Carrie in Cannibal Town

[midnghtraver]

This is the pilot episode of episodic short stories I may or may not continue. The first one is for a class. This could also be "Chapter 1" if I decide to use that format.

Carib Community
The ‘Alfred’ Meatpacking Plant (Pilot)

The two day drive wouldn’t have been that bad for Carrie had she not been forced to spend it crammed into the tiny little truck cab that she currently shared with her father, Piq. Piq was short for Piquant, however, her father didn’t like the name Piquant. He always would say it with a sharp tongue, like it was an exceedingly sour grape, or possibly a painful one. Every time Carrie heard her dad complain about his name she would retort with, “At least your name isn’t Lecker!” Carrie’s real name, was Lecker. Carrie felt as though the name pertained to neither a boy nor a girl, and decided to take on the most unoriginal name she could imagine, Carrie. Carrie felt, though, that Carrie was getting a little old, “Maybe I’ll change it in this new place…” Carrie thought.
“Hehey! Just one hour to go!” Carrie’s dad chided in a manner that definitely did not reflect the actual amount of excitement he felt for arriving at the place that would be his home for the next indefinite number of years.
“Piquant, pull over real quick please,” Carrie demanded giving her dad’s name a posh accent when she spoke it.
“I told you! Call me either Piq, or dad,” He said matter-a-factly, pulling off onto the side of interstate 94.
“I’ll call you Piq when you stop calling me Lecker!” Carrie retorted as she forced open the door and stepped out onto the hard ground for the first time in hours. “Ugh! It smells like barbeque out here and I’m so hungry.”
“That’s gross Carrie,” The vegetarian preached from the driver’s seat.
“How would you know if you’ve never tried it!?”
Piq shuttered, “I don’t need to try it to know. It’s too much like eating-” Piq shuttered again, “each other. I feel like a cannibal.”
“Bravo dad, that was very dramatic,” Carrie clapped. “Cannibals don’t even exist anymore. Can I go pee now?”
“Yeah, yeah, hurry up.”
Rolling her eyes, Carrie wandered off into the forest to look for suitable tree to shelter her from the eyes of passers by back on interstate 94. “Milwaukee,” Carrie thought, “I wonder if there’s a lot to do there…” She returned to the car where her father was pretending to be asleep on the wheel.
Carrie couldn’t come up with anything clever to do to him, so she simply stated, “You know, if you’re really that tired, It would probably be a good idea if I drove the rest of the way.”
Her father shot up like he had been stung by something, “Who said anything about tired? I know I didn’t! Come on Carrie, put your seatbelt on, let’s go.”
Rolling her eyes, Carrie pulled the familiar seat belt over her shoulder. It was one of those seat belts that, in production, had gotten unfeasibly twisted in a way that made it impossible for the seat belt to sit flat across Carrie’s chest. This bothered Carrie very much.
“Hey, ya’ know what would be fun for us to do once we get to our new home?” Carrie asked.
“What’s that?”
“Removing this seat so we can untwist the seat belt!”
Piq just smiled and shook his head for he had heard the suggestion many, many times over the life of his truck.
The last hour of the drive felt as long as the previous 30 to Carrie being so close to her possibly final destination. It had been eons since Interstate 94 had made a turn or even a slight bend, and the rhythmic passing of dashed street lines caused Carrie to become thoughtfully drowsy and eventually lulled her into a sleep that could only be broken by one thing.
Carrie walked into her school, the uncomfortable, forced indifference of her last day creeping into her psyche. As she looked around, she saw unfamiliar familiar things lining the school walls. Trophy cases, a bulletin board, posters for upcoming events, and murals painted by students all reminded Carrie of her school, but none of the posters or pictures were the same, none of the trophies for the same sports. Carrie thought that this was weird, but not nearly as weird as the lack of students creating a ghostly silence in the hallway. “Carrie, you are here.” She heard over the intercom. What could that have meant? “Carrie, come on we’re here!” She heard coming from the intercom again, less gently than last time.
“Carrie, WE. ARE. HERE!” This time, it was Piq yelling in Carrie’s ear as she unglued her face from the dashboard where it had adhered itself.
