#ultrapigmented | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fortey · 8 years ago

Text

Pigboy Saves the World

I haven’t written a short story in ages...

Pigboy’s Mega Piggy Platter featuring the UltraPig Thunder Munch burger, a sandwich with three quarter pound, all-beef patties made with no preservatives, three slices of American cheese, nine slices of bacon, a tomato slice, three pickle chips, three onion rings, ketchup, mustard and Pigboy’s own Secret Pig Drippings, a proprietary sauce that was probably mayo with garlic mixed in, was ungodly The platter also came with a large order of fries, a large fountain drink and a small sundae for dessert. It was not Pigboy’s best seller (that was the Bigboy Pigboy combo) but it was popular with hungry patrons. Carlos was making two of them right now.

There was a precise order in which one had to assemble an UltraPig. The Secret Pig Drippings had to go on the top bun first, then ketchup, then mustard. Cheese went on each patty then a pickle, then the onion ring, then the bacon, unless it was the top patty in which case you put the tomato under the onion ring. None of this concerned Carlos at all.

Having worked at this Pigboy location for five years, Carlos could probably assemble an entire arena’s worth of Ultrapigs without even opening his eyes. Muscle memory made him do it, the tragic PTSD sort of muscle memory one gets from compulsively masturbating or, in this case, assembling burgers of subpar quality for subpar customers for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for five years. If Carlos’ math was correct, and he’d used the calculator on his phone to do it, he’d worked for nearly 10,500 hours. That was literally over a year. An entire, non-stop year. Here, at Pigboys. Carlos had become the living embodiment of Pigboy.

Carlos made no sound as he took the finished burger and began wrapping it in the waxed paper he had assembled it on. The Mad Hatter grin of a neon pink pig grimaced at him from a cartoonish ring under the word “Pigboy’s.” Below the pig was the Pigboy slogan “Let’s rustle up some grub!” It was the worst slogan in fast food. It was the worst slogan in business. Rustle up some grub was something a cowboy might have said, it had nothing to do with pigs. It silently infuriated Carlos but he gave no outward sign of it.

Wrapping the second burger, Carlos put both on the tray with the fries and drinks and Sonia, the elderly cashier who was the only person who had worked here longer than he had took it and gave it to the customer. The customer was someone Carlos recognized, a man who ate here every day at the same time and always ordered the same order. Two Mega Piggy Platters with root beers. According to the company website, this meal rocked in at about 6000 calories. That the man wasn’t dead was nothing short of astounding.

In the kitchen with Carlos was a teenage girl named Eunice, a name which no teenage girl was supposed to have. She went to a nearby highschool and usually worked three shifts a week. She had a nose piercing and kept her hair in a ponytail. It was the color of a mouse, which is to say brown but not a pleasant brown. It was the brown of an animal that carries disease to the already weak and infirm. Also one of her eyebrows was thicker than the other, which had the effect of making her look like she was constantly questioning everything. She spoke often to Carlos about how her Spanish class sucked, assuming that because Carlos’ name was Carlos he would be interested in all things Spanish. He had stopped speaking to her after she insisted on using the word “loco” in casual conversation. She had yet to notice and would talk at him for hours on end some days.

Also in the kitchen was Brice Bigelow, a man who also had a name no person should legitimately have. Brice Bigelow was the name of a man who sells you a car with faulty brakes. In this case, however, it was the name of the Pigboy’s manager. Brice had worked at this location for about two years. He had transferred in from Brighton where he “made things happen” as he put it. His job was to make things happen here. In two years all he had made happen was burgers, which would have happened regardless.

Brice had hair so blonde is was almost white, and his face was round and pie-like. He had very red cheeks like he had just stopped running and was flushed from effort, no matter what he had just been doing, and his lips were too chubby for his face. He snorted when he laughed and would often steal food and clock extra hours he hadn’t worked. One time Carlos caught him loading two cases of burger patties into the trunk of his car. He had explained to Carlos that they had expired and he was taking them back to the warehouse. Carlos nodded at the bullshit story. He couldn’t care less if Brice stole the toilet from the men’s room.

Aside from Sonia there was one other cashier working, a college student named Leah. If Leah were not wearing the pink and white Pigboy uniform and were allowed to dress in human clothes as is the custom outside of fast food restaurants she would be stunning. She had raven black hair and high cheekbones and was probably the most beautiful human in existence, a fact which Carlos had noticed frequently. Leah was, most days, his only motivation for coming to work. That and his fear of homelessness should he not be able to pay his rent someday. Oh, and the other thing.

Leah was studying social work, a topic about which Carlos knew little as things of a social nature tended to give him stomach cramps. She was very congenial in nature and would smile at Carlos when she came to work, and he would sometimes remember to smile back and other times stare dumbfounded until her expression grew wary and he realized he was being offputting again. Carlos was often offputting.

Contrary to popular belief, Carlos was not creepy. Sure, he had his moments, but who didn’t? He wasn’t an obsessed stalker though. And also, since Leah had a boyfriend, Carlos did not put much effort into trying to juggle or breakdance or whatever it was that would woo a lady these days. If life were an 80s movie surely Carlos would destroy Leah’s boyfriend in some sort of shaming match and win her heart, but in point of fact her boyfriend, James, was an exceedingly pleasant and handsome fellow. He looked like a model and had a winning smile and while Carlos was prepared to hate him in principle he would often bring Carlos a coffee and chat to him about gaming or the news and laugh in a way that made you feel warm inside, even if you weren’t gay. He was a great guy and Leah was smart to have forged a relationship with him. Their children would probably be so stunningly attractive that they’d never have to put effort into anything for their entire lives.

