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It was another day cooking patties in the Papa’s Burgeria. As usual, Rita had to deal with all eleven customers by herself, as she was the only employee. The only thing she looked forward to was flirting with the ladies like a real slapper. A wheeler dealer, a real slag if you know what I mean. A promiscuous shoulder wave and a wink was enough to send the women head over heels. She’d lean forward, compliment, and slide the burger with her number on it over the counter. Her compulsive strumpety habits was never really a problem in the literal sense, but perhaps a moral sense. Until now...
Akari, Rita’s favorite consort, entered the store to get her usual burger. Rita put aside the growing customer line to prioritize Akari’s meal. Her sense of cuisine style was truly magnificent, a piece of art. It was a perfectly symmetrical burger: bun, onion, tomato, lettuce, burger, lettuce, tomato, onion, and bun. Rita, like the floozy she is, had no control over the tarty compliments that slipped through her lips. “Is that a new leather jacket? It looks nice on you but it’d look better on my floor.” ( Lloyd Samuel Rosen David). Rita liked her women with butchy styles and motorcycles. Akari blushed like an over sensitive anime girl, and promised her with a kiss on the cheek over the counter. What Rita didn’t realize was that Peggy was in the prodigious and ever expanding line of mildly frustrated patrons.
Peggy gasped in betrayal. She had been thinking about the trollopy burger goddess nonstop for months now. She knew everything about Rita. Like how she comes home from work at 3:30am, and leaves at 9:26am. How she starts her evenings off What’s New Pussycat followed by a shower to Tom Jones, It’s Not Unusual. She would then watch Larry the Cucumber compilations in HBO Now until she passed out to Shane Dawson’s conspiracy theory compilations at 8:13. It was like clockwork and Peggy was the bored public school student during Latin class.
She bubbled with an emotion too dramatic to comprehend. A deep pain tore at her chest and made her breathe ragged. She screamed channeling her inner 10 year old minecraft boy and threw down her bottom bun, tomato, mayonnaise, bottom bun, onion, rare patty, pickle, mustard, top bun, burger. “I thought we had a connection Rita! You said the denim in my vest brought out the denim in my jeans!” Her hat would have fallen off with the velocity of the throw down, but luckily it was steel-tipped.
Rita panicked and shrugged nonchalantly, throwing up her hands loose manner. “Uh.” She said smiling coily.
“What are you trying to impling, you swashbuckling country bumpkin?” Akari shouted back incredulously. “I bet you don’t even know what Rita’s bi-solstice starbucks order is!”
“Ha!” rebutted Peggy, “She goes to Dunkin on the bi-solstice! She gets a coconut coffee with an earl grey tea bag half cream half splenda.”
Akari was flabbergasted. She, running out of insults and also random facts, curled her fists to resort to Plan E. E for enraged. She took running start, but since it was a ‘running start’, Peggy was able to duck. She was sadly unable to save her cowboy hat and it was knocked off. Peggy wrapped her arms around Akari’s waist and bulldozed her back into the angry line of customers. As they tumbled over like bowling pins, Akari ate it on the greasy fast food floor.
Wally had a particularly terrible day. He just got kicked out the senior center for beating up Bertha and Regenold for playing Monkey in the Middle with his hearing aid. He had a long history of anger issues and he just wanted to consume his regular mayonnaise coated beef.
When Akari slammed into him and knocked him over, his last frick had flown. He absolutely had it and started throwing punches in a blind rage, unfortunately hitting Mitch. Mitch was a chill guy, probably hazed, but a chill dude. He stood there and took it like a champ. Carlo Romano, on the other hand, took out his lute and started whacking Wally on the head with it. He and Mitch had history back to preschool. In a way, they were hetero life partners. Carlo Romano had a busy life, as he had a job at the Scooperia and also played in his family band. Whenever he needed to chill and probably smoke the devil’s lettuce, his buddy Mitch was always there.
Meanwhile the stray cowboy hat was ricocheting off the restaurant walls unpredictably and precariously. It shredded the Kingsley Comedy poster on the wall, hit the one of the lights, breaking the bulb, and finally came to a finale of hitting Lisa in the head. She snapped around and growled like someone-who-won’t-named when he gets hit from behind with stray food in the school cafeteria. She immediately asserted her dominance, and her hair stood on end like a fricking furry. She started shouting something along the lines of “Who hit me” and “You could have hit my kids”. She went absolutely feral and threw a table. She pointed to the closest person to take her anger out on, and she called her shot like Babe Ruth.
Doan was a meek man. He lived like a hermit in his house from where he closed all the blinds. He worked as a graphic designer, which wasn’t gay. His two contacts with the outside world was emails and forcing Rita to make a nasty rare burger she burnt most of the time. He didn’t care. What he didn’t expect was a feral Suburban mom to grab him by his white button down collar.
“Did you hit me with that honky steel-tipped cowboy hat.”
Doan doesn’t wear cowboy hats, if he were theoretically a region it wouldn’t be the South, but perhaps a quiet Northwest. He stuttered over her words, as this was also his closest encounter with a woman. “I-I d-don’t style myself in the t-trends of the South,”
She leaned in so close you could smell the bubblegum and fury radiating from her mouth. “Let’s see what breaks first, your spirit or your back.” From that declaration she picked Doan up over her head like Bane from the Dark Knight Rises movie and dropped him over her knee. He crunched like a snail shell.
Taylor was an ordinary guy, and was trying to make up his mind. He wasn’t violent, but from within the customer line he could see the chaos. It moved him, no, inspired him to finally do what he dreamed of. He jumped the front counter where Rita was making her escape. She already had fake passports and stored away money from her third tax evasion. She was ready for the FEDs at any moment. She didn’t expect to use it for this though. She was slightly disappointed. Taylor kneels and painstakingly drags her back by her ankle. Rita makes a small sound that was drowned out by the screaming of Doan. Her fingernails tried to grab hold on the dirty laminate flooring, but wouldn’t because she’s a lesbian. He lifted her up and suplexed over the counter into the writhing mass of people.
This was revenge. He was in love with Peggy for as long as he’s started seeing her in the Burgeria. He was infatuated with her vaguely psychotic tendencies and country accent. He was a nice guy though, so he never made a move. He just followed her home, and watched her from the window in his free time. As time progressed, he found himself stalking Peggy stalking Rita. His inner envy for Rita grew as he realized Peggy wasn’t even straight. It was all Rita’s fault for enticing her with her womanly wiles to the gay side. He smiled as he watched her torn apart by the masses, and thusly left through the back door.
Big Pauly was more often known as Pig Bauly by the taunting burgeria employee. He was a little on the slower side so he hadn’t quite realized the fight was going on from the far back of the line. People were starting to scatter since Mandi, loving mother of four, had dumped the frying oil on the floor and was quite literally ‘lighting this b*tch up’ in an adrenaline induced pyromantic frenzy. As people, other than the ones already fighting, dispersed like the Rats in Ratatouille, Pig Bauly spotted Rita. She was scrambling in attempt to not get Mufasaed. She had mocked him for far too long, insulting his physique and choice of triple cheeseburger monstrocity . And more prominently, refused to call him by his given name: Big Pauly. She looked in horror at his meat hooks grasped his head.
“D-Do you know who I am?”
“Some dead man.”