Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Food Hygiene
Simon applied the final layer of glaze to his life-sized statue of a basilisk queen standing proudly atop a nest of newly-hatched chicklets and stepped back to admire his handiwork. BF Skinner's most recent substitute art teacher had called it "a masterpiece of grotesquerie", before running out of the classroom with her hands over her face and blood trickling through her fingers. Since it was going to be a baby shower gift to the heavily-pregnant basilisk currently living behind a false wall in the Teller's garden shed, Simon was choosing to interpret her remarks as complimentary, and the sudden and apparently irreversible outbreak of stone-skin amongst his classmates as mere coincidence.
He was washing his brushes over the long trough-like sink when a babble of raised voices coming from the Home Economics test kitchens caught his attention. Not bothering to remove his clay-splattered and slightly charred apron, he eased open the heavy double doors that lead into the corridor, and headed towards the sound of culinary carnage.
The hand-lettered sign in front of the student kitchen warned that a meeting of the Future Homemakers of America Club was in session, and that non-members should knock and wait before entering. Simon stood on tip-toe to peer through the small safety-glass window, and decided that good manners could wait.
"What happened?" he asked, turning the handle and stepping inside without bothering to knock. Every available flat surface was covered with baking trays, which in turn were covered in brightly-coloured paper cupcake cases containing what appeared to be a mixture of melted chocolate, shredded wheat, and a scant handful of the kind of the tiny candy-coated chocolate eggs that only appeared at Easter.
Janet Donner turned. Her long red hair was tied back out of her face, and there was a dark streak of what might have been chocolate, or caramel, or the chocolate-caramel blood of some horrible dessert-based monstrosity, across her forehead. In one hand, she clutched a long-handled wooden spoon as though it were a weapon, or perhaps a protective talisman. The other rested on the cold water faucet next to the first aid station, keeping a steady pressure on it as Melanie Monroe thrashed beneath the icy stream.
"Don't worry," said Janet. "She's not possessed or anything. This isn't an impromptu witch dunking, if that's what you're thinking."
"She's foaming at the mouth," said Simon.
Janet sighed and let go of the safety tap, which instantly shut off. Melanie, still spluttering, reached to turn it back on again, but Janet slapped her hand away.
"Mel," she said. "Please stop over-reacting for a minute and reassure Simon that you didn't accidently get witch-held while helping me make rice krispie treats for the Easter fair."
Melanie coughed, wiped water out of her eyes, and sat up from her prone position beneath the spout.
"Nope," she said cheerily. "No supernatural weirdness here, except of course for that skinless ghost girl whose hair got caught in a food processor while it was on and now she hangs around the dried food storage whinging all the time and looking for her missing face."
Simon looked sceptical.
"Really?" he said. "Because there was an awful lot of spit for anything not involving a demonic infestation of your body and soul. Souls, I mean."
"Nah," said Melanie, grabbing a floury dish towel from the handle of a nearby oven and unwisely using it to blot her face. "Nothing like that. I just went to lick some left-over cake batter off my hands and accidentally ate some soap instead."
Simon considered this. The idea that anyone could mistake cake mix for soap was unlikely enough to lend credence to the possession theory, but then again...
He surveyed the kitchen, taking in the frosting-splattered ceiling, the extractor fans coated in aerosolized vanilla, the drifting clouds of self-raising flour disturbed only by the draft that came in from the high windows and the passing of the occasional sad, faceless ghost.
"So, yeah," Melanie went on. "Basically, if you ever wash your hands, then notice you missed a bit of chocolate under your thumbnail, just let it go. All I could taste was industrial-grade dish soap. Hardly any chocolate flavour at all." She shrugged. "Live and learn, I guess."
"I guess," Simon echoed, resolving to steer clear of the Homemakers' cake stall this year.
Trusted Associates, Inc.
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