Two dollar hotdogs!
The words were emblazoned in neon green on a black placard outside the petrol station, the font shrinking toward the end as the sign-writer ran out of room.
Tracey White eyed the sign hungrily as she pulled into the station’s forecourt. She needed petrol to get home. This semi-rural station seemed to also specialise in firewood and vaping products—and apparently cheap hot dogs.
Tracey wondered if it was a hot dog in a bun or just the dog, meat in tube form, or “roller dawgs” as her American husband David called them. The damn thing would likely play havoc on her stomach and acid reflux but even at the age of forty three, Tracey couldn’t resist a deal for a dog.
Her love of hot dogs probably went back to her primary school days. When teachers would proudly declare a Friday “American Hot Dog Day!” as if hot dogs were some illustrious international cuisine, perhaps they were in 1980s New Zealand.
Tracey’s face was grim; the price frightening her as the dollars spun up on the pump display. The gentle beep of the sliding door was the only sound as she entered. Rows of miscellaneous car parts (who bought these?) gave way to fridges full of milk, energy drinks and fizzy drinks. A low fridge sat between the aisles, this was full of ice blocks and ice creams of alluring colours and flavours. Mid autumn was too cold for that kind of thing. Over the back was Tracey’s destination; a pie warmer sat next to a glass bay with trays full of heated items. The smell of fried chicken was almost overwhelming in this area, salt and mysterious artificial spices mixed with oil that had not likely been changed for months.
Her eyes finally found them; six purple-pink dogs, skins shining, just sitting in a glistening pool of old grease, waiting to be taken home.
The tall man behind the counter watched Tracey head to the hot food area, one earbud dangled from his left ear as he continued his phone call in a language that Tracey couldn’t pick.
She eyed the radioactive coloured dogs, as her tongue moved absently across her lips.
‘Hello Miss, how are you today?’ The clerk’s voice was a pin point mixture of pleasantry and apathy. ‘What pump did you use today, ma’am?’
Tracey stood up, her back creaking from leaning down to eye the perfect specimen.
‘Ah…pump three, I think,’ she looked out the dirty front windows to confirm. Outside her car was the sole car in the cracked, weed riddled forecourt and no other cars passed on this rural road. The distant mountains shone in the morning sun with fresh snow.
‘Yeah, fifty dollars on pump three and can I also please have five of these hot dogs—do they come in a bun?’
The man looked at her as if she had just asked him to commit a crime.
‘No ma’am… just the sausage.’
The way his accent said the word “sausage” sent a hot ripple of pleasure down her spine, sweat tingled the back of her hairline. She absently brushed a finger through the hair above her ear and wiped her own fluids on her dress.
‘Okay then, no problem.’ She handed over three crisp twenty dollar notes, she was pleased she could round the cost up to both a ten dollar increment and an even number. (Strange things and occurrences often tickled the mind of Tracey White.)
She watched the man as he took shining metal tongs, their ends covered in mysterious meat crumbs, to each dog.
She watched, saliva pooling hot on her tongue, as he slung them limply into a white paper bag which instantly became almost transparent with grease.
She watched, desperately fighting her own urges to grab them from him, as they slapped together wetly in the bag as he placed it on the counter in front of her.
‘Thank you sir,’ she muttered as she tucked the moist bag under her arm, its heat almost calming, like a hot water bottle in winter.
There was a brief moment between them as money and looks changed hands, ‘You have a great day ma’am!’ he called, with a beaming smile, ‘So nice to meet you.’
The way he hung on the word “meet” went completely over Tracey’s head as she pushed through the doors and escaped the salty greasy indoors to the sanctuary of her car.
After catching her breath, she took the first bite in the car, the casing snapping with a sickening, high-pitched pop. Her mouth filled with the briny, nitrate-heavy taste that slickened her tongue like a thick coating of oil on the ocean.
She put the car in gear, flipped down the visor to ward off the descending afternoon sun and pulled out of the forecourt—the eyes of the clerk watching her the whole time.