All of the minutiae of work was very inconsequential to Carlos. While Leah was a delight and the money, though paltry, was welcome, the most compelling reason Carlos had for spending literally over a year of his life at Pigboy’s was saving the world. Each and every single day, except for 2 weeks vacation per year and Fridays and Sundays (unless he traded shifts), Carlos saved the world. It got dicey on the days he was away, and the world came very close to ending, but he was usually back in time.

In the back of the Pigboy’s kitchen was a very large walk-in fridge. Pigboy used fresh beef, never frozen, so there had to be room for a lot of meat as well as the various other ingredients used to slap together one of their vaguely edible treats. Just to the left of the large aluminum rack that held the boxes of burger patties, if you were to look carefully enough, you’d see a black crack in the white fridge wall. At about 3 inches in length and an indeterminate depth, it certainly wasn’t a huge attention grabber, especially since it was also at shin height. It was also a gateway through which interdimensional chaos entities appeared with some regularity and if one were to make it out of the fridge, the Earth would probably last for maybe two days tops before all life was sapped from the world and all that remained was a swirling miasma of warped reality and solidified panic.

The crack in the wall had formed during Carlos’ first week on the job. Some irresponsible individual had dropped a tomato in the fridge and not properly cleaned up. This resulted in Carlos slipping through the tomato mulch and grabbing the aluminum rack for balance. The rack, not meant for such herky jerky movement, buckled and collapsed into the wall. Carlos would later come to learn that as aluminum rack hit aluminum wall it just so happened that, on an extra-dimensional plane that overlapped with our own in precisely that same location, a chaos entity and a confluence of divine order were clashing in an existential sort of MMA match. The chaos entity had managed to get the upper hand and was in the process of both siphoning the energy from the divine confluence as well as unmaking it from existence when the effort of such a thing popped it through a hole in reality like a rabbit popping up in your garden. That hole was in the fridge. That pop hit Carlos right in the substantive part of his extra-dimensional self, which is kind of like a soul if it was made of phyllo dough and exists in many places at once but often in a state beyond consciousness. And the two mixed like chocolate syrup and milk. And that made Carlos into a tall drink of reality-protecting divinity. Which meant he had to routinely go to the Pigboy’s fridge and battle very dangerous though oddly tiny chaos entities in an effort to save the world.

As luck would have it, the cosmic scales of justice are overseen by para-dimensional energy fluctuations that have adapted a kind of consciousness as a necessary form of being and not being at the same time. Those fluctuations maintain a system of order in the way that rainfall maintains an system of order by always falling down. Yeah, gravity plays a part there too but ignore that. Point is, the fluctuations flow in and of all things because they do, even the chaos entities which are constantly trying to disrupt that order in a very contradictory way. And that means they follow rules. And one of those rules is that Carlos gets two days a week off. Not too shabby.

“I’m going to rotate the stock,” Carlos said, partially to Brice and partially to no one. That was his convenient excuse or saving the world. Someone had to make sure the tomatoes stayed fresh.

Inside the fridge, Carlos approached the small crack. It was black and unassuming just like always. Humans typically could not see chaos entities, or anything extra-dimensional for that matter but Carlos merged with the divine confluence could see a lot of things. For instance, as he watched, the tiny crack flashed an electric blue, and a very small beast made of many, many tentacles and many more mouths slowly began to lurch itself free, like an octopus trying to fit itself into a water bottle, a thing Carlos had once seen in a Youtube video.

As was customary, Carlos first gave the chaos entity the opportunity to divest itself of negative intentions and return to its own dimension. “Chaos entity, I offer you this one opportunity to divest yourself of negative intentions and return to your own dimension,” he said quietly, not wanting Brice to overhear. As expected, the chaos entity spewed forth a string of otherworldly profanity which, to human ears, sounded vaguely like bubbling farts and bird song. In five years not a single one had taken Carlos up on his offer.

The chaos entity writhed forth, a nightmare of dark energies and pseudo-flesh forged from negativity and solidified fear. They felt a lot like rubber. That the entity was adapted to the size of the dimensional rift made Carlos’ job somewhat easier than perhaps it should have been, as destroying a dimensional squid monster that’s the size of a cookie is really quite easy.

Carlos grabbed the entity before it pulled itself fully free and squeezed, crushing the tiny monster like a bug. The pan-dimensional residue it left on his hand was slimy and warm and reminded him of pudding each and every time due to the ominous scent of butterscotch that came with it. Carlos wiped his hand on a rag and reorganized the tomatoes. Crisis averted for another day.

Leaving the fridge, Carlos returned to wrapping burgers for the final hour of his shift. Tomorrow he would return and crush another chaos entity. And the day after that. And the next day he had off. Sometimes he wondered if the divine confluence was going to make him immortal and he’d have to work at this Pigboy’s forever. Sometimes he wondered if he was not immortal who would then save the world when he was gone. He didn’t know. It would probably sort itself out, though.

#shorts

2 notes · View notes