The Taco Bell Fiasco

It was the beginning of the end.

The thought came automatically. The moment that Jake took Exit 217, Veronica knew where he was headed—Taco Bell. Every time… e.v.e.r.y. t.i.m.e. that they went out for a drink, it would turn into three, and the House of Americanized Burrito became a stop on the way back. On each occasion, disaster awaited them within the next few hours.

No, it wasn’t always like you assume it was, dear reader. I’m sure you think that the following paragraphs will be filled with fart jokes and stories of inconsolable, explosive diarrhea. That would be easy to deal with: open a window, turn on a vent fan, or duct tape his ass to the toilet. Sigh. Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

“Please don’t,” Veronica pleaded. “You can’t do this again. We got a letter from the homeowners association last time.”

Jake laughed maniacally. He always did this when he was buzzed—still sober enough to drive, but sufficiently intoxicated to shift into a higher personality gear. The man rolled down his window and hollered into the interstate-induced wind stream, “THE HOA CAN SUCK MY DEEEEEYOCKKKKKKKK.”

His wife buried her face in her hands and slowly shook her head. She wouldn’t get much sleep tonight. As the two pulled into the drive-through, Veronica pulled out her phone and texted her sister. “I’m going to need you to bring me the ladder, a rope, two rolls of duct tape, and some bolt cutters.”

The text bubbles popped up immediately. A moment later, the response came through. “Is Jake at Taco Bell again??”

“Yep”

“Crap. How many beers has he had?”

“Three”

“OMW”

Meanwhile, Veronica’s husband had leaned out the window and was having an in-depth conversation with the menu board. Unfortunately, they were still a car back from the speaker, and the driver in the first car was desperately trying to order over Jake’s enthusiastic ramblings.

“I’d like a Cheesy Gordita Crunch…”

“WOOOHOOOO!!! WRAP DAT MEAT IN YO CHEEEEEEESY SAUCE!!!” Jake began thrusting his hips against the steering wheel enthusiastically.

“…and a chicken quesadilla…”

“OHHH, YOU WANT A QUEASY DOLLA?? YOU DIRTY BOY!!” The slightly inebriated driver pulled a handful of change out of the center console, transferred it to his left hand, and rapidly shook it to and fro. “DIS MONEY BE SO MOTION SICK IT BE ONE QUEASY DOLLA!!”

Veronica buried her face further in her hands, turning beet red.

Jake hurled the coins at the now-departing vehicle. It was fortunate for him that he missed; otherwise, the driver’s noticeable relief at completing his order and intense concentration on leaving the immediate vicinity might have transformed into more irate emotions. The couple’s automobile rolled forward, and they were soon at the order screen.

Jake chuckled. “Hey babe, watch this.” Veronica lifted her head to look at him and saw the toddler-level mischief plastered on his expression. Her husband faked a thick Southern drawl, then faced the speaker.

“Welcome to Taco Bell. May I take your order?” The feminine voice on the other end belonged to someone who was either confused by the previous mixed order and giving the newcomers the benefit of the doubt, or was a world-class customer service rep. Either way, there was nothing but innocent enthusiasm in her voice.

“Yeeaaaahhh, y’all got any o’ them there pink tacos?” Jake turned toward Veronica and winked.

“Ummm, no, sir. We have soft and hard tacos.”

Jake’s juvenile laughter filled the car. “Awwww, I bet y’all do. Now Imma need a number 4, a number 7, and a number 69.”

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no 69.”

“Yeeeaaahhhh, I get that from my wife all the time.” Veronica punched Jake’s arm as he recoiled in mock agony. “But if you HAD a number 69, what do you think it should be?”

There was a brief pause before the response came. “I don’t understand.”

Jake’s fake drawl thickened, the very tone as dense as sweet tea. “Aight, sugar pie, lemme ask you a question. If you was the CEO of this here yonder Taco Bellio, and you had to come up with a number 69, what would you put in it?”

Another awkward silence. “You want me to invent an order for you to order it?”

“YAHTZEE!!” Jake’s enthusiasm grew into a near scream.

“Well, I’d say you needed 14 bean burritos, 26 soft tacos, 28 hard tacos, and a black bean burrito.” The cashier had begun to giggle, and her laughter came through in her voice.

“Yeeeeahh, gimme one o’ them. That’ll be it!”