Shaking the grogginess out of her mind, she looked around. Carrie could see a lot, however, the majority of what she saw was empty space. The only objects that weren’t trees or farmhouses were to the east. Carrie noticed a small town that looked proportional to the “uptown” of her previous living place. It was a novel little town, the buildings looked like a modern rendition of a “1940’s mainstreet” scene. The only structure that Carrie could make out the name of was the Town hall building positioned at the head of the strip. “Dahmerville since 1994” was printed across the top of the building in large black letters.
“I thought our new house was in Milwaukee,” Carrie said questioningly, gesturing towards the town hall.
“So did I,” Piq replied, slightly confused. “That’s what the retailer told me, at least. Dahmerville must be the county. If you look closely, you can see the distant silhouette of Milwaukee, see? Up and to the right from town hall.” Piq pointed where he was looking.
Carrie never understood why people pointed at things they were looking at in the distance. From any other perspective than theirs, the place at which one is pointing is never the same as intended.
“Yeah I see it,” Carrie said and wondered if she would ever have a reason to go there.
Carrie hadn’t ever seen their new house before, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t a barn at all like she was expecting. The red front door stood out the most out of all the ornaments on the face of the structure with it’s color creating a stark contrast against the blue of the vinyl siding. The house stood at three stories tall, not including a basement floor, and leaned to the right a bit, but not in a way that would suggest a poor structural integrity. There were, however, only two windows, one on the ground floor and one for the upstairs bedroom.
“What’s with the lack of windows?” Carrie asked.
“I dunno, maybe the previous owners didn’t want people looking into their business,” Piq shrugged and made spooky fingers as he walked passed her, carrying an assortment of briefcases and luggage bags.
As Carrie walked into the house the air around her changed. Outside was warm and comforting with the sun overhead causing the surrounding nature to glow, but inside the house was cold, and dark from the lack of windows.
“Looks like I need to get the boiler working!” Piq pronounced.
“This house still runs on a boiler!?” Carrie clammered as she rubbed her arms.
“If it even has one…”
Shaking her head, Carrie walked passed the kitchen where her father was unloading boxes full of various things onto the counter table and right up the staircase at the far end of the hall. She noticed that the walls had been painted with an added texture of sand reminiscent of the 90s, and were incredibly rough to the touch. Not only that, but the sand would fall away if anything brushed up against the wall, creating a mess of paint chips and drywall on the ground where the wall stood. The carpet was an old brown somewhere between shag and plush that was matted and stained in most areas. Over time, it had developed a smell of musty fabric that now overpowered the previous smell of dust. As carrie approached the staircase she noticed old framed paintings, all of them depicting a different family standing on the front porch of the house. She assumed they were all the previous owners. There was an unusual air about the families in the photographs, as though they were all together in something weird, like a cult. Carrie decided that once they were all unpacked, she would replace the photos with ones of her own, they creeped her out. The staircase was in fairly good repair compared to the walls and the foundation of the house apart from a single step that had seemed to fail in its duties of providing support and snapped in half right in the middle. Avoiding the trap, Carrie lugged her bags up the stairs and across the hall to the one room containing a window.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Carrie said out loud as she walked into the room that would be her living space for who knows how long.
The entirety of the room was filled by a mere two items: an old couch that looked as though the springs had been completely removed and the stuffing ripped out to let the pads go flat, and an old wooden chest nestled against the side of the couch.
“Hey dad!” Carrie called down the stairs.
“Yeah?” Piq yelled back up to her after a large crash resounded throughout the house.
“Uh, What was that?”
“Oh nothing,” Piq called out nervously, “just the uh, door to the refrigerator. I shouldn’t have tried to open it. Hinges and...” trailing off.
“Ah, well I was going to ask if the moving van was going to get here before dinner, I want time to set up my room and apparently we need a fridge too.”
“About that,” Piq said, keeping his nervous tone, “while you were sleeping on the way here, the moving people called and said that the truck is going to be delayed.”
“Ok, so what are we talkin’ 10 o’ clock?” Carrie asked with a sinking feeling as she eyed the deflated couch before her.
“Yeah, that sounds about right, 10 o’ clock on Tuesday,” Her father replied flatly.
