Yesterwary

“You know I cannot hire non-conformist, Bastian.”

Chef Kraus was a big man. Not in the sense that he overindulged in the food he made, but he’d been a body-builder in the old world, and it showed in his veiny arms, cracked, muscular chest, and his head, which was far too large for the white chef’s hat that wobbled atop it, threatening to tumble down into his pan of flavorless omelette.

“You won’t regret it,” Bastian said, crossing his arms as he leaned against the industrial, steam-powered refrigerator, which whizzed and whirred in exactly the way refrigerators probably shouldn’t.

“Oh? And why is this?” Chef Kraus asked, disinterestedly tossing random spices into the pan, even though it made absolutely no difference, seeing as how no one in all of Yesterwary would have been able to differentiate between cumin and cayenne.

Bastian nodded at Demi, who nervously extended a plate of spaghetti toward the Chef.

“Just try it,” Bastian said.

“You expect me to believe she is better at cooking flavorless food than me?” he mocked.

“Try it,” Bastian repeated. “Then we’ll leave, if you still want us to.”

Chef Kraus sighed with exasperation, and glanced from Bastian to Demi, then to the plate. He brushed off a very-used fork on his white jacket and plunged it into the noodles with a twirl. The moment the sauce touched his lips, his eyes bulged, and the fork fell to the crud-thickened floor with a clink.

“How did you—” he began.

“We don’t know,” Bastian said. “But everything she makes is like this. Well, not like this. It doesn’t all taste like spaghetti. But it does taste.”

“This is unbelievable,” Chef Kraus whispered, before wrapping Demi in a massive, and slightly uncomfortable, bear hug. She nearly disappeared into his arms.

“So… you’ll hire her?” Bastian asked.

Chef Kraus stepped back from the embrace, tensely scratching at the nape of his neck. “I want to. She would be fucking gold mine. I want to help, but I get in lot of trouble for hiring non-conformist, you know?”

“Then, don’t let anyone find out,” Bastian shrugged.

“People will wonder why we suddenly make real food. The gendarmerie will be all up my ass.”

“That’s… that’s not the expression. But okay. Never mind,” Bastian said nonchalantly, taking Demi by the arm and leading her toward the door.

“Wait,” Kraus called after a moment’s hesitation. He walked over to them, and spoke in a slow, steady whisper. “You come in after it gets dark. You use only back door, and you never set foot in front room of restaurant, not even as customer. No one ever see you enter or leave this place. You not connected to me in any way. You understand this?”

Demi nodded. “No problem.”

“What about pay?” Bastian asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Fifty a day and free food,” Kraus said. Demi had no idea what minimum wage was in Yesterwary, but she very much liked the idea of free food.

“You can do better than that,” Bastian ridiculed. “You said yourself; she’s going to be a gold mine.”

“Fifty a day and free food, for now. When business pick up, we renegotiate,” Kraus said sternly.

Bastian was about to speak, but Demi butted in, having no recollection of agreeing to let him act as the agent for her newfound talent.

“That’s fine,” she said, reaching out to shake Kraus’ hand. “When do I start?”

And from there, Demi began her unexpected career in the culinary arts. Not exactly a field of art she’d ever pictured herself pursuing, but art nonetheless. Of course, she had approximately zero experience in any food preparation that didn’t involve organizing various meats and cheeses between slices of bread, but she was quick to learn. And even though Chef Kraus knew his customers could never taste his food, he’d always taken his job very seriously, and had hordes of secret recipes stored away in his mind, which he was more than happy to share with his new, secret employee.

“I tell you,” Kraus said with irritation, dumping a half-cooked pan of omelette into the trash, “onion go in before mushrooms. It’s been fucking week. You should know this by now.” Maybe she wasn’t exactly the quickest to learn.

“What difference does it make?” Demi sighed, retrieving the carton of eggs from the refrigerator as her own chef’s-hat bounced atop her choppy hair.

“Mushroom cook faster. You don’t do it in right order, something is overcooked or undercooked,” he explained.

“It doesn’t matter. The people are so excited to have real food, they don’t care if it’s cooked properly,” she groaned.

“That is no reason to be doing the job of halved asses.” Kraus eyed her.

