Pasta-Gal

  It was getting te. Her shift would be starting soon at the diner. Maria didn't mind working the long night shift. It was usually calm and the few people that did come in were pretty quite. It also gave her plenty of time to work on homework.

  Maria was taking a few summer csses to help speed along her masters degree in art history. And she had gotten herself into a pretty comfortable schedule— daytime was for rexing or the occasional css while night was working time.

  She had an especially good feeling about tonight. The diner had been even more slow than usual the past few nights and if the trend continued they'd be dead as a door nail. Which would leave Maria plenty of time to crank out a few more pages towards her thesis.

  She threw her ptop into her bag and made her way out of her apartment. She had to stop herself as she started to step out the door as her neighbor and someone she didn't recognize carrying bags, that held what looked like coolers, swiftly made their way across the hall. It was strange. Every time Maria saw that woman she always seemed to be carrying around those Styrofoam boxes. She wondered what kind of fancy food she must be getting. Probably something foreign.

  When she got to her shift she found herself blessed with an incredibly busy restaurant. Practically every table, booth, and chair was full. The kitchen was in a frenzy frying and grilling burger, potatoes, and sausages.

  When Maria first started working at this diner that smell used to taunt her into hunger, but now she found herself indifferent. Much of the food just didn't interest her anymore. Not to say the food there was terrible, they had quite good reviews and they had the same main chef there for years. Overtime however the allure of the food simply faded with exposure. She did however still have a soft spot for their fries.

  By the time the diner had died down and all the other staff had left Maria was exhausted. She didn't have the will power to type away about oil texture or fabric dyes. She had stood slouched over the counter for quite a long time. Maria was about to relent back to her ptop when the bell rang.

  Maria looked up slowly at the person that walked in— the woman stood frozen in the door, she looked like a little scared but there was something else about her. Maybe she was right to have a good feeling about tonight after all. Maria couldn't help her eyes wander up and down at the woman who had just walked in. She was hot. She had this beautiful androgynous thing going on for her that was really doing it for her.

  "Oh, welcome miss, you can sit wherever you like," Maria broke the silence remembering that she had a job, that wasn't ogling the patrons.

  While she was cooking the impressive amount of food that she had ordered she heard the bell ring again. She quickly poked her head out into the dining area but didn't spot anyone and returned to the slowly cooking omelet.

  As Maria brought out the vast swath of food she threw the idea around in her head of trying to talk to her. Maria hadn't flirted in a hot minute but she could still probably charm the hell out of her. That is if she even found her attractive in the first pce, which there was absolutely zero sign of. But what if she did? You miss every shot you don't take.

  "So what's a small girl like you, doing eating all this by yourself? Did your boyfriend just break up with you?" And she's ruined it, terrible opening line— she was more out of practice than she thought. And now she's smiling, possible win? Maria rolls with it and optimistically sits across from her...

  ***

  Maria felt sick. She sat sipping at a cup of coffee waiting for the police to arrive. Petra having ran off to who knows where— Maria found herself drawn to the bathroom. What could have possibly covered her in so much blood? So Maria followed the trail of bloody foot prints.

  Nervous she slowly cracked the door open. Her eyes catching only the slightest of glimpses of the bloated body sprawled out across the floor, a stream of blood trickling towards the door— part of a much rger pool that was gathering beneath the body. She sealed the door and ran to the safety of the kitchen, colpsing against the side of a counter.

  Maria immediately called the police.

  Maria was sure that it had to be an accident. She seemed like such a ball of nerves and anxiety when she walked into the diner but slowly Maria managed to open her up and there was a delightful innocence to Petra's eyes as they talked. She definitely didn't seem like the kind of girl that would even be capable of such a thing in the first pce. Something must have happened that forced her to defend herself. She wish she hadn't fled; the poor girl.

  Sirens grew louder as various emergency vehicles pulled up to the outside of the diner. Maria jumped as the the door opened and the bell rang out.

  "Hello? Is there anyone here?" A cop called out. He scanned the diner looking for anyone to ask questions to but there was only Maria and the corpse.

  "I'm back here," Maria called out as she walked out from the safety of the kitchen.

  The cop held his hand just above his gun as he spun around to face Maria. Maria threw her hands up, her arms covering her face slightly. She hated cops. For as long as she could remember, Maria had the unfortune of frequently finding herself in the wrong pce at the wrong time, which always ended with her entangled with the police. They always tried to rope her into part of the bme but she was thankfully able to prove her innocence every time.

  The cops hand rexed as he saw Maria cowering behind her hands.