“TUESDAY!? What do you mean, Tuesday!? How can the truck be an entire two days behind us when we left at the same time!?”
“That’s a wonderful question, Carrie. How about you ask the truck driver on Tuesday, when he shows up.” Piq replied with a sigh saying the last words more somberly.
“Real helpful,” Carrie said, not loud enough for Piq to hear.
Returning to her current charge, Carrie threw her bags onto the lifeless couch and immediately went for the chest. She resolved that if there was something exciting inside, she would be less sore about the delay with their stuff. However, excitement was not what she found in the chest, but instead something incredibly perturbing. As though the previous owners were trying to play a joke on the next, a green, distorted, severed finger lay at the bottom of the chest next to a rusty pair of scissors. Cringing, Carrie picked up both items and took them downstairs to show her dad the treasures she uncovered in her room.
“That’s disgusting,” Piq said in response to Carrie showing him the finger as he shrugged away from it.
“It’s not real!” Carrie laughed, “Still definitely creepy though.”
“Get rid of it, those scissors too. They’re probably covered in tetanus or something.”
Rolling her eyes, Carrie threw away her prizes in the trash bin creatively located under the sink and turned to Piq.
“We have no fridge, we are unsure whether or not our house has heat, I found a severed finger in my room, and i’m going to have to sleep on a couch that wasn’t even comfortable in whatever century it was made because the moving van is going to be two days late. I think every good thing that could possibly happen today has happened so I see no reason to stay awake any longer,” Carrie reported and began walking back towards the stairs.
“You should probably spray that couch with something first!” Piq called after her half-jokingly.
***
When Carrie awoke, she was aware of a stiff pain in her lower back, and as she maneuvered to reposition herself more comfortably, she also became aware of the fact that she was laying on the hard, wooden floor of her bedroom at the foot of the poor excuse of a couch. “Startin’ the day off right,” Carrie thought as she propped herself up and came to terms with her situation. Light streamed in from the single window that did not have any blinds, casting a bright light over the dusty landscape. A closet door Carrie hadn’t noticed before positioned itself on the wall adjacent to the window. She noticed that the closet door was missing a door handle, leaving a symmetrical hole where one previously was. Shaking of tiredness, Carrie got up and went over to her bag which contained items geared towards making travel more comfortable, her school things, a single pair of clothes, and a granola bar that she hadn’t eaten on the drive up. Remembering that her things weren’t going to be arriving until Tuesday, Carrie realised that she was going to have to wear the same outfit for her first two days of school. Not the severed finger, not the lack of heat, not even the delay in receiving her possessions was worse than having to wear the exact same outfit two days in a row, especially on the first two days of school. Begrudgingly, Carrie threw on her clothes and headed downstairs where her father was sitting at the table with absolutely nothing in front of him.
“I’d make you breakfast but we never got food and we don’t have anywhere to put it either,” Piq stated.
“No worries,” Carrie replied, “I’ll feast on this granola bar,” She waved the granola bar above her head.
“Come on, I’ll take you to school on my way to the store,” Piq said as he stood up from the chair and began to walk out to the car.
The drive was short and when Carrie got out of the car in front of her new school the first thing she noticed was how small it was. The entire school could have fit into the athletics building of her previous school. The other thing she noticed is a relatively small group of kids who mingled in the main entrance and the surrounding area not doing anything at all that Carrie could see. Taking a breath, she grasped the straps of her backpack and trudged forward towards the small crowd.
“So, uh, you’re new here, right?” A voice coming from behind Carrie asked tentatively.
“Yeah! I’m-” Carrie said as she wheeled around, then noticing the expressions of uncomfortable nervousness on the boy and his friends faces asked, “is that a problem?”
The boy and his friend both looked at each other, then the boy’s friend spoke, “No, not at all, we just aren’t used to new people coming around. This isn’t the most popular town.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Carrie said. “My dad and I thought we were going to be living in Milwaukee. We’ve never even heard of Dahmerville.”
“Oh, it’s uh, nice. S’named after the famous can-” the boy’s friend interrupted him.
“-nery! Yeah! Back when this town first started, the first building was the Dahmer Cannery!”