“Sorry,” she said, ignoring the newest addition to his list of incorrect phrases. “You’re right.”

When Demi was ten years old, Margo had snuck into her diary, as older siblings sometimes do. Demi had been absolutely outraged by the invasion of privacy, but her anger came nowhere near the amount of disappointment Margo showed in the quality of the writing. “It doesn’t matter!” Demi had whined, arms crossed, and stomping. “No one was ever supposed to read it. It was only meant for me.” “That’s why it matters even more, little sister,” Margo had cooed, wrapping the very-displeased Demi in a comforting hug. “None of your words will ever be more important than the ones you write for yourself.” And from that point forward, Demi had put more effort and care into her journal entries than she’d ever thought possible, and once she had started writing outside of her diary, she treated every word she wrote as if it were meant only for herself.

“Even though you fuck up, you are doing good,” Kraus said supportively, hanging his grease-stained hat on a hook over the sink.

“Well,” Demi muttered under her breath.

“What?” he questioned sincerely, shifting an ear in her direction.

“Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat. She had little intention of correcting her new boss’ grammar, at least not within her first week of working for him.

The swinging door, which separated the kitchen from the rest of the restaurant, creaked threateningly as Kraus made his way to the cash register near the front window. He returned moments later, and shoved a wad of cash—noticeably more than fifty dollars—into Demi’s hands.

“Word get around quick,” he said with a light-hearted wink.

“Quickly,” she whispered.

“Speak up, woman.”

“I guess so!” she said, tucking the money away in her pocket as she made a bee-line for the refrigerator.

“I am heading out,” Kraus said, turning rusty knobs on numerous lanterns until the front of the restaurant was left in total darkness. “Lock up when you are done, keep eye out when you leave,” he said, waving his hand lazily, aware that Demi was already familiar with the routine.

“Yup,” she said distractedly, laying three steaks into a pan and preheating the oven.

“Demi?”

“Yes, Chef?” He hadn’t asked her to call him ‘chef,’ but having watched many a cooking-show on insomnia-ridden nights in the old world, she thought it seemed like the appropriate title. And it put a noticeable perk in his step.

“Of all shitty restaurants in Yesterwary, I am glad Bastian bring you to this one.” A click of a lock later, Kraus was gone, and Demi was all alone, save for the juicy chunks of beef that glared back at her from the pan.

It wasn’t the first time Demi had forgotten to use an oven mitt. Since she couldn’t feel the pain, she didn’t notice that anything was wrong until the smell of burning flesh began to mingle with the smell of perfectly-cooked steak.

“Dammit!” she shouted, dropping the pan with a loud clank onto the stove in a failed attempt to save her skin. Little inflamed bubbles had already begun to blister up over her entire palm.

In the six days that she had been working at the restaurant, she’d shown up to Bastian’s house four times with various burns, welts, and cuts on various appendages. He’d pour a little vodka on them—as Demi had found out, the only type of alcohol available in Yesterwary was the kind that urged people to make terrible choices and say stupid things—wrap them in a piece of cloth, and then they’d enjoy whatever it was she’d brought home from work that evening. Of course, that’s not to say she had only showed up to Bastian’s house on the nights that led to work-related injury. With Demi’s disdain for her nearly-unlivable apartment, and with Bastian’s seething loneliness, she had very nearly moved in with him. And, seeing as how her few belongings were there, and she’d already claimed the spare bedroom, and the only thing keeping her at all linked to her apartment was the key she kept forgetting to return, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that she had, in fact, completely moved in with him. But, as they had only known each other for about a week, and they still knew very little about each other, they didn’t feel quite comfortable claiming to be roommates. Even though they were, technically, in fact, roommates.

“I’m going to make you start buying your own alcohol,” Bastian joked.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Demi said, setting a cracked and dented container of steak and French fries on the counter.

“The fact that we can’t feel physical pain means we can’t feel when something is wrong,” he mumbled, cornering her against a wall and grabbing hold of her hand for inspection. “People die from infection all the time here. It’s like the fucking olden’ days. You have to be careful.”

Demi rolled her head from side to side, letting out a groan somewhere between boredom and irritation. “Are you going to give me this lecture every time?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “You won’t be able to cook if we have to chop off your hands due to gangrene. And I would be significantly less fond of you if you didn’t have the proper amount of limbs.”