  "You can rex, is everything all right? Heard there was a dead body here?" The cop told her. Maria slowly released the tension in her body and slumped into a chair. She nodded quietly.

  "Where is it? Can you show me?" A few more cops and begun to gather outside the diner and some paramedics had made their way inside.

  "The men's room," Maria pointed behind her. "Back there. I didn't see much but it looked, really bad..."

  "Do you know who attacked them?" The cop asked as the paramedics and another cop went towards the bathroom.

  Maria nodded, and took another sip of coffee. "Sort of, but I think it was an accident."

  A collection of various sounds of disgust echoed out from the direction of the bathroom. Maria shrunk further into herself.

  "And why's that?" the cop slowly lowered himself to sit beside Maria across the table.

  "We were talking while she was eating. She was nice, maybe a little anxious to be here. And when she came out of the bathroom there was a genuine look of fear on her face— she was shaking. I think he might have tried to do something to her."

  "If it was an accident why did she run off?" the cop asked.

  "I don't know, but if she intended to kill why didn't she kill me too, leave no witnesses?"

  One of the paramedics walks out from the bathroom and makes his way towards the cop.

  "Man's long dead. It looks like a huge chunk was ripped out of his neck, and one of his hands was covered in some substance. Brutal way to go, drowning in your own blood," he told the cop, who nodded and thanked him.

  "So ma'am can you tell us anything about the woman?"

  She started to speak but stopped herself. Maria had a rather terrible thought run through her head. An inkling of an idea that had been building since she started talking to Petra. Petra didn't seem exactly like she was the most conventional woman out there. Was Petra trans? Maria was at the very least sure that Petra was some fvor of queer.

  Maria didn't like this though because while she didn't know much in the realm of trans folk she at the very least knew it was unkind to— what was the word? "Clock" them. But unfortunately it made some sense, it would expin why she walked into the men's room, as well as her voice, and the fact she lit up like a Christmas tree every time Maria called her a "cute girl", Maria had called many cis girlfriends cute and none ever reached such visual euphoric bliss that Petra dispyed.

  If she was right that would mean the police will likely do little in her favor if they found out. She could see the headline, "Chicago trans woman violently murders poor man, sentenced to life". Conservatives would have a fucking field day with her.

  She bit her tongue.

  "Not really, my brain has been a bit scrambled from tonight. Things I'd normally be able to tell you just fine have all flown right out of my mind," Maria was never a good liar but she hoped it was te enough the cop was just as out of it as she wanted to be. She also hoped that she was not actively aiding an actual murderer.

  "Well thank you for your time,"

  A short while ter Maria had called up her boss, the owner of the diner to inform him of what happened. When he arrived he let Maria head out early from the rest of her shift. Not much business could be done with an active crime scene investigation.

  Maria kept gncing at her phone every few steps as she walked down the streets towards her apartment. She hoped that any minute she might receive a text from Petra telling her she was safe or something. Part of her wished she had asked for her number instead. At least then she would have been able to ask herself.

  She could always try tracking her down herself. Look her up, cyber stalk her a little. Though if she was trans like Maria thought there was only about a fifty-fifty shot she would be able to find anything, she might not have her name pstered on her information yet.

  The door to apartment squeaked as she unlocked it. She had every intention of oiling it but at the same time she wasn't sure she was allowed to do that and was too zy to contact the building manager.

  It was a tiny little studio that she had lightly decorated with various pnts over the years. She took pride in her pnt keeping capabilities. Pride that she could show off to her friends when summer came around and all her pnts bloomed.

  She colpsed into her bed to decompress. Maria didn't intend to fall asleep quite yet but she wouldn't stop herself if her body decided it wanted to.

  That was a dead body. A real dead body. Maria had been to funerals before and had technically seen a dead body before but it was far from as visceral as this. What happened in that bathroom? There was only one thing that Maria could think of that could push someone to murder but Maria hoped that wasn't the case, for Petra's sake.

  Maria squirmed just thinking about it, it brought back bad memories that she had spent years with her therapist sorting through. She checked her phone again-- still nothing.

  Hopefully tomorrow.

  Maria sat up and tried to take a deep breath— the air was dry and uncomfortable. She got up and opened up her window— taking a moment to breath in the warm summer air that was flowing into her room. She looked out towards the street looking at the few cars as they passed. She followed one of the cars left when something caught her eye.

  That person looked familiar. Maria blinked and refocused her eyes towards them. Petra? She was making her way towards her apartment building. Does she live here too? Or maybe she was followed and Petra is a killer, here to finish the job?

  Pasta-Gal