in all the ways we've ended up here Chapter 1: curdling like sour milk, a danny phantom fanfic

[Time started: Dec 24, 2:06am; –]

I've had the idea for this one-shot series for about two years, probably, but I've never really got around to starting it. But since my obsession with Danny Phantom is resurfacing, I'd thought I'd start it now.

Also note the title of this chapter has nothing to do with everything.

Please rate and review!

Chapter Title: curdling like sour milk

Summary: The kitchen was all she had. –– The Lunch Lady ghost.

She had been the Casper High School's cafeteria lunch lady, somewhere between the fifties and the sixties, and she had absolutely loved her job.

It was a fairly simple one, really. It had a regular and constant schedule that never really changed: Thursday was always meatloaf day, and Tuesday was always chicken casserole, and on Mondays there was always a special dessert of buttercream cake with pudding in the middle if the kids had been quick and finished up their lunches early. She had an especially light touch when it came to the buttercream, and she didn't mean to brag, but she probably made it better than any of the other lunch ladies that came before her.

This was what she was good at, and this was what she was proud of: in an obscure school tucked away in the unknown town of Amity Park she smiles kindly at every child passing behind the lunch counter and offers them today's special, and she is content, she is at peace.

–

There had been some rumours going around the school recently.

Normally she doesn't concern herself that much with rumours, but this one floats around the cafeteria like the whisper of a ghost, thin-wispy and just as intangible, and it hangs in the air like hazy smoke that just won't go away. There's word around the school that there was going to be a new cafeteria menu change, and that the school was going to review the current cafeteria food list and redo it so that it would be healthier and better for the students.

She dismisses the notions as ridiculous. Why would they possibly change the menu? It was perfectly healthy as it is, with good healthy wholesome food to fill the kids right up. She's seen the smiles on the children's faces when they bit into her meatloaf or when they had a taste of her roast beef; they liked their food, and she saw no reason why the school would change the menu when there was no complaints. The rumours were obviously all completely untrue.

She smiles out affectionately across the cafeteria from behind the lunch counter, and contentedly hums an old tune.

"Ah, Mallory!" A voice calls out from behind her, and she turns around to find the principal of the school, Mr Ronalds, standing in the kitchen beaming at her.

She smiles, and straightens out her apron over her pink uniform before she walks forward to greet the head of the school and her employer. "Mr Ronalds," she says kindly, her voice quavering the way all elderly people's voices do. It was a warm high quaver, kindly like fresh homemade cookies and sitting by the fireplaces, and she holds Mr Ronalds' hand with her own yellow-gloved one and shakes it once, twice. Mr Ronalds smiles once at the greeting, before he pulls away and straightens out his own tweed suit, business-like and friendly all at once.

"How are you, Mallory?" He asks politely.

"I am perfectly well, Mr Ronalds. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Please, call me Roger. We've known each other for too long."

She laughs. "Oh dear, no, I could hardly bear to call my own employer by his personal name. What brings you to my kitchen?"

"Ah, yes, well, I was just popping by to see how you were doing." Mr Ronalds adjusts his glasses and peers around the kitchen, his eyes scanning the impeccably clean workplace and the neatly organized food stacks, as well as the various prepared meals lined up at the lunch counter.

She waits standing in front of him as he does a sweeping check-through of the kitchen, hands clasped in front of her, feet together, the very picture of patience personified. She is proud of her kitchen. She has tended to it for nearly twenty years now, it was her pride and joy, and she has never kept it anything less than perfectly well tended in all the twenty years she'd been here. She is sure there is nothing her employer could find wrong in her kitchen.

But as she watches his eyes flash with something unreadable, and when he glances at her there was an expression of calculation in his gaze.

"As you can see, I am doing alright," she says politely, even so, and she tugs at her apron, smoothing down the wrinkles in an effort the hide the sudden tremble of uncertainty in her fingers. "Everything here is perfectly under control."

She raises hazel eyes and meets Mr Ronalds' gaze, and she stands her ground even as his eyes flash again behind his glasses. But barely a second later Mr Ronalds is a picture of friendliness again, and she lets go of the breath that she didn't know she was holding.

"Yes, of course, Mallory. I'd expect nothing less from you. Keep up the good work!" Mr Ronalds beams out before he hustles himself out of the doors, and the doors swing shut behind him with a soft whumpf of air.

She stares at the doors closing after him, and tried to shake off the sense of foreboding in her stomach.

–

Something's been happening.

Lately, the children have been complaining of the lunch food being too salty, or not salted enough, or too bland, too strong. They say the cafeteria food standard has been dropping, and how it wasn't as good as it used to be.

She is frantic. She spends sleepless nights awake in bed worrying about her food. What is she doing wrong? She was sure she was making her food the same way as before, so what was the issue? Was it the new kind of salt the school got? The chicken from a different supplier? What exactly was the problem?

