Miasmatic Review

I need to pay more attention.

They are rearranging where everyone sits in my office. The move is happening over the weekend, thus everyone is packing this week. That includes me. I’ve sat in this same desk for over 3 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a lot of crap. This was my cubicle away from sanity. Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite an impressive collection of condiment packages. Soy sauce, mustard, ketchup, horseradish sauce, barbeque sauce, sweet and sour sauce, and salad dressing have filled up about half of one of my desk drawers. I had forgotten that these existed. I just kept throwing the packets in there and never pulled any out.

Today is one of my minions last day in our department; she was promoted to a new position in a different department. Since this is her last day with us, they decided to throw her a potluck. I brought in my legendary chicken enchilada casserole (yes, I cook.) as my dish to pass. It was gone by 9:00 AM; it’s that good. Someone brought in a lunchmeat and cheese tray to make sandwiches. I love a good sandwich, so I made myself roast beef and cheddar sandwich on pumpernickel. Upon taking a bite out of it at my desk, I knew it needed something. No one had brought in any condiments for the sandwiches.

Well, no problem, I just finished cleaning out my desk drawer that had the condiment packages in it, I knew where to find what I needed. Digging through the box I put them in, I pulled out some salad dressing (aka generic mayo) and horseradish. While I was doctoring up my sandwich one of my minions was asking me questions. Then we had a minor emergency on the floor I had to go put out. Forward 20 minutes later, I return to my desk to finish what I was originally doing.

While I was working, I picked up the sandwich and took a bite out of it. It didn’t take but a split second for me to realize something has gone horribly wrong with my sandwich. To say it tasted bad would be quite delicate, this tasted like licking the bottom of a road kill skunk. My gag reflex was kicking into overdrive. Before I hurled, I spit the sandwich out into the trash. Thankfully, I’m still hooked on Listerine Pocketpaks. Three of those strips took the taste out of my mouth.

Carefully I peeled back the bread on the sandwich to take a peek. There, between the lettuce and the meat, was some kind of opaque, green-yellow colored substance with the consistence of baby snot. Sick baby snot! It didn’t take much for me to figure out what the hell that was. Apparently, those condiment packages only last so long, I was looking at the congealing mixture of horseradish and generic mayo gone bad.

The two different rancid substances mixed together had created some kind of chemical reaction. Noticeable distortions in the air were visible around it. The stench was god-awful and it cause my stomach to contract so violently I was sure I was about to spew forth the entire contents of not only my stomach, but also my entire bowel. I am not kidding when I tell you that I think I created life. A life that did NOT want to exist and it new who its creator is.

It might have been my gagging or some psychotropic side effect, but I swear the stuff started to pulsate and move. Grabbing the sandwich, I carried it to a trashcan at an empty desk and threw it away. There was no way in hell that sandwich was staying anywhere near me. I figured let someone else enjoy my stinky creation.

Then I threw away all the condiment packages. I don’t want to risk making the same mistake twice.