Today I had the unfortunate experience to witness Hell itself. And not some interesting Hell like Dante’s where you can wander about and chat with the locals about the weather, watch your political enemies get flayed alive or even get to have lunch with The Great Deceiver himself. Rather this came straight from the Fundamentalist Eternal Fire and Agony Hell version 2.4.16 now with 18% more suffering. And it is in my fridge. And I’m not talking about some horned bear yelling about some forgotten Mesopotamian god while Bill Murray makes witty quips and tries to get into Sigourney Weaver’s knickers either. This is the genuine article here.
Today’s breakfast started out like any other breakfast. Bowl of Lucky Charms (mmmmm, faux marshmellowy goodness drooool), tire black (and tasting) coffee, and a handful of now chewy pop corn from last night. Nothing wrong with that, gets me by. Today for some reason it wasn’t enough. I needed more. Toast. Yeah, toast. Threw the bread into the magical mystical toasting device, and went to get the butter from the fridge. Open the door, see the tub with the words “yummy, coagulated, artificially colored, vegetable-based fat” on it, and open the bright, cheery yellow tub.
And that’s when I experience Hell. Not in some sort of abstract way, but the literal entering there of. The mere cracking of the bright, cheery yellow tub released a vapor blown from no where else except twixt the hindquarters of Old Scratch himself. The vapor just had a fraction of a second of nose-time, there was no way it could have even entered my sinuses before my entire respiratory system went into shock. My VNO, no doubt thinking it has been exposed to the pheromones squeezed from impacted wildebeest glands, forces an immediate sealing of the nasal cavity. My lungs, still expecting air to enter, continue to expand creating a pressure differential and sucking the contents of my sinuses backwards. This being hay fever season, the amount of said contents was considerable. The mucilaginous mass hits the back of my throat. My pharynx, knowing that such things simply are not allowed tries to throw itself into emergency reverse. But there is no air in the lungs to effect a cough of any strength and dislodge the offending goober. Meanwhile, the escaped vapor assaults my eyes and they tear over. The slimy residue of odor that was left upon my nasal cavity was finally cataloged by my primitive, lizard-like ancestral brain parts only as DEATH! and started the primitive gut-reaction (ha!) of reversing the digestive system to expel whatever might have been consumed. The pharynx, engaged with trying to keep the mucus out was now conflicted by faux-marshmellowy goodness trying to leave from the other direction. Blinded, gagging, choking, shaking I manage to seal the portal. Elapsed time: 1.5 seconds. I place the bright, cheery, yellow Source of Evil on the counter and try to regain my composure as best I can considering that tears, snot and vomit are all trying to simultaneously escape from me and I haven’t got any oxygen left from my previous breath. The mephit that escaped had by now touched every surface of my kitchen and it all smelled of a thousand Diaper Genies left to ferment upon a tropical beach for a week and then carpet bombed into my living quarters.
My toast happily pops up.
My pharynx resolves the dispute and allows the whole kit and kaboodle access downwards and I re-eat my faux-marshmellowy goodness. At last air is allowed into my lungs, but it is polluted by the miasma that continues to permeate everything it touches. That . . . that . . . stuff was certainly NOT yummy, coagulated, artificially colored, vegetable-based fat. That was Evil.
Now I’ve heard that Martin Luther had personally met Satan and the two of them had gotten into nice, little schiess fights like a couple of naughty monkeys. My first impression was that some of their schiess ended up in a bright, cheery, yellow container, stored for 500 or so years, shipped to Wal-Mart where it had been unwittingly bought by me and then stuck in my fridge. But I realized that then I too had just personally experienced True Evil just as he had. And I had to know what it was. I can do no other.
I grabbed a dish towel and naively covered my mouth and nose like that would actually do any good to protect me. I cautiously approach the treacherous happy tub and quickly rip the lid off. What I beheld can never be truly be described by poets of any age. Orpheus himself could not sing of the chaos contained by that tub. The screams of the damned reverberated throughout the kitchen while the mass pulsed, swirled, and undulated within. This was a gateway, a mystical path straight into the festering bowels of Hell. And it once was potato salad. The corrupting influence of Hell had turned a once rather tasty dinner accessory into a villainous doorway. My sin of keeping left overs in old margarine tubs should have been outlawed in Leviticus. Or prophesied in Revelations, “And I watched as he opened the Sta-Fresh Seal™ and I was sore afraid, and the air fell, and the wart-hogs wept and the faux-marshmellowy goodness returned to the earth.” Never shall I be able to expunge the vision of the torments that surely await us. Repent! Repent! Or the potato salad shall come for you too in a bright, cheery, yellow container and you too shall come to know Hell.
And the toast? I was still hungry. I ate it dry.
