Crab Omelette Rice

1

There is an American Chinese restaurant in Claremont called Royal King Kong. It has been open for more than thirty years, and business grows better all the time. The owner is American. The decor is the sort of gaudy fantasy Hollywood likes, but the food caters remarkably well to Chinese tastes. Best of all is the crab omelette rice.

The crab is fresh and delicate, every strand distinct, without the slightest fishy smell. Paired with egg personally cooked to silken perfection by the Chinese chef, it is beyond compare.

For that crab omelette rice, my good friend Lord Diao, his girlfriend Rourou, and I drove over from Pomona every Friday and Saturday. We happily queued outside for half an hour.

One Friday, it rained.

Royal King Kong's business did not suffer. The line stretched out the door as usual. To prevent cutting in, everyone received a waiting token: round, wooden, with an American flag on the front. I had stolen one before and stuck it to my refrigerator at home.

After taking a token, Lord Diao and Rourou leaned against the window to watch football on television. I wandered around.

Behind the kitchen, I saw a Mexican waiter vomiting. Rain had soaked his hair, which meant he had been there for a long time.

I knew him. He had started two weeks earlier. Once, when we paid, he complained that our tip was not enough.

He was not merely vomiting but sobbing, so I stepped forward to offer a few words of comfort. The moment he saw me approach, he stopped. He stared straight into my eyes, sending a chill down my back.

Before I could speak, he did.

"That isn't crab."

I began to answer, but he continued.

"I don't have long. They have ears everywhere."

2

We ate crab omelette rice that night anyway.

Lord Diao even complained that the meat had been frozen too long and was less fresh than before. I held a piece in my mouth and carefully weighed the flavor with my tongue. It truly did not taste much like crab.

Could even a place like America pass off rat meat as something else? Did any restaurant become miraculously Chinese the moment it served Chinese food?

The more I thought, the more plausible it seemed. The meat was resilient and fine in texture, while rats were nimble creatures. The resemblance became too horrible to contemplate.

I never saw the Mexican waiter again that day. No one else seemed to care. Everyone looked up from time to time at the football game, where players collided in a heap and the ball could not be seen.

After eating, I checked behind the kitchen once more. The rain had stopped. The waiter was gone.

The next day, we returned to Royal King Kong.

The sight of crab omelette rice made me want to vomit, but I ordered it anyway. Everyone else did. To leave Royal King Kong without ordering the dish would be to have come for nothing, to have lived this life for nothing.

Lord Diao and Rourou were especially happy. It was the thirty-seventh day since their relationship became official.

I still could not find the Mexican waiter. But I noticed Mary, in the corner, secretly glancing at me.

Mary was one of the old employees. She looked around forty and had worked here since I arrived for school. During the roar after a score in the football game, I stood. Somehow, Mary appeared beside me without anyone noticing.

"The restroom is this way," she said, pointing.

I walked slowly.

I remembered the waiter's warning that they had ears everywhere. I did not know whether to trust Mary or everyone else.

Instinctively, I preferred everyone else. Even if we all fell into hell, at least I would have company. But what if they were all sending me to hell alone?

As I thought, Mary said:

"That isn't crab."

I knew immediately that I had to trust her.

Mary pushed me toward a hidden exit.

"I can't leave," she said.

Standing at the opening, she repeated:

"That isn't crab."

"Rat?"

"Human."

3

Mary said it was human flesh. The flesh of infants, sourced from China, Thailand, and Myanmar. There was some in America too, but the price had risen too far, so they had to use crooked methods.

Supply was especially abundant in China, she said. Walk into any second-rate hospital in a third-tier city and slip someone money. Or go to the countryside and find children no one will raise, families that do not want girls. The goods fall into your hands, sometimes openly.

The person responsible was the owner Tom's nephew, Jack.

"You've heard of him. Jack, the murderer who has done every evil thing."

Ah. Jack. Jack the Ripper. Of course I knew him.

Once, he had been the underworld figure everyone in Los Angeles talked about, the man who cut a waiter's throat in a restroom stall. The police discovered the victim quickly, but it was already too late.

Later, people watched a live broadcast of Jack racing through Los Angeles against police cars. He made the department spin in circles, then stopped with acrobatic flair and surrendered. A few months later, he walked free.

The chase remained a favorite subject in bars, though its protagonist had vanished. I had never imagined his connection to Royal King Kong.

Jack. Jack the Ripper. Now, in China, he had transformed into Mr. von Thomas.

He lived mainly in Shanghai and Beijing, where a white face and an aristocratic name opened every door. When he was not out having fun, you know, he traveled to the countryside for business.

The infant business.

Mary said I had to leave, had to leave quickly. Run as far as possible, though perhaps no pure place remained anywhere in the world.

They hunted more than infants, she said. They also hunted people who refused reality.

She could not get out. Perhaps she never would. She did not have long, because they had ears everywhere.

Jack. Jack the Ripper. Mr. von Thomas, welcomed on every side.

Jack was meticulous. He preserved each shipment with care, maintaining freshness and humidity. Boning, cutting, sealing, and unpacking all placed enormous strain on fresh meat.

You know, from the moment a shipment was packed, it traveled nearly a month before reaching America. Yet every plate of crab omelette rice retained its perfect texture, each strand distinct.

Do you know how difficult that was?

Thirty years. Every day the same.

You know. Everyone likes crab omelette rice. Everyone loves us.

I raised my head.

Tom, the owner, adjusted his hat and lit a cigarette.

Mary was already gone.

4

My heart pounded as I stumbled back to the table.

Lord Diao and Rourou sat with their fingers intertwined. I threw the menu aside and swallowed a mouthful of free tea. Before it had gone all the way down, I was pulling at them to leave.

