“A Salty Valentines” by Jess

I approached the sink with the intent of brushing my teeth, but a heart shaped plastic bag stopped me on my tracks. If I know my wife, it would be full of goodies, so I decided to forgo my mouth cleansing until after devouring the treats. I jumped into the bed with a bag of sugary treats and pulled the covers over my body.

I reached into bag like a little kid during Christmas and produced a red object. The room was dimly lit, but I could make out that it was heart shaped and crumbled in my hand easily. I was disappointed because I thought it was chocolate when I shook the bag. Maybe it was a heart shaped cookie doused with sugar, which I would take as a consolation prize this late at night.

Now, I am not a smart man when it comes to things I put in my mouth or even food in general. When I lived by myself in an apartment, I thought that cooking a funny smelling meat just required more salt and pepper. It was also that same day that I knew what spoiled meat tasted like. There was also another incident when I picked up an order from a Vietnamese restaurant. As I arrived home and opened the bag, I became furious that all they had given me was a container of hot soup, vegetables and thin slices of raw meat.

I was 5 seconds from contacting the health department to shut down the place, but was so hungry that I took a cooking pan and began to fry the meat. It wasn’t later that my wife informed me the hot soup would have cooked the raw meat. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for my wife. There was a high possibility that I might have died alone in that apartment faced down from an apparent food poisoning suicide.

I salivated as my brain began to imagine the taste as I gazed longingly at the heart shaped cookie in the palm of my hand. Now, I’m not one to nibble on food. I believe I come from a long line of nomadic people that survived by not sitting around to eat, rather would eat on the run, so as not to become meals themselves. I think that is one of the reasons why I gobble up my food and not “eat delicately” as my wife would say.

So in one smooth motion, I tilted my head back and popped the cookie right into my mouth like a seagull. My tongue breathlessly waited for the sugar granules to break down and releases its sweet nectar over it. Suddenly, my sense of taste tilt it’s head to the side as if betrayed by what I had advertised to my tongue. I thought that the cookie would be sweet, but ended up being salty. Maybe my wife had gotten me salt water taffy cookies. “Are there such things as salt water taffy cookies?” I asked myself in bewilderment. Another surprise was that the taste didn’t stop at salty. As I began to bite through the cookie, the taste began to changed towards bitter. I started to gurgle and it felt like I ate a bag full of pop rocks. I could hear a bubbling sound along with fluids escaped my mouth.

The mysterious cookie was activated by the moisture in my mouth. It causing a chemical reaction that went from solid to liquid foam in a matter of nanoseconds. I was beginning to look like a rabid dog at this point. A very confused and concerned rabid dog. My mouth was starting to overflow and since I had wrapped myself under the covers, I couldn’t get out quickly. I caught the frothing fluid between my hands as I clumsily fall out of bed. I ran to the bathroom while holding my hands out in front of me, praying for the foam to stop. The bubbles began to inched its way down my throat and I could smell an overpowering stench of lavender plugging up my nose.

I spat out the horrible cursed cookie into the toilet bowl and furiously rammed my throat into an open spout of water. After clearing the substance from my mouth, I had a strange sensation of being able to smell what seemed to be blossoming flowers originating from inside my body. I ran back into the bedroom and furiously grabbed the hearth shaped plastic bag of pseudo cookies off the bed.

I’m glad that my wife had her earplugs on, because she would have woken up to me holding the bag of lies toward the ceiling like a decapitated head and screaming, “Not Cookies! “. I began to blamed the bag, as if it was it’s fault that I will be farting like a unicorn in the next couple of hours.

It wasn’t until later that I found out what I thought were cookies was effervescent lavender bath salts that my brother’s fiance had given my wife a couple of days ago. So, thanks to my sweet tooth, I had a salted valentines*.

-JECIE