This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/JLKeay on 2025-08-28 22:38:11+00:00.

I know what the papers said: Kat was a commuter to the local community college who went missing three years ago. I know what the rumors said: she ran away from her drunk of a father. It’d be easier if those things were true. I know they’re not. I remember what happened in that diner. I have the scars from that night.

I first saw Kat in Ms. Grayson’s baking fundamentals class. I needed an elective, and my friend Mikey had told me it was an easy A. Kat certainly made it look easy. Even when we were working with pounds of sugar, her black vintage dresses and bright scarves were immaculate.

She noticed me when I asked Ms. Grayson what to do if my pound cake was on fire. I turned my floured face to follow a giggle that sounded like a vinyl record. Kat blushed and gave me a wink from across the kitchen.

After class that day, I decided to make my move. On our way out of the industrial arts building, I walked up to her. “Did I say something funny?” Her skin was porcelain in the sunlight.

She laughed again. “I suppose not, but it was pretty funny watching you almost burn down the school.” Her teasing voice was from a film reel. I smiled as I watched her glide away across the quad.

We spent more and more time together over the next few weeks. She shared all her retro fascinations: baking from scratch, vinyl records, Andy Warhol. I had to pretend to appreciate some of it, but it was a better world with her. It felt like we were beyond time. Nothing mattered.

That night was the first night she ever called me. We had texted for hours, but I was startled when I heard my phone ring. She had made me buy a special ringtone for her: “All I Have To Do Is Dream” by the Everly Brothers.

“Jimmy…” The film reel sputtered. She sounded like a different girl. For the first time, she was breaking. In that moment, I didn’t know how to handle her. “Could you please come get me? I need to be somewhere else… Anywhere else.”

A drive I could handle. “Yeah. Of course.” I didn’t even have to think. A beautiful girl needed me. “What’s the address?” I realized I had never asked Kat where she lived.

“Reed Street.” She was fighting to keep her pieces together. “Please hurry.”

I followed my phone to Reed Street. Kat’s neighborhood should have been lined with pleasantly matching two-bedroom homes with  green yards and white picket fences. Instead, Reed Street was a dirt road off a gravel road off the highway. Kat’s home, if you could call it that, was a rusty trailer in an unkempt field.

When she walked into the light at the bottom of the crumbling concrete stairs, she looked just like she did in the sun. Even in a moment like that, she had kept up appearances. She moved differently though. On campus, she was weightless. In the dark, she walked like she was afraid someone would see her make a wrong step.

She opened the door to my truck, and I turned down the Woody Guthrie playlist she had made for me. Her apple-red lipstick was fresh, but her mascara had already run at the edges. There was a darker spot under the matte foundation on her right cheek.

“Drive please.” Always composed.

“Where? Where do you need to go?”

“Just…drive.” She pursed her lips tightly. Looking back, I know she was holding back tears. We both wanted her to be a statue: beautiful and too strong to cry.

I rolled back over the grass and dirt to keep going down the highway. She didn’t speak, but she breathed heavily. I let her be.

When I went to turn the music back up, she gently laid her hand on mine. “Thank you. Very much.”

I let the quiet stay. Over the sound of the truck wheels, I tried to console her. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She looked ahead into the dark. “Just…an argument with my father. It’s fine. We fight all the time, but tonight…”

She stopped herself and hurried to plug my aux cord into her phone. Buddy Holly. “That’s enough of that, don’t you think?” She flashed a sudden smile at me and turned up the music. I should’ve turned it down.

I hadn’t paid attention to the time, but we had been driving for an hour. It was past midnight, and I was starving. I saw an exit sign I had never noticed before. Its only square read “Lily’s Diner” in looping red print.

“Hungry?” I shouted over the twanging guitar.

Kat hesitated like she had something to say. When I pulled off the interstate, she laughed to herself. “I could eat.”

The sign had said the place was just half a mile off. A few minutes down the side road, I checked my odometer. It had turned two miles. I had nearly decided that I had taken the wrong turn when I saw it…

“Well damn.” It was the sort of abandoned structure you learn to ignore in our county: a flat, long building that couldn’t have served food in decades. A pole stood on the roof, but whatever sign had been there had fallen off years ago. “I guess we’ll go to McDonald’s.”

