New Flash Fiction: Midnight at the Sushi Pig Cafe

In our latest story, DeAnna Knippling takes us on an urban fantasy trip to see what happens in a cafe when the doors are finally closed and the diners have all gone home. DeAnna is a freelance writer and editor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

You can also find her at wonderlandpress.com and on Twitter at @dknippling


Midnight at the Sushi Pig Cafe
by DeAnna Knippling

Outside the plate-glass window, the streetlights have come on, throwing the shadow of a dancing pig across the small, black lacquered tables and upended, mismatched wood chairs. Headlights flash as cars pull out of their parking spaces. The sound of drunks echoes down the street. Drunks and loud, American-style country music. 

Inside, Mr. Tong bumps and grinds to the stereo, playing Elvis and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He slides trays of translucent fish out of the refrigerator case. Today's tuna will be tomorrow's spicy tuna filling for the Olé rolls.  Although I suspect his takes some of it home... to his cats. 

I watch the shelves on the other side of the restaurant, where some pigs have been moved to fill in the holes where the lucky china cats used to be. Across the room, Bumblepig is crying. He's next to a yellow neko that turns into a teacup when you turn her upside down. He sniffs loudly and Mr. Tong's dance steps hitch for a moment. 

A glass bottle shatters in the street. Three drunks stop at the window. The female straightens her short, floucy skirt, rolls her lips together to smooth out her lipstick. The two males argue. The larger one wins, the smaller one leaves leaves alone.

Tonight's the night. The yellow teacup neko's getting pushed off the shelf. Minipig, tiny and brown and ugly and kind of flat in the stomach, says so. Superpig agrees. They both say that until the cats are replaced with pigs, there will be no peace. Superpig cares about law and order. Minipig cares about the loyalty of the new pigs that have a home because some cat took a dive. I say Minipig needs to stay off Ebay for awhile. Minipig says we need reinforcements and accuses me of wanting to get rid of the two newest pigs, Rubberduckiepig and Farmerporkiepig. He’s sitting next to me, the runt of the litter, to make sure I don’t interfere.

He hints that I, too, can be pushed.

Mr. Tong sings into his broom, jumping in his socks on the clean kitchen floor, then rushes out to flip a chair off a table and back onto the floor. He leans the chair back and forth, tapping the wooden legs in time with the music, then gives it a whirl with one palm braced against the round cane top. When the song is finished, he'll turn out the lights.

The yellow teacup neko smiles at Bumblepig. I see her curling lips whisper don't cry, baby. They had some good times. That's all anybody ever gets.

I've known Bumblepig since the opening. Back then it was good times, cats and pigs dancing in the kitchen, drowning our sorrows in endless cups of sake, eating roach tempura and mouse sashimi elbow to elbow at the sushi bar. 

That all ended with the arrival of Minipig. Although none of us knew that then.

Mr. Tong whistles as he checks the latch of the walk-in cooler one last time, then turns out the lights four by four with the side of his hand.

There's a crash even before he locks the door. The lights flip back on and his footsteps come back through the kitchen, into the dining area.

I’m on the floor, looking upward through my one good eye. I’m all over the place.

Mr. Tong stands over me. "Oh, poor Burglepig," he says. "I have you forever. I take you home, see if Mae can put you back together. Although probably not." He gathers up my pieces gently, ignoring the way the shards dig into his soft flesh. 

I look around desperately, hoping that my sacrifice has done what it needed to. At first I don't see Minipig. As I'm being lifted through the air, though, I spot him under the bar. He's lost an ear and his curly tail but he hasn't shattered. Too small, too sturdy. Although I think he must always have been cracked.

I made my play for your sake, Bumblepig, you and your cute little teacup. But Minipig grunts mockingly under the bar  and I know it was nothing more than a nice gesture. 

Mr. Tong stoops suddenly. He bends forward and Minipig freezes. 

"I need more cats," he says. "When I have more lucky cats, I never have roaches like you."

Crunch.

My first book Choose Your Doom:  Zombie Apocalypse was released in November 2010 (www.doompress.com).  I was recently published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Silverthought Online, Crossed Genres and Nil Desperandum.  I received an honorable mention in Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 3 and took first place in the 2012 Parsec Ink Short Story Contest.