The lights and camera were in all the right places. The kitchen was clean and prepped with all of the tools and decorations; the holidays were just around the corner.
Piggy stood behind the camera; he was bribed to film the show in order to fix his glasses with the pay of winning the contest.
Ralph and Jack were in their attire and ready to get the show on the road.
"Piggy, come on!" Jack shouted. "It's not over here! We've been standing under these lights forever!"
"Hold on! I can barely see! Remember how that happened?" Piggy frowned at Jack. Ralph decided not to complain. He was smart enough to wear only his outfit and no other layer underneath; Jack, however, was not.
"Okay! Three, two, one!"
Jack put on his happy face, thinking of the money he could win from the cooking video contest.
Two-thousand dollars! Enough to fix Piggy's glasses.. And plenty to spare! For the pig farm!
Ralph put on a apprehensive smile as Jack spoke.
"Welcome to The Jack Merridew Show! Today, I'll being making chicken kiev and scallop skewers with my assistant, Ralph!"
Ralph was bribed into the project as well, only muttering a word under his breath. "Yay."
"First, we have to mix our butter, chives, and parsley!"
Ralph held up a bowl of already mixed butter. Then, Jack proceeded to dump his pre-chopped and measured bowls of parsley and chives into the butter. He stirred it all together until it became a paste.
"When that's done, it should turn out like Ralph's!"
Piggy gave them a thumbs up, for the sake of his once useable glasses.
"Now, moving on, we have to get out our chicken breasts!"
Piggy and Ralph groaned simultaneously. This was the part that Jack always messed up. This was the final shot. There was no turning back.
"We set the butter aside and lay out our cutting board for our chicken."
If his hands were free, Piggy would be biting his fingers.
He's gonna get psycho! Like when he broke my glasses and kicked those children's round at the daycare!
"Then, we place the chicken on the cutting board and get out the meat tenderizer."
"Ralph, run while you can't!" Piggy pointed to Ralph, and then the door.
"Not now.." Ralph was quick and his words weren't seen through the camera.
Jack picked up the meat tenderizer.
"And then we..."
"Jack, no!" Piggy screamed, but it was a lost cause.
"Bash it!"
With the force a tyrant, he held the tenderizer up in the air and banged it on the chicken breast, once again, scaring Ralph and Piggy.
After the worst of it concluded, Piggy shut off his camera.
"Jack! What are you doing?" Ralph asked him.
"I just followed the recipe. Now, I think that's actually good footage. Let's clean up for part two, shall we?"
"Yeah.. Sure.." Piggy was reluctant. He wasn't going to get anywhere, he thought, not when he acted as barbaric as he had.
They took a break; while Jack lounged away in the corner, Ralph and Piggy cleaned up the mess. The chicken breaks were halfway decent, so they kept them with the other equipment.
After Jack was done dawdling, they went back to their filming.
"Three, two, one!" Piggy yelled once more.
"Welcome back to The Jack Merridew Show! When we left off, I was using the meat tenderizer."
Piggy was praying silently in his mind. "Dear God, help us! Jack isn't gonna win and I'm not gonna get my glasses fixed!"
"So, now, we're going to put spread our butter on the chicken!"
Ralph did this task with no enthusiasm. And Jack displayed it to the invisible audience.
"Beautiful! Thank you, Ralph! Now, we're going to do one of our final steps."
Ralph and Piggy's eyes filled with terror.
Oh no... The skewers. He can't use the skewers!
"To hold the meat together, we'll put skewers on it on three different sides."
Ralph tried to work with it himself, not wanting to get into yet another mess.
"No, Ralph. It's my show. I'm going to do it."
Ralph shoved the chicken in Jack's direction.
All hell was about to break loose.
"Jack! Don't touch the skewers! They're quite sharp!" Piggy gave him one last warning.
"Shut up, fatty!" Jack roared and stabbed the metal skewers in the chicken repeatedly, as if he was committing a murder. He then looked up from the mercilessly mutilated chicken breast.
The skewers were plenty, meaning the worst damage was not done.
Piggy and Ralph made a run for it, out the back door and down the street to see the child most often harassed at the daycare, Percival.
"I'll get back at you, fatty! I've got my skewers and my tenderizers! The Jack Merridew Show's gonna win! We'll show you all! I'll have Samneric film my cooking show! And we'll use pork instead! I like pork better anyway!"
His former companions were long gone; they didn't listen.
They knew he was psychotic. They really did. They also knew this: he could not pull off a cooking show.
"Not in a million years,"Piggy deduced. "Not ever again."