“Your order comes to $119.74. Please pull up to the next window.”

As the car began to roll forward, Veronica looked at the driver with incredulity. “What in the world are you going to do with that many tacos and burritos??” Jake’s goofy grin had already spread across his face. “Hell if I know, but we ain’t letting it go to waste!!”

After he’d paid (and only let one remark slip about how much better a 69 was when a black burrito was involved), the cashier handed him three bags loaded with faux Mexican food. Jake stacked them all on Veronica’s lap with a satisfied smirk. He didn’t say a word, just smiled that idiotic expression that said he’d reverted to an odd combination of a two-year-old, 15-year-old, and 21-year-old boy that emphasized the most immature aspects of each. By this time, his wife sighed in acceptance, knowing that the events of the night had already started. There was no stopping this train wreck now.

Forty-five minutes later, Veronica’s sister arrived. She parked, exited her truck quickly, and began walking toward Veronica, who was standing in the front yard with a flashlight pointed up in the tree. “What’s he doing??” Cassidy asked the question without even seeing Jake; she knew that’s where he had to be.

Veronica sighed. “He’s making a swing.”

“WHAT?!? It’s 1 in the morning!”

Another sigh. “Trust me, I know. Last time, he…”

Her words were interrupted by a shout from the branches above. “OK BABE, CATCH THIS!” A rope dropped from the heights of the tree, followed immediately by a Tarzan-style yodeling shout.

“You said he had only three beers???” Cassidy’s surprise was apparent.

“Yeah,” came the response. “AT the bar. The moment we got home, he wolfed down three soft tacos and a black bean burrito, then five shots of Fireball. We’re fucked.”

“HEY BABE, YOU GOT THE DUCT TAPE?!” Veronica glanced over at her sister, who shook her head but retrieved one of the rolls from the truck, handing it to the relatively calm but obviously exasperated wife. “Yes, hon. I have it.”

“WELL, TOSS IT UP!” Resigned to the ensuing events, Veronica threw the roll of gray tape toward the shadowy figure wedged in the crotch of a V-shaped branch. Jake caught it, then yelled back: “OK, NOW I NEED TWO OF THOSE BEAN BURRITOS!!”

“Babe, you don’t have to scream. I’m literally fifteen feet away.” As the woman walked toward the house, she heard an adolescent chuckle, followed by the sound of Jake’s drunken singing. “Do yo’ dick hang low, do it wobble to and fro, can you see it from the yard, alla fitteen feet below…” A few moments later, she returned with the required food items.

“Ok, I’ve got ‘em. What do I do now?”

“TOSS ‘EM UP!”

One after another, she threw the phallic Mexican food toward her obliterated husband. It took several tries this time, but Jake eventually managed to catch both. The sounds of unraveling duct tape, ripping, and Taco Bell wrapping paper crinkling followed for several moments. Cassidy inquisitively looked at her sister, who just shook her head in stoic acceptance.

Moments later, the juvenile giggling from above was interrupted with another request. “I NEED A FLASHLIGHT.”

His angelically supportive wife responded. “What size?”

“A BIG BLACK ONE. THE BIGGER AND BLACKER THE BETTER!!”

“Oh gawd…” she muttered as she headed toward the garage, then returned with a 5D Maglite. Veronica looked at her sister with an expression that was equal parts embarrassment, sarcasm, and resignation. “This is what he used last time.” Then, turning her attention, she said, “Tally ho!” and threw the metal tube in Jake’s direction. Once again, her aim was true.

In the moments that followed, the neighbors began to arrive. Awakened by the shouting, several came to watch the scene. “He drunk again?” old Mr. Johnson asked. “How many did he have?” nosy Sue from next door queried. “Taco Bell?” came the inquisitive statement from John, Jake’s best friend who had arrived with a shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

More sounds of duct tape unwrapping and ripping followed. It couldn’t have been more than a minute before Jake shouted, “Y’ALL READY TO MEET TYRONE PEDRITO THE THIRD?!?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled up the end of the rope he’d previously tied off, then repeated the Tarzan yodel. As absurd as his previous shenanigans had been, no one below was prepared for the sight that followed.

A pale, nearly nude male figure swung from the tree, completing a near-perfect arc. The only part of him that could be called clothed consisted of several strips of duct tape wrapped around his thighs, anchoring two burritos that hung out in front of his crotch and the now-lit Maglite that extended rearward from between his naked butt cheeks.

