CALL LOGS

It started on a Taco Tuesday.

The meat was flavorless and moist, the taco shells and soft tortillas were positively dripping; not with grease or salsa, but with a viscous liquid that made everyone’s stomach turn in the lunch hall. We each spit up in our napkins, shoved them into our pockets, and prayed for a better meal.

It was weird to see so many damaged people gathered in one place. I guess because I never had to go through rehab, I never saw something like this.

But BFSH had sent me here and I was determined to stay on their good side, no matter how bad Taco Tuesday was and no matter how weird their bonding exercises got.

So I watched as all of us in the hall pushed our mushy food around and spit up what bites we gambled on into napkins. I talked to my table in a low voice about how weird it was that, while walking up to the mess hall, the air had smelled so fucking good.

Aromatic. Delicious. Enticing. And then we walk in and try to eat this shit, yuck.

One girl at the table, Bobbi; agreed with me, but quietly.

Sabrina, the chef here at the Eden Retreat, was beaming in the cafeteria doorway as she always did. Watching.

She absolutely loved to watch everyone in camp eat her food. Sabrina took great pride in what she did, and not a single one of us were going to take that from her. We sucked down what we could, just for the nutrients, not even chewing just swallowing and bearing it.

Then we moved on; eating Wednesday’s breakfast like it was nectar of the Gods, relishing Wednesday’s dinner like we were starving, and hoping that Thursday’s Taco Tuesday (confusing, I fuckin’ know it) wasn’t possibly as bad as last Thursday’s Taco Tuesday.

It always was.

We were there for only a few days before things got weird around camp: People were going missing. People were turning up dead. An unnamed sickness was ravaging everyone’s bodies, but the rangers were calling it normal.

I was used to such strange events working in the call center, as well as digging deep into their awful history.

Hell, my very own dad “went missing”/”turned up dead” and I had been working my ass off to gain clarification and closure before being sent to this...retreat. I don’t think the term really applies here.

“It should’ve been called the Hell Hideway instead,” Judith says. I agree. Then the next thing you know Bobbi and Judith were gone. The events happening around this camp were way beyond the “strange” I was used to.

Anyways, it started on a Taco Tuesday. Actual Tuesday, not Thursday’s Taco Tuesday. The food was horrid, even more so than usual. It had cleared up there for a week or two; we were sending genuine compliments to the chef, not spitting nearly as much into napkins, glad to not see the same liquid dripping off our tortillas.

Some campers went all in with their compliments, saying it was the best taco they’d ever had. I could tell something was different, and the tacos were definitely better, but they weren’t the best.

But then Wednesday came after Taco Tuesday. The food was bland and a little soggy. Little to no flavoring; and what the fuck was with the constant water-y substance pouring off of our food around here?

Thursday’s Taco Tuesday rolled around and breakfast was shit, lunch was shit, dinner was shit. People were getting sick, again.

They were getting angry, and antsy. My nerves were on edge and my ears were listening for any trouble; my entire body on high alert as we rolled through the motions of trying to eat, spitting it out, or throwing it up onto the person next to us.

To say we were looking forward to Friday’s meals would be an understatement. The sounds of retching and rumbling stomachs echoed throughout the lunch hall. We grabbed our breakfast plates and sat down eagerly. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Soggy, mushy, runny shit.

Hard to look at, impossible to eat shit. The days rolled on and the meals got worse. Some of us tried to wise up and grab just fruits or veggies instead, nothing made by Sabrina or premade whatsoever. Even the juiciest, thickest fruits and veggies were devoid of taste. I would bite into a delectable looking apple, my all time favorite, and the juice that would flow forth would be yellowed and dirty. The fruit would stick to my teeth in a way near impossible to scrape off with my tongue. My tongue, all the while, recoiling from the vile emptiness that came with the bite!

Some of the guests started complaining. Their skin was sickly and sweaty from puking so much. They looked like dried up, shriveled raisins with restricted blood flow from having so little energy and so little to eat. Their complaints were met with screaming matches from Sabrina. When the offending guests inevitably lost said screaming matches, they would simply disappear.

fliers showed up on the posts along the Eden Retreat, trying to explain away the disappearances, but not a single one mentioning the food. “We are allowing those who want to go home, go home! We understand homesickness! We understand not every retreat can cure the anxious feelings caused by your shared jobs!”

The food got worse after that. Now none of us were able to eat anything. Flies hung heavy around the cafeteria. Flies hung around the cabins of the sicker guests, too. The delicious smell wafting from the cafeteria got stronger as we got hungrier.

“Talk to your ranger about your reasons for wanting to go home today!” A new flier said simply. This was a few days ago, and half the camp has gone missing since then. They claim they’re sending people home. They’re not mentioning how they’re dying off in droves from dehydration, starvation, and just general fatigue. I saw Ranger Giselle moving a bunch of carcasses off to a pit just today.

