It Was Super Yummy, For Realzies
The afternoon wind blew hot through the alley behind one of the main commercial streets of Canterville, kicking up dust into picturesque little swirls and creating tiny vortexes when picking up leaves and then deflecting off the many buildings. This is not the inviting façade the owners and managers want customers to see; it is a desolate place, row upon row of barred windows, grimy doors, grimier dumpsters, and dozens of pipes sticking out of grey or whitewashed walls or tarpaper roofs belching smoke and/or steam, hot enough that even the pigeons stay away. At street level exist certain nooks where the sun almost never shines. Here is where the innumerable stray cats ply their trade, sauntering between this back door and the next, hoping to encounter a less malicious restaurant worker who might perhaps be willing to part with some unusable scraps from the kitchen, or better yet some refuse from the comparatively wealthy patrons taking up space in the dining area who had for whatever reason left some of their food uneaten.
The cats had competition this day, though. A young girl with pale blue skin – oddly common in this city – and two-tone blue hair pulled into a long but unkempt ponytail, sporting a surprisingly fashionable purple top and pink skirt (though both were rather worse for wear), was also lurking around in her own attempt to find sustenance. As luck would have it, behind the French restaurant ‘Le Connard Prétentieux’, a dapper waiter on his fifth smoke break of the shift had just placed a bowl of cream on the ground, attracting the attention of all the mammals in the vicinity. Grown cats may be lactose intolerant, but they won’t care if they’re hungry enough. A large black tom attempted to monopolize the bowl, but the girl, now on all fours, reached for it.
A tense standoff ensued, the cat and the young girl locked in mutual death glares, hissing and growling as they tried and failed to frighten each other away. Finally the girl let out a roar – less pathetic than one would expect – as she reached out her right hand and slapped the tomcat. Beyond livid, he prepared to rip the girl a new orifice or five, but she stood up to her full height, what little light existed in this dingy alley directly behind her, putting her in silhouette yet encircled by an aura that told any comers they would not make it past her unscathed. Her pupils, surrounded as they were by rings of magenta, appeared to briefly glow bright red as she shifted her weight and prepared to give the tom a taste of her right boot. However, the tom wisely opted to retreat.
The girl chuckled to herself as she knelt down to accept her hard-won bowl o’ cream. Sonata Dusk, you still got it, she thought with some pride as she recalled happier, more primal days. Once a Siren, always a Siren.
As she reached to pick up the bowl, something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. “Aww, what a cute kitten!” she said to no one in particular as she stood up to approach an orange ball of fluff, leaving her prize to the tom by default.
“Here, kitty!” she called out to it as it ran away, walking further and further from her liquid meal. After she had chased it two more doors, her stomach’s growling shook her back to some semblance of reality.
“Oh, right,” Sonata realized. She turned back to the back entrance of ‘Le Connard Prétenteux’ to find her bowl of cream fully in use by half a dozen stray cats. She sighed. “Aw, for realzies? Why do you always do that?” she asked herself, but no answer came.
Sonata kicked a random pebble in the alley. It ricocheted off another indiscriminate wall and collided with the head of a nearby pigeon, who immediately took flight. She jogged over to the unlucky avian, apologizing and begging its forgiveness. Two seconds later she only barely missed being the target of the pigeon’s excretory wrath.
“Yeah? Well… you’re the worst!!” Sonata exclaimed, fist shaking at the bird as it flew out of sight.
Her stomach growled again, more insistently this time. Lips pursed in an attempt to deny the rest of her body screaming at the top of its nonexistent lungs for something, anything, that could sustain it for another week, Sonata wandered around in a small circle, rubbing her arms as if lost in thought… though the only image in her mind was that of her new enemy the pigeon: plucked, deboned, pan fried, and used as the centrepiece of a taco.
Before she could partake of her imaginary delicacy, however, her olfactory bulb caught wind of a familiar scent – meat, tomatoes, peppers, onions, a distinct blend of spices that are only used in one genre of food…
“Taco…” Sonata mumbled as she allowed her body to be carried by the smell, moving instinctively to the door from which it was strongest.
A stencil-sprayed sign above the heavy windowless door read “Big Beulah’s Burrito Barn”. Sonata neither noticed nor cared as she unthinkingly opened the door and slipped inside with barely a sound.
Sonata found herself standing on a red tile floor surrounded by cookers from which the smell of goodness wafted around. She could almost see the colours of the fragrances – that one’s chicken, that one’s beef, that big old pot is cooking salsa. To her left sat a fryer filled with oil that probably needed to be dumped. A teenage boy with green skin and (for some reason) a dashiki grabbed a basket of sliced corn tortillas and dipped them into the boiling oil for a couple minutes, only to bring them out again and liberally dust the now-formed chips with some spices from a nearby glass shaker. Her eyes widened to the point it looked like they might pop out of her head, the stimuli threatening to overwhelm her fragile mind. She imagined herself frolicking through the fields surrounded by twenty-seven dancing tacos, all singing a jaunty whimsical tune with her.
