Behind Dark Doors (the complete collection): Eighteen suspenseful short stories, Page 2

  So it got me wondering: What happens when the cameras leave? Are they always as happy as they are made out to be? In the case of George, sadly, he was not very happy at all.

  “Do Us Part” was first published in the 2011 anthology “The Bridge”—an editor’s pick of stories from the Stringybark Fiction Awards. It’s still one of my favorite stories.

  Hell’s Kitchen

  Gordon must survive the elimination round in an intense cooking competition. But he’s made a mistake. As the tension mounts, he becomes convinced of his imminent elimination. For him, winning is a matter of life and death.

  Second by second, the crimson stain crept across the bench. Gordon frantically blotted it with his cloth while reaching for the upended wine bottle.

  He peered anxiously into the dark brown vessel, praying that enough remained. What he saw instead almost caused him to drop the bottle a second time. The lip of the bottle was broken. Glass slivers. He didn’t dare use the contents now.

  The thought I’ve lost flashed through his mind.

  Without the wine, he couldn’t complete his rich sauce—and the judges had just called “thirty minutes.” He would face certain elimination—a thought too frightening to contemplate.

  He’d been cooking so well this past week.

  Only yesterday the judges had complimented his risotto, encouraging him to keep up the good work. Winning meant everything to his family. He was doing this for them. The comforting image of their faces nudged aside his near-crippling thoughts of loss and its consequence.

  Some of the other contestants couldn’t handle the stress. One by one they folded. Those left behind rejoiced quietly, shamefully relieved as each competitor’s departure brought them closer to the prize.

  Glancing around the darkened room, Gordon wondered if anyone had noticed his mishap. The other four remaining chefs were working intently on their creations, each spotlighted by an overhead shaft of white light, just as he was. Nobody glanced his way.

  Three judges stood huddled at the front of the room. The judge they’d nicknamed “the Spice Nazi” stared at him with eyebrows raised, his mouth open in a little ‘O’. After making a tutting sound, he then returned to a discussion with the other two. The swirling aromas of complex blends, nurtured to maturity by his fellow competitors, reminded Gordon that he needed to stay focused on his task.

  Gordon’s spirits faded further as he surveyed the ingredients arrayed before him. What could he supplement to provide the distinctive flavor in the beef bourguignon? He stilled his mind as he ran his hand through his wildly curled blonde hair, the only part of him that lacked discipline.

  Grape juice, Worcestershire sauce, malt vinegar. None of those options would work. A can of tomatoes caught his eye just as he heard a judge’s voice boom, “Fifteen minutes.”

  The tomatoes could work. They would add the necessary acidity for a start. Then if he added brown sugar, extra stock, and adjusted the seasoning…. It was worth a shot. He couldn’t call it beef bourguignon anymore—but considering the main protein, that had always been a stretch anyway.

  Chef Jeremy cursed behind him and Gordon’s spirits lifted a little. Perhaps Jeremy’s dish was not going according to plan either.

  Sometimes it came down to that. Someone else’s failure was your success. Guilt stabbed at him. They all deserved to win, but someone would tragically leave simply because their dish failed to meet a judge’s taste. Everyone has an off day.

  Cooking relied as much on a dash of fickle fortune as it did on the chemical reaction between ingredients and temperature. A miscalculation of seconds in the cooking process could change everything. this kind of pressure, this overbearing stress, it would challenge anyone.

  So much at stake repeated endlessly in his head.

  “Five minutes,” another judge bellowed.

  It was “the Enforcer.” Gordon knew their voices intimately by now. Their comments whirled like a tornado through his brain every sleep-deprived night. He’d pick through their words looking for insights into their taste preferences. What flavor nuances did they favor? Which consistencies most pleased their palates?

  When you’re cooking for your life you need every advantage. Some of the best chefs he had ever cooked alongside had eliminated themselves by cooking to their own personal predilection and not to the judges’ tastes.

