Charlotte wiped her hands on her dirty lime green apron, the signature color of Fried Freddies fast food chain, and glanced sideways at the man walking toward her.
“Hey Charlotte? You’re doing it again. I’m going to have to fire you if can’t get your work done.” Dave stood way too close to Charlotte in the overheated kitchen. Looking matronly with his hands on his hips and his glasses slid down his nose, his lime green tie was stained with Blue Kickberry Punch. Charlotte threw out her own elbows to make space for herself.
“You don’t know anything about him? Why he sits there all the time?”
“There’s no one there, Charlotte, just get the buns in the oven. Next time I catch you staring at nothing, you’re fired.”
“Fried.”
“What?”
“Fry me, when you do it, it’ll be funnier.”
Dave stared, defeated for a beat, then his middle management brainwashing kicked in. “Get your work done, or else.” He turned, and ran straight into the new dishwasher, a big guy named Orlando.
“Dammit! Everybody get back to work!” He hissed as he hurried off.
“You seen him, too?” Orlando stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “You googled him?”
“Yep, nothing. Not a single news report about a horrible accident at a this Fried Freddies.”
“Could be paywalled.”
“Yeah, I thought about that. Nothing I can do about it though since the pay is shit here.” Charlotte turned back to the specter sitting at the oven, a bald man in his late forties who sat, every day, on a metal folding chair and stared into the oven. Charlotte had timed this next part, it happened every forty-seven minutes. She turned to Orlando, “You seen this yet?”
“Seen what?”
The bald man turned. Orlando threw up his hands, “Oh, shit, no. Nope. I’m out.” He turned and fled back to his corner of the kitchen. Charlotte laughed to herself. She’d seen the bald man’s half burnt, glistening hamburger patty of a face a billion times now it felt like. She stepped through him to open the oven and slide out the bun rack. Fried Freddies was one of the few fast food chains that didn’t just warm frozen bread, but baked it fresh. Charlotte’s whole job was to “keep those hot buns coming” as her manager put it.
She’d thought about it a lot, how it couldn’t have been the bun oven that burned his face. The oven was about six feet tall, all of the bread trays rolled into it on a single rack of shelves. You could shove someone into the empty space, for sure, but it would be like a convection iron maiden. A single, large burn was not happening. The result would be burned stripes all down your body… and you’d cook. It looked more like someone held his face onto one of the big patty grills. So why watch the oven? And how did he die? That burn wouldn’t do it unless he had a heart attack or something. So many questions.
Charlotte parked the baked rolls in the cooling area and loaded the next tray in the oven, setting the timer. Then she had to cut the baked buns. She was supposed to have a rack in the cooling area, a rack in the cutting area, and a rack in the oven. But she spent too much time watching the ghost, and now she’d have to cut the buns hot or risk getting fired. She touched the first bun gingerly.
“Ouch, fuck. Ugh.” It burned through the latex gloves she wore, but she picked up the bread knife and grabbed the bun. At least by the time she got halfway through the rack they’d be cooler. She cut fast, but not too fast, no way she was losing a finger for this shithole. Looking back at the ghost she shuddered involuntarily. Fuck a finger, imagine losing an entire eternity to this place. Horrifying. Maybe she could, like, free him. Or maybe he didn’t want to be freed. Ghosts should probably have consent.
By the time she had hand-cut two hundred and fifty buns her hands felt blistered and sweaty inside her gloves. And since she was behind she’d have to do it all over again with the next rack… and the next. She slid the cut buns into the bun bin and had exactly three minutes to prep the next rack before the timer buzzed on the fresh bun batch. So she started that. Unwrapping the cold dough and plopping the pale pillows onto the baking trays hurt at first, but eventually the chilly buns numbed the burn. While she worked, she talked.
“Hey, so, I see you here a lot and I wondered if you wanted to tell me anything?”
Bald guy starting silently at the oven kept staring silently at the oven.
“Ok, cool. I just, I mean, what are you looking at, you know, in the oven? All day. Every day. And, presumably, at night, too, yeah? When the oven isn’t even running.”
Charlotte realized she’d never actually just took his place and stared into the oven in the exact way he did. She finished prepping her dough globs just in time to catch the timer before it buzzed, this would hopefully keep Dave from thinking about her for a bit. With the new buns in the oven and the baked buns in the cooling area, Charlotte crouched in front of the oven in the exact place where the bald ghost also sat. An icy coldness overtook her as she gazed into the heating elements.
“What do you see, guy?”
The elements flickered, time plumped around her like dough, and a voice whispered, “Watch this.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Charlotte!”
She stood up. Smoke was pouring out of the bun oven, the blaring buzzer cut through her like a cold chainsaw and she shivered. Flipping on the vent fan, she opened the oven door, waving the billow of smoke away from her face. Dave’s face was a shade of red that shouldn’t have been possible in a human being. Charlotte shook her head.
“Maybe you should… sit. Shit.”
Dave clutched his heart and staggered backward, tripping over the edge of the counter he winged sideways and fell face first onto the hamburger grill. His hairpiece flopping off onto a raw patty. The cook hauled him off the grill. Dave was dead.
Charlotte looked back at the oven, Dave’s future specter no longer sat in the chair. Someone else was there.
“Hey Charlotte, the ghost is gone. I can’t see the chair anymore.”
“You know what, Orlando, you should quit today.”
This story is set in Deadwater, CA. Check out the Deadwater Navigation Page for more stories set in this strange place.
Ooooooh, that plot twist was awesome 😁😁😁
Oh man that was great. I love the idea of a precognitive spectre.