Before they could get to the bridge, however, a man’s voice jolted her out of her daydream.
“Excuse me, miss. What are you doing here?” he asked. He was a small, weedy man, thin body and thinner hair, skin as grey as the walls – were the lighting not so intense, he would blend into the background completely. He sounded annoyed but tired, his meat-juice stained apron belying his mood.
Sonata tapped her cheek with her finger as she attempted to form a coherent sentence – “Uh, I was, um… looking for… and then the smell and… door and…” – but failed utterly.
The man sighed and shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly. “I told Beulah we need to make the signs for the restrooms and the kitchen more clear. You’re not the first customer who’s come into the kitchen because of it. She’s on the phone yelling at our onion supplier right now. I’d better get you out of here before she sees you.” He ushered Sonata away from a large intimidating woman and out a door into the main dining hall.
Staring at the nearly-full house, Sonata felt weak in the knees (more than she already was from hunger). Every single table was occupied by CHS students who probably remembered her from that disastrous Battle Of The Bands concert. She recalled vividly the rotten fruit and random bottles they tossed at her head. Fortunately, all of them were currently engrossed in themselves, paying no attention to anything outside their own tables.
Scanning the Burrito Barn’s perimeter in hopes of finding some way to leave without being spotted, Sonata discovered a chair sitting forlornly near the back corner.
It’s all alone. Just like me, Sonata thought as she flashed back to the day last week her ‘sisters’ finally tired of her and threw her out of their lives. Aria had always been the hotheaded one; her livid profanity-laden screams still echoed in Sonata’s head. Adagio was quieter but even more furious, unleashing a short speech brutally destroying what little confidence Sonata had left. Idiot, moron, ditz, spaz, the worst – Sonata had heard that all before; telling her that she was a worthless waste of space who not only could never survive even six hours without them, not only would be better off dead, but was ultimately a mistake of a failure who never should have been born… that hurt.
Quickly, quietly, Sonata shifted along the wall over to the awaiting seat and sat. She soon realized that despite the presence of trash cans and tray platforms at the front of the room, most of kids seemed content to just leave their refuse on the tables in expectation of some poor overworked busboy cleaning it for them. She briefly recalled the days – not too long past – that she and her sisters could effortlessly command any schmo to clean up after them, and felt incredibly thankful that her bad habits had caught on with the rabble. Someone might leave food that she could swipe before the staff throw it out.
As her scan of the area reached its rightmost extreme – since that was as far as her neck could turn without hurting (she learned after the coffeehouse incident not to make that mistake again) – Sonata caught a glimpse of something that chilled her to the bone.
Alone at a two-person table less than eight feet away sat Sunset Shimmer, the girl who just over a month earlier had destroyed her and her sisters’ very essences. Sonata shuddered as she recalled that horrible night. Afterwards, Adagio had declared Sunset their mortal enemy and spent hours every day entertaining revenge fantasies, but Sonata could not bring herself to hate Sunset – she’d thought Sunset was rather nice, in fact. Even upon learning Sunset used to be a manipulative bully on par with Adagio herself, she wondered if she could perhaps use that as an ice-breaker to get to know Sunset better. Of course the Battle Of The Bands put a stop to that idea. What would Sunset do upon seeing Sonata now? Would she call in her friends? The image of a giant glowing rainbow Unicorn remained etched indelibly in Sonata’s mind.
Surely Sunset could tell she was no threat – after all, Sonata had been wearing the same clothes for over a week (it was a minor miracle she still looked and smelled presentable enough to not be thrown out of the Burrito Barn immediately, but perhaps the stench of a busy kitchen was able to overpower even her) and her matted ponytail was a clear giveaway of a girl who had fallen on hard times. But maybe she wouldn’t care? Sonata shivered as she imagined the possibilities, of a likely fire of anger behind Sunset’s green eyes not unlike Adagio’s infamous explosions, of the silly horse transformatio— what’s that on the table?
In front of Sunset rested a tray upon which sat a green thing. Like a giant soft taco but not. Burrito. Sonata stared at it. Sunset, for her part, seemed to be staring off into nothingness, voicelessly mumbling to herself, taking absolutely no notice of Sonata, or anything else for that matter.