  Big mistake. Very big mistake.

  Leaning over the steaming pot, Gordon waved the vapor toward himself in a single gesture. The spiced bouquet of the meal wafted into his nose and tickled his taste buds. For years, he had instructed his chefs to taste every dish before serving it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that here. Instead, he brought all his olfactory skills to the task.

  “One minute. Plate now,” screeched “the Hyper-Critic.”

  He was the worst of them—finding fault in some of the most perfectly executed dishes. Nothing pleased him. Thank God the other two usually counterbalanced his disparagement.

  A rivulet of sweat breached Gordon’s brow, plopping onto his bench. He ignored the urge to waste time wiping the food-splattered surface. Plating up was of supreme importance. Presentation was thirty percent of the judges’ score. It now came down to seconds. Precious seconds.

  As if sucked through a time vacuum, Gordon was suddenly before the judges, as they impassively dissected his offering.

  “Please let them like it,” he muttered, his stare fixed on their poker faces as he awaited their comments. Cold sweat streamed down his face; clinging wet patches formed under his arms and across his back. It was as if his body had decided to expel all its water instantaneously. His bladder was bordering on explosion. He forced himself to breathe evenly when what he really wanted was to suck in great gulps of air.

  The judges were now nodding with collective smiles, even the Hyper-Critic, whose only question was whether a hint of cinnamon had been added.

  Gordon only breathed fully again when the judges announced their decision. His hand flew to cover his mouth when elimination fell upon Jeremy. Something must have gone terribly wrong for him. He was a good chef and a good man. He had a family.

  Jeremy was screaming now as the Enforcer dragged him through the open vault door to God knows where. The four remaining chefs exchanged tortured stares, their faces pale with relief, even as their eyes reflected the horrific visualization of Jeremy’s fate.

  They would never see him again.

  Well…

  They would.

  For their own sanity, they would pretend it wasn’t Jeremy.

  © 2011 Susan May

  From the Imagination Vault

  Hell’s Kitchen is a nod to the phenomenon of these popular television cooking competition shows—in fact any of the reality competition shows. One night I caught “Master Chef,” an Australian show, and observed the contestants battle to avoid elimination. I was struck by their life and death demeanors.

  My dark sense of humor couldn’t resist exploring the strong emotions the situation extracted from the contestants. What if it really were “life and death,” and they weren’t just playing for money?

  You may have noticed the protagonist’s name is Gordon, and the title of the story is the same as the English celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s own chefs-competing-against-chefs show, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Yes, I did name it after that show; the title fit too perfectly not to use. I also thought it was fun to name my character after Chef Ramsay.

  Hell’s Kitchen won first prize in the 2011 Writing to Inspire “First Line Short Story Competition.” Entrants were given a choice of three first lines and a thousand-word limit. I chose “Second by second, the crimson stain crept …” and the rest is history.

  Of course, I enjoyed adding a dash of a twist. No short story would be satisfying without it. For me, it is the indispensible ingredient.

  Mitigating Circumstances

  Bullying is always a volatile subject, but when a parent-teacher interview goes very wrong, “volatile” is too mild a wo
rd. When a mother feels she’s not being heard, sometimes actions can speak louder than words.

  It didn’t have to end this way. In fact, it didn’t even need to go down the path it took. People being the stupid stubborn creatures they are, they just couldn’t leave it alone. The same damn fools probably pick at their pimples for the very same reason they picked the hell out of this. They just want the satisfaction of doing something for the sake of doing it. Dumb and dumber meets even stupider; that’s what it was.

  This disaster started with the simplest of actions. It started with a push.

  Just a little push, and then a little laugh, and then a little stumble. Ben’s knee hit the ground before his hand, and normally a knee could take the brunt of the fall and everything would be just dandy. Instead, his hand smacked the black graveled asphalt, and thanks to momentum what followed was the sharp snap of his wrist being bent back. Followed by a small bone inside twisting at an angle for which it wasn’t designed.

