Super Meals: Part Fourteen

“Bullshit,” said Mimi. Walter had just finished telling her about his afternoon, starting with the special order cheerful meal and the feeling of lead in his stomach when he finished eating and then how he’d ripped the door off his car (at which point he paused to consider that he’d left his now-doorless car at the restaurant and by now it had almost certainly been vandalized, stolen, sexually assaulted, or all three) and then ran to the wrecking yard and was chased away by dogs and then found the hobo camp with the bloodstains which grossed him out and made him throw up before he passed out on the swing-set and woke up to a good kicking from a bunch of guys who he could only assume were gang members before Mimi found him and saved his life.

Mimi didn’t want to believe him, so she said “Bullshit.” It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, he knew enough about the hobo camp and the bloodstain that at least that part of the story was true, but she didn’t want to think of the super strength.

The super strength made her think of the super hearing.

The super hearing made her think of Jane.

Jane made her think of happier times that were well in the past.

“Look, I know it sounds like bullshit, but I swear it’s all true,” said Walter. “I don’t know how it happened, really, but now I’m afraid of what’s going to happen the next time I eat there.”

“So don’t eat there,” said Mimi.

“But what if it’s not the food? What if there’s something wrong with me?”

“I doubt that,” said Mimi. She was about to add something about the hobo, his super hearing, and the fast food remains that had been found with him, but she stopped herself. Legally-speaking, the details of the case were available to the public, but she wasn’t about to volunteer anything. “I mean, everybody knows that the food at these fast-food joints are just processed chemicals and nobody else is getting super strong from eating there. We’d have heard about something like that, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so…” said Walter, but his heart wasn’t in it. He knew what he’d done and how he’d felt and what had happened to him, he just didn’t know why.

Frankly, the idea terrified him.

“But what if…” he continued. “What if it happens again? What if I eat something and…I dunno, my biceps explode? Or I end up hurting somebody?”

They’d reached Walter’s apartment building and Mimi pulled up to the curb. “Here,” she said, fishing a business card out of her pocket and handing it to him. “I tell you what, if you eat there again and you get more super strength or laser vision or you get a Cajun accent and start throwing playing cards or some other gay super power, call me. I’ll come over and shoot you.”

“What!?”

Mimi smiled. “I’m kidding, I’d only shoot you if you proved a harm to yourself or others…although with super powers like those, I’m absolutely certain you would be a harm to yourself and others, so I could, technically, shoot you and it would be ruled justifiable. But really, I’ll come over and talk you down or whatever.”

“Really?” asked Walter.

“Sure,” Mimi sighed. “Now get out of my car, I’m tired and want to go home, myself.”

“Thanks,” said Walter. “And thanks for saving me earlier, I appreciate it.”

Mimi gave him a salute as he climbed out of the car and shut the door. She watched him walk up to his apartment, unlock the door, and give a wave from the front door before going in, then pulled away and headed for home.

His bag of food was still on the floor of her car.