Napalm and Tabasco – By Mr. Grey and Tobe

[TobeOrNotTobe]

Hello, so MrGrey and I got together ( :woohoo: ) and wrote something a little different for you all. We hope you enjoy it. Do note that we wrote this in about an hour and a half, so editing wasn’t really something we focused on.

Disclaimer: “The following story had produced severe giggles lasting several weeks on test subjects. The author(s) take every responsibility for any outbreaks of smiles, smirks and guffaws. Read at your own risk.”

Nobody ran their tongue against Antonio the Chef, mainly because, after one of his meals, they hoped they still had one inside of their head. Don’t get me wrong, the man could cook a mean curry…but sometimes that wasn’t personification.

In fact, the police had gotten tired of constant reports from diners at Antonio’s Spicy Curry Emporium, who formed orderly queues outside the local station to report GBH on their taste buds. It was so fierce, that taking a date to the fiery restaurant was a sure way to seal a divorce, break-up, or assisted murder.

It’s said to be better than saying, “You’re ugly.”
Or, “Yes, you do look fat.”
Want to break up with your girlfriend?
Buy Antonio’s curry, and that will be that!

When the police released the above stanza as an official statement, people knew that something had to be done.

“Constable Peters,” he said, flashing his badge. From the appearance of the Emporium itself, it was hard to say that this restaurant alone was responsible for the high rise in plumber call-outs over the past few days. The title of the restaurant was displayed overhead, alongside a smiling cartoon of the chef. The chef himself was a stark contrast, his pudgy and annoyed face glaring at the policeman as if he was the criminal here.
“Ah, more guests,” Antonio said. “Do you fancy a sit-down? Here for a meal or two?”
“Ah, no thanks,” Peters said. “I’m actually here because of reports that the food you serve actually harms those that eat it.”
“Not my fault they’re too puny to handle my art,” Antonio said, his long mustache wiggling as he shrugged. “Don’t go into boxing ring if you don’t want to be hit, that’s what I say.”

As the chef spoke, a burly customer built like a rather muscular truck ran out the door screaming like a small girl. Antonio didn’t spare him a glance, but his mustache twitched, and Peters fancied it was laughing at the man’s pain. He quickly squashed the thought. Whoever heard of a sentient mustache?
Peters shook himself and managed a reply, “You call that art?”

“I once saw a man scald himself several times with an iron and stand in a town square, declaring himself a piece of the modern age. If that’s art, so is this, except we also deliver a nice dinner and good waiter service.”
“And people actually come visit?”
“Oh, yes. All the time. They hear of my work, come in like they own the entire planet. Think they can conquer what I have to offer. When the waiter comes in with a face like a sheet and tells me that someone has ordered ‘the hottest thing on the planet’, you should see the grin on my face. Entire kitchen turns into the inside of a volcano. And then, well…” He nodded towards the customer, whose brain had gotten confused halfway through his attempt at saving his own life and was making him stop, drop and roll on the grass nearby. “Upload them to YouTube. Big hits.”
“I think I’ve heard enough, Antonio,” Peters said. “I’d like to enter your property under the rights given to me by the law.”
“Sure,” Antonio said, unfazed by the police inspection. “Mind the buckets of water by the entrance. Those are for the screamers.”

So onwards Peters went.
Into the cave.
He went into the danger,
hoping to save.
At least one more person.
From liquefying their brain.
At least one more person.
That would be kept sane.

As Peters moved deeper into the kitchen, his eyes burned, and his nose began yelling at him. His pores were steaming, and he thought he felt the hairs on his neck crisping to a fine dust. There were shadows on the wall, moving faster and faster. Lights were flashing in his quickly frying brain. Finally he gasped and threw himself out the doors, landing next to the unfortunate customer from before. “It’s a nightmare in there!” Echoing laughter followed his voluntary removal from the premises.

