Food for Thought

FOOD FOR THOUGHT by JULIE ADCOCK

 Contest for Reedsy Blog

Francis and I were sitting comfortably in a booth at her favorite restaurant, Pop’s Kitchen. She was intently looking at the menu. You’d think she had never been there before if you went by how long she was taking to decide on what to eat. Except she ate there at least twice a month.  It did not take me long at all since the only healthy thing they offered was a house salad, to which you could add fried chicken.

“Come on, Francis!” I exclaimed, putting down the menu and ready to order. “Please pick something! I do not want the waiter to come back again a third time to see if we’re ready to place our order”. 

Francis completely ignored me and continued to look through the 3-page menu. She then slowly lifted her eyes and asked my opinion. “Should I get the Pop’s fried egg burger, or the Buffalo wings, Maya?”.

I was not a fan of either one, so I replied, with a bit of exasperation in my voice: “Just get whichever you’re in the mood for.” 

“Ok, I will go with the burger and onion rings. Do you want some loaded potato skins to share?”

“Absolutely not! I am not that hungry, and my salad will be enough” I said.

“Well, I am very hungry. All I had for breakfast was a couple of pieces of toast and a banana.”

“Did you have coffee?” I asked with suspicion.

“Well, coffee doesn’t count. I only had a cup anyway”. Francis said defensively. I thought about the large cup of coffee she normally drank. It had to be at least 20 ounces and 10 or more of those were creamer and sugar.

When the waiter came again Francis ordered her meal and I ordered the house salad sans the fried chicken.

After we both finished eating our lunch, we were walking back to the office through the park that was conveniently located across from the office. The restaurant was also located across from the small park, only it was on the north side while the office was on the south side. All in all, the short walk was only 9 minutes long at a normal pace.

I looked at Francis and noticed that she was huffing and puffing trying to keep up with me and sweating profusely even though the temperature was a mild 74 degrees. I couldn’t contain myself anymore and I had to tell her, for her own good, that she really needed to get in shape and start changing the way she ate. She was borderline obese and at 38 years old, already showing signs of poor health, a bad back and problems on both knees.

We’ve been working for the same company for the last 10 years and had developed a close friendship. However, we could not be any more different in almost every possible way. She is tall, I am short; she is slow, and I am fast (not just physically); she is overweight, I am fit; she is carefree and I am careful. But the biggest difference between us is that she refuses to own up to her poor choices and I like to take responsibility for my mistakes, and I also change the things that I do that affect me negatively. In short, she is self-destructing, and I am ensuring a long, healthy, and rewarding life.

For instance, she complained about being hot and tired after that short walk back to the office. Blamed it all on the weather or the shoes she was wearing instead of admitting that she is overweight and should not continue to eat everything fried or full of fat. 

“Francis, I am going to tell you this only because you are my friend and I care about you. You must stop eating burgers, fried chicken, wings and French fries for every meal or you’re headed for an early grave.” I said with concern in my voice and hoping I did not offend her.

“What do you mean, Maya? I eat a lot of different things and anyway, life is too short to be worrying about this type of thing.” She said without an ounce of hurt or indignation. She went on: “I think people that are always worried about what they eat, end up depressed and die young.” 

I could not believe what I was hearing. I am not sure what kind of reports she was basing that information on, but of course, it is totally false. It has been proven time and time again, that obesity and people with high body fat are more likely to die of a heart attack, diabetes and develop all other kinds of medical problems and die younger than their healthier counterparts. Francis was obviously delusional, and I decided to make sure she had the correct information concerning obesity and how it robbed people of longevity. 

As soon as we were back in the office, I went straight to my computer, signed into the internet, and did a few searches on the subject. I printed all of them and put them neatly in a folder and handed them to her as we were headed to our cars in the office parking lot at the end of the workday.

She could not hide the surprise when she took the envelope. She looked through its contents and smiled at me while thanking me for taking the time to put those articles together. She said she would read them later tonight after dinner.

I felt a bit guilty that she was so nice about it. I brushed off the feelings telling myself that I did it for her own good. That’s right, I should be proud of myself for being so honest and putting her wellbeing above the awkwardness that she may feel when being confronted with her obesity.

Even though it was only 5:30 or so, a brightness so extreme, as if the sun had been put through a magnifying glass and set to shine directly above the two of us, surrounded Francis and me. Simultaneously, a wind like a tornado was circling around us and it made all the papers in the folder to fly out and spin in a circle before being pulled in an upward direction as if sucked up by a vacuum. We both gasped in surprise and looked up at the same time. 

“Francis, we are not alone!” I exclaimed.

Right at that moment, I felt a strange pressure on the top of my head. Across from me I could see that Francis had what appeared to be a giant metal pipe, but flexible like a tentacle, with a suction cup on her head. As I realized that the same thing must be on my head, we both started to leave the ground obviously being pulled up by these metal pipes. As my body and my legs dangled, I felt like I was in a horrific ride at an amusement park. I did not dare look down. We must be at least 500 feet above the earth now.

Francis’ horrified look mirrored my own and as she looked up, my eyes followed suit. The only thing I could make out inside the unnatural, blinding light, was the darkness of the pipes swinging above us. They looked like they were getting shorter and shorter and next thing I knew, we were swinging back and forth in the wind. I was so scared of falling that I could not even scream but I definitely heard Francis let out a big yell as we both got flipped up by these pipes and thrown into what had to be some sort of spaceship.

