The lunch bell rang.  Children streamed into the cafeteria, some eager to eat, but most dreading their meals. ..

 The eager children were the ones whose mothers packed their lunches in cute brown bags stuffed full with artfully sliced sandwiches, cups of fluffy, sweet, prepackaged pudding, crisp fruit, and “naturally flavored” boxes of juice. They could enjoy eating.

The rest of the children, staring enviously at the students fishing juice boxes and delicacies wrapped between bread slices out of neatly packed paper sacks, shuffled cautiously down the lunch line, trying not to breathe in the foul fumes of what lay ahead.

Lucy found herself in this line. 

Usually a brown bag kid, in the rush to catch the school bus she had neglected to grab it. She had wanted to survive by nibbling bits off her friends’ meals, but no, Mrs. Gerdbin, the school’s evil lunch monitor strictly forbid the sharing of food. “Germs,” she would always say, “the horrid creatures constantly crawling in and out of your mouth, up and down your hands, swimming around in your fingernails…sharing food will just get you more of them. We don’t want that now, would we?” Having said that, she would gleefully pluck the morsel out of the hands of the unfortunate student she was lecturing and toss it into the nearest garbage can.

Mrs. Gerdbin also loved watching the horror pass over students’ faces when she proclaimed to them in a sickly sweet voice, “Now, every good growing boy and girl needs good nutrition, so I’m going to give you a free lunch ticket and kind Myrtle and Dorothy here will feed you a nice, nutritious meal. Make sure you finish it, because you know how we feel about wasting!” Gerdbin would then crack her knuckles and bare her decaying yellow teeth at her victim in a smile while pointing at the lunch ladies, who grinned evilly and waved.

Having sat fearfully through all of Gerdbin’s routines, Lucy was plucked out of her seat and marched over to the lunch line.  “I’ll be making sure you get that nice healthy meal of yours!” the lunch monitor sang as she skipped away, happy to have ruined the day of another innocent child.

Lucy had heard that the stuff the lunch ladies put into the weekly meatloaf had the same ingredients as the stuff that paved the sidewalks in front of the school. She had heard that the principal had hired these ladies as a way to get revenge on the kid who stole his briefcase years ago. She had heard that to save money, the lunch ladies spit in the food instead of seasoning it. She had even heard a rumor that one of the ladies was secretly a scientist studying the effects of eating radioactive waste on middle schoolers.

Well, so she had heard.

So as the line inched forward, Lucy glanced at the menu.

                                                                    TOMATO SOUP or SPINACH CASSEROLE

 


                                                                      CHOCOLATE CAKE or PEACH COBBLER



 
                                                                                       WATER or PUNCH 




Being an optimist, Lucy decided that chocolate cake couldn’t get that bad, and that nothing could be wrong with the tomato soup. She would order those. And punch sounded pretty good, too.

But then she was hit by the most horrible stench in her whole life. It smelled like a skunk had rolled around in a pool of elephant poop then drowned, and floated around in the pool for a month then was immersed in a cow fart and peed on by a naughty little boy. The smell was that, but even worse. The odor crawled up Lucy's nostrils and stayed there, suffocating her. She began to cough. 

“AHH,” A scratchy, high pitched whine interrupted her asphyxiation.  “Takin’ in thuh delishuhs smell uve da soup, eh?” It was an overly made-up, chunky lady, with a large slightly purple hairy mole over her lip. She was wearing an apron over a greasy blue uniform and a holey hairnet. There was a tiny nametag pinned onto the apron, which looked like it had once been white, reading MYRTLE. This monstrosity was a lunch lady. Lucy had no choice but to say yes, it did smell wonderful, as the lunch lady was licking her unusually sharp teeth threateningly and tapping her unusually long and glittery nails impatiently on the soiled counter.

“SEW, watsit gonna be, kid?  Ya bettah be hurryin’ aluong, cuos, we gottallotta kayds ta serve!”

