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SIDE EFFECTS GUARANTEED

Chapter I

"I am telling you, this is bigger than Roswell!"

The man sitting at the table with Amanda was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and tie. He spoke in a whisper and kept looking around as if he were a fugitive, expecting the police to swoop in at any moment.

The two were sitting in the corner of a busy diner. The restaurant was nothing special. Like other similar American diners, it was a sleek, stainless steel railroad car with red leather booths and an old jukebox with an "Out of Order" sign taped to it. The sign was dirty and looked like it had been put there at least a decade ago. The diner was located at a busy intersection in downtown Brooklyn, and at that time of the night many people were passing by in search of a quick bite. The food was mediocre, almost tasteless, but it was cheap and the diner was conveniently located right at the subway entrance.

Amanda stared at the man in front of her, thinking this was probably the twentieth time this month that someone had claimed to be working for the government on a secret alien spacecraft development program.

"I would like to write an article about this. If it all turns out to be true, it would really be quite remarkable. But as I told you on the phone, I need proof," she told him.

The man had almost devoured his burger when Amanda entered the diner fifteen minutes ago, and now she was sitting there waiting for him to finish his meal. He had broad shoulders and she guessed he was probably about six feet tall.

"It would be hard for this guy to hide in a crowd if he ever needed to do that," she concluded.

The waitress interrupted her thoughts, but Amanda decided she just wanted a cup of coffee.

Mark, the editor of the small newspaper Amanda worked for, had assigned her this story a few days earlier.

"The whistleblower," as Mark called this guy, "would meet with you when he is ready. That's it! This is the scoop we've been looking for," Mark said.

Amanda, on the other hand, was used to these stories of secret government programs, alien abductions, human DNA experiments, and Chupacabra monsters feasting in New Yorkers' trash cans. She had been working at The Weekly for just over a year, and although she had been interested in writing about such events at the very beginning of her career, her enthusiasm began to fade over time as she could not find any convincing evidence of the alleged authenticity of these stories.

The "whistleblower" had spoken to Amanda several times before this meeting, each time calling from different numbers that she could never redial. Amanda had hoped something would come of it, but every time she mentioned the word "proof", he would tell her that he would bring her one when they met. He claimed to be a network engineer at a company that worked for the government. As a network engineer, he had access to the security cameras monitoring the alien ships. He said he risked his life talking to Amanda.

After several phone calls, the "whistleblower" finally agreed to meet. She expected him to ask the meeting to take place in an abandoned factory or at night in some remote subway station, but he surprised her—the meeting place was a busy Brooklyn diner.

Amanda had visited this establishment several times before and knew the area well. The crowd here was an interesting mix. Many locals were regulars here. Diner prices were so low that, from a money standpoint, it made it a better alternative to home cooking. Although many considered the food bland, locals knew the "good stuff" on the menu. At any time of the day, a local can walk in and see an acquaintance sitting at one of the booths. When someone finished their meal, another local would come in and this chain of meetings would go on late into the evening and start all over again the next morning.

There was a hotel nearby that recommended the restaurant as an alternative to ordering takeout. The restaurant's proximity made it convenient for late-night orders—guests just wanted to order a quick meal and have some privacy without being disturbed.

The restaurant was open around the clock, but at night the clientele was very different from the people who came here during the day. After dark, it was a common sight to see well-dressed European tourists curiously perusing the unusually extensive menu and finally ordering the thing that seemed most familiar to them—scrambled eggs.

Besides the tourists, some of the most frequent visitors were the white-collar workers. There were several municipal buildings in the area, a few large businesses and a few small companies that had ambitions to be the next unicorn company.

It was easy to distinguish the workers from the rest of the patrons—they usually came alone, ordered, ate quickly and left. They never looked around and they didn't take the time to enjoy their food either. They were on a break and the clock was ticking.

The voice of the "whistleblower" interrupted Amanada's musings: "Compartmentalization."

"What?" she asked, trying to figure out what the man across from her was talking about.

"You wanted to know why so many people seem to be working on these alien ships, but no one is talking about it openly? The answer is—compartmentalization."

