The Hole in the Wall
Written By: Patrick Joel Quinif
“Still need a minute with the menu,” Liam told the bustling waitress. He flashed a smile to the young woman sitting across from him. The Great Wall Hibachi was an average hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint, despite the name's Japanese promise. Sandwiched in the strip mall between a nail salon and a massage parlor, it was the last place Meiko expected to meet her biological father for the first time.
“You order there,” the waitress said, pointing at the register. She quickly crossed the cramped dining room, vanishing through the swinging half-door to the kitchen.
Liam nodded with that awkward simper white folks do. Not a frown, hardly a smile, just a kind of tucking in of their lips. A sign of acknowledgment and little more. Meiko tried to remain objective. Her mother had done an excellent job tempering her expectations. Already pretty well managed, considering no sight or sound from the man in all of her 20 years. She had no photos, so this was her first time laying eyes on him. Her dad. He had an air of nonchalance that oozed unearned confidence. He was handsome, if a bit unkempt. In his features she saw a glimmer of familiarity: the shape of his nose, the arch of his brows, the general bone structure of a face so similar to her own, but missing a key component. The main ingredient that the world seemed consistently compelled to define her by. She was Asian, and he wasn’t.
He shuffled his gaze across the massive menu. She looked to her own—most of Asia’s culinary output in one laminated flipbook. Had to be at least 10 pages. No shot that any of these dishes would even approach authentic. She guessed at the wait staff’s ethnicities, hoping to narrow her options. She scrunched her nose at the thought. She thought she heard the glottal stop of Vietnamese. Or was that Thai? It was coming from the booth behind them. Cantonese called from behind the counter? She wasn’t certain. She’d only poked around on Duolingo and even then only knew enough Japanese to disappoint her mother.
“Whatchu thinkin'? I’m buyin’.” Liam said, the smile finally reaching his eyes. She could tell he genuinely wanted to do something nice for her, but it was far too little too late to mean much. So why did she feel butterflies?
“Szechuan Chicken.”
“Oh, yeah? You sure?”
“Yeah… Why?”
“Just double-checking! They’ve got Japanese stuff too.” The silence hung between them, a pit of molasses. He continued, “You want a beer?”
She ignored it. To acknowledge would only further complicate this delicate moment. If this were anyone else, she would have set him straight with a, “Yes, only Japanese, please, because half of my DNA comes from an island I’ve never seen and never will.” She didn’t want to scare him away. So she carried on.
“I’m only 20.”
“Close enough,” smile twisting like a clown, his face too expressive. She could feel his nerves ratcheting tighter with every word. She chuckled, returning his classic lipless acknowledgment.
Liam rose to the counter. A nervous wreck. He could hardly remember Sumie. What he did recall was one incredible night with a beautiful Asian woman he met at a bar.
He had come from a small southern town, predominantly white. And while he recognized their beauty, it never registered. Then came Lili. Adopted from China by a wealthy neighbor. They paraded her around like a three-legged dog, breathlessly reciting the struggles from which they saved her. Everyone looked at her funny. Like how they looked at him. That summer changed everything.
Life moved on, but his feelings remained. He searched for that connection wherever he landed. Many places with many women. Sumie, seemingly just another. Until that text, twenty years later. “We have a daughter. She wants to meet you.”
The waitress at the counter finally acknowledged him.
“Hey! I’ll do uh, one Szechuan chicken and a… beef teriyaki. Just in case. A, uh, Coke. A Sapporo. Oh, and some crab rangoons.”
She nodded, taking his card. He tapped an anxious little breakbeat on the countertop. The waitress watched his hands, hovering over the receipt printer, eager to end this interaction. He smiled again, returning to his table.
Meiko was beautiful. Seeing her face instantly brought back Sumie’s intense but somehow calming countenance. There was something else about her that he couldn’t seem to pinpoint. She looked scared. A little girl dangling there alone at a floating table. He should have gotten a booth. He sank into the metal chair.
“So what do you do?” she asked.