“Hah!” Antonio said, leaning out of the kitchen door. “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Most people do it these days. Maybe that’s why I’m still single,” he added, looking to the floor in consideration.
“Enough about your relationship status. Forget about your food, your kitchen damn near killed me. It’s a surprise anyone comes out of that place with their head still on their necks.”
“We wish we don’t,” the customer murmured into the floor.
“So what?” Antonio said, his temper apparently as strong as his toppings. “So what if my craftmanship can’t be handled by the likes of the public? Are you going to arrest me for being too good at what I do?”
“We’ve arrested some very good murderers, I can tell you that now.”
“Whatever. The point is, I’m a genius in my field. No, a god of spice, a creator of the most intense curry you’ll ever have. You can’t arrest a man on such terms. In fact, if you want to come along and make up your own decisions, how about taking the gauntlet yourself? Try your hand at my work, then maybe you’ll see the beauty of having a fire in your mouth.”
Peters blinked. He was definitely hungry; the problem laid in the definition of how hungry he felt.

He wasn’t actually hungry…but he was. He didn’t want food…but he did. It was peculiar really. Something about the offer seemed suspicious…but he wanted the spice. He craved the spice.

Peters rose and began walking back towards the door when he spotted…the mustache. It was staring at him. How exactly it was doing so was up for debate. But he slowly realized…the mustache was making him hungry. He had to resist!

The mustache went up.
The mustache went down.
Peters had a bit of a frown.
This mustache was bad,
it was really quite wrong.
It was, for one, overly long.

Peters had always been convinced to eat things. From his loving wife’s cooking to his drunken friends giving him strange dares, he wasn’t foreign to the idea of someone else making you force food into your mouth. This was the first time a load of human hair was telling him to have a go, and it would have been disturbing if it wasn’t so enchanting.

It sat there, giving him hints as to what to do. Ask him about the Mouth Melter, it told him, a succubus sitting atop of Antonio’s lips. It’s one of the best meals you’ll ever have. Or are you scared? Perhaps a bit chicken? That’s alright. I’ve sat atop these lips for as long as you’ve been alive for, and I’ve come into contact with all the spicy foods known to man. You can turn your tail, report to the police back home that you were too chicken to take on this case. Or, you can have a try.

“You know what,” Peters said, rising again from the floor. “Just a bite can’t hurt, surely.”

He plodded towards the emporium tables, then tripped, his overloaded mind forgetting to tell his feet where to go. As he fell, his foot snagged one of the water buckets on the floor, and yanked it into the air. A small, high pitched scream was heard, and Antonio was hit directly upon the face. But the mustache was gone!
Suddenly clear minded, Peters rushed to his feet, and saw the mustache scuttling across the floor away from the growing puddle. He leaped and grabbed another bucket of water, pouring the entire thing upon the surprisingly nimble lump of hair.
“Begone foul hairpiece! You have burned away the tongues of good citizens for long enough!”

Antonio merely sat, soaked in water, as his facial hair was extinguished, then began to laugh. He was free!

“Glad to be of service,” Peters said. “Now all we have to do is get rid of this moustache, and–”
“I demand a fair trial!”
The small, squeaky voice caught both of them off guard. Peters looked all around the room in an attempt to locate the midget that had just spoken. He had to break several layers of his own sanity before he could come to terms with the idea that the moustache was the one talking.
“Pardon?” Peters said.
“I demand a fair trial,” the moustache repeated. The left and right parts of its body were being used as legs to stand upright, keeping its balance very admirably for a chunk of hair. “You can’t just kill me. That isn’t what this country was built on. We didn’t come all this way through history, murdering fashion statements in order to get what we wanted. I demand an arrest, and a fair trial.”
“It’s going to be awfully hard to arrest you,” Peters said. “I don’t think the handcuffs will fit.”
“Just pick me up and take me with you, tie me up, anything but kill me. My mum and dad were cruelly shaven off when I was but a child. I want to live my life as much as I can.”
“Well, alright then,” Peters said. “We’ll take you into the police station and see what we can do.”
***
“So,” the judge said, adjusting the glasses on his head. No matter how he looked at the paper, it still said the same barmy statement that he thought it said. “Let me get this straight. We’re here for the prosecution of one M. Stache, is that correct?”
“That’s right,” the moustache said.
“For illegal possession of dangerous spices, illegal chemicals, and a slightly obese chef?”
“Yes,” the moustache continued.
“Very well.” The judge stacked the papers in his hands, then threw them over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to be needing these, where he was going. “You may proceed with your statement.”