This conversation was already boring her.

This case, which at first she considered a breakthrough, turned into yet another episode of chasing the wind. She had met all kinds of people over the past year. Many were clearly dealing with mental health issues, and Amanda had learned that the best way to approach such people was to just listen to what they had to say, and then they usually left her alone. Most of them just needed someone to talk to; someone to tell their story to, someone who won't think they're crazy and ignore them. Aside from the people experiencing psychological problems, Amanda often encountered people she referred to as "believers". They were very annoying.

Amanda began writing about the paranormal because she had once "believed" herself. When she was little, her Mexican uncle told her the story of El Duende, a mythical creature with evil eyes and sharp teeth that hunted children who disobeyed their parents. The uncle, who did not speak a word of English at the time, but knew Spanish very well, frightened her so much with this ancient legend (and his own embellished version of it) that she tried to behave herself afterward so that the creature would not harm her. Many years later, at the age of ten, on a school trip, Amanda saw something in the woods that reminded her of El Duende. However, this encounter, instead of scaring her, made her interested in the origin of these creatures. Amanda was fascinated by the paranormal, but felt that there had to be a scientific explanation for everything. She was convinced that this fearsome creature was an animal yet to be discovered and studied, and people used the legend to keep their children under control.

The "believers" Amanda met while working on an article differed from her. They didn't want their stories debunked. They weren't looking for the truth. Most of them were looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, while others, on the contrary, were so convinced that everything they had seen was true that they just wanted to tell their story but didn't want their name mentioned in it. All of them, however, harassed Amanda constantly with phone calls, emails and, the most persistent, visits to her workplace.

"And there he is, another con man," Amanda thought.

He never provided any proof that he was who he said he was. The pictures the "whistleblower" had shown her looked fuzzy and could only prove that in the twenty-first century, the government and the companies it worked with were still using nineteenth century technology. To Amanda, the proof that the "whistleblower" was lying was in his suit. Even though he was sitting, Amanda noticed that the sleeves of his jacket were too long, and the suit itself looked like it was at least one size larger than his. That meant only one thing—that he had rented the suit so he could wear it during the meeting.

She wrote down everything he said during their conversation, but in her mind Amanda was already at home thinking about what to cook for dinner.

It was almost half past ten in the evening, but the diner was still full of customers. The "whistleblower" seemed very excited to have his story printed in a real newspaper. Amanda was looking at him, trying to figure out what kind of person he was. Did he really work as a network engineer? Did he have anything to do with the government at all? This story was a dead end, but Amanda agreed to publish it because, first, her editor insisted on it, and second, because she had nothing else to write about.

Amanda wanted to go to the restroom and asked the "whistleblower" to wait for her.

The tune of a 70's rock ballad came on the radio and it, for some reason, reminded her that she hadn't taken a vacation in a while. As she walked to the restroom, Amanda caught herself looking at the people sitting in the other booths. There was a couple looking at each other with those loving eyes that couples only have at the beginning of their relationship.

There was a woman dressed in black leather pants, wearing designer boots and a leather jacket with angel wing sequins on the back. The jacket appeared to be handmade. A delicate black lace blouse was showing from under the jacket. The man sitting across from her was wearing ripped blue jeans and a black leather vest over a white t-shirt. Amanda immediately jumped to the conclusion that the man was a biker, but the woman he was dating was not, but was going to great lengths to fit in with his lifestyle. It seemed that the two were arguing, because a vein was pulsating on the man's forehead, and the woman was vigorously waving her hands, as if trying to explain something very important to him.

It is strange how a song can evoke different feelings. As Amanda walked to the restroom, looking around at everyone, and listening to the tune on the radio, for some reason the image of the beach with white sand, palm trees and a cold cocktail was replaced by a very unusual and uncomfortable feeling. The diner was full of strangers, and she realized that she was just one of them. The song on the radio was familiar to everyone here, but at the same time it meant something different, good or bad, but certainly very personal to each person. Everyone here associated the song with a certain memory in their life. For Amanda, that memory was buried deep inside her and she regretted recalling it.

When she was eight years old, she saw her mother cry for the first time.