“What do I do?” he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and looking into her eyes. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m serious, I’m kind of a big deal.”
“Oh, yeah?” The corner of her lip started to curl into a smile, but she twitched it back into place.
“Enough about me, what do you do? What is it about life that lights your fire?”
A hiss of fizz as the waitress approached with their drinks.
“I’m a figure skater.”
He finished his sip with a smirk. “Ice skating, huh? So, the opposite of fire lights yours?”
She shrugged. She hated Coke, but sipped it anyway.
“Shit’s tough. Kudos. My balance? Awful. No coordination whatsoever.”
“Guess I got it from Mom.”
“Guess so… How is she?”
“She’s alright. Working like 3? 4 jobs now?”
“Oh shit, really?” He took another swig.
“Gotta pay for college somehow. I’m working through school as well. Mostly just for extra spending money or whatever.” She sipped her glass. A grimace slipped past her defenses.
“Oh no… Not into Coke?”
Eyebrows raised, she quickly shook her head, “No, no, it's fine…”
“I should’ve asked. More of a Sprite chick, huh?”
“Really, it’s alright…”
“I gotchu. Whatcha want instead?”
“Maybe a tea?”
“Coming right up.” He rose with her glass and traded at the counter. That was something. Would things have been different had he been around? She imagined Liam, sans beard, struggling on the ice. Skating circles around him and then swooping in, lending a hand before he toppled. Laughing together, in the cool, bright rink.
“Tea for the little lady.” he placed it in front of her with a bow. “So, college? What school? What’s your major?”
She sipped her tea. It warmed her. The ice in her glass cracked.
“Eh, communications. I’m just going to City College while I figure out what I want. Not trying to be buried in debt.”
“I feel that.”
“Yeah? Got a mountain of debt in the… ‘killing people you tell about it’ business?”
“Hah! I only made it three years. Never figured out what I wanted. Dropped out with like 30k to pay and no paper to help pay it.”
She pursed her lips to the side. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be! I just don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t pay it,” he took another sip, “What are they gonna do? Take it? I dare them. Remember… my work.”
“But what do you actually do?”
He paused. A pipa piped playfully over the tinny speaker system. The elderly gentlemen in the booth behind them burst into laughter.
“I…”
The waitress came with two mounds of sticky, formless meat atop piles of fried rice and a plate of rangoons to boot. They dug in.
The speakers continued their mystical melodies. Meiko considered her Szechuan; it lacked the tell-tale buzz she craved. She preferred some spice to the more measured and balanced flavor profiles of Japanese dishes. She smiled at her Dad, who was already smiling at her when she glanced up. He seemed nice enough, but wasn’t very forthcoming. She needed more. What made him tick? What were his tastes? What was his fucking job?
“Seen any good movies lately?”
Liam, still chewing, stalling really, shook his head. “Never been much of a screen guy, to be honest. More of a light up a doob, listen to a record kinda guy.”
“Oh yeah?” That was something. Her mouth shrugged, surprisingly impressed. “What’s one of your go-to albums?”
“Hmm… that’s actually a harder question than you think,” he pointed his chopsticks at her and picked up a strip of her chicken. She swiped playfully at his chopsticks with her own. He chewed thoughtfully as he cycled through his collection in his mind. “I’m gonna go with… The Wall. Pink Floyd. 1979.” He sputtered at the spice.
“Cool. No clue what that is.”
“Life-changing. We should listen to it sometime,” he sipped his beer, and his stomach gurgled. Loudly. Every wrinkled head at the booth turned in their direction. Meiko chuckled. “Nothing to see here, folks.” He said, rising. “I’ll go knock this out.” He winked. Meiko burst into laughter, and the elderly joined in.
The guffaws followed him into the bathroom—two, tight stalls on his right and a sink on his left. The mirror above the sink was cracked across the middle. A long sticker of flowers slapped on as haphazard camouflage. He entered the far stall.
He considered the evening. So far so good. They finally seemed to have broken the ice enough to see each other's true colors. He wasn’t sure how to put it into words, but he was proud of her. He knew he could take absolutely no credit, but his pride swelled regardless.