She's getting old. She's fifty-one and still working as Casper High's lunch lady, and recently her eyesight has been failing and there's a creak in her bones every time she walks and her fingers feel thick and clumsy and like a stranger to herself every time she picks up a spoon. Maybe the food she cooks has been getting worse because her body has been betraying herself, like this.

If this keeps up, she could get fired.

She sits up in her bed in restless horror, and outside the night stars flicker like they're exploding in reverse.

–

She tries harder. There isn't anything else to do. Being Casper High's lunch lady is the only thing she's ever known, her at age fifty-one and single with no husband or children, and no grandkids of her own. Her job was her life, and she wasn't going to give it up just because her body was leaving her behind.

If she can't measure out the salt properly, she gets one of the kids to do it for her. She pays them five bucks each time, and they help her measure out the exact amount of salt she needs for her casserole whilst she busies herself cutting the chicken somewhere else.

If she can't read the words on the food labels, she gets a magnifying glass and squints at each one painstakingly, slowly, to double check that the ingredients she would be using were accurate and that shouldn't mix sugar and salt up by mistake. She gets up two hours early to make time for her to do this, and she leaves two hours later than she does organizing and packing up at the end of the day to make sure everything was as organized and as neat as it could be, even as her joints creak and crease and her backache worsens her pain and her headache.

She asks around about what sort of food that the children would like to eat. Nine kids out of ten say they want more meat in the menu – too much veggies, and they wanted their dessert in bigger and better portions.

She is dismayed, but if this is what the kids want, this is what they will get. She makes veggies optional. She includes bigger portions of meat, and her desserts become more regular.

All the effort she puts in pays off. Complaints stop circulating the cafeteria and school halls. People start praising the food that she cooks, again, and about how The Lunch Lady was kind and gave them exactly what they wanted, and how the food was better now (namely because there was more meat with it). They smile at her when they pass her lunch counter. One of them even yelled out "you're the best!" once when he walked past her counter to sit with the other jockies.

When he did that, she smiled bright and happy with all her teeth, even as vision swims a little bit and her head pounds with the headache that's been there for a week. She hasn't slept well for a few weeks now, but that's okay, because her efforts were paying off, and she was going to be able to keep her job. There would no new menu changes, and everything would be okay.

–

Only of course, it isn't, and three weeks after things had gone back to normal she gets the news that there was going to be a new menu change.

She flips through the file, and reads the different new recipes with growing dread and panic. She has never seen these recipes before. She has never made them, and she has never learnt them, and how on earth was she supposed to make something that she has never seen before for lunch? The menu only came in today; lunch was only in a few hours, and at her capabilities she was never going to learn the new menu in time. Her eyesight had been getting worse, her back problems nowhere better, and nowadays her fingers tremble so hard when she tries to measure out the milk that half of it usually ends up splashing down her front. She couldn't be able to learn the new menu in time.

With a determined suck of air she decides to look for Mr Ronalds and ask about the new menu change, explain that she couldn't possibly cook any of these for today's lunch, and maybe ask for Mr Ronalds to keep the original menu as it is – because the kids love it, and there really didn't need to be much of a change, the food was good and healthy and wholesome and the kids all ate them right up.

So she shuffles slowly down towards the principal's office, her feet hurting at every step and her eyes swimming at every movement she makes, but she continues walking onwards and soon finds herself in front of Mr Ronalds' office, and after that in front of Mr Ronalds himself.

He glances at her from behind his oak desk, and there was something almost uncomfortable in his expression. "Yes, Mallory?" He asks.

She wets her lips. "It's about the new menu change," she blurts out, forgetting even a proper greeting, forgetting about everything else, as she lays the menu file on his desk with shaking, wrinkly, spotted blue-veined hands. "This only came in today, and lunch is only a few hours away, and I am so very sorry Mr Ronalds, but there is no possible way for me to learn this so quickly–"

"You wouldn't have to, Mallory," Mr Ronalds reassures her in the midst of her sentence, just as she was working herself up into a fit, her voice growing more and more frantic with her words tripping over themselves with every second.

"Oh." It took her a second to process this, but when she did, she was abruptly relieved, grateful. It had all just been a misunderstanding. "If that's the case, Mr Ronalds, may I suggest there not be a menu change at all? The children love the old menu as it is, and I honestly see no reason why we would have to–"

Her voice abruptly cuts off as she spies the look on Mr Ronalds face: uncomfortable, regretful, and impatient all at once. The silence in the air once occupied by her voice hung in between the both of them in his well-lit office, whispering along his bookshelves, his files, his chair.

"You see, Mallory," he says finally, uncomfortably, weaving his fingers together as he leans forward to rest his elbows on the table, looking her straight in the eye, "along with the menu change we are also hiring a new… lunch lady."

Suddenly the world seems to shrink in around her; she gasps for breath as she stumbles back, her hands against his door. "You're firing me?" She asks, and her voice sounds so much frailer and weaker than she remembered, when had she ever sounded so frail?