I’ve been eating berries and plants from the woods. I’ve even taken to chewing on paper around the cabin; I’m trying to not devour my notebook as I write down every little thing that goes on around here. I know BFSH is responsible; they’re responsible for god damn everything! I wouldn’t put it past them to send the entire camp into a full-fledged frenzy caused by hunger!

I’m one of the only ones who didn’t go to our “trusted” rangers to try to leave. And I’m one of the only ones who hasn’t tried to sneak into the kitchen, either. That’s Sabrina’s territory.

Eden Retreat Rule #2: Guests are never to enter the kitchen before breakfast or after dinner. So far, I’m one of the few left who haven’t gone missing. I’m not sure how much longer I have, though. Sabrina visited in the middle of me writing everything down last night.

I was munching on some berries I had yet to research (I’m running out of options near the camp and some forcefield won’t let us stray very far, okay?) when my cabin door swung open. The rest of my weaker bunkmates had “gone home” (AKA disa-fuckin-peared).

Standing in the doorway was a creature more vile than the food we had tried to scarf down. I knew at once that it was Sabrina, the smiling chef of Eden’s Retreat, but couldn’t see a trace of the same smiling human in the dripping, drooling creature that stood in front of me. What looked like, as close as I can compare it, a contorted tree limb with humanesque features filled the doorway. Gnarled, thick skin covered in deeply porous holes towered over me, casting a thick shadow across the only occupied bunk in the cabin. Dingy, vaguely familiar hair clung loosely to a flaky, mud-like scalp. Maggots writhed in and out of the pores clinging to the strands of hair. Roaches and tiny, unfamiliar fuzzy creatures leapt across the Sabrina’s grotesque body.

A long, twisted appendage covered in graying cracked skin pointed at me. The shadow it cast covered half the cabin. I cowered away, covering my journal in a protective motion.

“You. Will. Starve.” Sabrina’s voice erupted from the plump, wormy lines that seemed to serve as her lips. I didn’t have an answer for the bellowing creature; I remained cowered on my bunk, wondering if I was suffering some hunger-induced hallucination.

“They have died. They will die. You will starve.”

The monster groaned. I winced as a boil busted near where a human ear would be; a strand of hair fell from its gaping pore and slid through the syrupy mess that poured from the sore.

“Their suffering was delicious. It started with general discomfort throughout the retreat; how delicious their pain was as they looked to me, afraid to say anything. Weak humans, so afraid to upset someone who handles their food, even if who handles their food is slowly killing them. Then came the complaints--”

The creature heaved in a breath. I watched as four bulbous lumps, looking too much like human eyes for my comfort, burst open. White fluid poured forth from them, running in revlits down the gnarled skin of its face. I can’t even say her face; the creature groaning at me was far from human.

“The complaints came here and there, a sharp word, a low rumble in the stomach. I watched as you hid your dirty napkins in your lap; what fools humans are, thinking you can hide things from beings as me!”

Another heaved breath came. The withered limb dropped away and fell to the floor, no longer pointing at me. The gaping hole left behind covered quickly in a thick skin that looked too sickly and green to be human. The appendage on the ground writhed and twitched for a full minute before it shriveled down to a normal human arm-- a human arm that was rotted away, bones and muscle peeking through the bloody muck.

“Then, finally, came the anger. Where had the taste gone? Where was the good food going? Where were the nutrients? How long would this last?

“The sheer panic was my favorite part. It fed me as you starved. It fed me as they died. The scramble for reasoning abandoned as hunger took over the systems. As hunger shut down every thought but “Eeee Aaaaa Ttttt.”

A thick liquid projectiled from the gaping hole that was the creature’s mouth. It covered the ground quickly, flooding the floor and sounding very much like pouring water into a bucket. It bubbled and boiled across the floor. I was positive that, if she let me walk away, I wouldn’t be able to walk on that part of the ground. My hands trembled around my journal. My stomach rumbled, no matter how afraid I was I was still afraid and thinking only of eating. “Just remember to eat. Eat what you can. Eat what you will. You’re meant to stay here. The others were not.”

The cheap wood of the cabin floor warped and bubbled as Sabrina retreated with nary another word. I’ve decided I need to leave. A friend of mine, Harper; has claimed he knows a way to get us out that doesn’t include disembowelment. It’s got to be worth a try.

I know now what was in those tacos. Bobbi. Judith. All the others.

So I’m leaving to get there as fast as I can, maybe hide amongst other barracks along the way.

Not just to avoid Sabrina or anything else wicked here. But to avoid other campers. You see ever since that conversation I have found I can no longer ignore my hunger.

And neither the tacos nor the berries are doing it for me anymore.

My coworkers. My bunkmates. They are looking rather delicious.

And that one word Sabrina told me to focus on is ringing in my head.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaattttttttttttt.

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