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I am not sure how much time had elapsed from the time we got picked up and placed inside the aircraft, until the moment I woke up drowsily. I felt as if I had slept for days. I had a hard time getting my eyes to focus but once they did, what I saw all around me was very confusing, almost shocking. 

First, I had been asleep but not laying down as usual. Instead, I was standing straight up, arms limp at each side, and my whole body seemed to be glued to the wall behind me, including my head. Second, I was inside a rectangular glass box. Last, and most weird of all, there were hundreds of the same boxes stacked all around me in this huge room. Each box contained a person, but no children that I could see. It made me think of boxes of Barbie and Ken dolls stacked up on the shelves of a department store. Even though there were shelves in this room, there were no isles, just one big open space surrounded by these glass boxes stacked up 3 high all against the walls.

I was not sure what I expected but certainly some display of emotion from everyone inside the boxes, such as confusion, frustration, fear or even anger at being trapped. However, all I saw from everyone was just the movement of their eyes as they looked side to side and blinked from time to time, a bit more often than normal.

Approximately five minutes later, I was starting to feel a bit panicked at the inability to do anything other than look around, when I spotted Francis. She was inside a box that was directly across from me but instead of being on the second box from the bottom, as I was, she was on the bottom one with two other boxes stacked on top containing a man and an older woman on each. After a little while of looking at her, she locked eyes with me, and instead of the warm smile I normally saw in her face when she would see me, all I saw was the same emotionless stare that everyone in the boxes displayed.

I had my eyes closed trying to calm myself when I felt a strange vibration go through my whole body. I quickly opened my eyes and saw that the floor opened and up out of it came this platform with 3 terrifying gray beings in the middle of it. They were all about 7 feet tall, had two arms, two legs and what appeared to be a tail. Their heads were disproportionately large, and they had black circles all around the upper front and top part of their heads that seem to be their eyes. No nose, no ears, and no mouth. Their arms and legs were very long, and both ended in what seemed to be two fingers with suction cups on their tips, this was also the case with the tail that came out from the middle of their back. On the front of their midsection, there was a horizontal line that looked like very thing lips.

Once the platform was fully out of the floor, the vibration I had felt stopped. The aliens, I suppose that’s what they were, stood motionless for what seemed like an eternity. Their skin had an ashen appearance and the eyes at the top of their heads were glossy and moist, like small, black oil pools.

They simultaneously got off the platform and with the things that looked like suction cups, they started to glide smoothly on the floor towards the glass boxes. Each going to a different wall. I could see the one that was heading to the wall directly across from me, as it was gliding over to the far right of the wall. However, I could no longer see the one heading to my own wall; it was out of my field of vision, too far to my right.

I changed my focus to the one I could see. It was using its “hands” to feel the outside of each glass box as it approached it. It would stay with each box for 3 or 4 minutes then move to the next one. Its arms seem to be able to stretch and then retract whenever it needed to reach the ones on the middle and the top.  I thought I could see the terror on some of the people’s eyes as their boxes were being inspected by the alien. To my own horror I watched as some of them started to vanish into thin air shortly after their box was touched by the creature.

I could feel my heart beat faster and faster as I caught a glimpse of the creature on my side slowly appear on my peripheral vision, to my right and slightly below me. I was petrified both outwardly and on the inside as I saw its grotesque hands and fingers reach up to my box and press on the glass. I could see the moistened skin spread on the glass, and it made me think of the gooey slime that I used to play with as a kid. The stuff you could store in a small container and take out to squeeze or throw to the wall so it could stick on it.

My thoughts were brought back to reality when words that had not been spoken, were clearly heard in my mind.

“This one might be a keeper. I am glad I found another one. It seems to be getting harder and harder to find anything edible in this planet. No signs of damage to the skin. No bruises and no infection.”

I took my eyes off the fingers for a minute and looked across the room to Francis’s box just in time to see her disappear. The words in my head kept going and it did not help get my heartbeat back to a normal rhythm.

“So many are too plump or too dried up and wrinkled. This one is just right, my scanner shows that it has the right amount of fat content and therefore it will be the best combination of tender outside with crunchiness on the inside. Thran! Lorx!, Come look at this one!”

I saw the other two creatures glide from where they were to each side of the one with its fingers on my box. Now I could hear all their thoughts in my head.

“Kreth! I think you’re right! This one is the best I have seen! We’re not sending this one back!” I heard one say.

“Should we get it out to try it?” Another one said.

“Let me think about that; even though it looks so great, not sure it would be a good idea to eat it raw.”

At this point I was losing it. They were talking, I mean communicating about me as if I was food. I tried to break free but no matter how hard I will myself to move, nothing happened. All I could move were my eyes.

It finally dawned on me that the reason they had let the others go, Francis included, was because of their high fat body content. Tears started rolling down my cheeks as I thought about all those times that I turned down pasta, fried chicken, donuts, cake, and everything else really worth eating.

Right at that moment, the aliens extended their arms towards my box and somehow removed the front part of the box. I saw their beady black eyes blinking rapidly and their lips on the midsection open and a black tongue, fat like a parrot’s came out and as their arms pulled me out towards them, I remember what Francis said: “I think people that are always worried about what they eat, end up depressed and die young.” Francis was right, on both counts.

The End.