Myrtle pointed an ultra-long fingernail extension to two bubbling pots filled with an oily brown sludge in which furry chunks of something purplish kept floating up that she was standing next to.   Lucy couldn’t help thinking that they could be some of Myrtle’s moles…

“I-I’ll take the tomato soup, please.” Lucy watched, feeling very nauseous, as Myrtle plopped a large blob of the brown-purple muck into Lucy’s bowl. “Dessuot is down de lane, kid.” Myrtle said in her high pitched whine. 

Lucy slid her tray down the lane, optimism mostly dissolved.







Myrtle loved cooking. She was a self taught chef, specializing in exotic dishes and going off the recipe. She broke many cooking rules, thinking herself a rebel cook as she ripped off her hairnets and gloves, letting her unwashed hair flow free over her dishes. She was especially fond of boiling food, and everything she made was cooked this way. Her whole life, she had cooked as much as possible, for her family, for her friends, for random strangers...

She didn't have much family left now. Most of her friends had passed too. For some reason, they had all died of food poisoning. Myrtle couldn't figure out why, as they had mostly eaten the food she made, and she made sure it was very sanitary. Sure, the occasional bit of toe gunk or fingernail fell in there, but it was probably all sterilized through the boiling.


Despite her wonderful passion for the preparing of food, no one appreciated Myrtle's art. Whenever she offered to cook dinner or contribute to a potluck, the person she was speaking to always turned green and started taking deep breaths before she was politely denied. She was never able to get a job at any restaurant due to her "New Age" style. Close minded old people,  she called the people who didn't approve of her ways. 

Finally, Myrtle was able to find employment as a middle school lunch lady...

A friend and I wrote this story together a long, long time ago. It is part of a much bigger story that we never finished.

"Hey, Steve, pass me that doughnut, will you?"
"Nah, this doughnut’s for me!!"
  "No, I get it! You're still on probation, remember? You failed to pass the intelligence test...I've never seen a hole that big on the floor...how violent can you get with a toothbrush anyway?”

While Steve was teasing Jimmy, he didn't notice a large shadow slowly spreading over the little room, blocking out the fluorescent lights.


"WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING IN HERE?! THOSE ARE MY DOUGHNUTS!!!!!! "

    "No, no, Commander, we-we were just, uh, reorganizing those doughnuts!”

The scrawny officers chuckled nervously, squirming in their undersized stiff yellow plastic chairs..

    "NO YOU WEREN'T!!! I CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU PATHETIC SHRIMPS!!! NOW WHERE DID MY FAVORITE JELLY TYPE GO?" 

Their 7 foot tall 350 pound boss, who insisted he be called Commander (it reminded him of his glory days in the Navy), was always screaming, even if he was in a library. He insisted that his constant shouting was because of all the bullets that he took in the throat during the war, but everyone knew it was the tons of lemonade he drank as a child. He would not admit it, however, since, according to him, lemonade was for spineless ninnies.


Steve gulped as he sneaked another sip of lemonade from his purple polka dotted sippy cup. (though his friends were constantly making fun of it, he thought it had been a great deal, as he had gotten in for only 50 cents, plus $94.97 shipping and handling at an antique garage sale) If you touched Commander's doughnuts, he swore he would cut your buttocks off and hang them over his fireplace. Or else he would just curse your descendants. After Steve shook those terrible thoughts out of his head, his mind jumped to Jimmy. That toothbrush wielding nincompoop wasn't capable of much thought. Steve suspected that he did have a few brain cells, but this limited brainpower was mostly used up on pondering whether a fish was alive or not. Right when this thought entered Steve's head, Jimmy yelled,  "I GOT IT! A FISH IS DEFINITELY A LIVING TING!!! YOU KNOW, BECAUSE O’ DA  STRIPIES! WAIT NO, DAT CAN'T BE RIGHT, GRANDMA BEA SAI’... “


