I stood at the counter, cash register in front of me, flickering neon lamps above. The cold and uncertain light didn't the scene I was looking at any favors, except maybe making the disgusting display seem less real.

As far as I could see there was pallid flesh squirming and trembling in a mass of bodies. It was like looking through a haze, undefined contours making it difficult to understand where one ended and the other began.

From behind me, I heard the sizzling of meat on the hot metal. It had become the soundtrack of my life. Little bits that overlapped and repeated themselves eternally. The thump of the lump of what could generously be called food if one had only a passing familiarity with the concept, the fizzing of grease on the blackened slate, the scratching of the spatula removing the charcoal. Thump, Fizz, Scratch. Again and again and again.

The worst part was probably the stench hanging in the air. Sweat dominated over everything else, but in the middle of it I could distinguish the cheap cologne of the manager, the feces from the employee toilet and the burnt fat. I could almost smell cancer. A whiff of chlorine briefly overpowered the rest before being crushed under the history of decay that had lorded over my prison for so long. Somebody had tried to clean the bedlam that was the kitchen. Probably a newbie, Barbara if I had to guess. She hadn't quite worked out how the "family" works here. I would laugh at the risible idea that something could be ever done to improve our little corner of damnation if this place hadn't killed all my feelings—except for dread and loathing—ages ago. The world on this side of the cash register was filth and lard. Demons dwelled here and humans squirmed in the cage waiting for the Company to process them.

I focused my attention on the thing standing in front of me, forever kept at arms length by the counter but with power over me nonetheless. A Customer.

My face contracted in a rictus smile, muscles tensed and not an ounce of joy reached my lips. Putting on a cramping mask was all I could do to not throw up.

There was my lord and master in all its glory. The manager may have been my warden, the upper echelons of the Company may have been the ones yanking my chain, but it was the Customer that decided my fate a thousand times at day.

Rolling waves of fat around the throat. Pale complexion with thin veins drawing a map of sadness and loneliness through the almost transparent skin. Craters and pustules made the landscape of its face a fractal testimony to the futility of existence. I was sure that sooner or later those tumorous coagulations would become more of an individual than the mass that had bred them.

Dead eyes that told a story of failure and of a stolen future. That was probably the worst of it all. Inhuman, glassy and small eyes sunken in a bloated face. It was like staring into the soul of a pig.

Then it spoke and I had to rethink my previous evaluation. Crooked teeth and a breath that made whatever came out of the kitchen seem a spring meadow became my world for a few, terrifying instants.

It was a drawling abomination of communication, a farce of the concept of exchanging ideas, an insulting joke thrown in the face of God.

That I understood what it wanted was probably a sign that I had passed too much time in my prison.

I sighed, looked the demon in the face, then turned around and screamed "A Double Seared Sinner Special with extra Cheese!"

As I returned my attention to the Customer and the never ending procession of abominations that waited for service I caught a glance of the gray wasteland outside. I swear could almost smell the brimstone. Just another shift in Hell.