The Ghost of Gabriel Green

A food gothic horror story

This is a true story.

The events depicted here occurred in the Midwest in the early 21st century. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

It was about a year ago. I had a craving for linguini alle vongole.

I made it the way Gabriel Green showed me back in grad school. Even in the crappy little kitchenette of his studio apartment, with damp stains on the wall and that terrible, temperamental electric stove, Gabriel made cooking look debonair. It helped that he was annoyingly, effortlessly good-looking to begin with, with his lithe frame, toned arms, and little Freddie Mercury mustache. Honestly, I always wanted to be Gabriel. Making a decent vongole was the closest I could get.

He never cooked (or did much of anything) without a martini close at hand. His movements were balletic, his laughter was infectious, and his food was delicious – and he knew it. He punctuated his speech with pithy cooking tips. “The key to good vongole,” he said, pausing to slurp his martini, “is good vongole!” He rattled a colander full of glistening quahogs in my direction before tossing them into the pan. Droplets of oil escaped as he shook it, creating a flurry of sparks as they caught on the flame below. A splash of wine, a pinch of Calabrian chilli flakes, a ladleful of linguini water, and the clams opened up, giving their lives to satisfy our appetites.

Gabriel whipped the pasta off the burner and drained it into the sink, taking another sip of his martini along the way. He tipped the pasta into the pan and deftly tossed it through the sauce.

I did everything just as Gabriel did it (except, it must be said, for the martini and the charisma). I added parsley not at as a garnish, but as I started to toss the pasta through the sauce. “Cook with your herbs. Let them warm through. Let their aromas open up!” All of Gabriel’s little tips echoed through my mind. When he was on, he was really fucking on, as the song goes, and he would talk like he was talking to a whole room full of people, an audience. This was The Gabriel Green Show.

And his vongole was sensational, as luxurious and restorative as basking in the sun after a swim in the sea. It made you feel warmer, wilder, more languorous. More like Gabriel himself.

Gabriel’s death was, frankly, hilarious – and I have no problem saying so, because I know he would have thought it was hilarious, too. Hilarious, but also horrific.

Annie was with him when it happened. They’d been out late at the Rainbow Room. On the subway platform, Gabriel tried to buy a packet of Utz crab chips (his favorite) from a vending machine, but it got stuck in the little spiral thing. Gabriel became furious, in his winking, half-joking, “Son of a bitch! I’m so angry!” way, and he spun around into a roundhouse kick, landing hard on the machine’s keypad. The impact knocked Gabriel off balance, and he stumbled backwards into an oncoming Red Line train.

That’s the funny part. The horrific part is that Gabriel didn’t die right away. Annie could hear him from below the train. Deep, growling groans that became terrified wails, the screams and sobs of Gabriel’s soul trying to desperately claw its way out of his body. A cacophony of guttural, animalistic sounds, sounds no person should ever have to hear. Annie endured it all as she paced back and forth, erratically, helplessly, on the platform, waiting for the paramedics. By the time they arrived, the sounds had stopped.

I switched off the heat on the pan, grabbed the tongs, plated up, and sat down at the table. I held open a clamshell with my spoon and took up the meat with my fork, before twirling it to mummify the little clam in a bale of linguini. I had been looking forward to this all day. But no sooner than I had taken my first mouthful of pasta –

Bzzzt bzzzt

my phone buzzed.

It was a text. From Gabriel Green.

I stopped my jaw mid-chew and my fork mid-twirl. I furrowed my brow and stared at the phone for a moment before picking it up. I wasn’t imagining things. There it was: a message from Gabriel, from beyond the grave. It read:

You realize La Molisana is just basic bitch pasta in Italy, right? Bronze die?! Who gives a good goddamn about the bronze die?!?!? They’re all bronze die in Italy. They’re just using that as a marketing tool for dumb Americans who don’t know any better

… what the fuck?

The initial jolt of terror that I felt when the I first saw the notification faded into mere perplexion as reason took over. The message must have been delayed, stuck somewhere in the digital ether, a red exclamation point on Gabriel’s long-dead phone suddenly freed from connectivity limbo. It happens. I’ve sent texts that didn’t go through, only to have them reach the receiver long after the message was relevant. We all have. Right? Perfectly normal thing to happen.

But a couple of details perturbed me. I couldn’t recall having a conversation with Gabriel via text about different brands of pasta (though this is something we would have gotten into in real life). The message seemed to have come out of nowhere – but then again, abrupt non-sequiturs were always part of the Gabriel Green experience. But the other thing that bothered me was that I actually did make the vongole with La Molisana linguini.

It was disquieting. But my nerves soon steadied, as I was able to convince myself that it was nothing more than a glitch. Just one of those weird things.