His right ear picked up a strange frequency. A ringing, but lower. It tugged at something deep in his skull. He twisted his head to ease the pressure. The slight chemical scent in the stall suddenly shifted. He sniffed. Meaty. He looked down at the wall. Was that a hole?
“Oh, come on,” Liam said to an empty bathroom. A glory hole in a Chinese restaurant? What was on the other side? The nail salon? Massage parlor? A bit on the nose. He shook his head. “What the fuck?”
The frequency swelled again. It was coming from the hole. The hairs on his neck rose. His arm reflexively spasmed away from the wall. An involuntary grunt escaped him as he slipped onto the floor, pants still at his ankles. From his vantage point, he saw into it. His ears pricked up, and his jaw went slack. He couldn’t parse what his eyes were receiving. The hole was writhing. Something inside it was wriggling. It was expanding and contracting as if it were breathing. Or, shitting. Which Liam, unfortunately, still was. A squirt splattered the tile. He didn’t even realize. His gaze was locked on the morphing orifice opening before his very eyes.
The meaty smell was overpowering, even more than his own, as the source made itself known. The cavity on the wall looked like a steadily prolapsing anus or something remarkably similar. He gagged. Wretching on the restroom floor. It was reaching for him, slowly unfolding like a gastrointestinal play tunnel. He slammed himself flat to the ground, clambering back on the slick tile. He pulled himself under the partition, kicking wildly. The neighboring toilet blocked out the light as he slipped across the floor. He felt pressure on his leg, still in the stall with the thing. He whipped his gaze down and saw a reaching leech of pulsing organ gripping at his pants. He screamed as it tugged him, smearing his bare ass through his own mess. It was still unfurling, grasping along the length of his body; searching, hunting… sniffing? It made contact with his skin and suctioned on.
It began sucking. The skin of his arm and the thing seemed to merge. Liam’s eyes rolled back in his head as it plugged into him. Everything went dark.
He opened his eyes on a decimated landscape. An ethereal, smoky glow permeated the desolate terrain. Buildings had crumbled and scant structure remained. Tendrils of the silvery vapor that composed the image rose, flickering tongues waggling in the wind. Vaguely humanoid forms of dull, pulsing light moved to and fro in droves.
The entire image shuddered, shaken by a massive, thick, padded paw stepping in from a rent in reality. Yellow, scaly skin drawn tight. It articulated five curling black talons. Each one punctured the dissipating luminescence as it pulled itself through.
A head the size of a city block slowly lowered into the vision, displacing the air around it. A wild gust blew through his sweat-soaked hair. His arm reached to shield his face, but he peered over the edge.
The head was long, almost horse-like. Bulbous, and wisened with a bulky crocodilian jaw. Isosceles teeth lined the length of its crooked smile like houses on a violent street. It flicked open nictitating membranes to reveal big, black eyes with glowing yellow irises. It seethed through slit pupils. Its continuing descent revealed colossal antlers rising from its skull; the largest ginkgos ever grown, branches wild, and coated with fine yellow velvet. The rest of its body slithered through, curling and spiraling in on itself, long and wide as a highway. It was covered in matte-black scales. It seemed to suck all of the ephemeral light from the scene, redirecting it through its glowing eyes.
Liam stood in awe before the gargantuan creature. The humanoids milled about as if it wasn’t even there. It twisted and breathed and stretched its monumental muscles. One paw rose with a puff of displaced smoke, reaching out towards him. A talon extended, coming for him like a cursor. He couldn’t move. Closer. An ancient redwood in size, that curved knife, keratin black. It punctured his life force. The very shimmer of his soul. Not his body; it remained about a foot away from his trembling torso, but the light within him that radiated out. It was hard to identify in the void before him, for it shared the same color, if not the shade. Black. The claw slid through the field, yielding as easily as gelatin. It popped, an exhale. Burst like a bubble. Everything stopped.