The commander shook his head in shame. This year's squad just wasn't the same. Last year, he and his team had fought ninjas, brought justice to the race of rabid turtles living in the sewers, and imprisoned the most notorious nursing home robbers in the Bay Area. But then most of those officers were promoted to a bigger station downtown, and Commander was left with those two idiotic pinheads. So far, they had only been able to do...let's see...NOTHING...except destroy half of their station with denticle polishers. That REALLY angered him. Imagine how many jelly doughnuts he could’ve bought with that repair fee...Come to think of it, he didn’t know how those poor excuses of officers managed to find their way to him. But then he remembered...and Commander nearly flinched as the memory washed over him...


They literally arrived on his doorstep, holding an edible flower bouquet made of fruit and a lacy pink get-well card and a long, wordy note that, under all that complex vocabulary, screamed “Please hire us!!! We’re relatives of the big boss and if you hire us you might even get a raise!!!”

This had been a few days after the Case of the Hole in the Wall, after his team abandoned him, after the gas bomb that created the hole left Commander’s voice wheezy and quiet, and Commander, stunned at the state of his vocal cords, passed out... 

For this show of weakness, he was left behind in the dingy shack that was his station as the rest of the squad was sent off to the Central Station. Commander’s so-called “teammates” abandoned him for the high life, full of modern walkie-talkies, vinyl chairs, and even glazed donuts, a treat meant for officers that were truly worthy of the job. Why, the Commander couldn’t even afford glazed doughnuts! And even if he did, he wouldn’t be allowed to buy them anyway. The commissioner made sure that all police did not buy snacks that were out of their league.


Anyway, the Commander soon realized that he had contracted a rare disease known as the sore throat. The Commander, realizing that he was sick, promptly threw a hissy fit, worsening his condition.

That was when Steve and Jimmy arrived at his doorstep, begging to be hired, and because of his current lack of employees, Commander had no choice but to do so.  That begun the two’s reign of uselessness.


      Eventually, the commissioner realized how pointless giving cases to this station, so the Commander had nothing to do but sit around and calculate how much seventy-four pounds of jelly doughnuts would cost. 
Finally, the week before, Commander, after weeks of shameless pleading, had persuaded the central station to give them a job. A murder. Commander was overjoyed. The problem was, he couldn't get his two employees to cooperate.

The commander decided the only way to get Steve and Jimmy working was to use (here the commander coughed) niceness. He would (ahem) try his best muster up some (hack, gag) understanding. (Here the commander went off to vomit) And maybe he’d even (the commander swallowed some aspirin before attempting to think this) bring out the normal voice. 


Around the time of these preposterous thoughts, Steve had to catch (and be squashed by) a fainting Commander. Uh oh. That was a bad move. He should have just let the Commander fall like a man to the ground. Now Steve would most likely never be forgiven for witnessing Commander display actual weakness. 

   "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!! WHY AM I IN YOUR ARMS LIKE A FUZZY DOGGONE SLEEPING DOGGONE BUNNY DOGGONE RABBIT?! HUH? LET GO OF ME THIS INSTANT, YOU DOGGONE TWIT!!"
    So Steve let go. 
The commander fell like a man the way he wanted to but fell through the floor in the process. He screamed from three floors below, "HOW COULD YOU LET GO OF ME?!"

Steve answered meekly. "B-because you t-told me to?"
The commander replied, "NOW WHY WOULD I EVER TELL YOU TO DO SUCH AN OUTRAGEOUS THING??? WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, A...WAIT...NEVER MIND! THIS YOUNG MAN HERE WAS UNDER ME, SO THAT'S OKAY! YOU TWO DORKS SHOULD BE MORE LIKE HIM!"
Three floors below that, the man who had so kindly cushioned Commander’s fall wondered where he was. Finally, when his partially mashed in brain started functioning again, he remembered that there WAS no three floors below. Steve looked down into the man-shaped hole in the linoleum and gulped down another pint of lemonade. 