  The scream came next, and that’s when everything went crazy. Ben lay there, curled up as if he were a kitten basking in the sunshine—except he was writhing on the hot black ground, like a lizard stabbed with a stick.

  A handful of kids stood around him, watching silently, momentarily unable to grasp the idea of taking action. A gangly seventh-grader pushed through the small crowd surrounding Ben, and took one look at the red-faced screaming eight-year-old before grabbing the arm of the nearest kid.

  “Get a teacher,” he said. When the child continued to stare without moving, he shoved him and shouted, “Now!”

  The seventh-grader leaned down and placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder in an attempt to calm the contorting boy. By now, every nerve fiber in Ben’s wrist was sending piercing signals to his brain. His mind had entered a whole other realm, where red was the overwhelming color and white searing heat was the climate there today.

  A blonde six-year-old girl, standing amid the quickly growing crowd, was crying silently and wringing her hands. Tiny tears rolled down her cheeks and formed big creamy droplets underneath her nose before sliding over her lips. Others were pushing her toward the front, toward the mass of twisting anguish at the center, amid murmurings: “It’s his sister,” “Let her through.” The onlookers parted as if an unknown energy formed a pathway before her.

  She stood at Ben’s feet, her small fist stuffed into her mouth to stifle a scream and prevent her stomach from spilling the contents of her lunch over the already horrific scene. Before she could take another step forward or even remove her fist, Mrs. Bryant, a graying, rolling ball of a woman, had moved her aside and plowed into the epicenter.

  “Oh, my God,” said Mrs. Bryant to nobody and everybody as she dropped to her knees and put her hands over Ben’s injured arm. It was obvious by the red swelling lump, which moments before had been a wrist—and the twisted right angle of his hand—that something was broken, and broken bad.

  Mrs. Bryant turned to the seventh-grade boy, whose jaw had visibly relaxed once he’d realized he was no longer the sole decision maker. “Get Principal Gardner. And tell him to call an ambulance.”

  Bad as Ben’s injuries were—two surgeries to realign the damaged wrist cartilage and four pins for the two broken wrist bones—it still could have ended there.

  They had to go and do their investigations, didn’t they? As if Ben’s cast weren’t proof enough that he was the injured party.

  In the name of God, and every other blessed deity, how could they get it so flippery slippery wrong?

  Only one word described this situation. It was “F’d.” Right? I can’t say that word, though. People who use that word in all its four-letter glory are nothing but common beggars.

  My mother said that. Common beggars went straight to hell. If that word accidentally fell from our mouths, well, my mother was happy to demonstrate hell—the physical pain one could expect at least.

  She wasn’t being cruel. Oh no, she was saving our souls. “God’s a flippin’ tough guy, you know,” she would say. “I’m just preparing you. If those marks don’t go away then let them be a reminder.”

  So Ben’s accident was a flipped and flippery situation for sure. When I say those words they mean the same as that word. I just won’t go to hell.

  Even my mother would agree it was a flipped-up situation. Bless her departed soul, which was certainly in heaven discussing with God the benefits of toughened-up kids.

  I wasn’t like my Mother. I didn’t want my kids toughened up. Every time I glimpsed the ugly lumpy purple scars across my legs, it strengthened my resolve to shower only love upon my children.

  Somehow, these common teacher beggars had screwed it all up. Ben’s room teacher, Mrs. Large-and-Lazy (who could barely get out of her chair), to this Assistant Principal, Mrs. Barber, the big A.P. (who acted like we should all kneel before her), had got it flipping wrong.

  Ben and I sat there in the A.P.’s office waiting for it—waiting for the apology, and for the promise of punishment for the aggressors that must surely follow. These kids, these flippery spoilt kids would be punished, expelled, and would receive a black mark against their name. Although I didn’t say it out loud, I knew they were going to hell.

