It’s here again, parked on the street below your apartment spire. You can tell by the glare of flickering pink and blue neon refracted by the rain droplets on your window, and the steam fogging up your view of the city. It’s three in the morning, and your crappy, crooked blinds can’t hold back the glow of the ramen truck.
The neon dances its way into your dreams, a slow-swirling party of light along the walls of your office cubicle, which is so much smaller in dreamspace than in reality. You hold up your hand and let the colorful shards of illumination scrape along your skin, casting shadows on the walls with your fingers. You jolt awake and shake the blinds to try and make them lay flat against the window. Is it worth complaining about the light? You can’t afford new blinds.
But you can afford ramen. Maybe you should go down there and complain to the owner, maybe over a bowl of steaming shoyu broth, maybe after a few moments of shoveling those thick strips of chashu that melt like bacon-flavored butter into your mouth. You slip back to sleep and the ramen is in your dreams now, too. The rich broth and slick noodles steam seductively until you grab your chopsticks and slide the ends of those long, springy noodles into your mouth, sucking endlessly as the neon flickers around you.
In the morning you wake and the truck is gone, surely moved on to some other, more profitable location. The days slide by, and through each twilight you are cozied with ramen dreams. Some nights there is pork belly and chewy ear mushrooms. Other nights there are creamy tofu and crunchy bean sprouts. Always the broth is salty, liquid silk, and you open your eyes to see the steam of it fogging your apartment window.
The ramen can’t possibly taste as good as in your dreams. You know that. You open the window, just a crack, to breathe it in. Cold rain taps at your face instead. If you want to smell it, you’re going to have to dive down into the shadowed street, where the ramen truck shines like an anglerfish lure in the currents of damp night. The buzz of lights are a pleasant white noise, like the hum of the cheap air conditioner in your childhood apartment. You leave the window open. Just a crack. Below the neon hum, you think you hear a distant sound of slurping.
The next day, you awaken so hungry. Three a.m. again. Barely conscious from the fog of sleep, you slide into your boots and don your baggiest jacket over your pajamas. Why bother getting dressed? This will only take a minute. One ramen to-go and a quick, but firm, chat while you wait for them to ladle that succulent broth into a styrofoam soup cup, tong shaggy noodles into a plastic bowl, and top it with strips of pork and diced green onion. You tap your foot, waiting as the ancient elevator creaks and shambles its way to your floor and opens its dry mouth.
The elevator finally arrives downstairs and you wince against the oppressive fluorescent lights of the lobby. Your footsteps seem loud on the tile as you fix your gaze past the glass panels of the revolving door, to the street where the ramen truck crouches patiently, waiting for you.
You haven’t seen it up close before. You notice its impressive size, more like a repurposed freight hauler than the boxy food truck you expected. The sign standing up from the roof is a massive cartoon bowl with writing in a script you can’t read and steam billowing around it. The door is glass, blocked from the inside with brown paper. For a moment, you hesitate, the cold air and dapple of rain sobering you from the haze of sleepiness.
Shaking your head slightly, you pull open the door. You’re already here, and there have been too many nights of interrupted sleep to turn back now.
As you step in, steam welcomes you like a humid hug. It carries the scent of your dreams: spicy, salty, oniony. It’s dark, but you figure your eyes simply haven’t adjusted. When you squint, you can barely make out a counter lining the long wall of the truck’s interior, and the arched backs of customers sitting there. You close the door behind you to block out the wind. Now you hear it, louder: that slurping sound of so many mouths. The restaurant is even more popular than you’d thought. Your stomach moans.
You walk along the counter seeking an empty seat to order, and keep walking. How long is this truck? You walk further, deeper into the fragrant darkness. You open your mouth to call out for service and the taste washes over your tongue. Brothy, earthy, meaty–that complex, day-steeped ramen caresses your tongue like warm velvet. You sip the air and feel your mouth fill with noodles, chewy and slippery all at once.
It’s the best ramen you’ve ever tasted, impossibly perfect and rich. Your mouth is hot as you suck and guzzle the delicious, empty air. The other customers turn to face you, their hands and bowls empty, their eyes engorged and webbed with veins like squiggly red noodles. Their lips are mushroom-shaped and glistening, their teeth are the milky brown of bone broth. Neon reflects on the rainy windows behind them like stained glass.
You find an open chair at last and slide into the bucket seat, its plastic buckling around you. The sound of your devouring joins with the chorus of worshipful feasting around you, and as you gaze up, ecstatic and satisfied in the savory sauna, the great yellow eye of the CHEF looks down, unblinking as you inhale its hot, sacred breath.
C. A. Kane is an author of speculative fiction. In previous lives, she has worked as a bartender, performance coordinator, web designer, tour boat guide, and stage manager. She currently survives in southern California with her partner and her cat, avoiding the ocean and sunshine in favor of death metal concerts and board games. You can follow her writing journey on instagram @speculativekane, or check out her work at www.speculativekane.com.
The Noodle Truck is the winner of the Apparition Literary Magazine September Flash Fiction Challenge.
Photo by masahiro miyagi on Unsplash
