The whistling, whicked whind whipped across the courtyard as Mr. Pony's kindergarten class strode towards the food building in a silent, solid, single-file line. I could almost hear the primordial, timeless, orchestral music heralding our march across the cold, cold campus. The WATCH Tower bell sounded its metallic toll as we reached the food building, before entering inside of it. Following the legend of these hallowed halls, we ascended the stair-case, turned left, and entered the cafeteria. But… Nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to see. With our eyes.
It looked like the cafeteria had undergone and extreme makeover. The whole room was a pleasant shade of green, the layout of all the tables had changed, and many of the food stations had been replaced. The hot bar was now a juice bar. The sandwich station had been reformed into a salad station, and the soup area was now a cornucopia of wholesome fruits and vegetables. In short, the cafeteria had been… healthified.
"Wow, it's like a whole new world!" remarked Mr. Pony, feigning surprise, for as a teacher at this wonderful institution, they were already aware of the changes planned and made to the cafeteria. "Don't you dare close your eyes!"
"Stealing my material, huh, Mr. Pony?" asked Owen, grinning and putting his hands behind his head. "That's not very cash money of you."
"W-where is the sandwich station?" cried a shocked, openmouthed William in disbelief.
"And the soup area!" I, uh, lamented. "Now I'll never be able to eat oyster crackers again!"
"Now kiddoes," confessed Mr. Pony, realizing that the jig was up, "I have something to tell you. This cafeteria has been remodeled as a part of our Operation: Nutrition initiative, to provide you lot with healthy dining options for lunch! And all thanks to a donation from our generous benefactor!"
Upon hearing the last syllable of that last word, a pulse ba-dumped through my head bad and I only saw the world in black and white for an instant. I blinked, startled. That was right, I remembered, I had forgotten to ask Jordan about Tor.
Mr. Pony continued talking, meaning that I didn't really have time to entertain that thought. "Please, feel free to scope out and enjoy these delightfully researched healthy alternatives to your hearts' content!" They sounded like they were reciting a well-rehearsed speech, since it was full of big words that sounded like Tim would use them. Eventually their verbose lecture about the cafeteria and Operation: Nutrition came to an end, and I had to make like a hunter-gatherer and find some food and a tribe to eat with.
"Ick," I said out loud for some reason. There were none of the foods I liked to eat, no oyster crackers, no butter sandwiches, and no portable pizza! shep would be devastated. The only things I had on my plate so far, literally speaking, were a few baby carrots, some bouncy, raw broccoli, and a banana, because you've go-a have faif in the banana, m8. After weaving through the cornucopia of wholesome, healthy foods, and finding nothing appealing, I went off to find a table.
Tor. I thought. Jordan. Tordan. I spotted my bespectacled boi sitting at a table with his ol' buddy pen-pal, Chuck, Jenny and Kristy, Graham, Kyle, and Eli. Oh boy, I wanted to sit with Graham too, since he seemed interesting. I approached the table, taking one of the empty seats. "Hey guys," I said in my best attempt at being 'coolio' as those kids called it. "What's poppin?"
"Greetings, Kindergartener," roared Graham in his Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.
"Hey Maddie!" waved Chuck from across the table. "How's it going?"
Considering the being next to him was Chuck, Jordan began sweating profusely. "Uh, who are you?"
"Huh? What do you mean?" asked Chuck. "I'm Chuck. Your pen-pal."
Jordan's face lit up melodramatically. "Oh, so you're Chuck! Right. They, uh, told me about you yesterday."
"What?" asked Chuck, this time thoroughly confused. "Uh… what did they say?"
"Jordan got amnesia during recess yesterday," filled in Jenny.
"And it looks like he's still feelin' the effects today," added Kristy, uppercutting one of her fists across her body.
"That is indeed peculiar," remarked Graham, crossing his arms coldly. "Pray tell, what was the source of this… amnesia?" It was so hard to take him seriously while he was straining his voice like that.
"We don't know," I admitted. "It just kind of happened out of the blue."
"Bwahaha," laughed Graham like Bowser. "My sixth sense tells me it is the work of some fourth-dimensional force."
"Yeah, or a ghost," agreed Kristy, laughing happily. Was that all she thought about?
"Gow!" went Kyle out of nowhere. We all turned our attention slightly towards him. He was fuming and clutching a butterfly shaped lettuce leaf in his little hands.