Liam woke on the bathroom floor, smelling his surroundings before opening his eyes. Never before had he craved such a stench. He scrambled up, rushing to the door and tugging at his pants, still down around his ankles. The door slammed open, striking the knob against the tile with a massive crack. Every eye turned to look at him. A sea change as he entered, the atmosphere of the tiny restaurant gone ashen.
Meiko looked up and saw her half-naked, estranged father; one hand loosely cupping his wild bush, genital skin spilling out around the edges. The other hand was fumbling to tug his pants back up. She made out streaks of shit tiger striping his too-white legs. His face was a rictus of sheer terror. His eyes scanned the room like a child awaiting review of his monster-filled closet. She couldn’t help but look away. Instinctively, her hands rose to cover her reddening face.
“What the hell?” She whispered. The geezers at the booth sat in stunned silence. The waitress watched in horror.
“I… there…” Where did he begin? He finally latched the button of his pants. The stench reached the rest of the restaurant, and the waitress broke from her stupor. She snatched up a broom and swatted at him.
“Please! There’s something in there!” He cried. She shouted in Cantonese and swept him from the store.
Meiko threw some cash on the table and rushed after him. The waitress wedged the broom in the handles, locking the door from within. Through the glass, Meiko saw her rush to the bathroom and throw her hands up in fury. On the sidewalk outside, Liam’s filthy hands smeared through his sweaty hair.
“Dad?” Meiko crossed her arms tight, covering herself in shame.
“I saw something, Meiko. It… shouldn’t have been there.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea.” She said softly.
“No… Please, I know this looks insane, but if you’d seen what I just saw, you would know this is… an underreaction.”
A pregnant pause; that molasses gone spoiled.
“Liam?” Asked a man walking up in makeshift SWAT gear, thumbs resting behind the straps of his bulletproof vest. His camo cap hung over a puffy white face, goateed mouth agape. His eyes darted to the girl, dismissive.
“Kenny?” Liam responded, eyes growing wide. He stepped between the man and his daughter. “What are you doing here?”
“Was about to ask you the same. Ain’t you supposed to be on duty?” He hocked thick spittle and spat it at Meiko’s feet.
Only then did she notice the Velcro patch on his vest. Three block letters, thick and yellow, dangling in the black. ICE. Her blood froze.
“Dad?” She asked once more.
Liam winced.
“Da-a-ad?” Kenny asked through a chuckle. He sniffed the air and asked, “What’s that smell?” He locked eyes with Meiko.
“Don’t even look at her,” Liam flexed his filthy knuckles into a fist.
“Or what?” Kenny asked, sizing her up.
Liam looked back at his daughter and saw her mother. That night. Their youth. Their hope. Their optimism made manifest. He saw his own face there, now. Still scared. Holding herself and wishing she could disappear under the rapidly setting sun. The streetlight’s shadows screamed down the sidewalk. They converged serpentine, the light above, a slit reptilian eye. It loomed over Kenny’s shoulders, ready to strike. Liam looked at Meiko with one last, sad little smile.
He leaped, climbing the man’s torso like a creature, knocking him prone. It all happened so fast. She watched in shock as her reeking father pummeled the burly man with bare fists. His knobby knees locked the man’s flailing arms to the concrete, and he struck, and struck, and struck. Blood flew as he beat the bulbous, bruising, rapidly deforming face. A crowd drew in, rushing to stop him. Meiko fled. Someone called the police, but he kept on. Kenny spasmed and gurgled beneath him.
She looked over her shoulder one last time. What remained of Kenny’s face was little more than a pulpy hole. A few from the crowd had come close, attempting to restrain him. Liam’s throat erupted a guttural, snarling, earth-shaking roar. Meiko swore; for a brief moment, she saw a serpentine shape ascend from the shadows and soar off into the night.
Patrick Joel Quinif has been writing. Instead of working the family farm in Georgia or studying physics at Brooklyn College, he was pulling worlds across the threshold through music, paint, pastels, and prose. He writes from the hills outside of Nashville, Tennessee, alongside the love of his life and their ever-growing family.