As the neighborhood watch filled its role in stunned silence, Jake began his return arc. That’s when everyone noticed the plastic bag hanging from one arm, from whence the yodeling nudist withdraw soft tacos and began launching them at his audience. “TYROOOOONE PEDRITOOOOOOOO” came the wafting screams as the torrent of soft tacos rained down as the third arc began.

By this point, everyone had shifted into defensive postures. Mr. Johnson lifted his cane and began swinging it like a geriatric D’Artagnan, Sue dove for the hydrangeas while Veronica and Cassidy sprinted in the other direction. John, the lone holdout, was attempting to catch tacos and toss them back, apparently considering the sport of denuded pinata launching worth the risk of being nailed with greasy tacos. To be fair, he was doing a rather spectacular job. One of the quasi-Mexican delicacies found its mark square in the middle of Tyrone Pedrito the Third’s back, while another slapped him across the face, leaving a trail of hamburger meat and lettuce across TPIII’s maniacal features.

Realizing both the sport and danger posed to him by his cannon-armed neighbor, Jake began a series of contortions that would have certainly landed him at least the silver medal in men’s gymnastics at the Olympics. All of the onlookers stopped and stared in awe at the flyaway that immediately transitioned to a double layout and finished in a momentary front giant.

The unfortunate side effect of Jake’s gyrations was that it changed the direction of his swing. Already twisting in a slightly counter-clockwise fashion, the rapid shifts had altered his arcs by a full 45 degrees. This put him on a collision course with two things: Mr. Johnson, and Fate.

Despite his cataracts, the elderly neighbor was acutely aware of motion and had lost none of his mental faculties. This includes the renowned “fight or flight” response, which dictates that when a mortal threat is swinging toward your melon, the physical reaction is to push it away. And when one has a cane, that automatically becomes an extension of one’s hands.

Tyrone Pedrito the Third’s twisting motion had oriented him to face away from Mr. Johnson. The commotion had also partially inverted him, angling him in an ungainly fashion for a direct collision with Fate. The gap closed. Mr. Johnson’s survival instincts drove his cane forward. Even with poor eyesight, it’s difficult to miss the shining spotlight of a 5D Maglite—unfortunately situated perfectly between Jake’s butt cheeks—and Fate combined with subconscious reactions to foster a rather calamitous encounter.

Mr. Johnson pushed.

Tyrone Pedrito the Third swung astern.

Veronica, Cassidy, Sue, and John gasped.

In some unknown realm, Fate laughed maniacally.

The night’s first casualty occurred.

The shrill scream that issued forth from the Tarzan facsimile could be described as nothing short of what a Hollywood sound editor would have deemed a personification of Terror. Knocked backward by TPIII’s insuppressible momentum, Mr. Johnson was flung rearward into the hydrangea bushes.

Where Sue was hiding.

Fate claimed its second and third victims with enthusiasm. 

John, intent on helping his two injured neighbors, spun toward them when Fate turned its attention on him. Jake’s reaction to being… manhandled… was to spiral in the accelerated version of his former gymnastic feats. This put him in a (quite literal) tailspin, and the rotation swung what was formerly Mr. Johnson’s (and now, indisputably, Jake’s) cane toward John’s head.

The fourth casualty of the night collapsed.

Veronica and Cassidy, having retreated to the relative safety of the driveway, stared slack-jawed at the graphic scene unfolding before them. A moment of subconscious sibling clairvoyance joined their minds as one, and both turned to sprint toward Cassidy’s truck. Jake’s wife seized the bolt cutters while her sister hoisted the ladder. That’s where the telepathic connection was severed.

If they had paused to discuss their intentions, they would have realized that their goals landed at opposite ends of the spectrum. Veronica intended to sever the rope, dropping Jake immediately. Cassidy assumed they would set up the ladder and gently rescue him from his perch.

As often occurs with contradictory attempts, neither happened.

Veronica reached the tree first and immediately set upon the rope. Cassidy was mere steps behind her, the ladder hoisted on her shoulder like an adrenaline-fueled firefighter dashing towards a raging inferno. TPIII was once again reaching the height of his arc, screaming like a banshee and twisting frantically as he began his return swing.

The next three events occurred simultaneously.