  The A.P. stared at me with a weird fake smile that stretched from her mouth to her poky eyes. Then she cleared her throat just before she said the words that would set us on the path of no return.

  I was expecting something else, something like remorse or pity. Something normal under the circumstances. But I got this look from her, with her pointy rat nose turned up, her hand brushing through her perfectly bobbed brown hair. I got this look that said “You’re the flippery beggars, and you’re not going to like it, but I’m giving it to you anyway. I’m going to enjoy giving it to you. Oh yes, I am.”

  Then she said the word as if she were saying something simple like “Cool weather we’re having this time of year?” or “Have you tried that new peach yogurt?”

  She said “Mitigating.”

  There was a sentence around the word but I only heard that one word. It was a word straight from one of those repetitive television law shows.

  “Mitigating.”

  For one moment I thought she had it wrong. I thought, these teachers really have poor vocabularies. How are they going to teach our kids when they know squat about words?

  My mother’s voice chimed in. “Mind your words or they’ll mind you.”

  “Mitigating? I don’t understand,” I said, thinking she’ll sort it out now. She’ll correct her mistake. “Mystifying.” That’s what she’ll say. It’s mystifying how this could happen. How your son was injured. We’re very sorry.

  All week I’d practiced my response to her apologies. “I know you’re sorry, but look at my son. These children need punishing. He could have died.”

  Then I would wait quietly as she outlined their punishment. In my practice speech I even made my own suggestion. “Hoist the slipping beggars up the flagpole by their ankles and throw lunch scraps at them until gravity forces blood into their brains and they pass out. That’ll prepare them for hell.”

  My practice speech didn’t include the word “mitigating.” So I couldn’t find the next sentence. But she flipping well found hers.

  “Yes,” she said. “You may not be aware of this, but Ben has been the instigator of some very nasty behavior directed at the boys involved. You would be shocked.”

  She turned her sharp mottled face sideways, tilting her chin up and her head back, as she stared at me longer than she needed. I thought if she had a cigarette butt she’d flick it at me.

  “Ben’s behavior?” I said, trying to run the words through my head different ways so they made some kind of sense.

  She ran her fingers up and down a gold chain hanging beneath her white turtleneck. Her finger stroking was slow, as if she were sending me a message. I swallowed the saliva that had built up in my mouth, and hoped she didn’t see my throat flex.

  “Yes. Yes. The boys have told me every
thing. Ben—” and as if I had suddenly left the room, she turned her butt-flicking gaze toward Ben. “—perhaps you need to tell your Mother what has been going on.”

  Following her gaze to Ben, I saw his face redden. His beautiful big brown eyes swelled with tears that he was losing the battle to contain. My hand instinctively reached over to his and clasped his little fingers that poked out from the once white but now graying cast.

  His fingers felt hot and sticky against the coldness of the fiberglass. Scribbled along its length, in an uncertain eight-year-old scrawl, was “Pokémon Rules.” Seeing that made me smile despite his tears. He loved his Pokémon.

  Ben didn’t speak, but his quivering bottom lip said everything as he lowered his chin to his chest and sobbed. I wanted to pull him toward me and explain that this woman—and all her beggar cronies at the school—were flippery slippery fools, and would go to hell. But before I could speak, she opened her flipping mouth.

  If she had showed one iota of sympathy for my son, just an ounce of compassion; even picked up the box of tissues (so within her reach on the shelf behind), it may have still been okay.

  She didn’t.

  Instead, like all stupid beggars, she spoke before thinking. She probably thought what was said would cause no more of a problem than it had ever caused before. She said it with a confidence that should have been tempered. Then, as I said, this was a flipped-up situation. She seemed hell-bent determined to make it worse.

  “Upon our investigation, and, I may add, I am trained in handling these situations, the other boys have told us a very distressing story. It’s a nasty picture. The boys were simply defending themselves against your son’s bullying behavior.” She spat the word “son” at me as if it were a half-eaten glob of gristle stuck in her throat.