Page 37 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
I don’t answer, but it doesn’t matter because in a matter of seconds I turn into the 7-Eleven parking lot.
The homeless woman is in her usual spot, sitting next to the Redbox kiosk. She’s looking into the palm of her hands, and she seems to be talking to them.
I pull into a parking space. Both Oscar and I get out of the car.
As soon as I make eye contact with the homeless woman, her facial expression goes from blank to frightened. She says, through her closed yellowing teeth, “Nash!”
Then, she suddenly springs upward and lands on all fours like she’s some kind of animal.
Oscar stops dead in his tracks. “The fuck?!”
I hold out my palms toward the woman. “I need to talk to you.”
The woman, on her hands and feet, scurries away, and disappears around the corner of the building.
“Hey!” I yell after her.
Oscar turns to me. “Who the hell is that?”
I start walking in the direction of the woman. “She knows something. I know she knows something.”
“Knows what?”
“I mean, I don’t know how she knows, but she knows.”
“You not making any sense, Hunter.”
I head to the side of the building, and Oscar follows me.
Several yards away is the woman, still hunched down. We lock eyes. She turns away from me and quickly crawls around another corner, going to the back of the store, where the dumpster is.
Oscar raises his hands to the sky. “Yo, I’m out, dude! Let’s get outta here, Hunter.”
“No. I have to talk to her.”
“She ain’t a ‘her.’ She’s some kind of creature and shit. Let’s go, bro!”
I run towards the back of the building.
Behind me, I hear Oscar mumble, annoyed with me, “Hunter.” But he follows me anyway.
When I get to the back of the store, I see the dumpster leaning against the far end of the wall. But the woman is nowhere to be seen.
“Where’d she go?” asks Oscar.
We take a few steps forward. We hear a loud and squishy chewing sound coming from the other side of the dumpster, the side that’s not visible to us.
“What’s that noise?” Oscar is yanking on my arm, trying to get me to stop moving ahead. “Is that her? Why is she making that noise, bro? I don’t like this.”
We approach the dumpster. The chewing sounds now alternate with the sounds of slurping, of jagged teeth gnashing on something and then savoring it.
Oscar still holds on to me. “You sure about this, dude?”
The slurping, the chewing, the gnashing: it all amplifies and reaches a thunderous crescendo, seeming to make the metal dumpster vibrate in compliance.
Oscar and I simultaneously take a peek at the other side of the dumpster. The homeless woman is squatting down, her legs wide apart. In front of her, on the pavement, is a mound of old, rotting chow mein noodles with flies hovering all around them. She shovels a fistful of foul noodles into her mouth. She chews and slurps. But before she’s even swallowed it all down, she’s already grabbed more noodles. Chew, slurp, chew, slurp.
I try to get the woman’s attention. “Hey!”