Veronica cut the rope, unhinging Jake from his uncontrolled careening. Jake continued in the direction he had been headed but added a rapid descent to his forward motion. Cassidy, the ladder hoisted on her shoulder, swung to position it for a rescue.

Jake’s forehead met the aft end of the ladder with such force that it knocked him senseless. Propelled by his momentum, the ladder swung clockwise, and its perch upon Cassidy’s shoulders was ideally situated to greet the equal height of her sister. Knocked unconscious by the ladder, Veronica tossed the bolt cutters backward, nailing Cassidy in the back of her skull.

In the ensuing silence, one could almost picture Fate’s invisible figure strolling past his fifth, sixth, and seventh victims and chuckling with satisfaction. After all, even immortal forces must find their humor somewhere, and after millennia of interaction with homo sapiens, Fate’s jocularity had reached “full buffoonery” levels.

It was Officer Johnson’s first night patrolling the small town, and he had enthusiastically responded to the noise complaint in a nearby suburban neighborhood. He was about to discover that police academy, with all of its emphasis on attention to detail, hadn’t come close to preparing him for the sight that lay before his eyes as he exited the patrol car.

For a moment, the man paused in stunned silence. He grasped for his radio and managed to find it on his third swipe. “Uhhh… uhh…multiple code 187s! It’s a massacre!!”

The rest of the town’s night shift police force, as well as half the volunteer fire department and two ambulances, arrived on the scene promptly. The ambulances had to make four trips each before everyone involved had been transported to the local hospital. At the same time, Officer Johnson and his associates attempted to make sense of the incoherent and contradictory statements of those who had started to regain consciousness.

Within twenty minutes, the on-shift police supervisor arrived. He exited his patrol vehicle, then walked up to the young cop. “What in the world of three-toed bare-backed berry pickers is going on here?? I can’t make heads or tails over what’s being said on the radio.”

Johnson swallowed, then wiped his brow with a combination of nervousness and frustration. “Sir, all I can make out is that somebody got anal plugged by an order 69 from Taco Bell, and an alleged perpetrator named…” the officer flipped several pages back in his patrol book, “…Tyrone Pedrito, who was apparently demon-possessed, turned into a Tarzan turd tornado and leveled everyone.”

His supervisor stared at him in disbelief. “Say what?”

Johnson shrugged, resigned to the fact that he’d be on night patrol until he retired. “You’ve got me, sir. It started as a noise complaint. When I got here, I thought everyone was dead.”

A month later, Veronica and Jake appeared in court, both represented by their respective divorce attorneys. The courtroom was silent as the judge finished flipping through the last page of documentation. He glanced up, his gaze shifting between the two parties. With a sigh of amused exasperation, he finally settled on Jake. “Well, do you have anything to say in response to this?”

Veronica’s soon-to-be-ex-husband had always been relatively unflappable and capable of taking everything in stride. With a wry smile, he glanced toward his lover-turned-hater. “Only one thing, Your Honor.” There was a pause for dramatic effect, then he reached under the table to retrieve a large paper sack. “Does anyone want Taco Bell?”

And that, my friends, is how Veronica wound up in jail for homicide.

The Fiery Inferno of Love

This was an article I wrote for a client who used creative fiction pieces to teach English to ESL students. The only requirements I had were:

1. It had to start with the sentence “While the cashier was filling the bag with money, my gun started dripping water.”
2. It had to be very creative.
3. The total length of the article was 3,000 words.

What you will read below is the result of my addled brain left free to roam the infinite spaces of fictional storytelling on its own.

____________________________________________________________________

While the cashier was filling the bag with money, my gun started dripping water. I was shocked, to say the least. The salesman at the ice shop had guaranteed at least two hours before it began to thaw, and it hadn’t yet been half that since I walked out of his store. I looked up from the gun and saw the cashier’s eyes match my own movement: she stared at my pistol in a mixture of curiosity and confusion, then her glance drifted upward to meet mine.

I needed to create a distraction. “FILL THE BAG BEFORE I FREEZE YOUR ASSETS!” My scream reverberated in the convenience store, echoing off the walls of energy drinks and candy bars. I couldn’t believe what I had just said. Puns? Really? At a time like this? The cashier continued filling the bag with renewed vigor, and I noticed that beads of sweat had formed on her forehead. At first, I assumed it was due to nervousness from the extreme situation, but then I felt perspiration started to drip down the back of my neck as well. My mask began to grow uncomfortably hot, and I used my non-gun hand to pull it away from my face and breathe a bit easier. The temperature was rising quickly.

