Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Make Mine Rare

By Steve Mast

Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to eat her dinner. Melinda Budge, the porky fiend’s mother, was staring in disbelief at her husband, who was, apparently, allowing their daughter to misbehave.
Melinda’s arms were crossed and she kicked the thin, shrunken and balding man under the table. There was a loud “THUMP” and a tiny cry of pain emanated from what looked to be more of a corpse than a man. “DO something about your daughter,” the woman growled, and tilted her head at the girl, who was sitting in a cross armed imitation of her mother, her lower lip stuck out, staring at her food.
The corpse gave a hint of a consolatory smile and glanced back and forth between mother and daughter, as if trying to decide which was the lesser evil to talk to. “Now sweetie,” he said, settling on the daughter, “Why don’t you at least try your ham?”
The little girl raised her pudgy eyebrows to her father and said, “I don’t LIKE this ham. I don’t WANT this ham! I want PIE!” Her voice raised in volume and pitch with every phrase.
“But honey-pumpkin – you asked for the ham – you LIKE ham.”
“This ham is OVERCOOKED! I want RARE ham!”
“But lubby-hunkins – nobody eats ham rare – you have to cook it to be sure it’s…”
“I’ll eat a WHOLE FUCKING PIG ALIVE if I want to – I won’t eat this overcooked processed FILTH!” The mammoth child was shouting. She picked up a fistful of peas and mashed potatoes and flung it at her father. Half the food stuck to his chest and face and the other half splattered around the room.
Melinda, seeing the scene begin to get out of hand, grabbed her purse and swung it at the corpse’s head. He ducked but too late and there was the noise of glass breaking as it struck him solidly in the ear. Her own shouting matched her daughter’s. “Why are you doing this to her? Just order her some GOD DAMNED PIE, you GOD DAMNED IDIOT!”
The corpse looked down at the table but put a hand up until he had somebody’s attention. “Waiter, we’d like to order some desert now.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

lubby-hunkins rocks.

Restaurant twist is MMM nice.

Was the husband really a corpse or was that a literary device?

-Brihac

Anonymous said...

Literary device