Instinct took over. Sonata picked up her chair and moved it back to its original spot, immediately across from Sunset, trying her best not to make any sounds that could draw attention to her. She sat down, eyes transfixed on the burrito. She silently lamented its not being a taco. On the other hand, it was larger than a taco. But it was green. Why would Sunset buy a green burrito? What made it green? Sonata imagined a plump fairy in a white tutu cavorting around Beulah’s kitchen and zapping burritos different colours with its magic wand. She wondered if that was the real reason the little man – Mister Beulah? – wanted her out of the kitchen; now she knew their secret. Did Sunset know?
Sonata tentatively stared at her hoping to find an answer yet afraid there might be one. Sunset, for her part, said nothing and saw nothing, so Sonata turned her gaze back toward the burrito. It sat on its tray, inviting her, mocking her. A small bit of the edge of the tortilla had come loose from the rest of the wrap, hanging on by the narrowest sinew of flour. Sonata slowly licked her lips in steely contemplation, her eyes darting up to Sunset’s face, wondering if she had returned to the world of the living. No? Well then. Sonata slowly, carefully extended her right hand toward the errant bit of food, ripping off with a quick flick of her thumb and forefinger, bringing it back to her mouth with as little ostentatious movement as she possibly could.
It didn’t taste like much. If anything, the aftertaste was odd, like one of those leafy green vegetables Adagio always insisted she eat, knowing she hated them. But it was the first solid food her system had known in a week. Immediately, Sonata began to salivate; now that her brain and stomach registered nutrition, they demanded more.
The burrito continued to sit there as Sunset Shimmer’s mind ruminated on a different plane of existence. Sonata reached for the burrito, eyes locked onto Sunset, but held back. Even she knew taking without asking was wrong. The puppets on the television had taught her that. But… just a little nibble wouldn’t hurt, right?
Besides, Sonata reasoned, Sunset’s a nice girl who wanted to be friends with us before Adagio made her mad by making everyone fight. Maybe I made her mad too because I put too much grape juice in the punch? But that was an accident! I’m hungry. Nice girls share food with hungry girls, right? Also… Sonata quickly glanced over Sunset’s attire, Her clothes are nice. Nicer than mine. She can buy another burrito. Maybe I’ll buy one for her when I have money?
Sonata resolved that she would, as soon as possible, find a way to treat Sunset to another burrito or perhaps a taco, knowing that day would not come soon enough for either of them. But she contented herself in the knowledge that her good deed would happen eventually.
With deft flicks of her finger, Sonata slowly slid the tray over to herself, Sunset oddly oblivious to it. To Sunset’s left sat a black plastic knife and fork. Perfect for cutting off just a tiny bit. After swiping the utensils, Sonata did exactly that, liberating about a quarter of the burrito and quickly popping it into her mouth.
Sonata’s mind nearly broke from the sheer explosion of flavour. Savoury juices and spices mixed with the tomatoes, onions, peppers, corn, beans, and rice in an intense lambada dance on her tongue as she chewed. She felt a subtle warmth radiate throughout her body once she swallowed, her eyes tearing up slightly (though involuntarily) at the sheer joy of it all. Although she briefly noticed the lack of meat and was more briefly disappointed, it did not matter in the grand scheme of things. What did matter was her stomach silently screaming at her; she needed more.
Body operating on autopilot, Sonata grabbed the other three-fourths of Sunset’s burrito and shoved it into her mouth in a single rapid motion. The ecstasy she felt before now exploded within her at far greater intensity. Maybe a bit too much. Had anyone noticed her, they would have been impressed (and possibly disgusted) at the spectacle. That she did not choke to death right then and there was a minor miracle. Still, after her teeth, tongue, and saliva had adequately broken the burrito down, Sonata managed to swallow it, the only remnant of its existence a small bit of sauce dripping out the right side of her mouth, which she attempted to lick off but failed. She had arrived at her temporary nirvana. Almost as an afterthought, she slid the now empty tray back toward Sunset.
Thanks to that science cartoon she liked to watch, she imagined it digesting and its sugars breaking down – pancreatic juice: flow, flow, into the duodenum.
Across the infinite chasm of the 30”×30” table, Sunset’s eyes had begun to wander; her head lolling in whatever direction to compensate. Eventually, they settled upon the tray, its distinct lack of burrito suddenly snapping Sunset, blinking, out of her stupor. Her face momentarily wore a look of shock, confusion, and hurt. Slowly, she brought her head up and found herself face-to-face with a satisfied and grateful Sonata. Sunset’s jaw dropped slightly as her eyebrows contorted in their attempt to register the proper emotion; failing that, she cocked her head in utter befuddlement. Sonata, for her part, responded with her normal friendly smile, as well as the only thought currently bouncing around her mind…
“What?” Sonata asked sweetly.
Author's Note
This story has been kicking around the back of my mind since about a week after I finished Sunset's perspective on it, nine months ago, though only in the last week have I been able to write it down in a presentable form. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
For more rambling (from the writer, not Sonata), click here.