Although I knew it was silly, somehow it felt rude not to reply. So I did:

Yeah yeah. Well what am I, but a dumb American? And anyway, I like La Molisana. It’s got a nice texture and it takes a sauce well.

I thought you’d approve!

Typing these words made me realize that they were true – the pasta really does take the sauce well, and with that, the vongole recaptured my interest. I resumed the ritual of picking out clam meat, twirling, chomping, sipping my wine.

But then – bzzzt bzzzt. More messages from Gabriel.

Hmph. Well as long as you’re not olive

My god, oh deus mio IT’s al dente lacrima

Dolorem ipsum ex iecore et cerebro effluit

I stared at the phone, my shock and confusion fully rekindled. Did he actually just reply? “Dolorem ipsum” – wasn’t that placeholder text used in publishing software? I remembered it from a graphic design class I took in college.

I soon calmed down – the messages were clearly gibberish. Just some bizarre malfunction. It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often, I thought to myself. Even my stupid printer doesn’t do what I want it to do half the time.

I shrugged and shook my head, as if to shake the experience from my mind. This time, I didn’t respond to the texts. It was nothing, and it was silly to think otherwise. I swiped out of the messaging app and over to the browser to check on the Cubs game.

I finished the vongole absent-mindedly and glugged the last glug of wine from my glass, then retired to the sofa with the bottle to watch the rest of the game on TV while swiping around absent-mindedly on my phone.

I thought about the errant messages frequently, and occasionally looked at them, just to ponder them. I even came to think of them as a kind of memento – something there in my pocket that felt intimate and real. Like Gabriel was still with me, ranting about pasta.

A few months went by. The days got shorter, then longer, the snow turned grey and then slowly melted. Springtime in the Midwest was, by most people’s standards, still pretty damn cold. But for those of us that grew up here, this was practically T-shirt weather, and as the sun appeared more and more, my appetite turned to lighter fare – Thai, Japanese, Italian, that sort of thing. And it was peak season for clams. As I walked past the Asian fishmonger on my block one afternoon, I spotted some prime littlenecks through the window. My mouth watered at the sight of them. Time to make some vongole.

I invited Annie over to join me. I hadn’t heard from her in a while, and I was worried about her. She’d become quiet and withdrawn since Gabriel died – as anyone would, after going through that sort of trauma. But I wanted her to know that I was there for her. And I knew she loved Gabriel’s vongole, too.

She arrived as I was slicing the garlic (the way Gabriel told me to: like Paul Sorvino does in Goodfellas). She was still wearing her thick, red, woolen winter coat. Annie wasn’t originally from the Midwest; she’d moved up from Arizona for college and never fully acclimatized, so the spring sun didn’t have the same effect on her. We hugged, and I hung up her coat. She kept her arms folded, still a little chilly.

We caught up as I cooked, but it was mainly small talk. The subject of Gabriel hung like a fog in the room between us, but I didn’t want to just bring him up out of the blue. Strange, how it always feels so awkward to talk about the very thing that everybody really needs to talk about. Luckily, the food became exactly the icebreaker I had hoped it would be. Annie spotted the clams in the colander next to the sink.

“Vongole,” she said, with a half-smile. “I don’t think I’ve had it since Gabriel made it for us.”

“I make it exactly the way he used to,” I replied. “I mean, maybe not quite as good. And I don’t really have his, like, flair. The way he put on a show when he made it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Annie said, with the softest laugh. “He was always putting on a show.”

I knew what she meant – but I got the impression she was hinting at something deeper, something I didn’t know. She was closer to Gabriel than I was. But before I could reply, the timer for the pasta beeped.

“That smells amazing,” Annie said. She finally unfolded her arms, warming up a bit. I looked at her with a confident smile – I wasn’t really much of a cook, but thanks to Gabriel, I knew I could make a pretty damn good vongole. “I hope you like it,” I said.

We sat down, she clinked her bottle of Old Style against my glass of Michigan riesling. “To Gabriel,” I said. Annie smiled awkwardly, then looked away as she took a swig of her beer.

“I’m so glad you could come over today,” I said, picking up my fork and spoon. “It feels like it’s been a long time.”

“It hasn’t been that long, right?” Annie replied. “Dwayne’s Christmas party. We saw each other then.” She put a forkful of pasta in her mouth. My phone pinged from the kitchen.

“Sorry – I’ve got to check that,” I said as I stood up. “My mom’s just had surgery on her wrist and she’s not a hundred percent independent at the moment.”

As soon as Annie replied, “No worries,” her phone buzzed as well.

I picked up my phone and checked the notifications on the way back to the table. I stopped in the doorway. I stared at the phone, disoriented, flush with panic and fear, then looked at Annie. She was staring at her phone as well, lips parted in a silent gasp. She looked up and our eyes locked.

“It’s…” Annie whispered, unsure if she could explain what she was seeing. But I already knew.

“… Gabriel,” I said.