“Like hell!” The Kat I knew from campus was back. “Come on!” She threw open her door and then dragged me out of mine. I didn’t know what she saw in the place, but I told myself I would humor her. Really, I would have followed her into the Gulf.

“Where are you taking me?” I tripped over tangles of weeds as she walked us into the dark. “There’s nothing here.” A voice in my head told me to turn around.

Standing at the door of the ruin, I saw that its cracked windows were caked gray with dust. The county must have condemned the building years ago. Kat looked at it like she was admiring a Jackson Pollock. The voice in my head grew louder. “Let’s go inside!”

“Are you sure?” The hinges shrieked as Kat opened the door. Neon lights broke through the dark.

We were looking into a diner. The white lights reflected off the black-and-white checker tile and the chrome-rimmed counter curving from end to end. On either side of us were rows of booths in bright red leather. It was all too clean. The colors were dangerously vivid. Like the outside, the inside was dead. Kat elbowed me in the side with a laugh. “Told you so!”

Watching Kat step inside, I heard the buzzing of the neon. There was no other sound. The quiet was broken by a woman behind the counter. “How y’all doing? Welcome to Lily’s!” I stood frozen in the entrance.

The woman spun around. It was the first sign of life. “Well don’t be a stranger! Find yourselves a spot!” She couldn’t have been much more than our age, but she dressed even more out of time than Kat. She wore a sturdy, sensible blue dress and a stainless white apron. Her fiery red hair matched her nails and lips. For just a moment, I thought I noticed that her teeth were too sharp.

My breath catching in my throat, I started to turn around when Kat rang “Thank you kindly!” For once, she looked like she belonged. We’d be fine.

“I’m Lily, by the way! Nice to meet y’all!” She smiled and pointed to her name on the sign. Neon red flickered in her eyes.

Kat giggled like she was meeting a celebrity. “Nice to meet you too, Lily!” When we were at the diner, her laughter was light again. It made me forget the wrongness of the place.

Lily grinned and pointed to a booth. Her fingernail looked like a cherry dagger. “Y’all sit a bit, and I’ll be right with you.”

The booth’s leather was stiff. I hoped we’d be out of there soon. I picked up the large laminated menu to order, but Kat snatched it from me. “I know exactly what we’re going to get!”

“Hungry, Levi?” Lily called. She had been alone when we came in, but now there was someone sitting behind me at the counter.

“Sure am, honey. I’ll have the usual.” The rasp in his voice was ravenous. He was a young, athletic man in a tight white tee shirt and blue jeans that looked sharply starched. I flinched with jealousy. Kat looked up and smiled his way.

“Coming right up! One usual, Lou!” She shouted towards the wall behind her. Through the round window of a swinging door, I saw that it was dark. The silent kitchen took Lily’s order.

Without losing a beat to the quiet, Lily came over to us. Her heels clacked on the black-and-white tile. They were red stilettos just like Kat’s. “And what are you two lovebirds having?”

I didn’t answer. I hadn’t even told Kat I liked her. Lily shouldn’t have known. She had barely finished her question when Kat bubbled up with excitement. “Two strawberry milkshakes! And do you have maraschino cherries?”

“Of course we have maraschino cherries!” Lily’s voice was too sweet—sticky. “Now what kind of diner would we be if we didn’t have maraschino cherries?” Lily gave Kat a squeeze on the shoulder, and I noticed her nails were dangerously sharp. Her hand curled greedily around Kat’s flesh. We needed to leave, but Kat was enthralled. Kat laughed as Lily shouted again to the silent kitchen. “Order up, Lou!”

As soon as Lily was out of earshot, I opened my mouth to ask Kat to leave. Before I could, she whispered to me like a girl on Christmas morning. “Strawberry milkshakes, Jimmy! Just like Grease!” I couldn’t tear her away from that place. I was worrying too much like my dad always said.

“Yeah. It’s pretty authentic.” Looking around the diner, I realized how true that was. I had been to diners around the county before. The older folks always craved memories of their youth, but this one was different—even without its run-down exterior. The other diners did their best to recreate the past. This one had never left. It was a place untouched by the decades that had eaten away at the rest of our country town.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute before our shakes came—maraschino cherr…

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