"Uh, K-kyle," began Eli, "Is e-everything - "
"BOI BOI BUTTERFLOI!" shouted Kyle, tearing the leaf to shreds. He then rocked backwards out of his seat and hobbled off to get some other food. Everyone was silent for a few moments before Chuck was like "Uh, what was that about?"
"Don't worry about it," I assured him.
"Yeah, heh heh," added Eli, polking at some string beans and artichoke hearts on his plate with a fork. "So, uh, there's n-not much of a s-selection food wise today, huh."
"Yeah, it's a real bummer," honked Chuck, sweating nervously. "I can't even make my signature dish, the butter sandwich."
"Wait," said Jordan. "It wasn't always like this?"
"No," I said, picking at my baby carrots. "The cafeteria used to have all sorts of delicious food, but now it's all yucky vegetables."
"Darn," joked Jordan. "I wish I could remember, haha."
"I wonder why they even decided to change the cafeteria so much," said Jenny, looking around at her surroundings. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with it before."
"'Tis but an instance of the butterfly effect," inputted Graham, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. "In the desolate regions of the nether world, a mere butterfly flaps its wings, creating countless ripples in the time-space continuum." he really dragged out the 'm' noise in 'continuum'. "This cafeteria is merely a result of one of those dark wing flaps."
"What is he talking about?" I whispered to Jenny, who was sitting right next to me.
"I have no idea," she whispered back. Sometimes it felt like we were the only sane ones in this group of kooky klassmates.
"The food might not be as good," asserted Kristy, "but I'm diggin' the redesign." She started laughing bromeantically. "I feel like I'm in the rainforest cafe!"
Kyle returned to the table, sweating and breathing heavily as if he had just been undergoing some intense physical exercise. He placed a pint sized carton of 100% skim milk on his plate, sat down in his seat, and focused intensely on it. "Milk," he said. I wasn't sure if there was any need for him to elaborate.
I nibbled at a fluoret of my raw broccoli. "By the way, Graham," I observed, "What are you having for lunch? I don't see anything on your plate."
Graham chuckled darkly. "Holographic Meatloaf." my mind had been successfully blown.
Kyle poked the milk carton with a curious finger.
"Oh, hey, Eli," asked Jordan real quick. "Are you gonna work on that tunnel again?"
"Uh, y-yeah," he answered. "W-we all can w-work on it during r-recess."
Graham tch-ed his eye in alarm. "What tunnel is this?" the way he said it made it sound like he was parodying one of the phrases 'What child is this?' or 'What sorcery is this?'
Eli pulled out his blueprint to show everyone. "Maddie, Jordan, Kyle, and I have started working on a tunnel in the sandbox," he explained. The sudden shift in his tone of voice called everyone's attention to what he was talking about. "We're still in the process of digging for now but hopefully it'll be complete soon."
"That actually sounds pretty cool," said Chuck. "Where is the tunnel gonna go to?"
Eli chuckled nervously. "That… I haven't fully decided yet. Somewhere outside of the sandbox for sure though."
Furrowing his heavyset brow intensely, Kyle clasped both of his hands around the milk carton and began to squeeze.
"Yeah," said Jordan, looking down defeatedly. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing during recess, ever since I lost my memory. So the best thing to do at the moment is… well, help you guys, right?"
A loud pop echoed throughout the cafeteria as the pint sized carton of 100% skim milk exploded in Kyle's hands, creating a devastating milksplosion that splattered Eli, Chuck, Kristy, and Jordan, and left Kyle totally soaked. He opened up his almond-shaped eyes on his milk-dripping face, and blinked a few times. The smell of gasoline intensified, and the low rumble of a lawnmower being started could be heard in the distance.
"G-G-Gow!" went Kyle, shaking with fury. He scratched his sopping wet mop of mousy brown hair frantically and leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair backwards. He stood there seething for a few seconds before storming off without bending his knees.
The table was silent for another few seconds before Jordan finally asked "Are we sure he's okay?" He turned to Eli. "Does he always act like this?"
"N-not really," stuttered Eli, one of his shaking hands adjusting his helmet. "He does s-seem a bit agitated t-today."
"Augh," honked Chuck, sticking out his tongue. "He got me all grody! That 100% skim milk is gonna soak through my thin white t-shirt for sure!"
"Heh heh, yeah," laughed Eli. "G-good thing I c-can use my h-helmet as an u-umbrella!"