Annie nodded uneasily. I approached the table.

“What does it say?” I asked Annie.

“It’s a voice message,” she replied.

I took a breath, and explained how this had happened before. “I figured it was some kind of weird glitch, some unsent message or something. But it also happened when –” I stopped myself. The vongole had nothing to do with it. Of course it didn’t.

“Well, what did it say?” Annie demanded, “and what does it say now?”

“It was… something about pasta. Like, probably something related to a conversation we had a long time ago. And then it was a bunch of gibberish, just random words and characters.” I relaxed a bit – saying it out loud made me realize it was just a bizarre coincidence.

“But what does it say now?” Annie repeated. I hadn’t actually read the messages – I was too shocked. I swiped up to unlock my phone.

? How could you

HELP. ME, PLEASE, PLEASE, my god, my god

add the parsley after you plate up? It’s not a fucking garnish, it’s not a fucking garnish, I told you it’s not a fucking garnish, cook WITH your fucking parsley you’re always such a

dolorem ipsum ex me fluit

I didn’t know how to explain what it said, so I just told Annie that it didn’t make sense, that it was nonsense again. Which it was. Just a weird glitch, I said.

Annie squinted and frowned, unconvinced.

“Are you going to listen to the message?” I asked.

“I… don’t know,” she answered. But suddenly, something compelled her to tap play, and she laid the phone on the table, on speaker.

The message started as a low mumble. Muffled, slow, groaning utterances of where are you? and Help, please help. The pleas became sobs, then the sobs turned into heaving, gasping, and then frantic wails of help me Annie, oh god, help me –

Annie stopped the message. She was shaking.

“What the fuck is this?” she asked me, her eyes brimming with tears. “What the fuck is happening?!”

She sprang up from the table. She said she had to go, and in a matter of seconds, she had grabbed her coat and bolted out the door, slamming it behind her.

---

HELP. ME, PLEASE, PLEASE, my god, oh my god

I scanned Gabriel’s messages again. What did they mean? At this point, I could no longer believe they were just meaningless digital gibberish.

I hadn’t moved from the doorway since the notifications stopped me in my tracks. I was frozen, unable to process what was happening. I glanced over at my plate of vongole, which beckoned me back to the table, even though I’d completely lost my appetite. I sat down. I picked up the fork, slowly, and twirled it around a nugget of clam meat until it was fully bundled up in linguini. I put it in my mouth.

It had gone cold. It didn’t taste right any more. The garlic was too prominent. The clam was too chewy. The parsley was too leafy, too tough. Gabriel was right – I forgot to add it while the pan was still on the heat. I flung my utensils down, frustrated. I downed my wine, scraped the pasta into the trash, deleted the messages on my phone, and blocked Gabriel’s number.

It was a sleepless night. At 8 AM sharp, as soon as the fishmonger opened, I went down and bought more clams. I raced back up to my apartment, unblocked Gabriel, and made vongole again. I had to know what was going on. I could still hear the screams. I had to help him.

Sauté. Steam. Boil. Drain. Shake. Toss. Plate up. I made sure to add the parsley at the right moment this time. I sat down, took a breath, hastily formed a spool of linguini around a bit of clam, and shoved it into my mouth.

I chewed. Swallowed. Glanced at my phone. Nothing. I slowed down, took another breath, another bite. Nothing. I picked my phone up off the table. I tapped on the messaging app and into the conversation with Gabriel. Nothing. Just the messages from months ago, the first time they came up when I was eating vongole, and then the ones from long before, when he was still alive. Nothing new.

I carried on eating the vongole. It was so silky, so briny, so heady with garlic and clam juice and wine – so delicious, that for a moment I simply enjoyed it, forgetting about Gabriel. But then I shook myself – you can’t forget about Gabriel, the whole point of this is to not forget about Gabriel. I carried on eating until I’d cleared my plate. I looked at my phone again. Nothing.

The next day, I went back to buy more clams. I made the vongole again. I ate it feverishly, anxiously, always checking my phone, to no avail. I tried again the next day. And the next day, and every day after that for about a week, until the guy at the store said that quahog season was coming to an end, and this would be the last day they had fresh clams until the end of summer. I knew frozen ones just wouldn’t do, so I made the vongole one last time, ate it in a state of red-eyed exhaustion, and when I was finished, I wept.

I glared at the phone, desperate and angry, then shifted my focus to the pile of empty shells on the side of the plate. There, hidden among the hinges, was one last morsel of meat still attached to its shell, with a single fleck of parsley stuck to it.

I prized it out, put it in my mouth, chewed slowly, and looked back at the phone. I swallowed, and waited.

Not a buzz. Not a ping. No inane rants about bronze dies or fresh herbs. No pleas for help, no placeholder text… nothing. I put my fork down.

Gabriel Green was gone for good.