Near where I, for the want of a better description, work is a food court. In this court dispensers of "protein" frequently liberally adorned with "leaves" hawk their wares to a stream of office dwellers apparently unconcerned that protein and leaves could well mean fruit bat and oleander. Protein and leaves present themselves in all sorts of ethnic variations and combinations referred to as "fusion" or "mutation".or (in a rare burst of honesty) "I accidentally dropped one food tray on another". All around are happy people gorging themselves as they try and find the strength to face the afternoon.
But wait gentle reader, what's this? Is there a rotten heart to this nourishment for profit paradise? Indeed there is. A dark looming presence that casts a pall over the happy scene. Customers avert their eyes as they hasten past the grim location. Small children whimper and dogs flee. Actually given that the customer base is exclusively office workers there are no small children or dogs but if there were they would whimper and flee respectively.
It squats, a dark barren place in the midst of plenty. From time to time the brave attempt to penetrate its depths to no avail. Despite their hopes, their dreams, their ambitions, all come to naught in the face of this squat malevolence. It is the boarded up shop! Once there was a food vendor here indistinguishable from any of the others. Possibly they sold indigenous sushi or Lithuanian fusion pasta but it matters not. Whatever implausible collection of leaves and protein was foisted on the general public from the glistening counters and faux something or other bench tops are long since gone. The vendors transgressed! Some foul crime against the Gods of Semi-fast Food was committed and those mighty deities unleashed their wrath.
Their hopes in ruins the vendors fled, thankful at least to have got out with their lives even if their artisan cheese board was sacrificed to make good their escape. Since that time the curse has festered, its dark tentacles worming into the very structure of the haunted location. From time to time a new vendor arrives with a heart full of dreams and an trailer load of animal parts and leaves. Surely fame and fortune are just a few deconstructed sandwiches away. But no, even as they unveil the gleaming counter and stock the fridge with bottles of juice so adorned with words like "cold press" and "artisan" that it is difficult to identify the fruit that purportedly went into their creation, dark forces are moving against them.
What exactly happens no one knows. The other vendors know better than to ask questions. All anyone can say for sure is that a few weeks to a couple of months after that proud, hopeful opening the place is surrounded by boarding once more. No longer will customers be able to purchase cumquat and cape buffalo sandwiches on artisan rye bread hand fired in their own oven according to a traditional recipe used by a Gypsy tribe that starved to death in the fourteenth century. Grateful to have escaped with their lives the vendors themselves have been forced to work at McDonalds in order to survive.
Still it could be worse, at least they're not forced to eat at McDonalds in order to survive.
No comments:
Post a Comment