He and Jimmy grabbed their buttocks and ran out of the building as fast as possible.







The commander thought he was ready. He plastered a smile on his face and forced himself into the bathroom stall turned "man cave" of Jimmy and Steve. In his best "nice" voice, he spat the words out. "JIMmy. STeve. You. G-get. Case. We. Solve. Now. I h-HAve. List. Suspect. ThEY. At. Big. JAil." The commander threw up in his mouth a bit, then breathed a sigh of relief.

   "Hey, is it national clown face day or something?" Jimmy put in helpfully.
   "Yeah, what's wrong with your face?" added Steve brightly.
    Well, he finally got that over with. Now anything that happened after didn't count.
    "NO!!! I'M SMILING, YOU IMBECILES!!!"
    The bottom lips of the two quivered.
    "YOU'RE ACTUALLY SMILING!!!"  they simultaneously burst into tears, and hugged Commander.

Following, Commander politely excused himself and really threw up.

AGH! Those two didn't have any hope. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he returned to the stall to find them frolicking happily among balloons, which were raining from the ceiling. After he'd been through three wars, this is the treatment they decided to give him? What had become of this war hero? What was he now, a babysitter? He bet that his grandma had better detective skills than the two so called “officers”. And his grandmother did! She single handedly busted a Canadian drug ring while filing papers on the back of a donkey running at thirty miles an hour! She was his role model, actually!

    "SO, ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT?"
    "YES SIR!"
    (Steve and Jimmy actually had no idea what they were agreeing to do, but anything to save their buttocks!)
    "ARE YOU GOING TO WORK HARD?!"
    "YES SIR!"
    (Ugh. Again with that motivational stuff.)
    "ARE YOU GOING TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH?"
    "YES S-WHAT?! Um, I mean, yes sir?"
(the commander did not realize that, despite their feeble-mindedness, Jimmy and Steve valued their lives very much)
    "GOOD. NOW HERE’S YOUR EQUIPMENT AND DON'T COME BACK TIL YOU'VE GOTTEN TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS, YA HEAR?"

So Jimmy and Steve left, dropping all their detective equipment, trading the stuff for a generous supply of highly dangerous weapons pasted high with warning stickers and radiation symbols from a homeless guy they found lounging on the sidewalk. 


With that, the two set off into the world on a search to find out about something neither of them were quite sure of.


There. The commander brushed his hands together. Now they’re off my back. Commander was just stretching himself out on one of the bright yellow chairs, reaching for a jelly doughnut when something outside exploded.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating.
Silverware clinked.
Teeth chomped.
Dad opened his mouth, some food falling out. 
"I have a very special announcement! We-"
Then the roof fell in.
Mom screamed, and that cat pounced on my head, claws digging into my scalp.
We could hear explosions.
"NO! THE STOVE!" Mom panicked.
Our house burst into flames.
I guess we'll never hear the special announcement. 

"Die, Banana!"

My captor had me in a headlock, kindly notifying me that he would soon kill me.

He dug his sharp, sharp nails deep into my head, creating many long gashes. I could see the guts streaming from the unjuries, but what really frightened me was the fact that I was not feeling anything.

The captor picked at the deep cuts he had created, and, to my horror, began peeling off strips of my skin. The pain was so intense to the point that I was blinded by a fog of agony and all I could think was burn...burn. 

Soon I was nothing by soft, vulnerable flesh. My captor lifted me, now just a blob of bloodied pulp, towards his mouth.
He was to eat me!

I felt a last wave of excruciating pain as his incisors punctured my body.

My life flashed before me, from my childhood in a tree with my brothers and sisters  to the time I was locked in a dark box and emerged in a vast, bright box. I saw when I was placed in a pile of others of my kind. They became my friends, and I remembered my confusion when they were taken by those life my captor...

For a second I was still there, feeling oddly happy, despite the sight of my severed body being pulled farther and farther away....

The darkness washed over me.