Kiss the Chef

The chalky hand pushed the lid off the steaming pot in a frenzied effort to escape. The lid, however, clattered to the kitchen floor and alerted Mary of the attempt. She came running in, armed with a metal spaghetti strainer.

"Back in the pot!" she exclaimed, bashing the strainer against the scrambling fingers. "Back in the pot!"

The hand gave up all hope and fell with a splash back into the scalding broth. Mary clanged the lid back on the pot and placed a heavy bound cookbook atop it to weigh it down.

That settled, she stepped into a frail pair of pink slippers and trotted down to the end of the driveway to her slanted mailbox, victim of one too many drive-by baseball battings. Awaiting her inside was a brown package. She checked the return address, which was given as Penderghast's Cereal Museum. She couldn't remember being affiliated with any such place. She was strictly an oatmeal girl herself. But it was addressed to her, no mistaking it.

She brought the package inside and laid it on the kitchen counter. She cut the twine which was tied around it with a pair of shears. The contents of the boiling pot was making a racket again and she bellowed at it to keep quiet. She stripped off the brown paper and took the lid off the box within. Inside was a large quantity of packing excelsior, of which she was allergic. Holding one hand over her mouth and nose, she dug through it with the other, keeping as safe a distance as possible. Her searching hand encountered nothing underneath the excelsior but more excelsior. She made a few passes, but it seemed to her that someone had sent her a package of nothing but packing material. What kind of a sick joke was this?

Irritably, she turned towards the stove and the pot with the noisily writhing thing inside.

"I said be quiet!" she snarled and viciously cranked up the gas jet.