We were such a joke-crackin' crew. "Hold on a minute," I said, curling my finger in front of my lips intelligently. "What were we talking about before this?"
"I've got it!" said Kristy, leaning all of her weight onto one side and pointing. "We were talking about if, uh, fish had superpowers!"
"That was definitely not it," I said, and embarrassed bead of squeat dripping down my forehead.
"Silence!" ordered Graham Turver. We all subconsciously obeyed his order because his loud, deep voice was able to command us better. "Listen. A foul wave noth this way approaches."
"What?" asked Jordan.
"He's saying that, uh, there's no sound here," translated Chuck.
"No… sound?" I asked, before paying slight attention to my surroundings. Huh. Despite the weird way he had said it, Graham was correct – the background music that normally played in the cafeteria was turned off, leaving the hustle and bustle of the busy diners to occupy it. "Now that you mention it, that is scrange. There's usually some background music playing."
Still dripping with 100% skim milk, Kyle returned to the table, brandishing a pair of plastic salad tongs like he had brandished that stick like a katana yesterday. He threw these down hastily onto his plastic plate and they clattered loudly.
Two of the strange beings with dark hair, dark suits, and dark sunglasses watched all of this transpire, while simultaneously peering at their similarly-attired compatriots across the cafeteria.
"Everyone in position, boys," overed one into a bluetooth earbound mic.
"Y'gon' tell's th'signal when y'ready, chief?" crackled another over the mic.
"Affirmative, guy," barked the first one.
"Hey!" A loud voice sounded across the cafeteria from the salad bar. The same adult, who seemed like at total Karen btw, who had tried to prevent me and Chuck from making our butter sandwiches two days ago, angrily approached our table. "Uh-uh. Drop that! You can't take things like that!"
"Gow!" shouted Kyle, fumbling to pick up the salad tongs with his two hands. Once his squeaty fingers had firmly grasped the salad tongs, he inserted them into his mouth and began gnawing on them like a cartoon beaver on a corncob. He seemed incredibly panicked while doing this.
"Noooo!" shouted the adult, trying to wrestle the salad tongs away from Kyle's jowely jaws. "That's not food! You're not supposed to eat it!" By this point, they were attracting quite a lot of attention. Everyone at our table stopped to watch. Kyle's heavy brow furrowed even more and his eyes burned ferociously, locking his jaw so the adult could not extract the salad tongs. They continued this epic tug of war for a few more seconds until both's grip gave out and the tongs split in two like a plastic wishbone, sending both flying back several feet.
Kyle sprang to his feet immediately, beet-red with unimaginable fury. He seethed for a few seconds to let his anger charge, as the smell of gasoline grew to be so overpowering that it almost was as if you could light a match in thin air and cause an explosion. Suddenly, Kyle leaned backwards, shut his eyes tight, unhinged his jaw, and let loose the most bone-chilling scream I had ever heard. The sound of a lawnmower being started up roared at a deafening volume.
"THIS ISN'T A GOW." he shouted, throwing his half of the salad tongs at the still grounded adult. "THIS ISN'T EVEN A GIGAGIGAGOW." He bunny hopped over and stomped on the other half of the salad tongs.
"The signal, the signal," uttered one of the mysterious beings.
"Time to get funky," rasped another over the mic.
"THIS IS A GIGAGIGAGIGAGIGA…" Kyle begain speaking faster and louder as he clenched all of his muscles at once and screamed at the top of his lungs. He appeared to be growing larger and redder with every passing second, like a mystic tomato. "GIGAGIGAGIGAGIGAGOW! WROOAAAAH!" using all of his might, Kyle hoisted his solid oak chair over his head and brandished it. "AAARGH! I'M GOING TO VIOLATE YOU! I'M GOING TO 'TEACH' YOU A LESSON!" he threw the chair scraight at me.
...wait, what? I didn't barely have time to react, just close my eyes, brace for impact, and let out a cry of surprise before I felt the chair pass scraight through me. "Huh?" I asked, opening my eyes. I could feel something sizzling in my pocket. "What was,"
"Noooo!" screamed Kristy, putting both hands to the side of her head and howling as if she were avoiding the incantations of evil spirits. "Maddie's a ghost!"
"A...ghost?" I looked down at my body. The sizzling in my pocket grew more intense. My body, my hands, everything – was slightly transparent and flickering funnily. I reached into my pocket, gasped as I felt the two chips burn my hand, and was promptly blunk out of existence.