A Forbidden Meal

She looked down at the form lying on the table. Was it really in triplicate? Oh my God. Really? Did they need three official copies of her last meal request? What were they going to do with it, pray tell? One for the master chef, one for the media and one for the archives of death row dining? The bureaucracy of it made her skin crawl, made her want to refuse, made fasting seem the nobler route.

But no. They and their rules and their stupid system – they could take away her life. But they couldn’t take away her last meal.

A last meal. What should she order? What would make it just right? Suddenly the pressure of it threatened to overwhelm her – how to make it perfect? But she caught that thought before it leaped upon the backs of the ever ready wild horses and ran away with her. Trying to make things perfect. That’s what had gotten her into this mess.

Think, damn it. This was her last meal. This was the meal with no rules, no consequences. She could eat anything – what would it be? Forget starting with dessert – that was for people with something to celebrate, something left to enjoy. That wasn’t what this meal was about.

Pickles, she wrote. Yes. There have to be pickles. And gefilte fish, although she had no idea how to spell that. And beets, because something in this meal had to bleed.

Bleed. Bleed. That’s it. Raw meat. Or better – raw chicken! Never ever ever had she been allowed to eat that. Here was her chance.

Yes. This was more like it.

She’d keep the pickles, but forget the beets. And bring on the gefilte fish if they could figure out what it was. And then this: raw hamburger and chicken, both. She’d always wondered what they’d be like. And a piece of raw liver, slimy and slick. She’d always want to slurp it slipperly between her lips. Yes.

Cookie dough would have been perfect if Ben and Jerry’s hadn’t made it so mainstream. Oh, but who gives a fuck. This wasn’t about proving a point – it never had been no matter what the reporters and the lawyers and the politicians had said. It was just about her. She wrote down cookie dough.

But something was missing. She was almost there – this list was good. But there was something else…a vegetable? She laughed. No damn vegetables. And no grains, no dairy, no stupid pyramid.

The guards were coming through the door – they’d want the form. Shit. Something, there was something. What was it?

Oh that. Shit. She scribbled quickly, then handed the form to the guard without looking at him. Let’s see what they would do with that.

My Favorite Fortune Cookie

I broke off a tiny piece and inspected it.  The meal was over, but conversation continued, and somehow it was difficult to stop eating completely.  The fortune cookies were the only things – well, edible things – well, marginally edible things – left on the table.  We had already gone around the table with the fortunes, dutifully adding “on the drum, this year, in bed” to them, and laughing even when they weren’t terribly funny.  Conversation had moved on to other things.  I wasn’t quite ready to leave yet, and my mouth demanded something for dessert.

Absently, I lifted it, opening my lips just enough to place it discreetly on my tongue.  I let it rest there for a moment – no reason to hurry.  But as I listened to Al tell his Batman joke for the third or fourth time (for the benefit of the 3-year-old boy), I gradually became aware of a surprising and delicious flavor floating across my tongue, or drifting into my mouth.  It was hard to tell exactly where it came from, but it had to be the cookie.  I rolled it around a bit, noticing how it left trails of flavor as it disintegrated.  No fortune cookie I had ever eaten had tasted like that!

I broke off another tiny piece and ate it. Yes, it was definitely the cookie.  I caught the eye of the host, who had ordered from his favorite Chinese food place, and raised my eyebrow.  He smirked, looked down at the cookie, back at me.  “It’s like the short straw,” he said.  “Know what I mean?”  I reread my fortune and smiled.