A series of small, intense explosions erupted behind me. The rapid staccato of what seemed like machine-gun fire caused me to drop to my knees and spin around, looking for the police assault team that was undoubtedly there, ready to disintegrate me into a thousand pieces. “Don’t shoot!” I shouted, hoping that my yells would pierce the reverberations and convince them that death was not the way my Tuesday afternoon should end. “I surrender!”

An eruption of potato chips from aisle three interrupted my sudden change of heart, and I realized that the steadily increasing heat had caused the air in the chip bags to expand to the point where they were exploding. A sudden shower of popcorn kernels from aisle four covered the small shop in a plethora of white puffs. I chuckled at myself, for a moment forgetting this wholly unnatural heatwave and focusing on the part I could now explain. I stood, brushed the greasy remnants of a bag of Doritos off my chest and shoulders, then turned to the cashier.

“Please continue,” I stated in a somewhat calmer manner than I’d felt a mere thirty seconds prior, when I’d collapsed on the ground, screaming like a little girl in a horror movie. “I’d like to complete my withdrawal.”

The poor girl was more confused than ever. A melting water pistol, exploding chip bags, and her assailant’s rapid mental shifts proved to be too much. She slammed the plexiglass window to her booth shut and collapsed on the floor. I begged and urged her to open the door again and surrender my bag, but to no avail. I watched her hand slowly reach up and turn the knob on the small window air conditioning unit in her booth, blasting cold air into the small space. I realized I was drenched with sweat, and my ice pistol had rapidly turned into a water pistol, which quickly transformed into no pistol at all.

I faced reality: I had no gun, no bag, no money, and I needed to leave—NOW. As I ran outside, the heat intensified tenfold, but it was focused on my back. I turned, one hand in front of my face to shield my admittedly handsome features from the fiery inferno. What I saw terrified me.

The skyscraper behind the convenience store had erupted into flames, and thick, black smoke was billowing from each of the windows across a span of five full stories. The plastic sign on top of the store I’d just exited was beginning to melt, and I knew that if I didn’t do something quickly, the girl inside would roast to death. I had no desire to see her harmed; despite my attempts at robbery just moments before, I was a genuinely nonviolent person—hence, the ice pistol that could have never imparted more damage than mild frostbite, and that only to me. I knew she would never listen to me if I warned her and assume anything I said would be a ruse, so action was required to save her. Despite the sounds of sirens in the distance, the fire department would never arrive in time. It was up to me, and me alone.

I glanced about for anything I could use. There was an apartment building with a row of cars lined up outside. Further down, an ice cream truck sat idle, its loudspeakers obnoxiously blaring the repetitive tones of “Do Your Ears Hang Low.” At the same time, the attendant stood outside, staring slack-jawed at the hellfire engulfing the building that was now behind me. Then, I saw it. A block down the street was a construction zone, with orange cones and temporary plastic fencing clearly marking its boundaries. Parked just outside was a dump truck that had recently arrived, ready to dump its load of fill dirt and take on another of concrete rubble. A plan rapidly began to form in my mind as I sprinted toward the truck.

Fifty meters later, I leaped into the driver’s seat, finding that the keys were still in the ignition. I cranked the truck, and it roared to life as thick, black smoke erupted from its exhaust. This smoke, however, signified what would hopefully be a lifesaving effort. I threw the truck into first gear, popped the clutch, and sped out of the construction site. The truck’s tires threw gravel and then screamed on the asphalt. As I shifted into second gear, the wheels finally gained traction, and the machine practically threw itself toward the fiery conflagration.

I sped past the ice cream truck, noticing in one of those moments of stark clarity that gallons of melted decadence were pouring out of the back of the vehicle. For a moment, I felt the bite of childhood nostalgia. I remembered all of those summer mornings sprinting after the deliverer of desserts in my neighborhood with a handful of nickels, eagerly pursuing a moment’s reprieve from the heat of the Arizona desert.

A scream interrupted my thoughts. As I snapped back to reality, I realized that a woman dressed in a business suit had been running across the street and was squarely in my path. I jerked the wheel hard to the left, my foot slamming on the brakes and spinning the rear of the truck in a counterclockwise direction. I came to a screeching halt a meter from her face, and she promptly fainted. I would have jumped out to save her, but the cashier in the convenience store was my rescue priority at the moment.