The boy hit his friend, mumbled, “I know,” and shared another look with him. Carrie was going to ask the two boys why they were acting so nervous, but before she had a chance, a loud bell rang out across the main entrance. “Ugh!” Carrie thought. She had forgotten she was in school listening to those boys. They were quite odd but Carrie couldn’t put her finger on what exactly was odd about them. Carrie also noticed that neither of them had told her their names. “Huh,” Carrie thought as she walked down the hallway to her next class, “I’m going to have to ask them their names.”
The very first thing that Carrie noticed when she entered her class was the two boys she had spoken to moments ago, who were watching the door intently. As she stepped beyond the threshold they both, however, diverted their eyes away from Carrie. Noticing this, and gaining a weird burst of confidence, Carrie decided to make them feel uncomfortable with themselves and carried herself right over to the table that they currently occupied. Setting down her things on the desk next to the taller of the boys, Carrie was able to finally get a proper look at the two of them. The boy sitting closest to her was the taller of the two, and had short brown hair that was worn up, exposing the entirety of his forehead. He seemed like he was naturally muscular, but not in a way that would suggest he spent most of his time in a gym. The boy had brown eyes that seemed to almost turn green around the edges of his iris, which caught Carries attention for almost too long. The boy sitting next to him, while barely shorter than his friend, was not nearly as muscular, and also in contrast had short blonde hair that was worn down. This boy had the most striking eyes that Carrie had ever seen, the lightest of blues emulating the sky above made his eyes stand out on his face more than any of his other features.
Carrie had gotten distracted by the two boys, causing her to jump when the teacher yelled out in a voice that seemed almost forced, it was so gravelly, “Lecker Fey!”
After a couple of moments while Carrie composed herself she replied, “Yes, I’m here. I prefer Carrie though.” She ended with a smile.
“Your name is Lecker and in my classroom, that is how I will refer to you.” She said in a way that suggested Carrie was leaving a bad first impression.
“Ok,” Carrie said, nodding because she didn’t want to start off the year with a bad relationship.
Now speaking to the rest of the class, the teacher spoke, “Lecker is new in town and I expect you all to show her respect for the time that she is here with us.”
Carrie didn’t like how the teacher said “for the time that she is here with us,” like she was suggesting it wouldn’t be long before the class no longer had to worry about being “respectful.”
The teacher continued with attendance which enabled Carrie to pair names with the faces of the boys she currently sat next to. The tall one closest to her was Rome, and the other was Esure. The teacher seemed to be more tame when she was interacting with Rome than with any of the other students and Carrie thought, dreaded, that this was a teacher who picked favorites.
The rest of class went off much better than the start of it suggested it would and Carrie found herself feeling much more comfortable than when she had entered the room an hour earlier.
“Are you doing anything after school?” Rome asked her unexpectedly.
“No, not really. None of our things are going to be arriving until Tuesday so I’ll probably just sit at home with my dad,” Carrie answered.
“Well, if you wanted someone to show you some things around town, Esure and I will take you.”
Carrie was slightly taken aback by the upfrontness of the boys offer and possibly because of this, she felt inclined to accept it.
After school, she found the two boys waiting for her in the same place she had first met them outside the main entrance.
“You ready to go?” Esure asked in a manner that suggested he wasn’t.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure what you’re going to show me that I haven’t already seen. Everything that isn’t on main street is residential right?” Carrie asked.
“Not everything,” Rome said with a smile looking at Esure who met his eyes. “There is a old meat packing plant down the way a bit.”
The three of them took off down the road, passing by many buildings Carrie recognized from the drive in, and some that Carrie hadn’t.
“What’s that building for?” Carrie asked, gesturing towards a windowless concrete structure with a sign simply stating “F.O.O.D.”
“Oh, that’s the anthropopha- ahem, the anthropology building. There’s no, ah, university here but we have some specializations...” Rome said trailing off.
Carrie spent the rest of the walk trying to figure out what FOOD stood for and failing to come up with something before coming upon their destination, she promptly forgot about it. The meatpacking building was quite a large structure. Made of brick, the walls towered 4 stories high--much higher than any other building in Dahmervillle--and each of the 3 peaked roofs were tipped with a brown chimney which did not have smoke rising out of them. Across the top of the only pair of double doors was a sign that read “Alfred Meatpacking District” except that the only letters that retained their light spelled “Al red Meat.” Carrie was going to ask the boys who Alfred was but decided to assume that he was the owner back when it was in commision.
