The Spatula Chronicles - Part Two

I won't recap what "The Spatula Chronicles" is all about. You can read about that here.

This is the second episode I wrote. Try to detect the faint scent of sarcasm between the lines. This story almost ruined my friendship with Steve and his wife. The villain, you see, is Lynn's morbidly obese mother.

Too close to home? You decide:

------------The Spatula Chronicles--------------

Episode 83: Song of the Fat Lady

Beams of morning sunlight sliced through the clouds like the freshly-hewn knives of fifteen exclusive cutlery sets marked down to 40% off. It set Lynn’s heart racing like it was coupon day.

The sunlight was welcome, for the trek across Ethiopia had proven more treacherous than Lynn had initially anticipated. Heavy rains punctuated long hot days and frigid desert nights. Fortunately Lynn had thought to pack a gross of Sterno for warmth, which she kept balanced in the basket on her head when she moved camp. Still, even well prepared travelers suffer in the desert, a harsh mistress who saps the mind with her illusionary games. Lynn herself lost a day in her quest due to these wondrous mirages on the desert floor, when she gamely tried to haggle with a pack of hyenas for several hours over the price of a palm tree that suddenly evaporated before her eyes. However, the hyenas made off with her supplies before she realized the imaginary credit card reader wasn’t accepting Visa. The desert can be cruel, indeed.

Lynn tensed with agony. Her ankle, twisted during her fall into the Chasm of Sorrow, Regret, and Shame, bent uncomfortably in the makeshift brace Lynn created out of two golf clubs, electrical tape, three issues of Newsweek, and two hundred feet of twine from her backpack. No matter how well she wrapped and re-wrapped the ankle, the constant abuse from the journey bent the tender joint further out of place.

Lynn gingerly placed her belongings on the ground in a circle around her, grouping items in alphabetical order using their officially trademarked names. She then sat in the sand and rested. As she sat under the rising sun, her hand cupped a small vial wound tightly around her neck. She lifted it, inspecting the milky fluid half-filling the greenish container. “Just a drop,” said the Seer of Thailand, ”and whatever information you seek will be yours as if you were born with it.” Lynn imagined the great power she could wield with this elixir. A drop could provide her with all the answers to any community college class in which she chose to enroll. She could finally unlock the greater mysteries of the universe, as well as discover the true mark-up percentage of any product, in any mall, anywhere.

But one mystery remained unsolved. Like a lost child, its memory cried out to her, longing to be in her protective care once more. Lynn remembered the delicate curve of the flexible plastic blade, the finely-crafted finger grips on the ash white acrylic handle, and the long, semi-rigid neck curving erotically toward the tip. Lynn recalled how she found it sitting alone under the “Bargains” sign at Marshall’s, the last of its kind. There was no back up. She had no replacement. That spatula, perhaps the most important technological achievement of the twentieth century, meant everything to Lynn, her kitchen, and the fabric of space and time. Everything depended on this mission to retrieve it, and Lynn felt the pressure.

After several hours Lynn came upon a small, deserted village. Between the straw huts snaked muddy streets lined with the dead and dying. From the bones jutting through their chicken-like skin, Lynn deduced that the people in this small village were starving to death. A gaunt, rail-thin dog limped up and nuzzled against Lynn’s leg. She reached down and stroked the shivering animal, and fur fell from it in clumps. Lynn reached into her pocket and pulled out several sticks of beef jerky and fed it to the dog. As Lynn fed the dog, a young man, painfully thin, approached.

“Excuse me, but I have had nothing to eat in weeks. Gorgo of the great cave up there,“ he said, pointing to the large cave at the top of a nearby hill, “she has eaten everything, leaving us with nothing but dirt and urine. Can you help me like you have helped my dog?” asked the boy hopefully.

Lynn stood up and looked at the boy disdainfully. “This dog cannot go to college and get a good job to make the money it needs to buy food, but you can. You’re obviously too lazy to go to school to better yourself, or else you wouldn’t starve to death.”

The boy gazed back, confused. “Excuse me,” he stuttered, “but what is college? I don’t know what that means.”

“See?” retorted Lynn, “See what a lack of education will get you? Nothing!” Lynn tapped the dog lovingly on the head and went on her way. Behind her, the boy dropped face first into the dirt, dead.

However, something the boy said echoed in Lynn’s ears. GORGO! The half Chinese, half Puerto Rican Siamese Twins of Siberia had warned Lynn about Gorgo, the ferocious eating machine whose colon produced keys to every lock. Lynn knew that the final and necessary piece of the puzzle was somewhere underneath Gorgo, and to retrieve it Lynn would brave the most perilous dangers of this or any quest. Gorgo had devastated this town, reducing its people and way of life to waste products. Now Gorgo sat squarely between Lynn and her spatula. Nothing could stop the confrontation now.