The bag sat on the centre console next to her elbow, the heat from them similar to the familiar heat that flowed through her loins as she drove through town. She waved at old Mrs Whitecastle who always ambled to the shops with her wheeled trolley at the same time every afternoon—which meant it must be three thirty, or thereabouts. David would likely call soon as it was now around eight thirty at night in San Francisco and his day of meetings would be over. More than likely right now, he would be sitting on his hotel bed, clad in a bathrobe, eating a room service cheeseburger, a Bruce Willis action flick to be watched. Her eyes flicked to the phallic cylinders in the bag as another hunger began to take over. A compulsion almost animalistic in nature radiated out from her “down below” as she called it around David.
She just had to talk to him, to see him, right then—or she may just explode.
Her finger left a white slimy smear as, on cue, the UI changed to show a picture of her and David, smiling amongst the grapevines of some vineyard she doesn’t remember visiting—on account of how much wine she had drunk that day.
‘Hey baby!’ he answered enthusiastically.
‘Hey hot stuff! Waddaya doin?’ Something had come over with a fevered heat.
Her rampant Kiwi-isms were still like catnip for him, she could hear him beaming through the international phone lines.
‘Just finished a day of meetings, so I’m bushed.’
“Bushed” – an Americanism that she was not overly fond of, so she interjected, her voice a low purr as she spoke, ‘I ain’t bushed—if ya know what I mean. Shaved it clean off this morning, ready for your return….’ she smirked as she said this and she was adamant she heard him gulp through the phone. Where is this coming from?
She took a skinny dog out of the bag, rolled it coquettishly in her fingers and slid it into her mouth slowly. He could not see her, so for whose benefit this was, was only known to Tracey. She drew it in and out again two times, then felt it pop and release its hot innards in a viscous spurt down her throat.
The lining of her esophagus sizzled, the sensitive top layer of skin sluiced down her own throat with no acknowledgment of pain. It felt so wrong…yet so right to her, in that moment.
‘I just wanted to hear your voice, is all..’ Tracey swallowed the remains of the dog, her mouth now a slurry of saliva and salt, slowly thickening like glue left in the sun.
‘I love you baby, can’t wait to get home and see you – in all your splendour.’ he said softly.
‘And that is splendour with a U—the correct way.’ she purred.
She swallowed, barely noticing the thick and fullness of her throat as she spoke, ‘I’ll let you go baby, try not to beat the meat too much in your hotel room big boy… Save some for me!’
He could not quite figure out if she was joking so he simply said, ‘I love you Tracey.’ and the call ended.
Three dogs remained in the bag, they sloppily rolled right as she turned the wheel around the roundabout out of town. Her body held a longing sense of warmth after talking to her husband and more than a flicker of horniness; that feeling though, would have to wait until she got home to her empty house.
By the time she turned onto the road that reached like one long boney finger for the mountains—a long straight thirty minute run into the oncoming night, the expected acid reflux hadn’t hit—but some other feeling had. It was a heavy, structural warmth, as if her bones were turning into warm wax.
A wave of fatigue had replaced the elated feelings of earlier, but her stomach growled, beast-like, in a state of hunger. She took her eyes from the road and looked down at the now hungry-finger-crumpled paper bag. The three remaining dogs had greased their way out of captivity. She didn’t want one of them to slide off the console and under the seat, to be found three months later amid a cloud of stench.
Her stomach growled again and some animal (or something else entirely) part of her brain simply said: “fuck it.”
She abruptly fisted all three at once and shoved them into her mouth, like a square peg being rammed into a round hole, her eyes off the road entirely, she stuffed them in, flesh squirted and ground between teeth and her tongue rolled its over its prey like a crocodile in a death roll. She swallowed the mass in one, great, agonising gulp that stretched her throat to the limit of its elasticity. The wall of sleep arrived like the oncoming of a truck—not a natural tiredness, but like heavy, chemical or medical sedation. Her head was lolling on her shoulders and her hands, slick with the salty grease of the final three dogs, felt like they were melting, joining and melding into the steering wheel.
