Volume I, Issue ii

October 1998

What's Cookin' on the Backburner by Judy Ellison

The Cask of a-Lotta-Cheezwhiz

I said to her: "My dear Ms Bell, you are luckily with us tonight. For I have received a supply of what passes for Cheezwhiz, and I have my doubts."

"Cheezwhiz, here?" said she, "How fortunate! And in the middle of snack-time!"

"I have my doubts," I replied; "And I was silly enough to pay the full retail price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain..."

"Cheezwhiz!"

"I have my doubts..."

"Cheezwhiz!"

"And I must satisfy them..."

"Cheezwhiz!"

"As you are engaged in snacking, I am on my way to Lucy Coe. If anyone has a critical palate, it is she. She will tell me..."

"Lucy cannot tell Cheezwhiz from Velveeta."

"And yet some fools will have it that her taste is a match for your own."

"Come Reggie, let us go."

"Whither?"

"To the pantry!"

Thus speaking, Katherine possessed herself of my arm. Assuming an air of compliance, I suffered her to hurry me into the kitchen. 'Cook' was not there. She had adjourned to her quarters in disgust, refusing to share her domain with the enormous cask of faux-dairy (which, I had assured her, would be disposed of by the morning).

I took from the drawer two flashlights, giving one to Katherine, and led her through the dark passage that connected the kitchen to the butler's pantry. I felt her step encroach upon mine as we neared the large wooden vat, and the orange-yellow lids of multiple cans of Cheezwhiz could dimly be seen peeking over its rim like a distant cheddar stockade.

Katherine, apparently struck dumb in her ecstasy, made a gesticulation I did not understand. I looked at her in surprise. She repeated the movement, one of mimicking the release of pressurized cheese upon her flattened palm.

"You do not comprehend?" she said.

"Not I," I replied.

"Then you are indeed ignorant of the social mores of canned cheese snacking."

"How?"

"Fool!" she said, "Everyone knows that crackers are required...."

"Of course!" I said, producing a small box of the aforementioned treat. I nodded in the direction of a dark opening in the pantry wall. "And there is more of the same, stacked in the adjoining room."

At the most remote end of the pantry there appeared another chamber, less spacious. Three of the walls had been lined with an assortment of snack crackers, piled to the ceiling overhead. Katherine, uplifting her now-dull torch (I purposely supplied hers with nearly-spent batteries), endeavored in vain to see the recesses of the farthest wall.

"Are there any Ritz?" she asked.

"Proceed," I said, indicating the unseen fourth wall, "therein lie the Ritz crackers. As for Lucy..."

"She is an ignoramus," interrupted Katherine, and she stepped forward, abandoning her useless flashlight, while I followed immediately at her heels. In an instant she had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding her progress arrested by solid plaster, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered her to the wall.

"The Cheezwhiz!" ejaculated Ms. Bell, not yet recovered from her astonishment.

"True," I replied, fetching several cans of the substance from the cask, "the Cheezwhiz."

As I said these words I busied myself among the crackers, arranging them in neat rows. With these materials and with the aid of a special attachment which caused the Cheezwhiz to be dispensed in the shape of a long, flat ribbon, I proceeded to wall up the entrance to the niche, using the cheese-flavored topping as a mortar.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Katherine from beyond the growing wall of would-be canapés, "a very good joke indeed, Reggie, an excellent jest. We will have many a good laugh about it in the parlor, over our crackers!"

"...topped with Cheezwhiz!" I added.

"Yes! Ha-ha! The Cheezwhiz! But is it not getting late? Will they not be awaiting us in the parlor? Let us be gone!"

"Yes," I said, "let us be gone!"

And it was as if I could almost see, emerging from beyond the nearly-completed wall, a tiny beam of comprehension, as the tone of Katherine's voice at last betrayed her desperate state.

"For the love of processed cheese, Reginald!"

"Yes," I said, "for the love of processed cheese!"

I emptied the final can of Cheezwhiz, which signaled its demise with a loud release of previously compressed air, and forced the last cracker into its position. Against the edible masonry I reerected the old rampart of now-empty cracker boxes (the collapse of which would serve as a beacon should the prisoner ever eat her way free).

In pace requiesKat!

The Pit or the Pen Conundrum

It was dark: a darkness so perfect that I could not see my hand as it groped the cold, clammy walls surrounding me. Marking the origin of my journey with piece of wool torn from my designer suit, I made a complete circuit of my prison, attempting (somewhat unsuccessfully) to determine the size and shape of the vault. Finding no door with which to make my escape, I came to the conclusion that I was, indeed, being written into a corner.

Quitting the wall, I endeavored to walk across the enclosure, hoping to find a means of egress betraying the apparently solid nature of the stone floor below. As one is prone to do in such circumstances, I indulged in fantasy, and imagined the sole of my shoe treading upon a ring of metal attached to some hidden trap door (signaling, perhaps, a mere deconstruction of character rather than a complete assassination). But instead, the toe of my shoe became caught in the hem of my pants, and I fell forward.

When I regained my senses I realized that, while the majority of my body was supported by the stone floor, my head had impacted nothing and I was staring blindly into a pit. Determined to ascertain its depth, I dislodged a small piece of masonry from the rim of the well and tossed it in...

"Ouch!" cried a familiar voice from the recesses of the pit.

"Keesha?" I asked, "Is that you?"

"Justus?" she answered, and there came from the bottom of the well a light, illuminating my surroundings at last and confirming my suspicions: It was indeed my cousin Keesha inhabiting the chasm below. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I could ask you the same question," I replied.

I stared down at her countenance and watched it fall into a bleak arrangement of comprehension: "So, it's the pit or the pen for you," she said sadly.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It means that they no longer have any use for you, and you're either to vanish, as I have, or perish."

"Death or exile? Those are my only choices?"

"Not a literal death," she replied, "And not all at once. It will be a gradual thing, as the essence of your original self is surgically excised one character trait at a time with each stroke of the writer's pen." She pointed upward, at the ceiling. "You see? It has already begun."

Looking upward, I could see the pen descending, sweeping from side to side in a pendular motion. I observed with horror that its nether extremity was formed of a sharp point of glittering steel, as keen as that of a saber.

I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the dictatorial agents--the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself--the pit, typical of purgatory, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule (or Canada?) for all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and having failed to fall, there was no plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and milder form of destruction awaited me. Milder! I half-smiled in my agony as I thought of such an application of such a term.

Inch by inch--line by line--the pen descended, rewriting my character in the same manner as an artist painting over an old portrait. Evolution, indeed! I laughed at their erroneous application of that word. For my fate was not of one of evolution, but devolution.

I looked down into the pit, but Keesha had vanished. I imagined her returning to some quiescent state, floating dreamless in the ether far beyond the confines of the back-burner, with the likes of Miranda, Gina Cates and Tom Hardy, her essence reduced to mere paradox: the non-terminal ending. And I felt as if my own essence were being siphoned away as I stood there, tottering on the brink. I looked up again at the pen, still relentless in its descent, and I could feel myself losing consciousness (as well as my conscience). I raised my voice upward to the powers which held me prisoner: "Death!" I cried, "Any death but that of the pit!"

There was a discordant hum of human voices. There was a harsh grating as the ceiling of my cell opened. An outstretched arm grasped my own, and I hung suspended over the pit, staring up at a man I didn't recognize.

"Who are you?" said I.

"I'm Justus Ward," said he, in a Louisiana drawl.

And then he released me...