“Welcome to Zoo,” the bartender rasped, his voice low and gravelly. “What can I get for you tonight?”
Izel hesitated, her eyes flickering nervously around the deserted bar. “Just some scrambled eggs, please,” she replied, trying to mask the tremor in his voice.
As the bartender turned to prepare the order, Izel’s gaze wandered to the kitchen door, which stood slightly ajar, revealing a glimpse of the pandemonium that lay beyond. She heard strange sounds emanating from within. Growls, roars, squeaks, snorts, chirps, moos and hums.
Moments later, the bartender emerged from the kitchen, a plate of steaming scrambled eggs in hand. As he set it down before Izel, a chill ran down her spine, for there was something wrong with the eggs. They squirmed upon the plate, pulsating with high frequencies and bright neon curds.
With a trembling hand, Izel reached for a fork, her stomach churning with a mixture of fear and revulsion.
Before she could take a bite, the bartender asked “It is everything ok?”
“Not really” said Izel. “The eggs seem to be not fully cook,” she added after taking a deep breath.
The beats and riffs of the Mirlos cumbia tune that blasted the taxi cab stereo before she got off near Chapultepec Woods faded in. The twangs of electric surf guitars reverberated inside Izel’s body, seemingly mixing with the strange sounds of the bar kitchen. She remembered the words of the taxi driver after she payed for the ride: “Just be careful with the raw eggs, señorita. Awebo…it is night of tecolotles.” She recalled the pathway she walked to her apartment in San Miguel and felt again the sensation of being extremely hungry. She closed her eyes and saw the sign of the bar, blinking at the end of a tiny street in the middle of bushy alamos.
The bartender looked at her and replied with a calm voice “Give them a try, I warrant you they are well done and well mixed.”
Izel hesitated for a moment, then cautiously took a forkful. The texture was not light and fluffy as expected but rather dense, almost as if each bite contained traces of the creatures from which the eggs had been harvested. The flavors evolved with each mouthful. One bite was tinged with the metallic taste of hummingbird feathers, another with the earthy undertone of ostrich’s feet.
While she was trying to figure out the exact origin of the strange and familiar savours, the kitchen door opened abruptly. Birds of every kind flew into the bar —owls with eyes like moons, parrots with glowing emerald wings, and macaws trailing vibrant, iridescent tails. They circled around Mila and began to sing in a language she couldn’t understand.
In an act of defiance, she took one last bite. The taste exploded in her mouth a cascade of sensations that overwhelmed her senses. A tingling sensation spread through her body. Her skin began to shimmer and change, feathers sprouting from her arms, her fingers elongating into delicate wings. She felt herself lift off the ground, her wings beating in perfect harmony with the other birds. She joined a loud hubhub and flocked towards the bar kitchen.
As silence inundated the bar. The bartender looked at the seat where Izel had sat. A faint smile played on his lips. The birds had vanished leaving behind only an empty plate on the counter table.