After a short climb, Lynn found her way to the top of the small mount over looking the remains of the village. The large mouth of the cave beckoned like a hungry, moss-covered esophagus, and stale, putrid air billowed from deep inside like a belch. Lynn reached into her back pack and pulled out a police glow stick which she received from a donation to the fireman’s fund. The sickly green light danced across the jagged surface. Lynn mustered up her courage and entered the cave.

A small path wound down in sharp declines, the trickling water bouncing over the sharp rocks. Sounds of air mixed with a deep, labored breathing sent chills down Lynn’s spine. She held the glow stick out in front of her like a protection, a protection against the unseen and the imaginary. Then, ahead in the cave, lit dimly by a long-burning fire, she saw the creature which had eaten an entire continent to ruin.

Lynn entered the cavern, face frozen in shock. Gorgo turned her head slightly, her beady eyes simmering in the flickering campfire. Although some wild estimates place Gorgo’s weight in tons, such guesses are easily dismissed until you see her in person. Large dollops of fat spilled over one another, from her hair line all the way down to her big toe. Her tangled blond hair, greasy and unkempt, wove sticky webs over her eyes, which were sunken in her blubbery face. Around the monster lay ripped bags of trash, the refuse of dinners offered by the villagers when they once had food to give.

“What do you want?” screeched Gorgo in her high, unpleasant trill.

Lynn tried to appear unfazed. “I need a key in your possession. This key will unlock the mystery of my stolen spatula. Please tell me where it is,” Lynn replied.

Gorgo laughed wickedly, coughing and wheezing intermittently. “Tend to me, and I will help you,” demanded Gorgo. From under Gorgo’s gigantic sack of blubber, two badly wounded legs emerged. Lynn got down and inspected the bleeding sores. The skin had rotted away from the edges, and puss dripped liberally from the openings. Gorgo coughed, adding, “It will teach you humility.”

Lynn pulled out several boxes of Bi Rite gauze and antibiotic cream, and cleaned the wounds tenderly despite the pungent odor of decay in the air around the infections. Gorgo grunted with every application, wheezing and moaning as Lynn tightly wrapped the sores with fresh bandages.

Lynn stood up to inspect her handiwork. “There, I have tended your wounds with humility. Now tell me where I can find the key,” demanded Lynn.

Gorgo reached down and grabbed a long stick with claws on the end of it. She began to scratch the wounds with the clawed stick until the bandages came undone and the wounds began to bleed profusely. “You first learn humility, and then you learn the futility of humility,” chuckled Gorgo, impressed with her own wisdom.

“There must be something you want,” offered Lynn.

Gorgo considered. “Food. I need something to fill me up.”

Lynn took out the vial. Inside, the sickly white fluid swirled invitingly. “Here I have something that will fill you up forever. You will never want again.”
Gorgo stared at the vial greedily. “Give it to me!” Gorgo screamed. Lynn climbed up onto Gorgo and opened the vial. Gorgo stuck out her sore-covered tongue, and Lynn dropped one tiny droplet into the monster’s mouth. Lynn climbed back down.

“Now where is that key?” asked Lynn.

“Underneath me,” answered Gorgo honestly.

Lynn looked incredulous. “How am I supposed to get it out from under you?”

“Lift me up!” Gorgo replied sternly.

Lynn unpacked her 200 yard nylon rope. After lacing it beneath Gorgo’s short, fat legs and around two stalactites behind her, Lynn was able to fashion a simple pulley. With a mighty yank, the nylon rope pulled Gorgo’s legs upwards, flipping the creature on her back, where she cried and flailed her arms helplessly.

Lynn crawled across the floor where Gorgo once sat. There, in the dried piles of fecal matter and moist hay, Lynn saw something gleaming silver. She reached into the dung and pulled out a key, thick and heavy, which looked as if it fit a high security deadbolt with a pinless tumbler. Exactly what she had come so far to retrieve!

Gorgo twisted in agony on her back. “You told me I’d never get hungry again, but I’m hungry already!”

“What I gave you was truth serum, of which I never drank a drop. So I lied to you!” yelled Lynn triumphantly.

Lynn burst from the cave mouth, the key heavy like a trophy in her hands. Gorgo’s echoing screams descended down the slope with Lynn as she headed into the west.

Next Week:

Episode 84: Duplicitous Dangerous Doppelgangers