"Don't take it personally, Mallory," Mr Ronalds hastily tries to reassure her, "it's not that you aren't a fantastic cook – it's just, it's just that you're getting old, and it's probably time you should retire, and take care of yourself and your health – and we've always thought about a menu change, but with you, at your age," he waves uncomfortably at her, "We didn't think you'd be up to, to learning new recipes, per se.

"We have a nice pension all set out for you, ready to be transferred into your bank, and it's a rather tidy sum, even if I do say so myself."

Her head reels, but she tries hard to put herself together. "I don't need to retire," she says stubbornly, as she pulls herself together to stand firm in front of Mr Ronalds with shaky legs. "I am perfectly healthy. I don't need a pension. I love this job, I don't need to retire, and I am perfectly alright."

Mr Ronalds looks at her with something akin to regret in his eyes. "Mallory, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's all been settled."

She thinks her world is ending. This was all that she had in her life, and without it, where would she be now? She stares at Mr Ronalds, and her voice was quavering desperately when she asked him, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Mr Ronalds looks away almost guiltily. "You were so dedicated to the kitchen," he answers. "I didn't know how to tell you, and I thought I'd give you as much time with your kitchen as possible for the last two months you'd be here."

Two months. This had been decided two months ago. And she had never been told.

She grabs onto the door with her hands again, as the world feels like its spinning out of control. "The children," she tries again, her vision blurry as she tries to focus at Mr Ronalds, "the children like me, and they like my cooking. You can't fire me!"

And Mr Ronalds face was almost regretful, but impatience mars his features as he leans forward. "That's because of the recent ludicrous menu things you have done in the kitchen! You making vegetables optional to the children, and what with increasing the amount of dessert – and what's this I hear about the increasing portions of meat? You can't do that, Mallory, its unhealthy for the children!"

"The children like it," she cries out, yelling at Mr Ronalds with all she has in her old frail body – that reminds her, she hasn't really been sleeping well or going for her health checkups recently, she should go for one soon, "the children like meat, and it's good for them, there's nothing wrong with that!"

She huffs and she pants, and she is wracked with gasps as she tries to get her breath back from her outburst. Her knees are shaking. This can't be happening. Mr Ronalds only stares at her silently from across the room from behind his glasses, and says nothing.

The silence between them is thick and curdled like sour milk, and she can feel her world falling apart.

"I'm sorry, Ms Mallory," he says quietly, before he turns around in his chair. "But please pack up your things and move out by lunch-time."

She stands stock-still in his office for a moment, before suddenly she is out of the door and running as fast as her weak legs can carry her to the kitchen, her kitchen, she has to see it again, maybe this wasn't real and it was all a bad dream, and if she sees her kitchen again she knows it'll be alright and she'll wake up with her health back up and the menu changed back to what it always was.

She burst through the swinging doors and trips over the linoleum floor, and crashes headfirst into the food boxes stacked up neatly at the side and goes sprawling all over the floor. Pathetic. It was that stupid menu change. If that menu hadn't been changed she still would've been able to kept her job, stay here forever, and continue serving the kids the food they all liked the best – meat, yes, that was it, meat, the children loved meat and it was good for her and for them –

The world was swirling around her eyes. She touches one papery cheek and realises that back when her vision was blurry it wasn't because of tears, no, no, her cheeks are perfectly wrinkled and dry, and she lifts up a hands from the floor and gazes at it, and just beyond the gaps of her fingers she sees her kitchen, her twenty year's worth of work, and when was the last time she had seen a doctor? She doesn't know, she doesn't remember, and she knew she'd always had health problems before, but for now it doesn't seem so important, the world was swirling black around her and she just wanted to go to sleep, but no, the menu change, and meat, the stupid accursed menu change that should never happen and meat –

–

She dies all alone on the school cafeteria's kitchen floor, and she isn't discovered until the new lunch lady walks in through the swinging doors and screams.

I think The Lunch Lady looks like a Mallory. It's not the most suitable name for her, to me, but it's the closest.

I'll be honest I was a little uninspired when I was writing this piece. I tried to cover all aspects of The Lunch Lady's traits when I invented her backstory: her obsession with menu changes and meat, her ability to change from gentle and grandmotherly to ferocious ghost in a nanosecond and, of course, why she is even known as "The Lunch Lady".

Not sure if some of the things I put in here are accurate to the year, by the way, so if there's anything wrong don't hesitate to tell me :) (That goes for grammar errors too I make a lot of those.)

I'll be doing this series according to the appearance of the ghosts according to the episodes, so next up would be the Box Ghost. Stay tuned! (Actually, don't; I'm an erratic updater.)

Please rate and review! It would make my day ^^

[Time completed: Dec 26, 4.49pm; –]

Happy Boxing Day, everybody :)