It was early morning and Amanda was getting ready for school. The same song that was now playing over the speakers in the diner was playing on the radio, and her mother was busy washing the dishes after breakfast. Amanda was sitting at the table waiting for Mom to finish when the phone in the hallway rang. Her mother picked it up and soon started yelling at the person on the other end of the line. She heard the words "mataron" and "Diego". Diego was Amanda's uncle and "mataron" in Spanish meant killed. Amanda plucked up the courage to poke her head through the door. Her mother was sitting there, in the hallway, crying. The handset was severed from the phone— gutted along with the cord. Her mother noticed her daughter's worried face and motioned for her to come closer.

"Is Uncle Diego okay?" Amanda's pupils were dilated to the point that the brown color of her eyes could not be discerned.

"Yes yes. That was him. He's okay, don't worry," her mother replied sobbing.

Amanda's mother, Noemi, had moved from Mexico to the United States with her brother, Diego, before Amanda was born. Neither of them ever talked about what made them emigrate, and Amanda never asked, though the fragmented conversations between her mother and her uncle puzzled her. She knew her mother had been pregnant with her when they arrived in the States, and her father had died of a rare liver disease in Mexico a few months before Amanda was born. Amanda figured that mentioning her father brought up painful memories since Noemi didn't like to talk about him. Amanda, however, had a hunch that her uncle had something to do with her father's death, but she didn't seek confirmation of this theory of hers and never asked the question about it directly.

The memory of that phone call suddenly surfaced, and Amanda's mind was consumed by an inexplicable fear that the truth would soon be revealed. Thinking of that, she opened the door to the ladies room. There were two mirrors and two sinks, but one light bulb had burned out and the light only reached the first mirror. Amanda walked in, trying to see if either booth was free, but stopped abruptly when the door closed behind her. A woman stood in front of the unlit mirror, making faces. She was about 5.7 feet tall, had shoulder-length straight blonde hair, and was wearing a sleeveless top and a knee-length blue skirt. You could say she was well dressed. What shocked Amanda was the look on her face.

Through her work, Amanda had heard many stories about reptilian humanoids and the unsettling feeling people had in their presence; vampires with their pale faces and icy stares, and also stories of ghost encounters.

This woman was nothing compared to them.

She stood in front of the unlit mirror and smiled at herself. Her teeth, white, beautiful teeth, were visible beneath the strange smile on her face. It looked as if this woman, who could have been anywhere from her twenties to her forties, had never smiled before, and Amanda caught her the moment she discovered that her lips could stretch from ear to ear. The woman's eyes, brighter than the brightest blue Amanda had ever seen, read madness. But this was not the madness of a person who had lost their mind, on the contrary, this was the madness of a person who had just found a new meaning in life, and their eyes conveyed the incredible picture that their brains were apparently trying to piece together.

There was nothing human in this woman's gaze.

Although her mouth was frozen in a wide smile, the woman's eyes gave away absolutely nothing. There was not a trace of any human feeling in them. The grimace on her face betrayed an animalistic desire to live, as if this creature had just been born, had risen to its feet, and was already ready to go out among the humans to seek food.

Amanda frowned, confused by the strange feeling that had come over her. Suddenly she caught herself thinking that she felt as if she were a deer that had stumbled upon the den of a wolf; she felt as if it was not a woman that stood before her, but a predator.

The woman noticed her.

Still staring at the mirror, smiling, now she wasn't looking at herself, she was looking at Amanda. She was studying her. The song on the radio ended, and silence ensued for a few seconds. The muffled hum of people talking could be heard from behind the restroom door.

Amanda, without thinking, without understanding why she had this fear, hurried out of the restroom. The door slammed behind her and the people sitting in the restaurant turned. Out of the corner of her eye, Amanda saw the "whistleblower" still waiting for her, but she had no intention of going back to him. She ran out of the restaurant and, instead of heading to the nearby subway, decided to take a taxi and go home.

This was Chapter I of my story "Side Effects Guaranteed". If you found this interesting and would like to continue reading, you can find the story on Inkitt or Wattpad.

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