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.
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When Bash Mendez realizes...
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At 9:46 the next morning, Bash ran down a rock road with envelopes flying out of his mail bag and into the path of two oncoming emus. The large birds looked like two giant hairy eggs with long, fast toothpick legs topped with a sharp beak on a toothpick neck.
"Not my eyes!" He yelled. He ran so fast his feet felt like they were floating. He was terrified he would slip and fall and they would peck his eyes out.
Up ahead, Jye Lumly, an elderly man Bash delivered mail to, stopped his old rusty truck at the end of a long driveway. Jye smiled when he first saw Bash and began to hold up a bundle of envelopes that were to be mailed, but dropped them and yelled, "Get in, hurry!"
Bash dove into the truck bed with a thud and the two emus abruptly stopped.
"Hey, boy!" Jye hollered to Bash, who was laying down in the truck bed. "You still got eyeballs?"
Bash climbed into the truck cab through the passenger window and looked at Jye.
"Darn," said Jye. If they ate your eyeballs, I was gonna shoot 'em, open 'em up, and make me some eyeball stew."
Bash started to laugh but suddenly Jye yanked Bash by the shirt and pulled Bash toward the driver's side. One of the emus stuck its long neck and sharp beak into the truck.
"There's a gun under your seat!" Yelled Jye.
Jye threw punches at the bird and missed every time. While the bird was occupied, Bash managed to pull a pistol from under the seat and fired a blind shot toward his door, killing the emu.
Jye whispered, "The other one, where's the other bird?"
Jye and Bash both wanted to be in the middle of the truck away from both windows and they sat back-to-back. Their breathing was loud and they were both sweating. Counting the heartbeats pounding in his chest, Bash suddenly saw the other emu jump into the back of the truck and mash its face against the back window. The one black, beady eye on that side of the bird's head stared at the two terrified grown men.
Bash whispered, "Jye?"
Jye wanted to whisper but instead he whimpered. "Yea?"
"Remember ... in Jurassic Park ... "
Jye blurted, "I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!" Then he jumped out of the truck and tried to scare away the bird by throwing his arms around and yelling his loudest.
"Jye, NO!"
The emu dove out of the truck bed directly at Jye. In mid-air, Bash fired the pistol and the hairy egg-shaped monster fell dead to the ground in a heap of feathers and toothpick limbs.
#
Back at the Post Office, Bash walked into his boss's office.
"Have a seat, Sebastian."
Bash sat down and braced for the bad news that always followed the use of his full first name. He felt the room was cold and too quiet.
The next fifteen minutes were a blur and he only caught the worst parts of the boss's message: "The Post Office is being sued for killing emus"; "You're fired"; "No, that was not your 'Vietnam' and how dare you"; and, "No, I don't know how you're going to pay your rent."
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