chapter 24

"!Warning! Chemical side effects may occur in the following forms: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, bodily irritation, excessive bloating and/or severe damage to metabolism-

She is interrupted by a, '-Scuse me, miss!'

Melissa drops the box and turns, suddenly very conscious of a lump in her esophagus, thickly inching down to pool in her stomach. Which looks...

Oh hey, it's that janitor lady again. Melissa smiles, hoping she doesn't have any crumbs or smears of icing left on her mouth.

Pleasantly raising her eyebrows, the janitor lady says, 'You're needed in the prep room, now. It's time.'

So, off Melissa goes, reports directly to the nearest crewmember and asks them where to go. 'Ah... who said it was go-time?' is what she gets from the camera man, checking buttons and swapping big battery packs.

Melissa frowns. Goes to gesture towards the janitor lady... who isn't there. 'The um, lady, told me,' she says.

'Who?'

'The janitor lady. I didn't get her name.'

The camera man scratches his head. 'Ah... Look, mate. Um,' trying not to glare at her chubby gut, 'I dunno who you got your orders from but it's not actually go-time just yet, so...' He checks his watch and swaps words with a nearby co-worker. Turns back to Melissa. 'Still about five or so minutes to go.'

'Oh.' Melissa blinks, bites her lip. The camera man returns to work and Melissa backs away on her heels, paunch nodding faintly with every step. When she looks for the janitor lady, she can't find her anywhere. Even weirder: back in the room where the last donut in the box sits on the wheely tray-

There is no donut. And there's no box. Not even the wheely tray is there. The room lies empty of souls, occupied only by Windex-thickened air. Melissa goes over to where the wheely tray used to be, looks at the emptiness it used to occupy. On the carpet, not even indents from the wheels remain. The carpet is immaculately flat.

Dazed, Melissa idles away the next four minutes obsessing over the strange feeling sitting in her mind, trying to decipher whether it's telling her wake up from a dream or whether this is real. The last donut and its box have vanished, in the absolute sense of the word; dough, cardboard, tray, carpet prints, even the smell; all causal traces of its existence do not exist. She almost doubts the donuts were really there at all, ever... except for that strong slop of matter working down into her stomach, heavy and dense. That couldn't have come from anywhere else but the donuts...

Paranoid?

She sniffs the air for the smell of marijuana, or anything else, but there is nothing. It's just her, alone, with a whole lot of doubt.