“Hah,” she scoffed, getting out the closest thing she could manage to a laugh.

“There,” he said, after securing a paper towel to her palm with a piece of tape. It was a step up from shreds of old clothing.

“My hero,” she joked, shoving past him.

Demi set out their food on the cleanest plates she could find, and waved him over to the table.

“Oh god, Demi,” he said after his first bite. Even though his pleasure was caused only by the flavors rolling around his tongue, Bastian’s moan sent a scorching blush through Demi’s cheeks. “This is fantastic.”

“You say that about everything I make.”

“Yeah, but it’s always true.”

“You only like me for my food,” she teased, facing great difficulty in finding words through her discomfiture.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t even know anyone could make food like this in Yesterwary,” he said. “It’s a nice bonus, though.”

The dismal, inconsistent chimes of the clock tower rang out from the town square, signaling that it was sometime near midnight.

“I should get going,” Demi said, shoveling a few more fries into her mouth before reaching for the rest of the food from the counter.

“Be careful,” Bastian said, keeping his eyes trained on his half-cleared plate. He hated seeing her take off every night after she’d just gotten home.

“I’ll be fine,” she said sweetly, pulling on her odd little overcoat as she made for the door. “Be back soon.”

Most of Yesterwary was quiet, by midnight. Nearing the center of town, scraps of hoots and hollers could be heard from the bars and the burlesque house, but the streets were generally empty. The odd gendarme could be found here and there, patrolling the alleyways for signs of shenaniganery. Now and again, a non-conformist would emerge from the shadows, peddling Wormwood drops and Nightshade elixirs, but most of the residents simply didn’t care enough to cause trouble. They were all too caught up in their own misery to make life any worse for anyone else.

Demi shuffled up the walkway to the orphanage as quietly as possible, toward the swing set that would have been empty, had Michael not snuck out the bathroom window. After her first night of work at the restaurant, Demi had intended to eat her first free meal on the library rooftop. However, as she was very unfamiliar with the layout of her new town, she’d ended up right back at the place that had fired her the previous day. She’d found Michael on the swings, where he apparently went every night to stare at the empty sky, and she’d shared some of her food with him. After seeing the look of sheer joy on his face, she’d returned every night since, with food and a story.

“Steak and French fries, tonight,” she said, handing him the bag as she sat on the vacant swing.

“Thank you, Demi,” Michael squeaked, completely ignoring the cutlery she’d included, and digging right in with his hands.

“No problem, kiddo,” she said, tousling his hair as he beamed up at her through a face full of ketchup.

“I made this for you,” he said, handing over a folded piece of paper.

Demi smoothed out the crumpled art, and grinned. In shades of gray, Michael had sketched a very rough rendition of a table covered in different types of food.

“This is great,” she said, “thank you.”

“Ms. Moira wanted to know where I’d seen all those things,” he said, feet dangling, toes barely grazing the gravel.

“What did you tell her?” she asked, glancing over in mild concern.

“I said, ‘I’m eight, Ms. Moira. I have a very vivid imagination.’”

Demi huffed and the corners of her eyes wrinkled as she looked over at the boy. “Seems like a good answer.”

Michael nodded, and, after fitting a few more French fries into his mouth, he asked, “Are you going to tell me a story, tonight?”

“Of course,” she said. “Once upon a time…”

“In the world far and different from here?” Michael asked.

“That’s the place.” Demi winked. “…There was a great darkness.”

“That doesn’t sound so far and different from here at all,” he mumbled.

“Oh, but it is. Because the darkness wasn’t alone. You see, the darkness may have been cold and vast, but it had a brother. The brightness was smaller and more difficult to find, but it was so much stronger. It could burst through the darkness like an atom bomb, and slay the shadows with swords of light.”

“Like when the clouds part for a moment?” he asked in fascination.

“Exactly. And a lot of people are afraid of the darkness, but they shouldn’t be. Do you know why?” she questioned.

“Why?”

“Because the light feels so much warmer when you’ve been in the cold. It thaws your soul, and melts you from the inside out. And it will always find you, if you let it.”

“The light doesn’t feel, here, though,” he said, looking down in sadness as the dark of Yesterwary enveloped him. “Nothing does.”