The hostess turned up the radio on the shelf when she heard her current favorite song.
For Dan, the music and words made their way through the glass and the cool saltwater more as vibrations than actual sounds. With a swivel of his eyestalks he tried to study the large blurred shapes on the other side of the glass. They were humans, but he felt far removed from them as they went about their work.
The hostess greeted some customers, grabbing two menus and escorting them into the dining area.
Dan couldn't be sure, but he thought one of the patrons had glanced hungrily toward the tank. He took fright again, walking backward on his spindly legs, bumping into fellow tank mates in the process. The other armored crustaceans made room for him, and Dan nestled among his fellow lobsters, feeling some safety in numbers. How many lobsters did the restaurant usually go through in a single dinner service? If he could get through the next few hours...
A significant bump to the tank upset the mass of lobsters, sending them scurrying and scuttling in all directions.
Two waiters exchanged shoves. "You ask her yet?" A tall red-haired guy in black pants and white shirt asked a similarly attired waiter with sandy blond hair.
The blond grunted a non-answer and looked into the tank. His eyes locked onto Dan, who felt a breathless moment to find himself eyestalks to eyes with the huge human face through the distortion of the glass pane. Dan cast out some panicked thoughts, hoping something might penetrate the waiter's brain. If Kat could do it...
"Help! Please, get me out of here!" Dan begged. He didn't know why he tortured himself. The guy couldn't possibly comprehend him, and that made it oddly even more compelling for Dan. "Oh god. He really thinks I'm a lobster..."
"Chicken," the redhead said. "Ask her."
The blond waiter frowned. "These lobsters are fucking ugly."
"The what?" The redhead said in exasperation. "Quit changing the subject. Ask her out already..."
Dan stopped trying to broadcast his distress to his fellow humans. Well, perhaps he couldn't rightly claim fellowship with them now.
"Just shut up," the blond waiter said, shoving his co-worker.
He didn't mean to shove him quite as roughly as he did, but he was aggravated by the pestering and flustered when the hostess returned and almost overheard.
The redhead waiter fell against the hostess's podium, clutched at the sides to regain his balance, but still managed to snag the radio's cord, tugging the plastic casing and all of its connected electric current, right into the tank.
The hostess screamed.
Dan's eyestalks had retracted by reflex as he saw a large, square shadow falling toward the water. "What the..."
The water around him had quivered intensely for a moment, alarming all of the thousands of tiny hairs between segments of his shell used to sense vibrations.
The incident also caused quite the stir among customers in the dining room, and the current continued to flow until a manager pulled the radio's cord from the outlet.
By that time, however, Dan and 21 other lobsters had been lethally zapped and the manager faced a huge loss of inventory.
Barking gruff orders at the two waiters, the manager ordered them to push the lobsters. "Maybe we can salvage some if we can sell them quickly."
"Get them out of the tank and get them to the chef. We've got to cook them now or the meat will ruin."
Meanwhile, a disembodied Dan gazed down at his motionless shell and wondered what the hell had happened. "Am I dead?"
No, he couldn't be. Kat had sworn he'd be respawned... once eaten.
The waiters grabbed inert lobsters and dropped them into a bucket. When the first bucket filled, the redhead waiter took it to the chef. Dan noticed his shell remained one of about a dozen left in the tank.
"C'mon! Cook me already!" Dan exclaimed.