[Pride 2023 Short Story] The Dinner Date

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Jerry was nervous.

Which is why he was pacing around his living room attempting to tidy up even though the place was the cleanest it’d been since he moved in. His home was small, but not cramped and often a cozy retreat from the outside world. One bedroom, an adjacent bathroom, a small hallway and an open kitchen with a dining area occupying the space before the modest living room took shape. The kitchen had a small sliding glass door that led to a little grassy back yard, shaded in the summer by a large oak in the neighbors’ yard. The front door opened directly into the living room with a very small area to be used as an entry way, which was currently occupied by a simple mat and a small wooden shoe rack holding three pairs of shoes. The living room had one decently sized window that faced west, looking out at the sidewalk and street, through which Jerry was now watching the late afternoon sky turn to dusk. He sighed, ran his hands down the front of his shirt, smoothing wrinkles that weren’t there, and turned to the kitchen. 

Standing in front of the sink, Jerry gets himself a small glass of water. He is way too nervous and worked up about this. He gulps down the water, looking at his faint reflection in the small window over the sink. Pull it together he tells himself, its just a date man. He shakes his head, attempting to rattle out the bits of him that are overly anxious about that evening. He takes a deep breath, and the doorbell rings, shattering the silence and ripping him out of his own thoughts. His hands are sweating a little. He’s excited more than nervous now, as he makes his way to the door. 

Standing on the other side of Jerry’s front door is a woman, tall, athletic, with wavy hair flowing over her shoulders, light brown with natural bond highlights that complement her light green eyes. She is wearing a long flowing skirt of bright blue, with lace shaped like flowers at the bottom hem, and a daffodil yellow blouse, perfectly befitting of the summer evening. She has a small bag over one shoulder, that she knows contains her wallet, pepper spray, and a short-bladed knife that flicks open with the snap of a wrist. When she smiles she looks like she is having the time of her life and ready to engage with anyone. However, when she is sternly staring straight ahead at a closed door, she does not look like one to be trifled with or approached lightly. Regardless of her expression, she looks monumentally gorgeous. Which is exactly what Jerry sees as he pulls the door open to greet her. This is Marisa. And Jerry spends about 15 seconds silently staring at her, finding it hard to believe she is on his doorstep ready for a date with him. 

Marisa smiled despite herself. She wasn’t pleased to be standing on the front porch awkwardly like this, but this was the effect she’d been going for. I’ll just let myself in, then she said wryly as she stepped over the threshold, being sure to put her hand on Jerry’s shoulder as she did so. The effect was immediate, snapping her host out of his trance as he apologized and showed her where to put her shoes, and to set her purse. It was their first date, after months of wondering if he would ever work up the nerve to ask her out. Finally he had, and she’d had to hide how relieved and excited she was. 

In an attempt to be charming - and different - Jerry had asked her would she like to come over to his place and let him cook dinner for her. He was sure Marisa would say no, a first date in a strange man’s house seemed risky at best and catastrophic in probably too many cases. But here they were, moving towards the couch asking each other how their days were, while he poured two glasses of wine. They made increasingly comfortable small talk while the first glasses of wine were drunk to the stem. Jerry was a banker, well he told people banker, he really was a bank teller. Marisa was a personal assistant who was frequently in the bank - every Monday & Wednesday Jerry knew - on errands for her boss. They’d flirted casually for months, Jerry wondering if he would ever have the courage to ask her to dinner, and Marisa wondering patiently if he ever would. The second glasses of wine we’re halfway empty when timer went off in the kitchen and Jerry said dinner was ready. 

They sat and ate, and talked, and drank. The atmosphere loosened. The conversation grew comfortable. The lights dimmed. Blood pounded through their veins, carrying endorphins and alcohol and hormones to all points of their bodies. They leaned across the small table towards each other to whisper before erupting in laughter and settling back into conversing. This pattern repeated. They were both thinking what a fantastic time they were having. All hesitation had withered away, all trepidation and nervousness. Replaced only with warmth and comfort and at least for the moment, happiness. And then Marisa’s left hand spasmed. Jerking out of control just for a moment, just long enough to knock her glass of wine over with a sharp PING as it hit the table top, red wine flowing over the remnants of their dinner. Before she could apologize or laugh at the embarrassment, she collapsed, falling to the floor on her side of the table, out of Jerry’s sight.

And he froze. 

Nothing happened. Silence. Jerry stared across the table to where Marisa had just been. Seconds stretched into unknown eternities. A slow, near silent, drip was present in the room as the spilt wine found the edge of the table. Slowly he leaned forward, his throat suddenly dry in fear of the unknown, he whispered her name as he tried to see where she had landed but she was kept from his sight. Pushing his chair back he lowered his head to peak under the table, fearful, hesitant. His body was rigid and his movements rough But he saw her. She was on the floor, poised in something between a fetal curl and yoga pose, arms stretched out to either side at off angles, body curved into itself, legs half bent and stiff. He stared as her eye lids opened, not to show her beautiful eyes, but to reveal a shining gleam, a dark umber, filling the entire sockets.