As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I realized that the woman’s arrival in the street had been fortuitous, indeed. I was lined up perfectly. In a row directly behind me were a fire hydrant, the convenience store, and what was now six stories of scorched building. Windows exploded from the heat, showering the sidewalks below with glass. The paint on the edges of the shop I’d exited just minutes before had begun to bubble, then melt. It was moments from catching fire, and there was no sign of the girl.

I threw the truck in reverse and launched it toward the building. Four seconds later, I felt the impact as I knocked over the hydrant, releasing thousands of pounds of pressure as a tower of water erupted skyward. Because of how the dump truck was situated, the water burst upward, hit the rear axle, and then the bed, angling it directly toward the building. Even a vehicle as heavy as this would typically have been shifted by the intense force of the blast, but the truck was (thankfully) still filled with dirt. This weight forced the vehicle down, keeping it in place as the frame guided the lifesaving water to the fire above.

I stepped from the cab to the street and looked back. The destroyed hydrant was doing its job beautifully: the fire was already beginning to retreat as the onslaught of water quenched the flames’ fury. I watched in wonder as the door to the convenience store opened, and the attendant stumbled outside, gasping for air as she coughed, her lungs filled with smoke. For a moment, pride filled my heart with the strength of a galloping horse, and I imagined that I could hear its hoofbeats.

‘Wow, this image is intense,’ I thought. I actually could hear hoofbeats, and it wasn’t just a single animal. The sound of a hundred hooves pounding the pavement in unison startled me from my fantasy. I peeked around the front bumper of the dump truck, and I was not prepared for the sight that met my eyes. Through the smoke and steam engulfing the street, a herd of goats rushed toward me, bleating in a mixture of fear and the triumph of recently-gained freedom.

It was then that I noticed that the businesswoman was still lying in the street where she’d passed out as my fifteen-ton instrument of convenience store salvation had hurtled toward her. She lay directly in the path of the galloping goats, and it would be mere seconds before they reached her. Without a moment to lose, I threw myself into a sprint. I arrived just in time, pulling her to safety beneath the dump truck as the crowd of billies and nannies roared past us.

I looked from whence they had come and saw a gooseneck trailer, its rear gate nearly destroyed and bent open. On the side of the truck that was hauling it were the words “Honest Al’s Organic Highway Trimming,” with a cartoon image of a bleating kid munching on a mouthful of grass next to an overpass. Well, at least that explained the goats.

I turned my attention to the woman I’d nearly killed and whose life I’d subsequently saved. Auburn hair framed her oval face, while the dampness of the air merely served to accentuate her freckles. There was something vaguely familiar about her features. Her eyes began to flitter open as the realization of who she was struck me as hard as if a billy goat had charged me. This was no businesswoman. This was Matilda Oppenheimer, a daytime soap opera star I’d had a crush on for three years.

My loving thoughts were interrupted by the sensation of a solid slap across my cheek. Miss Oppenheimer had awakened, and her feelings were noticeably less affectionate than my own. “What. Are. You. DOING??” The outrage she felt dripped from every word as thoroughly as the hydrant’s water that had drenched my face. “Get off of me!”

I immediately pulled back and she turned away, crawling from beneath the vehicle and struggling to get to her feet. Just then, I noticed two intimidating-looking thugs in black suits emerge from behind the ice cream truck. One pointed at Matilda and shouted something indiscernible, and both men began to sprint toward her. I screamed to warn her, but the noise from the fire, the water, and the receding herd of goats made it impossible to hear anything that was more than a few feet away. These men were obviously after her, and although I would typically have limited myself to saving a single life in a day, this damsel in distress was none other than the love of my life. I couldn’t just sit aside.

I glanced around in a panic, my eyes shifting to and fro as I searched for a solution. There it was: a shopping cart full of groceries that had tipped on its side at the curb, abandoned by its owner in the panic. I rolled from beneath the truck with all the grace of a Jason Statham action scene and sprinted toward the cart. The cart was half the distance from me that the men were from Matilda, and I reached it moments before they did her. Grabbing a can of sliced pineapples in one hand and a family-sized portion of cream of mushroom soup in the other, I rolled both toward the thugs with the suave sophistication of a professional bowler.

