Wendy's Drive Thru

I knew my life would be shit once I started working at Wendy's. I started working at Wendy's when I realized my mom had stopped wanting to pay my college funds. I needed to pay my rent, and the nearest work available was a local Wendy's. I ended up working there, anyway, and impressed the manager enough to have a suitable income for my situation. Finally, I had enough money to pay my rent, and support myself. Things were good, but I was still looking for other jobs that related to my studies over at college. We had a small staff, consisting of only 12 people.

After about a year, I was granted the job of supervisor. One quiet night, we were ready to work all night (We were working all night because of the new 24 hours open Wendy's system). My shift was all the way from 10:00 to 8:00 in the morning. I thought it would be a slow, boring night, with nothing more than me, and another 4 people. The 4 people were an old man named Jim, and a few teenage girls. I was the supervisor for the night, and my boss decided to leave us.

Most of the night, there were no customers to speak of. Well, except for this one guy. He was pretty fat and I guessed that there were some people who wanted their chicken fix at 12 at night. After 12, all of us just stood at our posts, sometimes talking, sometimes not. I just looked at the drive thru camera most of the time, looking for something that caught my eye. I did notice a car coming in from the drive thru entrance.

"Gear up, guys" I told them.

"There's a customer"

The car was a yellow-ish 56 Chevy convertible.

"And he's got a sweet car"

I said to make things more interesting. I picked up the headset, and spoke into the mic:

"Hello, welcome to Wendy's. May I take your order?"

After a few seconds of silence, I heard a whispering, or a quiet speaking of some sort. This was a bit weird, and I just asked again.

"Sorry sir, could you just repeat that order again?"

After a few minutes of silence, I just regarded the whole situation as odd. I looked over to my co-workers and shrugged. I could tell that Jim was getting impatient. I asked again:

"Could you give me that order again, please?"

There was silence again. Before I could ask again, Jim took the headset from me.

"Sir, could you please just-"

He was cut off by something. By what, I don't know. The colour faded away from his face immediately. He ripped off the headset and ran to the employee wash room, crying. I was shocked that such a senile old man could break so easily. One of the girls chased him. I put on the headset and heard static. I saw the chord that was cut.

"God dammit, Jim you broke the headset!"

I looked at the screens, and neither of them had the yellow convertible. Fifteen minutes later, one of the girls came back with Jim. "He said he heard his mothers' voice".

I didn't know whether to yell at him to stop being so crazy, or sympathize with him. I just told him to get back to work, and that I'd take care of the drive thru. The girls clearly looked worried, and a bit scared. As a supervisor, I had to keep all of my staff under control, and working. I told them just to get back to their posts and wait for me to give them any orders that came through. Earlier on, I had no idea as to what happened. I was thinking of ways that this could be possible. Were we being pranked? I thought, as I looked through the cameras once more. Had they just messed with us on the mic, and sped right past the window? '' No, they couldn't have. I would have heard the engine right outside''. I wasn't a sceptic in earlier parts of my life, but recently, I had stopped believing in such things. I didn't know whether I was losing touch with my religion, or maybe my lack of belief in the supernatural. Needless to say, I had a lesser amount of logic in my mind that before tonight.

It was about an hour later that some weird things started going on. We were all a little tired, and we were all about to take mini-shifts where we would all take quick naps. I looked down at the cameras once more and noticed a bit of fuzz going on. I tapped the screen lightly, and that seemed to fix it for a couple seconds. It started to get a bit more fuzzy than before after I tried to fix it again. After a few more times of 'fixing' it, I noticed something really peculiar going on in the top-right corner of the screen. There was some guy in a hoodie walking down the side walk that was just barely out of view. After the hoodie guy had passed, there was another guy just seconds afterwards.

"Hey guys, check this out"

I said, pointing to the screen. Once I had said that, the guy stopped, and looked over to the camera. I felt like he heard me somehow. He then continued to walk and then there was no more of the hoodie guy.

"Never mind"

The screen started to clear up again. By that time, I had really started to get tired. I would have taken a nap, but for some reason there's a rule about the supervisor not taking naps, and knowing Jim, he'd rat me out in a second. So, I went to the office that was in the back, and just did some paperwork that needed to get taken care of. I just needed to fill out what was used in the night, how much we made. It's actually very simple stuff. While I was working on the papers, I noticed this red piece of the paper that was in the pile. I picked it out, and read it. It said: THE FREEZER Of course, I could understand it, but the writing was very sloppy, and reminded me a bit of a cover of a goosebumps book. I chuckled a bit and went to consult my co-workers. I asked them if they had left the piece of paper in the office, but all they said in return was:

"The office had been locked all day"

and "We're too tired to pull any pranks"

I just left it in the office and went to check on the cameras.

