Weekend has a minion!

Don't eat the Smiley Fried Egg

The aroma hits your nostrils at almost the exact moment the sound of sizzling bacon drums against your ears. Opening one eye it takes you a few moments to register where you are, as your sleepiness gradually clears. Opening the other eye and looking around the room, you can't quite place your location.
You seem to be either in a long-deserted cafe or some weird room that's styled on an abandoned eatery; there's a solitary wooden table set up in the centre of the room, covered with a brown and white gingham tablecloth. The room isn't particularly well lit, you really need to get up and move to explore it further. But each time you try even looking towards the walls, there's something about that solitary table that draws your attention back to it.


Trying to focus your thoughts to work out just why this place still has a table laid ready for you, the smell of bacon seems to enter your mind, wafting those thoughts out of your ears before you have a chance to actually think further. It's almost like there's a rope dragging you towards the table, encouraging you to sit down and make yourself comfortable in readiness for the sizzling bacon to be served. It doesn't matter that normally you don't even like bacon - personal preferences have also been wafted out of your ears by the aroma, leaving you with a strange feeling that you must sit down and wait for your meal.


Rising unsteadily to your feet, you take a few steps towards the centre of the room, your eyes totally engrossed on the table setting. You don't notice the flourescent yellow poster on the wall, with "caution" written in a large font, nor the image of a skull that might have been drawn with a Sharpie on the walls. As you gradually near the table, the aroma changes. The bacon has given way to the overpowering aroma of toast - slightly overdone judging by the carbonised tinge in the air. But once again your preference for lightly toasted bread has vanished, and the thought of singed toast draws you ever closer to the table.


There's no room for other thoughts in your head amongst the swirling aromas; just as you start to wonder how you got to this place, the smell of baked beans warming in a saucepan reaches your nose, wafts into your head and all other thoughts head straight out of your ears again. Even your knowledge that smells can't work that way has gone before you can ponder it.


It didn't look that far to the table, but your steps are more like shuffles. It's almost like you're walking through treacle... or maybe through brown sauce. The thought of brown sauce draws your mind back to the bacon you could smell earlier and you find yourself salivating at the thought of a lovely lucious fried egg to go with it. As you reach that thought, the unmistakable sound and aroma of butter sizzling in a frying pan enters your head, partying with the bacon, beans and toast. Vaguely you wonder why you can't walk any faster towards the table, but gradually you're getting nearer.


It must have been several minutes since you started making your way to that table with the gingham cloth, but time seems to have no meaning for you. It's like time itself has stood still and you're in a different dimension where your only interest is reaching the centre of the room. Eventually you find youself within reach of the wooden table, and eventually stand alongside the solitary wooden chair. The chair is at an angle, inviting you to sit down at the table.


Something makes you pause ever so slightly, like the rational part of your brain is fighting the bacon attacking your senses, but the feeling passes quickly and you lower yourself onto the wooden chair. Expecting it to feel uncomfortable due to the lack of cushion, you're surprised to discover that the chair feels padded as you sit. If you were able to draw your attention away from the table setting, you would see a few more posters on the walls, but they are now too far away to read clearly, espeically in the dim light around the walls. Whoever designed the lighting for this room knew exactly what they were doing, drawing everyone's attention to that centre table setting.


Looking down at the place setting in front of you, there's a wooden placemat which matches the wood of the table. As you stare at the placemat, a plate is passed in front of you and lowered gently onto the mat. You still don't feel any desire to look around, not even to see who (or what) may have served your meal. Picking up the fork, your eyes scan the plate as you decide which food to eat first. The toast? That would pair well with the beans. Maybe the bacon, although that would go well with the toast. How about the egg? Lifting your fork, you're just about to spear the egg when it suddenly blinks.


As the egg blinked, you found yourself seeing the egg's point of view - a large human looking down at you, aiming a sharp-tined fork right at you. Blinking again, you can't shift your viewpoint back to your human self - somehow you've become the egg. But if you're the egg, who is the human, and what on earth will happen when the fork jabs you straight between the -





Gasping for breath like you've run a marathon you sit bolt upright. Panting as your pulse rate gradually slows, you look around the room - your bedroom. Slowly the realisation comes that it was just a bad dream, and you've not turned into a fried egg that will be getting eaten for breakfast.
Just then, the aroma hits your nostrils at almost the exact moment the sound of sizzling bacon drums against your ears.

Credits

Profile by Paddy

• Coding help: Ringo
  Stock images from freepik: topntp26 & lifeforstock

Story by Paddy