Zero Gravity Burrito – Playlist
Last breaths of summer mixing in with the first crisp mornings of autumn. I grab a vaguely healthy sounding granola bar, and fall’s first pumpkin spiced latte. Caffeine in hand I head out the door on one of my excursions.
I make it to the front lawn before my roommate discovers my exit and tries to reel me back in “Yo! My saint?” she yells. I fucking hate that nickname, so I choose to ignore her and keep walking. “Augustine! Augustine!” she says in a muted shout, just barely below the noise thresh-hold per the homeowner’s association. I trained even my grandmother to call me Auggie, but she is another story.
“What is it, Blake?” I exasperated.
“Where are you going? We have work to do! We are so close!” she points back to the front room, fenced in with white boards full of mad scribblings like the secret liar of a serial killer. I myself, am white board ambivalent.
“I have work elsewhere”, annoyed I keep walking. Home is where the hatred is. I really need my own place. I wish I could Come Down to my front door just once without one of Blake’s fire drills. When she moved in about 8 months ago I was broke. My previous roommate, Jessup, left with almost no notice. He had a one year assignment as a test subject in a secret science experiment. “Free room and board. Free!” he said gleefully.
So I put an ad out for a roommate. At first, I tolerated Blake’s white board obsession, but she mistook my kindness for weakness, and tried to impose participation in whatever fever dream she was fixated on: Bluetooth shock collar for when your dog wanders out of range of your cell phone (that poor, frizzed out dog), a secret formula for cheese popcorn without the residue that stains your fingers orange (that’s where the flavor is!), remote start coffee pot activated by the warmth of your breath, each idea crazier than the last.
Blake stopped at the edge of the lawn, as if she was wearing the shock collar herself, and I made my escape. I walked down to Mayfair avenue, and headlong into St. Theresa’s, with all my childhood trauma hurrying up to meet me at the door. “Can I help you”, a short, young-ish looking nun asked me.
“I’m here to see Sister K.”
“She is with someone, please take a seat in the waiting room and I will tell her you are here.
Back in purgatory. All these years later I’m still a 10 year old awaiting punishment. There were 3 large paintings depicting biblical scenes, David slaying Goliath, Moses parting the sea, but I wasn’t here for all that. No more heroes, just a few minutes, maybe a little sympathy. Sister K never gives anyone an inch, but desperate times… I was waiting so long the seasons seemed to change. I absent mindedly stared out the window as the percussion of rainbounce started to punctuate the time like a sarcastic drumroll. Finally, Sister K emerged, “I can see you now, Augustine” she said.
“Hello Sister Kathleen, I know it has been a while, but I didn’t know who else to turn to,” I started.
“Here for confession? It is never too late to have your soul cleansed. You might think the church has passed you by, but we are always here for those ready to repent.
“Not exactly but, yes I am here for a cleansing of sorts. I’m not sure quite how to say this but, I need an exorcism performed. I have this friend Jessup…” Sister K’s eyes grew wide for just a moment, before shrinking down to her customary look of disapproval.
“Do me a favour” she said, “and stop wasting my time. I have a full day of service ahead of me.”
“I’m not joking, I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t serious” but Sister K was having none of it.
“Whenever you are ready to repent, you will always be welcomed back. Until then, I have no time for you and this nonsense. Please see yourself out.”
Well, fuck! I paced the front steps of the church, frantically trying to come up with a plan B, but my concentration was broken by the booming bassline emanating from an adult sized Tricycle with spinning gold rims speeding down the street. It pulled right up to the church and there he was, diamond rimmed sunglasses, gold plated Apple watch: Jessup, full on money drunk.
I reflexively started to retreat back into the church, but Jessup sprung off the trike and blocked my entry. “I’ll leave you to your god” he said, “but first, one question: Have you ever felt like a burrito, unraveling even as you try to hold your core tight. Like the thing you built your entire belief system on suddenly imploded, and you can’t feel its gravity anymore? ”
The fuck is my answer to that? “Si, una vez” I say weakly, hoping the Spanish papers over my lack of conviction.
“Well, maybe it’s time to burn those false gods down, and come up through the ashes. I have just the thing” he said as his eyes flashed to the back of his head. “what if I told you that there is a free bio-app you can download that observes your day to day life, and, once the AI gets to know you, acts as your life coach? Can you imagine, all of those stressful decisions made for you, in the way you would have ultimately decided on anyway, but without all the stress.”