"Are you sick?" Rourou said.

"No time. We have to go. Just this once."

I practically dragged them downstairs, terrified someone would follow.

In fact, no one did. Everyone was watching football.

Lord Diao was unhappy, but he drove. Even as he opened the car, I kept looking around, afraid the dark organization and a crowd of Dementors would descend and consume me.

The two sat in front without speaking.

"Back to the dorm. Right now."

Lord Diao felt no urgency. Like a paper, he delayed until the last second delay was possible, then finally started the car.

I watched through the rear window until I was certain no one followed.

We crossed streets and the railway station, then reached the town's commercial district. The riot of colored lights finally made me feel safe.

I leaned toward the front and spoke quietly.

"I have a great secret to tell you."

Lord Diao pulled to the side of the road. Both turned to look at me.

Still panting, still terrified, I stammered:

"Did you know the crab in the crab omelette rice isn't crab?"

"It's human flesh," I continued. "Infant flesh, smuggled from China and the surrounding countries. Infant flesh."

The car was silent for ten seconds.

"So?" Rourou asked.

Cold filled me.

"Human flesh isn't enough? We're eating people!"

Lord Diao lowered his head and stroked the steering wheel.

Rourou glanced at me as though I were making a fuss over nothing.

"What's wrong with eating human flesh? I never heard you were vegetarian."

I collapsed against the seat.

"So...you knew all along?"

Rourou smiled.

"You were a little slow to notice."

My eyes widened.

"Don't you think it's perverse? People eating people—I can't even imagine it!"

"If people don't eat people, they still have to eat meat. Pork, fish, beef, lamb. What's the difference?"

"It's cannibalism."

"It isn't your son. Why are you so anxious?"

"It's still someone else's child! What do the parents think? If someone ate your child, would you still not care?"

People eating people was nothing rare, she said. If someone truly ate a child from your own family, that too was fate. You had to accept it.

She called me a hypocrite. If eating human flesh produced guilt, why did pork make me so happy? Why did I take eating vegetables for granted?

A piglet was a pig's child. A vegetable was the earth's child. Had I ever considered them?

People eating people was natural selection, the food chain, letting nature take its course.

What gave me the right to think humans had to be different from everything else, had to stand one rank above? Besides, when I ate human flesh on ordinary days, I never looked worried. Why complain against heaven and earth now? How did my morality always know the right moment to appear?

"I don't eat human flesh. At Royal King Kong, I didn't know."

"Then the dining hall doesn't serve people? McDonald's doesn't?"

She became agitated as she spoke. Lord Diao held her until she calmed.

"Our dining hall serves...human flesh?"

Lord Diao turned around and laughed.

"You really are slow. Of course Pomona doesn't. Why else do you think meals at CMC and Scripps cost so much more?"

5

We returned to Royal King Kong.

When we entered, everyone in the restaurant stood. Then they climbed onto their chairs. Some were already on the tables, like the last scene of Dead Poets Society.

When we found our places, Lord Diao and Rourou climbed onto the table too.

In the whole Royal King Kong, I alone remained on the floor.

The restaurant was utterly silent.

I became more frightened.

To be honest, no one standing looked at me. Yet I felt that if I remained another minute, they would surround me and doom me beyond redemption.

Carefully, I searched for an exit. Tables blocked the entrance we had used, and expressionless people stood on top of them.

I wanted only to run. Where I would run, where there was left to run, I had no time to consider.

At last, I found the hidden exit Mary had shown me.

I trusted Mary.

I threw myself through.

It was a foolish decision. I would regret it for years.

Later, Lord Diao and Rourou told me they had indeed stood on the table, but only to see the football game. They did not remember any silence either. It was football. How could a football crowd possibly be silent?

"You imagined too much again," they said. "You always think too much."

In any case, I entered the hidden exit.

There was no broad road ahead, only a narrow corridor, a dead end, and three rooms.

I did not dare go back, so I could only hide in one. Until when? From whom? How? My mind was blank.

I opened the first door.

The smell of blood struck me. Fresh blood.

The room was not chaotic. It did not resemble a slaughterhouse but a laboratory. A man stood ahead with his back toward me. Beside him was a surgical rack holding all kinds of clean blades.

I heard an infant cry, though not loudly.

The man said nothing. He was entirely focused.

I knew who he was.

By then, I had collapsed to the floor. I almost crawled and rolled back into the corridor, then closed the door. I could hear only my heart.

When I entered the second room, the person inside had already sensed me.

I guessed Tom from the smell of smoke. I had heard since childhood that Tom was a chain-smoker, talkative but quick-minded.

He was counting money when I entered, great handfuls of it. Each time he finished a stack, he lit another cigarette.

He did not look up, as though he already knew every part of the matter.

Speaking to himself, he said:

"You know, in this life, money can never be counted to the end. A person always needs a new hope."

He also said:

"Run to the end of the world, you know, and there may still be no pure place. If you truly find one, you will spend your life alone."

I gently pulled his door closed.

I hesitated before the third, but at last I opened it.

Mary, as expected. She was about to leave the restroom. She looked beautiful that day and had put on makeup.

"Did you get away?" she asked.

"Yes. I got away."

6

By the time I came out, I could hear police sirens.

I had Mary's car keys. To my surprise, I was not afraid.

On the road, I even opened a window. The Los Angeles tunnel was long, and the wind was strong.

Beyond the tunnel, the sky was high, the mountains distant, and stars covered the night.

7

At the police station, only Tom came.

He gave me a look. Everything was under control.

Later, he visited once more, presumably after the matter had been settled.

There was one condition.

"From now on, you are no longer Jack," he told me. "You are von Thomas."

Written down after losing a fight with jet lag at noon on January 7, falling furiously asleep, and dreaming this.