Gasping he unconsciously pushed himself backward, knocking his chair and spilling himself onto the floor. He now sat even with her, staring at Marisa, and realizing that she had begun to twitch. To jerk, fingers working at impossible angles, arms flexing and recoiling with odd cracking, popping sounds. Like cracking your knuckles but amplified and distorted. Her shoulders began working back and forth and irregular intervals, flexing and compressing her chest as if she were heaving in breaths but Jerry heard no breathing. Just the cracking. Just the popping. Just the sounds of bones being displaced within the carcass of what had so recently been Marisa. 

And then the body began to split. Jerry’s eyes were fixated and his body frozen. The body that lay across the floor from him had begun to…open. Almost to unwind itself from being, like a chrysalis opening to reveal a transformation, an evolution. Only Jerry saw no beauty. He only saw horror. And as the shining brown/black limbs began to extract themselves from their fleshy carapace, too many limbs, a shock of adrenaline surged through his body. It was fight or flight. It was instinct. It was nature. And as the massive body of something new began to follow the limbs from the corpse of his date, shimmering with blood and god-knows-what, he chose flight. 

Jerry pushed his palms down into the floor as hard as he could, forcing his body up from where it had been half sitting, half laying. He stood, he turned, and before he could run he tripped over the chair he’d knocked over and fell. As his chain bounced unprotected off the hardwood floor he heard the thing on the other side of the table fully escape its horrific cocoon with the sounds of fleshy ripping and that unnatural creaking-cracking sound its joints made when it moved. It was out! He thought. Pain exploding where his chin had ruptured and feeling the blood seep out. Flight! That was his only thought. He had to get away. He scrambled, as he heard it moving behind him, around the table, towards him. He moved on all fours, clawing at the floor for purchase, trying to get to his feet. It made a sound as it moved towards him. Something primal, unknowable, untranslatable, in clicks and growls and the tongue of cosmic horrors it made a sound, and against his best judgement, against every urging in his mind, he looked over his shoulder at it. And his mind imploded in fear. 

A shimmering carapace of sharp ridges and made up its body, while its limbs, numerous and too many, arched up, and then back down at a sharp point, like some gigantic spider. Claws. Every leg or arm or whatever they were ended in claws. Sharp black claws. And its head, its eyes, endless and black. Blacker than the night, blacker than space, Jerry stared into them and feared he would simply fall into their blackness and vanish forever. He couldn’t fathom its entire shape, couldn’t make out its full mass. It was big. Too big, far too big to have been Marisa. And yet somehow this thing, this bug, had been. Insect. Evolution. Nature. And nature kicked in, and Jerry stood and ran. He ran for the bedroom because it was closer than the front door. He dove into the room, sliding in on his stomach, flipped himself over to his back and using both legs kicked the door shut in the face of the creature, holding both legs both feet in place to keep it shut, to hold the thing out. It had been fear, and now it became fury. 

Denied its prey, seemingly stymied for a moment by the bedroom door the creature raged. It let loose a volley of the horrific sounds it made, Jerry clasped his hands over his ears, he pushed with all his might against the door. He wept. Blood ran down his chin and tears streamed down his face and all he wanted was to block out the sound. The sound of the bug, the sound of the door rattling as it crashed against it again and again. The sound of his own heart beating - seemingly weaker and weaker - inside of him. The sound of blood pulsing in his ears. He held his eyes shut as tight as he could, pushed against the door as hard as he could, wept and screamed while covering his ears. The cacophony of chaos filling his small, peaceful house. 

Jerry had screamed his throat raw. His legs ached. His adrenaline had run out. Time was meaningless to him it could’ve been thirty seconds or thirty days since he had slammed this door shut on the horror that had been his dinner date. He dropped his hands from his ears, but was not greeted by the terrible screeching of the monster. He slowly opened his eyes, and lowered his aching legs, the door did not tremble. It did not fight back or try to open itself. He dared to breath. Had it gone? Had it ever existed to begin with? Was this whole thing some sort of horrific hallucination or his imagination turning on him? Slowly, cautiously, he got to his feet. 

As he reached for the knob to open the door he noticed the frame was cracked, the door had been splintered but never completely given out. It had protected him. And now he opened it, a portal to the unknown. 

The small home was an absolute disaster. The table was over turned. What remained of their dinner smashed and scattered. The couch on which they had been having since a nice time, was in tatters. Jerry turned and saw the front door was still closed, panic hit him. A cold sweat broke out. It was still in here! And then he heard, faintly, screaming. The window in the living room was blown out, a wreckage of shattered glass and wood. Deep marks carved in the wall where the insect had climbed out, out of the house and into the world. Jerry approached the hole in the wall, silent tears running down his bloodied face. He could see across the small side yard, a similar hole in his neighbor’s home. And screams. Screams coming to his ears. Screams of pure terror. Jerry fell to his knees.

And wept. 

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the Transgender Law Center here