As Tracey pulled the car over onto the gravel verge, the sound of cracking gravel beneath the tyres seemingly echoed the form of the pops in her stomach. The distant mountains now teeth against the darkening sky. She intended to just rest her eyes for a moment longer, to let the ‘slurry’ in her mouth settle. Just rest her head against the wheel for a moment, wait for all of this to wash over her. She closed her eyes as her bowels keened like an injured and dying animal. The weight in her stomach was now immovable.
Night closed in around her and the sounds of the outside world were eclipsed by the ruinous machinations of her digestive tract kicking into high gear.
Darkness summoned her, placing its bag over her head as she slipped into a black sleep.
She woke to the sun hitting the windscreen glass. She winced as her eyes peeled open with a sound like velcro.
It was daylight.
Fatigue sat on her chest as a yawn burgeoned inside her still-thickening throat. Her brain told her to open her mouth, but she couldn’t. Her newly clogged heart skipped a beat as her mouth had no interest in playing ball.
Her brain again signalled “Yawn!” to no avail.
Finally a ripping sound filled her muffled ears—it was the sound of her merged skin splitting, a new non-mouth stretching and ripping. Ribbons of slick pink flesh tore away, flapping down onto her chin like loose casings. A scream burst forth, but it wasn’t a sound—it was a wet, hacking expulsion of brine and gristle which spattered the windscreen.
Her heart thumped sporadically against the now softened cage of ribs inside her. Droplets of overly salty sweat rained down from her hairline, she reached up for her hair with clumsy fingers and greasy clumps fell away, some sticking to what her hands had become. She looked down in panic at the steering wheel. Her knuckles were gone, replaced by a tight, polished sheen of mottled pink. She pressed a chubby smooth finger into her thigh; it left a deep, doughy indentation that didn’t immediately bounce back. With a panicked, clumsy lurch, she reached for her phone. She needed to hear David’s voice. But her fingers had fused into a singular, blunt curve—a thick, uniform link. The phone skittered onto the floor mats, out of reach of her now jelly-soft appendages.
No sound now emanated from the wet hole in the front of her face, her throat now a blocked passage, coated over completely and permanently.
She lifted the mass on her shoulders and looked in the rearview mirror. A single, panicked blue eye peered out from a face that was rapidly smoothing over. Blobs shifted and melded together, fused by chemicals and fats. Her nose had flattened into the rising tide of her cheeks. Her skin had the high-gloss, vacuum-sealed sheen of a supermarket multi-packed smallgoods.
I’m forty-three, she tried to manage thoughts. I have a mortgage to pay. I have friends. I have a husband who loves…
But her thoughts were losing their edges, sliding down into a vortex, blending into a warm, pulpless pink soup. The salt was in her brain stem now. Her fondly recalled “American Hot Dog Day” memory of 1985 flashed through her mind—the steam onions, the smell of mustard and processed meats—and then, with a final, wet explosive pop inside her eardrums, her memories were now just another ingredient in a long list of illegible and unintelligible items.
Outside, the sun hit the fresh snow on the mountains, indifferent and cold. Inside the car, parked on the weed-riddled verge, there was no more Tracey White. An unanswered phone, emblazoned with that winery picture, rang from the floor of the passenger seat. In the driver’s seat was only ten dollars’ worth of meat, glistening in the mid-autumn light.
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About
Dan Eady (he/him), is an Aotearoa New Zealand based writer who isn’t afraid to delve into the shadows. He crafts stories that explore the darker corners of human experience. His work, often reflecting the quiet intensity of his rural environment, has found an audience in international publications such as Five on the Fifth, Pulp Lit Mag, Wicked Shadow Press, The Dark Corner magazine, and New Zealand’s Circular Literary Magazine.
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