a fit, nearly in hysterics. Sarah set her coffee pot down on the warmer and raced into the back to see what was going on. Jorge was looking out the back door, a big stainless steel spoon in one fist and a frying pan in the other. And he was shaking like he was hooked up to a high voltage wire.
“Go back, Miss Sarah!” he yelped when he saw her coming toward him. “You no need to see this s***! This s*** the work of the devil!”
Unfortunately, Sarah’s momentum had gotten her close enough to see some of what was just outside on the restaurant’s little loading dock. Just a brief flash, an intense now feeling hit her and she too started shaking. At first what she saw made no sense but in that now, the abject horror of it kicked her hard, as if in the ovaries.
“Holy f***,” was all that seemed to want to come out of her mouth.
“Nothing holy here, Seniorita.” He was nearly in tears.
The back dock looked like an insane petting zoo in Dante’s most fearsome version of hell. There were blood soaked cats with their legs twisted and knotted like furry little sausages, two dogs strung up, field dressed, like hairy miniature sides of beef and several gelatinous piles of various varmint gore...most all of the animals’ various eyes were missing, their tails snipped off and stuffed in odd orifices. What Sarah couldn’t shake was that it looked somehow staged. It seemed put there for a show and tell in some twisted child’s nightmare classroom project. Evil was the only word she could muster to describe it to herself.
“I’ll go call the police, Jorge. Don’t touch anything and close that damn door!”
The few customers in the diner had gotten some inkling that something was wrong, but Sarah dutifully calmed them when she came up front. She headed right for the phone by the cash register, lifted the receiver and dialed 911. What the f***? She dialed routinely so as not to go completely mad with fear.
In the two rings it took for the operator to pick up, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that the weirdo with the vest and the goatee was nowhere in sight. She was too wigged out to put anything together.
In less than five minutes, two sheriff’s deputies had arrived at Max’s and another local squad car had zoomed up in the back. In the distance, she heard the wail of a rescue vehicle siren. Rescue what? she wondered wildly.
It was after things had settled down, the customers safely hustled away and most of their questions for Sarah over with, that she wandered absently over to the seat where the creepy guy had sat. She noticed that his coffee cup wasn’t all together empty and that instead of money on top of the counter there was a folded napkin. At the bottom of the cup was a small brown pile of moist dipping snuff, swimming in a little pool of brown and yellow saliva. When she picked up the napkin, a small gelatinous orb fell onto the counter. It was a tiny, lifeless eyeball. The hysteria was immediate and final.
When Sarah woke up, she was in a hospital emergency room, scared, tired and very confused.
“Why me?” she whimpered, just barely audible enough to get the apparently weary nurse’s attention. The nurse furtively reached for Sarah’s pale, quivering hand.
“Now, now, child. It’s over. Relax.”
Sarah wished with all her strength that she could come to believe that.