“I was originally just a small mustache,of the normal kind, upon friend Antonio’s face. I lived there for many a year as he created his business and sold his curry. But it was not enough. His curry was missing that extra kick. So I broke the first sacred rule of the stache…I left his face.”

At this point, a loud and dramatic gasp came from the crowd.
“Pardon me,” said the judge. “But did you just say you left his face?”
“I did. And then I took it into my own hands to create something new. I became addicted to new flavors, new spices. And slowly, as I became spicier, I became…evil.”
Another round of gasps. A small baby began crying.
“Soon I was influencing Antonio…and then I forced him to mix two ingredients. The outcome was ‘the hottest thing on the planet’. And that’s what happened when we mixed Napalm and Tabasco.”

“Napalm? In a curry? Well, I don’t think there’s any more reason to hang about with this court session.” The judge slammed his gavel down on the pedestal. It was the official way to close proceedings, but it made the judge feel like he was in a movie, and that’s what mattered. “I find M. Stache guilty of all charges. You will be banned from placing yourself on anyone’s faces, and will serve life in jail. May God bless your soul. Or, er,” he said, scratching his head. “Strands.”
The courtroom guards picked the moustache up, carrying it out of the courtroom. They weren’t sure how much of a fight it was going to put up, but however much they guessed, it was far less than that. They just wished that every criminal that stood in front of the judge would be a clump of hair as obedient as this one.
***
The prisoner stood in his cell as the door closed behind him. He had made it.
Making sure no guards were looking, he withdrew the bottle from his clothes. It read ‘tabasco’ on it.
“So what do we do now?” he said to the nobody in the room.
“Now,” said the moustache. The prisoner had always wanted a bit of facial hair that suited him, and the other prisoners were impressed at how fast he managed to grow one. “We mix it with the others.”
Taking advice from the moustache, the prisoner crossed the cell to his bed. He pulled it away from the wall, uncovering a small stash of ingredients hidden underneath.
“Take the glass,” the moustache said. “Mix everything in.”
The prisoner obliged. Taking every spicy thing he could get his hands on — chillis, peppers, even a few mints the guards gave him out of pity — he planted them into a beaker, the mixture becoming more and more volatile as he did. Soon, it began to bubble furiously, spitting globules of death out of the flask and onto the floor, small holes being bored into the concrete.
“That’s enough,” the tiny voice said. “Now, throw it at the wall.”
The prisoner took the beaker in hand, turning to face the wall. The sun was shining through the bars, the outside world beckoning him to leave this dreary place. With a careful motion, the prisoner sploshed the mixture onto the wall, which hadn’t been prepared for anything like this in its job interview and promptly melted into a grey puddle on the floor.
“What do we do now?” the prisoner said, still awe-struck.
“Depends,” the moustache said. “Are you a fan of curries?”

**THE END**

And so that’s the end of our story.
The end of the moustache in all his spicy glory.
Watch out for him, and his sauce of doom.
Or else you’ll be digging your very own tomb.

[zette]

LOL —

But this isn’t where it should be posted. I’m trying to decide quite where to move it, but we don’t want people (especially new people) thinking they should post their material on the main board. I’ll move this off to one of the other boards as soon as I decide where it should go. (Too long for snippets, but that seems the best location.)

[TobeOrNotTobe]

Ok, thanks Zette. We couldn’t decide where to put it either, hence main board. Glad you liked it!

[Gabriele Campbell]

Maybe a forum for Those Crazy Stories You Can’t Sell But Want to Share Nevertheless.

[Author]

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