I got to the cameras only to find them busted. All the screens were cracked, and the headset was emitting this weird static noise.

"Guys! Who the fuck did this?"

I said in an extremely angry tone.

"I thought I heard something"

Said one of the girls.

"What did you hear?"

She seemed to have a higher I.Q than the other girls who just seemed to text on their phones half the day, so I was surprised to see that she didn't check the noise.

"I heard a bit of tapping and then a loud banging sound. It only lasted for a couple seconds, so I thought someone else was over there."

"I thought you were over there"

Said one of the other girls, texting on her phone. Why their phones have so much power, I'll never understand.

"Well, I wasn't"

I said in a shaky voice.

For the next few minutes, we just stood there, not talking. It was kind of eerie, actually. It was all silent and I could hear nothing except the static of the headset- The headset I thought, realizing the chord had been broken earlier. I ran over to the headset, checking to see if my theory was going anywhere. Sure enough, I was correct. The chord was completely disconnected, but it was still making noise. I felt my blood run cold, and the hairs on my neck stand up as I slowly put on the headset. All I heard was a disarray of static, and I didn't even know what to say, so I stammered out a weak "Hello?" As soon as I spoke, the headset blared out a loud and disoriented

"THE-F-F-FREEZER"

It was so loud that I ripped off the headset as soon as I heard it. After that, I told them not to go anywhere near freezer.

As the night went on, I tried to get the screens fixed, but I couldn't so I just told the girls to watch the windows every once in a while. It started to get a little hot, which was strange since it was in the middle of October. As I would know, it was always very cool during the night. I regarded it as just a change in temperature. The night went on, silently, and eerily. I made some hourly rounds, and it was nearly 4 in the morning when I noticed one of the girls had left.

"What happened?"

I asked Jim, since he knows a lot about what's happening, more than me.

"How am I supposed to know?"

He snapped back, snarling a bit as he did so.

"Aren't you supposed to keep track of them? I ain't no babysitter. I'm just doing my job."

He was right. this could badly effect my performance, and ruin the stable relationship I have with my manager. I looked in the back, and saw that all her stuff was gone. Where could she have gone? I thought as I opened her locker. Her phone was still here, so she couldn't have gone far. I went over to the screens and tried to fix them again, to see if I could make some more progress. About an hour later, I finally fixed the screens. By this time, I was sweating like a dog in the desert. It was so hot, that the air was almost like warm blankets. I looked at the screens, and all of them were this dark shade of red.

"Oh shit."

I said to myself, as I saw the body of a teenage girl in the bottom-left corner of the cameras view. I ran to the window and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge. In fact, none of the windows would open. I ran to the back door, and tried to open it. I have to get out of here I thought, as I tried to bust the door down. It would not open, no matter how hard I tried. By now, I was feeling weak, and I noticed that no one else was around except for me. I looked out of the drive thru window at an angle so I could see what exactly happened. It looked like someone had ran her over with a tractor. Blood was everywhere and it looked like some of her entrails were splattered along the wall. I threw up at the sight. I ran to the front of the restaurant, and tried to exit through the glass doors that led inside. I looked for something to break open the windows. I wanted to break out of here so badly, but at the same time, I wanted to be cold. I was getting so tired of the blistering heat.

I went over behind the counter and disconnected the cash register. I threw it at the glass, but the glass seemed to reflect it back at me. It hit me directly in the knee. I heard a loud crunch coming from my knee and my leg went limp. I fell to the ground and couldn't get back up. I heard something making a hissing noise behind me. It was the grill, it was hissing, and the grease traps were smoking. The grill suddenly burst into flames, which made the heat unbearable. I crawled over to the steel door of the freezer. It felt so cold against my head. It felt so nice. I flicked the handle with my hand. Then, I pushed the door open to escape the cold.

I crawled inside and saw the lights flicker on, as if by magic. They were waiting for me there. Finally, I met with my co-workers in the nice, cold. They were just hanging on the meat-racks. I crawled deeper in, and let the nice, cold sweep me off the ground and onto the steely cold of the meat-rack.