“Well? You guys wanna go in or are you too scared?” Asked Esure making his way towards the double glass doors that separated them from the factory.
Rolling his eyes, Rome gestured towards Carrie in a way that suggested they follow Esure and one after another, they all walked inside. The interior of the building was absolutely the same as the exterior, maroon red bricks like the color of dried blood formed the walls of the inside as well, making it seem like the walls were incredibly thin even though Carrie knew it was an illusion.
“This way,” Esure motioned as he began to stride down the hallway pulling out his phone as a source of light.
Doing the same, Carrie and Rome followed closely behind Esure, passing by many rooms whose doors were either boarded up, or nonexistent. Carrie was able to get a look at the inside of some of the rooms but saw nothing more than some broken desks and old office supplies strewn across the floor. Right before entering the main warehouse area where Carrie assumed the actual meat packing went down, however, they passed by a door which wasn’t boarded up nor busted, but quite intact and not only that, but seemingly new. Adding to the image, there was a new aged card scanner placed on the door to grant access to anyone with the proper credentials. The light on the scanner was currently a bright red, indicating that it was locked. Carrie thought that this was quite out of place but seeing that Esure and Rome gave it no heed, continued onward into the cavernous room. The space was full of decommissioned conveyor belts and other various factory machines. Cardboard boxes and other scraps littered the floor, covering up most of the plain cement under foot. Carrie thought it was cool in an eerie sort of way, like all of the machines around the room had died and now haunted the packing plant.
“Oh,” Carrie exclaimed subconsciously as she walked around all of the different apparatus, taking a closer look at each.
“This used to be the main source of economy for this town back before it got closed down.” Rome said, and then as an afterthought, “My dad used to work here.”
“Come on guys!” Esure said from across the room as he stood in front of a gigantic metal door whose handle looked as though it was fit for someone twice the size of a normal human. “Help me get this open.”
Rome and Esure pried open the handle and flung the door inward releasing a torrent of cold air that whipped passed carries face.
“Woah, looks like something still has power here.” Rome said wandering into the walk-in freezer.
Catching the door behind Esure, Carrie followed them in and mindlessly let the door close on itself. At the sound of the door closing shut both Esure and Rome wheeled around with horrified looks on their faces.
“No!” Esure cried running to the door to try and push it open without success.
Rome just stood there in bewilderment shaking his head.
“I told you it would backfire, did I not?” Rome asked Esure frustratedly.
Starting to put together that something was off, Carrie asked piercingly, looking back and forth between Esure and Rome, “Told him what would backfire?”
Sighing, Rome turned to Carrie, “We were going to lock you in here as a harmless prank. To show you that we could still have fun in a tiny little town like ours. I told Esure we shouldn’t be messing with you on the first day but he insisted.”
“Oh, so now this is my fault,” Esure ranted. “Who was it who showed me this in the first place huh?”
“I showed it to you because it was cool, not because I thought you were going to get us locked in here!” Rome snapped back.
“Both of you need to shut up and help get us out of here.” Carrie said angrily, just starting to shiver as the cold set in.
“I think we are going to die in here.” Esure said after the three of them attempted to use all of their weight to budge the door to no avail.
The three of them tried everything they could think of: Smashing, pushing, slamming, breaking, bending, yelling, screaming even. Nothing they did lent any assistance to their current predicament. After a few more minutes of sitting there in silence, Carrie noticed a vent in the corner, small enough for someone of her size to fit into. Looking around the room, she, for the first time, took a proper inventory of the items they had to work with. Two busted old shelves previously used for meet, a metal grate, and a couple of plastic crates were spread out in various corners of the room.
“Help me stack things up to that vent,” Carry told the boys.
“You really think that vent leads anywhere useful?” Esure asked.
“Either I find out, or we all sit here and freeze to death.” Carrie replied flatly.
“Good point Carrie.” Rome said giving a patronizing look to Esure.
