Bash Mendez must save his favorite snack food from getting ruined by being turned into a gluten-free, sugarless, tasteless, and ultimately useless food by the nation's most zealous health nuts.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Bash Mendez realizes...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Bash sped down Alameda in West Albuquerque and up the on-ramp where the road merged with Coors Bypass. He looked to his left to merge and there were two bright headlights in his way. Rain showered the road. "Let me in!" He shouted at what appeared to be two headlights without a vehicle.
He sped up but the lights kept up with him. Lightning displayed the desert landscape and, to Bash's surprise, a truck attached to the headlights. Sitting inside a green truck, in the flash he saw a white-haired lady glaring at him with a scowl and long wet hair.
"Aaaaah!" Bash yelled and pushed the pedal down with one foot on top of the other. "GO!" He slapped the steering wheel three times, hard. Finally, the green truck slid into the distance.
The parking lot of the Walmart Neighborhood Market was mostly empty. Bash parked and ruffled Buddha's hair. "I'll be right back. I need to get all the Creamys before anyone else." Buddha looked out the window solemnly. "I'll be right back."
He half-walked, half-ran to the entrance where the great light of Walmart spilled into the night. He knew exactly where the snack isle was. Through years of binge watching TV shows and movies on Netflix and Hulu, Bash had "experienced" every snack food "known to man", and described those experiences in detail on his blog along with a one-to-five-star rating. None of the other snacks were half as good as Creamy Mimis. Bash thought that if he ever earned a PhD, his dissertation would be on the reasons Creamys were so superior; superior with a wide, extremely wide margin that he believed could somehow be measured. Einstein discovered ∑=MC2 and Bash Mendez fantasized about discovering the ultimate equation of Creamy Mimis.
At the other end of Walmart, he saw a long-haired woman enter. How could she get here so fast? No, that isn't...
Then she turned her head and looked directly at him. Bash closed his eyes and opened them. "Oh, no, you don't!" She was headed for the snack isle. He yelled and ran so fast he nearly missed the turn onto the isle. Getting his balance , he ran smack into the woman and her wet hair hit his cheek as she dropped to the ground.
Bash kept running and what he arrived at made him question his sanity. The Creamy Mimi shelf space was totally bare and empty boxes and transparent cellophane wrappers scattered the floor. Suddenly he was cold and goose bumps spread over his body like robots at the singularity.
"They gone, man." A voice behind Bash said.
Bash looked up at the ceiling and spoke to it: "Thanks for the heads-up, Pal! You knew this was gonna happen, GOD. Now what?"
A man with dreadlocks tapped Bash's shoulder. "You not okay." The man looked at Bash's eyes. "Look like you need to lie down."
Bash's thoughts swam through his mind and banged into each other, reverberating. "God?"
"No, man, I ain't God. God ain't here—"
"God is everywhere."
The man shook his head. "Can you drive? I mean, are you okay to drive?"
"Where are the Creamy Mimis?"
"That's what I was saying, man. They gone. People came in here like heathens. They was savages man, ain't never seen nothing like it. Ripping boxes open, cramming those things in their mouths and laughing like hyenas. I don't think those things are safe, man, and I've done some crazy stuff."
A triple crash of lightning and thunder rattled the world. Bash's reverberating thoughts were shocked into stillness and low and behold, an idea popped into his head like an old light bulb that explodes when it turns on for the last time.
He ran out of the store faster than he'd gone in, holding his hands in the air as the rain soaked his face and shirt. "I'm coming, Creamy Mimi!"
*** Please vote, follow me, and add "Snack Food Hero" to your reading list! ***
