MB Short Story: Procrastination Pizza (Patreon)

In preparation for Nick’s discharge from the hospital, you and Sally are in the middle of stripping the sheets on his bed when your cellphones vibrate simultaneously.

“Sweet virgin Mary protect us,” Sally whispers as she stares at the text.

You can’t fault her sudden conversion to Catholicism—you’d sacrifice a goat to Baphomet if it meant protection from that.

The photo Nick sent in the group chat has a simple caption: “Abomination.”

That single word fails to capture the Lovecraftian horror of what your eyes are still struggling to comprehend . . . The image goes beyond mere “abomination.” It’s an obscenity, an anathema, a violation of all that is good and pure.

It’s a slice of pepperoni pizza covered in ketchup.

Sally’s hands are shaking as she sets her cellphone down on the nearby nightstand. You both glare at the offending device which delivered so grotesque a message.

“Who’s turn was it to visit Nick for lunch?” You refuse voice the question that you really need to ask: which of your friends do you have to break up with because they decided that was acceptable to feed your brother.

“Gray, I think,” Sally replies. “But I’ve seen him eat pizza before. He would never . . .”

Your stomach sinks with foreboding and nausea. Could Grayson have gone insane? Is insanity justification to profane perfection?

“I just don’t understand why someone would do this,” you say weakly.

Sally picks her phone back up gingerly with two fingers, as if the image is contagious. She squints at Nick’s message. “Maybe it’s a random internet snapshot?”

You peak over her shoulder, shuddering as you force yourself to stare directly at the snapshot like a hero gazing into Cthulhu's toothy maw.

“No, the background is Nick’s hospital room. Someone did this to him.” Your voice rises, taking on an edge of hysteria. “Hasn’t my brother been through enough?!”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Sally whispers. “A dreadful accident.”

You both look back at Nick’s text. There’s no way the zigzag squiggle of ketchup atop the lightly browned cheese got there by mistake.

“This was no accident,” you say grimly. “This was an attack.”

* * * *

“Stop being ridiculous,” Kim orders over your phone speaker. “I haven’t been to visit your brother since last Thursday when his nurse caught me smuggling in kung pao chicken.”

The Profane Pizza Incident was the result of good intentions. After Nick disclosed that he was sick of hospital food, you enlisted the members of Operation Hemera on a new mission: to bring your brother lunch from his favorite restaurants. Technically, Nick is still supposed to be on a limited diet, but the doctors clearly don’t know your brother. Recovery is fifty percent mental, and Nick is too much a gourmand to ever get better while being forced to live off unsalted grits and orange jell-o cups.

“Someone did this to him,” you tell Kim. “And you . . .”

Kim cuts you off. “Did not.”

“So you claim. But if anyone is going to poison Nick, it would be you.”

“Goodbye, Wiseman.” You can hear Kim’s eyeroll as he hangs up.

* * * *

“Is it really that unusual?” Grayson asks after you show up at his condo. “Pizza already has tomato sauce, and ketchup is made out of—”

“It’s not the same, Gray,” Sally growls, crossing her arms. “How can you not understand that?”

Gray looks at you as if expecting backup, but you’re nodding sagely at Sally’s point. He throws up his arms in bewildered defeat.

“Nick’s probably just messing with you,” he says.

You and Sally look at him condescendingly.

“And you call yourself his best friend,” Sally scoffs.

“Nick would never deliberately ruin food,” you add. “Accidentally while cooking, sure. But on purpose? No. Someone did this to him, and I intend to discover the culprit.”

“Did you ask Nick?” Gray says.

Of course not! You love your brother too much to make him relive the trauma.

* * * *

Glitch knows something.

You know that she knows something because she keeps bursting into giggles during your very serious Skype interrogation regarding The Profane Pizza Incident. Sally and you are sitting on Gray’s couch, having claimed his condo as your operation headquarters while Gray, appearing confused, went to fetch you both cappuccinos from the coffee shop across the street (detective work requires caffeine, after all).

“Exactly how bored are you two?” Glitch inquires.

Sally glares down her small nose at the videocall. “We don’t do this because we’re bored,” she intones solemnly.

“We do it because it’s right,” you say.

“Are you trying to procrastinate cleaning the house?” Glitch wonders. “Nick’s due back next week, after all, and the place was kind of a mess last time I visited.”

Damn her insightfulness.

“That’s completely unrelated,” you say stiffly, as if offended by the very notion that you and Sally would make a big deal out of something totally banal for no other reason than to avoid vacuuming.

“Completely unrelated,” Sally echoes. “Stop stalling, Parker, and tell us what you know!”

“Never!” Glitch dramatically declares. “I’ll die first!”

Sally cracks her knuckles. “That can be arranged.”

Your friend sounds a little too serious, and you place your hand over her clenched fists, lowering them back down to her lap.

“No one needs to get hurt here,” you coax Glitch. “Just tell us who ruined Nick’s pizza.”

Glitch’s lips compress together, holding back bother her secrets and an amused smile.

"I would never betray them," she says.

You and Sally exchange knowing looks. There’s only one person who Glitch would ever go out of her way to protect.

* * * *

Kent is still in Nick’s hospital room when you and Sally arrive. Some investigators might argue that the hospital is where you should’ve begun your search for the culprit, but that would've defeated the whole point of your investigation.

“Fiend!” Sally shouts, thrusting her finger into Kent’s face. “We caught you red-handed!”  She glances down at the small ketchup packet that Kent’s in the middle of squeezing over another slice of pizza, and her face crinkles with disgust.

“Literally,” she adds.

“Uh . . .” Nick pushes himself up off his pillows to get a better view of you still standing in the doorway. “Everything okay, Button?”

You can’t answer him. Your lips won’t move, your brain won’t work. The half-empty cappuccino in your hand shakes.

Because your brother—your smart, bon-vivant brother with his five-level spice rack and love of food—is eating (an appearing to enjoy) a pizza slice with ketchup.

Nick chuckles as he overhears your thoughts.

“Wow,” he says. “Anything to avoid cleaning, huh?”

He lifts his pizza off the paper plate with the pizzeria’s logo (a singular moustache), tilting it so you gain a better view of the heart drawn atop the cheese in ketchup. “I admit, it’s not something I would usually do. But Kent told me that his grandparents always put ketchup on their pizza, and I had a few packets left over from yesterday’s burger run . . . so I figured why not at least try it?”

“It’s not exactly like zapiekanki,” Kent says. “But close.”

“Zapi-what?” Sally repeats.

“Polish street food,” Kent says. “My grandparents made it for me growing up.”

Loathe though you are to ridicule Kent’s childhood favorite, the fact remains that he puts ketchup on his pizza. Can your friendship survive this description of dough and cheese?

Nick snorts. “It’s no weirder than corndogs,” he points out, “or sweet potato casserole.”

“Peanut butter and jelly,” Kent adds, pulling a face.

Yes, but those are unholy food combinations to which you're accustomed. And pizza was already perfect.

“Pizza already has tomato sauce!” Sally seems to take the revelation that Kent and Nick are enjoying ketchup pizza even worse than you. “Why would you ruin it by adding more salt?”

Kent takes a bite of his pizza, ignoring Sally’s finger still accusatorily hovering in front of his face.

“It’s good,” he answers.

“Want to try a piece, Button?” Nick asks.

“Sorry,” you say. “We should get back, uh, get back to the house.”

The house, with it's unmade beds and unvacuumed floors and empty fridge. That house.

Ugh.

Your attempts at procrastination thwarted by ketchupy pizza, Sally and you begrudgingly return home . . .

And call a cleaning service.