The three of them began work, dragging various items from their locations and stacking them atop each other to create the sketchiest makeshift ladder that ever graced that corner of the world.
“Alright,” Carrie said taking her first tentative step onto the pile of objects.
At first she just tested the water, pushing on the pile with her leg. Then, she started to put weight on it, and finally, she was standing on the first platform with all of her weight. When she began to move on to the second platform, however, the entire pile began to shift.
“Hold it!” Carrie cried as her arms flailed in all directions in an attempt to balance herself.
Both Esure and Rome grabbed hold of something enabling Carrie to continue her ascent to possible freedom.
“I swear to god, If I get out of here,” Carrie said. “I’m going to make you two spend an extra 30 minutes in here.”
Esure and Rome looked at each other, and at the same time, released their grip on the pile of trash Carrie currently was trusting her life to.
As the pile began to slide again, Carrie screamed, “I’m kidding, oh my god I’m kidding!” and the boys returned their hold.
Carrie only had two more platforms to go now, and as she was pulling herself up onto the very last one a sound came from behind her that she had heard once before, the squelching sound of the freezer door opening! Both Esure and Rome heard it too and immediately relinquished their hold on Carries DIY ladder to go see who was coming to their rescue. The treaturous pile of scraps that held Carrie fell apart and came toppling down with Carrie at the head of it all. With a loud scream Carrie flew through the air for what felt to her forever before she landed in a heap along with the rest of the “ladder”.
Propping herself up and forgetting why Rome and Esure had let her fall in the first place, Carrie demanded, “Seriously guys, what the hell!?” but when she composed herself, she realized she was not talking to the two boys but to an older man she had never seen before.
“I’m sorry, are you alright?” The man asked extending his hand for Carrie to help her to her feet.
“Yeah I’m alright, thanks,” Carrie replied, taking his hand.
“You really shouldn’t hang out with my son, he’ll get you into all sorts of trouble,” The man said smiling. “I’m Mulsh, Romes father. You can call me Mul.” Then addressing the three of them, “What exactly were you three doing in here anyway? Someone heard strange noises coming from inside the freezer.”
“Someone?” Carrie thought to herself, “Why would anyone be wandering around this place?” But instead said, “Thank god for that.”
“We were just showing her around,” Rome said quickly, not looking at Carrie. “We didn’t mean to get locked in the freezer.”
“Really? I thought that was the plan all along!” Esure responded sarcastically. “Can we please get out of this freezer? I’m really cold.”
Trailing behind Esure, Rome and his father, Carrie was lead out of the factory. As she passed by the door with the card scanner, Carrie noticed that this time the lock indicator light was green. She didn’t think to make the connection between the door and the mysterious appearance of help out of nowhere as her mind was quiet focused on getting home, so that she could spend a night safe, in a nice comfortable bed. As she thought that, the image of her scruffy couch flashed in her mind, but that wasn’t even enough to bother her at this moment in time.

***
Rome followed his father into their home, already preparing his rebuttal for the argument he was sure was going to ensue. When his dad finally turned on him, however, it was not at all what he expected.
“What were you thinking? Not only could she have started asking questions that you couldn’t have possibly answered, but she might have stumbled upon something that would be much more devastating to this community!”
“I- We- It was Esure’s idea!” Was all Rome managed to spit out, his entire argument falling apart.
His father just shook his head, “All I need you to do is keep Lecker and her father from poking around and asking questions until the council meeting ok?” Mul insisted.
“Her name is Carrie…”
“OK!?”
“Ok dad, but we aren’t going to eat them are we?” Rome finally said.
“That is to be determined at the next council meeting, you know that,” Mul answered.
“It’s just- We haven’t had any one new here in forever, let alone someone new who is my age. Please don’t let council decide to eat them, lets try and assimilate them!” Rome pleaded.
After a while of silent thought, Mul replied, “Ok, how about this. I’ll push the decision until the meeting after next. That gives you two weeks to bring me evidence that they might join us. If not, there’s not much I can do to stop the vote leaning towards consumption.”
“Deal!” Rome said happily, and with a new vigor, ran up to his room to begin brainstorming ways to turn Carrie, into a cannibal.