First one, then the other slipped on the rolling cans of deliverance that arrived beneath their feet with exquisite timing. Each launched skyward, propelled by their forward momentum that had been redirected by the canned goods from a horizontal motion to one that was decidedly vertical. I didn’t wait to see them land. I dumped the rest of the cans from the cart, righted it, then spun it around toward the lady in need of my rescue. Matilda had her back to the entire scene that had just unfolded. The men were slowly rising from where they had fallen, rubbing various bruises but appearing otherwise undeterred. There was not a moment to lose. I launched the cart forward, balancing precariously on the back bar with one foot while the other acted as a piston against the pavement, propelling me toward Miss Oppenheimer.

When I was ten meters away, I gave a shout. The actress’s head cocked to the side; she recognized her name, but couldn’t discern its source. Another scream erupted from my throat. This time she began to turn, but not in time to fully grasp the severity of what was about to hit her. The low-slung instrument of rescue struck her as she turned, launching her skyward. I reached up and grabbed her belt as she was tossed aloft, pulling her back down into the buggy as we raced down the hilly street.

I spared a moment to cast a glance behind us: the two thugs had risen and were now giving chase, shaking their fists and no doubt screaming obscenities and threats at the rapidly retreating figure of my heroic visage. I basked in the glow of my self-importance, imagining, for a moment, the bronze statue that would undoubtedly be erected in my honor. The scene continued in my mind’s eye, as the mayor presented me the key to the city beneath my towering, glistening image while thousands cheered. My mother would be so proud.

A whistling sound snapped me back to reality, and my attention was drawn to the left as I caught motion out of the corner of my eye. A painter, no doubt startled by the intensity of my heroic efforts, had fallen off of his ladder and landed in a truckload of hay that was adjacent to Honest Al’s no-kidding goats’ truck. He bounced safely in the straw, but the twenty-foot ladder upon which he’d been perched began to fall away from the building. It was headed directly for our path. With little ability to steer and nearly none to stop, the downward slope of the street that had been the temporary source of our salvation from the thugs became a harbinger of doom. 

The ladder struck a parade banner that hung across the street, causing the steel beams to twist as it pulled the nylon and rope from its supports. Gravity and rotation cause the two to intertwine, and I could already tell that we were on a collision course with destiny. The mass of metal and fabric hit the ground just before we arrived in that precise spot, and as it bounced slightly, wedged perfectly into the lower portion of the cart typically reserved for dog food.

We felt a jolt, and I was launched into the basket with my love, Matilda. Our eyes met yet again, and I was lifted aloft on the wings of love as my heart swelled with joy. Nothing else mattered. Our impending destruction at the bottom of the hill, the series of catastrophic events that had driven us toward the meeting fate had arranged, the multiple felonies I’d just committed to better the human race–all of these fell away. All that mattered was how we would spend the rest of our lives together, even if that would only last a few seconds longer.

My spirits soared higher and higher. I glanced to my right, over the side of the cart, and noticed that we were passing the roof of a building. I knew this place. My brother Jack had gotten his taxes done here for the last four years, working with a seedy-looking accountant who had a small office on the fourth floor which smelled suspiciously of mothballs.

My thoughts were interrupted by the realization that we were fifty feet in the air. I glanced down and realized that the ladder and banner had acted as wings, slinging us aloft to ride on the currents of both wind as birds and love as turtledoves. My surprise and awe were matched by Matilda’s shock and terror, which were loudly announced by a series of shrill screams. “Fear not, my love!” I shouted into the wind. “I will save us!”

I leaned forward, angling the temporary airplane downward. We landed on the street that had now turned gently upward, and gradually slowed to a halt, then began to roll backward. Matilda’s screams were interrupted by the arrival of the two thugs. I rose, ready to fight for the honor of my love when she shouted: “Billy! Bobby! What good are bodyguards when you let a man in a shopping cart kidnap me?! Grab him!”

Hours later, I relived the events of these fifteen minutes of glory while sitting in a municipal jail cell, awaiting arraignment. I chuckled in amusement at the thought of goats, carts, dump trucks, and the shortest relationship of my life. The embarrassment of my misunderstanding outweighed the glory I felt in having saved multiple lives, even if they had been put in danger by my actions in the first place. Matilda and the cashier were both safe, and that was really all that mattered. All in all, not my worst Tuesday.