“A bio-app? Is that what they did to you in those experiments, brain chip implants?” For a moment he says nothing, completely radio opaque. Sometimes the direct questions are the hardest ones to process.
He grips my shoulder, “I feel for you my brother. You are weighed down by this world. Does it feel good? Because, if you could just bend your mind a little bit, I have the answer right here. I know it sounds radical, but this little chip, I mean, I used to have no followers, now it’s in the millions. And it doesn’t change your personality, not really. It just exaggerates the best parts, the most Insta parts, suppresses the boring parts, and before you know it, you are making big coin as an influencer, just like me.”
“Money don’t grow on trees” I say, and manage to wriggle out from his demon death grip. I sprint away, as Jessup calmly returns to his trike and slowly follows me, OJ white Bronco style”
I get back to the house, which I have carefully warded against evil. As I approach the front door, Blake comes out to meet me. She has our hand held vacuum, half torn apart, in her right hand. “Augustine! This is perfect timing, I was just about to test my latest breakthrough. You were right, the dust IS where the flavor is, but what if…”
Before she could finish, the trike pulled up and spun out on the front lawn, leaving a surprisingly deep rut. I am getting a citation from the HOA for that, I am sure. Jessup sprung out, “don’t run, I can demonstrate. Watch me read you” he said and raised his hand to his temple. “you try to pass as normal, but I know you have been searching online for lederhosen, and yes, it’s September, but they are not for Octoberfest. If we searched your drawers I think we would find several pairs right now. In fact, you may be wearing them under your clothes as we speak.”
Before I can respond Blake pulls out a pouch and tosses it in the air, covering us all in orange dust. “Imagine, you just ate a delicious bowl of cheese popcorn, but you need to leave for an urgent business meeting. No time to shower…” she raises the modified vacuum up and turns it on. I can feel it tugging at me, but not in a normal vacuum way. More like it was pulling on my soul. After a minute, she turns the vacuum off, and I feel myself again, only to find that.. I am STILL FULLY CHEDDERED! What the fuck? Jessup is standing dumbfounded.
“How did I get here?” Jessup asks.
“What do you mean” I ask. “Like, in an existential sense, why is anyone anywhere, under the milky way, in the cushions of the couch…”
“No, smartass! How did I get back to the house. Oh shit, I am going to be late. The experiment starts today…”
“Jess, that was 8 months ago. They did something to you, fucked with your personality. Anyway, I think Blake’s cheese gun fouled up the chip they implanted in you. Blake, I apologize for ever doubting you. I can’t thank you enough…”
But Blake was preoccupied, “fuck, I thought it would work this time. Months wasted! It has to be salvaged.”
“I think your invention saved this guy’s life” I say, truly grateful.
“But what am I going to do about the cheese dust. I am orange, inside and out” Blake screamed in frustration.
“Can’t you just switch to white cheddar,” I suggested, “at least it wouldn’t make you orange.”
“White cheddar? It’s like you don’t know me at all. I don’t think I can live here anymore,” she said and stormed out, a whiteboard under each arm.
“What do I do now?” Jessup asks me
I look at Jess, “I guess a room just opened up if you are looking for one. In the meantime, I could go for a zero gravity burrito, maybe some German beer.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain it on the way I said, as we sped away on the trike.”
– Zero Gravity Burrito © Mike Chernoff 09/2019
About the Story: Zero Gravity Burrito was written as part of a CD club we were in. Each month someone in the club was responsible for creating a mix and sending it to everyone else in the club. And then when it was not your month, you sat back and got a mix CD in the mail, old-school style. It was very cool to see what everyone else was listening to. Anyway, my “theme” was that I wrote a short-short-story and incorporated the song titles, in order, into the story. It let me make whatever mix I wanted, and also gave me a creative writing prompt. I tried very hard to just make the mix first and deal with the fallout of whatever weird titles came up in whatever order. For the most part I didn’t change things around. One song I did wind up cutting for time (the fun of physical media) is “Home is Where the Hatred Is” from Gill Scott Heron, the brilliant jazz, hip hop before there was hip hop, poet.
The actual mix can be found here:
Chernoff Writing.com 