Condiment War

It all started when I couldn’t lighten up my face just to tell a joke… and then not give closure on the fact that I was just making a joke. But it also wasn’t a joke. It’s kind of complicated.

There we were, setting up our sandwich station in the morning. Set up the meats, set up the chemicals, set up the bodies to marinate these sauces in. And there he was, Tyrone. Minding his own business.

Tyrone was a special kind of worker. He used to be the inventory manager before Terri ever did not still receive the title (still hasn’t, by the way. I know you’re keeping track). But Tyrone was respected by Karl. Able to negotiate a wage prior to his hire because of how honorable and tasteful he was.

“I like his work,” Karl would say. “Arlo, you brought a good employee to our team.”

But I knew, deep down inside the boiling hot pits of my heart, he was a conniving fellow, using his good deeds to cover up his evil wickedness.

Haslia had taken out some chemical bottles to be refilled. That’s all she had done. As the coroner, she’s the one responsible for cutting open bodies and stuffing them inside our preparation cabinets. But Tyrone had other ideas.

“Hmm, I’m going to take the liberty of opening some of these foul bodies and slicing and dicing them up to be filled with preservation chemicals. But first, I’m going to bother Arlo by taking his cheese and just slicing in half, even though I clearly see him unwrapping some cheese for the preparation station.”

And that’s what he did. He cut those stacks of cheese in half, knowing very well that’s what I do in the morning – prepare the cheese of truth. And what is the truth? Tyrone is a malicious human who has people praise him for his goodness and so-called holiness.

And guess what? Haslia never even once opened up a chemical bottle to be refilled – she only set them aside so they could be refilled by someone, anyone, anyone who was a daring soul to refill the mayonnaise bottle with more mayonnaise.

Off to the back he went, Lord knows what he was doing back there. Normally, he’d slice up tomatoes and onions as a tribute to help family members mourn the loss of their dead ones in the waiting room. So, I figured he was going to the back cooler to grab some vegetables. But that’s when the commotion started…

“Hey, Haslia’s got that!” I point at the delicately packaged arm that likely belonged to a professional arm wrestler from Arm Wrestling World.

“This? Are you serious? Are you saying I can’t also do this?”

His mouth was open wide in shock as if he had been caught red-handed stealing buttons from the Gingerbread Man, but he continued his scheme.

Tyrone motioned for me to come over to the freezer by the cooler. All emotion flushed from my face, as if I had emotions in there in the first place, but this was crossing the line.

“You can’t do that, Arlo. You can’t go around pointing in people’s faces like that. It’s very disrespectful, and not to mention my pockets you’ve filled with disrespect in the past few weeks. Revealing to me the security footage of a patient who I decided was not worth my time so I could help the flooded line for the sandwich counter.”

The patient had a tablet in hand. Big deal. Who actually just walks around with a tablet in front of a packaged body case except they were looking at their order? Not like they’re a supplier or else Karl would’ve been with him by then. It was only like an eon that I had seen the man standing there. A whole colony of snails would’ve traveled to the moon and back by the time Tyrone had helped the guy. How hard is it to just be mindful of surroundings? Not to mention we had at least five of our beloved staff members already helping at the sandwich counter – a sixth is completely and utterly unnecessary as they are a hindrance to everyone present.

An offset this was to our relationship, two buds (certainly not friends). A shepherd and a sheep but not his sheep. A coldness as frigid as the dead bodies received on a weekly basis was his demeanor toward me from that time forward. A war of avoidance and ill-will. Pure disgust of even being around each other, and if we had to speak, it was as bitter as the waters of the Dead Sea to a slug that fell into its gurgling grasp.

Great was the fall of us as a house founded upon decaying tree branches, bits falling away with every blow of the wind and fungi eating away the facade of a foundation. And great was his departure from the morgue, a relief of unneeded stress and toxins.