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The moment the calendar declared Thanksgiving as done as Grandma’s burnt turkey carcass, Mother Nature went on a rampage that completely upended autumn tranquility. She set the wind to howling, the clouds to churning, and the temperature to ten below whatever temperature gives yetis hypothermia.
Maybe she got fed up with the South’s typically mild winters. Maybe someone chucked that turkey carcass at her head instead of the trash can. Either way, she’s Mother-plucking Nature, and it’s her right to torture the world with a dystopian arctic hellscape.
Bundled safe from the elements in my fortress of blankets and hot cocoa, I tip my hat to her and apply another layer of thermal underwear. But that refuge is only an illusion.
Enter Maximum Disgust.
He lurks in the coldest corners, hidden in shadow, arms bare to the elements. Come hail, sleet, or frozen tundra, Maximum Disgust throws sanity into the frosty gale and sweaters into the garbage. The mere sight of him is enough to make Jack Frost, the yeti, and your grandma shudder.
An unabashed cackle bubbled through my torso and up into my shoulders.
I’d struggled to sleep after my altercation with Running Man. It probably had nothing to do with him—because why would I still be thinking about that jerk anyway—and everything to do with the fact that rest was near impossible to achieve with the stink sofa doubling as my bed.
But the insomnia was doing things to me—making me wilder and more reckless than usual, at least in my writing. I’d never blogged about something so personal before.
During tonight’s pleasantly uneventful shift behind the counter at Eterni-Tea, I’d written a solid four paragraphs—more words than I’d managed in the past five weeks total. It was an ode—no, not ode. It was a scathing dismantling of my greatest foe Maxim Loughty.
Sure, there was some unintentional repetition in there—grandmas and garbage. Plus, I started with a mention of Thanksgiving, which hadn’t been a smart starting point for months.But I’d written words.
I smeared the last of my gross bran muffin in the puddle of syrup on my plate and popped the “food” into my mouth. Edwardo had only made bran muffins yesterday, no cinnamon or fruit-filled goodness, no danishes or cookies.
As he walked through the door signaling it was my time for quits, I asked, “Are you trying to kill me?”
He spared me a glance and headed into the back.
“Edwardo,” I called after him, adding a flare of sternness. “Are. You. Trying.To. Kill. Me?”
“What are you on about?”
“You know the bran muffins are basically suet bricks fit only for squirrels, right?”
He tilted his chin and sniffed at me. “You seem to like them okay.”
Did he…was he smelling the bran on me?
I snapped, “No I don’t. And don’t smell people. It’s gross.”
“I didn’t have to smell you. There are crumbs on your collar.”
So he was smelling me for fun.Weirdo.I wiped my collar without looking down to check. “Make something good today or I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”
I didn’t have any particular retribution in mind at the moment, but I was sure I could think of something.
“Bran muffinsaregood,” he said.
A yawn erupted from my face. The awake-at-night sleep fog was starting to hit, later than usual which was nice. But I really needed to crash.
“No. Bran muffins are the opposite of good.” I did the my-eyes-to-glaring-and-pointing-at-him gesture to make sure he knew I was serious. Then I cleaned up my dish, grabbed my belongings, handed the keys off to Edwardo, and stepped outside into the dark and quiet morning.
My skin prickled in a wave up my neck like I was being watched. I glanced in the direction Running Man always came, but he wasn’t there. No one was. Good. It was probably just the cold.
I headed down the sidewalk. I made it half a block before I heard footsteps. My heartbeat picked up. I checked the reflection in the next window to see if I was being followed.
I was.
“Holy Funyuns, are you Layana from that show?” an enthusiastic voice said from behind me.
I smiled my friendliest smile, pretended I wasn’t absolutely exhausted to the point of hallucination, and turned around. “Yes, hi.”
