The Wayward Noodle 3

            Soon, Noodle was back at ‘Mon Plume’. It was completely closed. He came to a two-point landing on a ceiling fan over the restaurant floor, which he realized was a great vantage point to reconnoiter. He could see all of the restaurant floor and bar, but barely, by the glow of streetlights outside, and by the advertising signs within. He spotted some suspicious items, but he held his post until he had catalogued them in his noodle head. Startled by the ice machine cycling, he waited above until he had determined all danger had passed. Then he jumped down to the seating and bar area, and investigated such things as the slot machine, cash register, card-swipers and espresso machine, and found that those things weren’t doomsday machines. He was working his way across the floor to the host’s podium, when:

            “Everybody jazzy music! Little bit of jazzy music!”

            played next to him, and Noodle nearly jumped out of his cheese sauce. He wound up under the X spread beneath a tall table, looking for the source of the noise. It wasn’t a doomsday machine, but an arcade game in the corner. It had been cycling, too, calling attention to itself in a rude manner that made no sense. Once he realized what it was, Noodle thought it was clever.

            “Everybody jazzy music! Little bit of jazzy music!”    

            Investigating the stock area was easy jaunt. It was well kept and orderly and there wasn’t anything labeled ‘Doomsday Device’. The floor in that area was even cleaner, which was becoming more and more important to Noodle. He was now covered with dust and other unidentifiable detritus. He crawled to the kitchen.

            The kitchen was the dimmest room in the joint. It was lit only by the UV bulbs in the cup sanitizer. As quick and methodical as he had been, at this point, Noodle was beginning to feel it. Sad to say, Noodle was going the way of all neglected pasta. Slowly. He had a terminal case of ‘drying out’, and, as he crept up things, he was finding himself less and less flexible. He was grimy and streaked with lint. Using the same strategy he had in the other rooms, he found likely targets, then went over and identified them. The slicer caught his interest, and he crawled up the stainless steel leg of a table. As he did, Noodle was beginning to notice, to his exasperation, that he was either losing his grip through the lint on him, or, when making use of his clearer spots, he stuck too much to make climbing efficient. He determined that the microwave next to the slicer was just a microwave. He wondered what was in it, then realized that if there was an doomsday machine there, it would be the thing before him, and not a thing inside of the thing. He was learning quickly.

            He crawled to the edge of the table and plopped the long way down. Across the kitchen there was a small refrigerator that had things on it that he could, from his low angle, just see.

            He knew that the collection of things there was extensive, since he’d seen them from the other table across the kitchen. That was the last place in the restaurant he hadn’t searched, and he just didn’t have the energy to get to it.

            Noodle crawled across the kitchen, then lay despondent, next to the stainless steel refrigerator door, covered in lint and crumbs.

            “Psst!”

            A thread of hissing, from very close by.

            “Psst! Hey! Mister Noodle!”

            Noodle looked over, and saw a glint of something the other side of the ‘fridge, hissing at him.

            “Whaddaya lookin’ for?”

            He crept closer, and saw who she was. She was a fortune cookie, still in the package, who’d bounced beneath the ‘fridge.

            “Nothing big. A doomsday device that will ruin the world- soon!”

            “Oh” she said, “That’s bad. I’ll help you look for it.”

            “How can you help me?” He asked the cookie. “I’m all sticky, and you’re too slick.” He was thinking about the package she was in. But, as it turns out, she was also slick in the attitude sense.

            “I can throw you up where you were looking. You hadn’t gone up there yet, have you?

            ‘Noodle’ could see that ‘Fortune’ wasn’t the worse for wear after winding up on the floor beneath a ‘fridge. Her package gleamed- “Alabaster Spoon Incorporated.”

            “I popped out about five feet as some schmuck was carrying the box I was in,” Fortune explained. “Chipped off one of my corners. And, I can pop you up there, if you’d like.”

            “Thanks for the offer, but noodles can’t pop far.”

            “Not by themselves. But with the thrust from the pressure in a hermetically sealed fortune cookie package, you could go quite far.”

            “Really?”

            “Certainly!” she said. “With flexing cellophane, things can wind up anywhere. When they sat the box I was in on the loading dock, one guy popped out. Later, I heard that he wound up on the upper railing of a water tower in Ypsilanti!”

            Noodle crept closer to her. “Wow! Is that far away?”

            “It’s very far away. Talk in the cookie box was that he had to have gone to the edge of space. And, you just need to go five feet up.”

            “Let’s do it! Let’s save the world together!”

            “Okay, but, one thing.”

            “Okay…”

            “I’ve heard about noodles. Oh, yes I have. There will be no hanky-panky.”

            “Oh, certainly not. No panky-hanky.”

            “No funny business, Mister Noodle.”

            “Never. No funny business, either.”

            Noodle didn’t know what she meant by ‘panky-hanky’, or ‘funny business’. He thought they were two completely different things. But he was sure that it wouldn’t happen, since he didn’t know what either of those terms meant.

            The truth is, both Fortune and Noodle were quite ignorant. But, an advantage they had was that they knew exactly how ignorant they were. After all, their formative months were spent inside of a box. Fortune’s was closed, most of the time. Noodle’s box only had a reverse view of the pasta aisle for the lucky few who were close to the little plastic window on the box. He hadn’t been lucky. And those close to the window wouldn’t pass on any information except complaints about how cold they keep supermarkets. They’d even started a petition. Noodle went closer.

            “So, how do we do this.”

            Fortune rolled further away from the little ‘fridge so’s to get a better angle to the top.

            “Hop on.”

            And, Noodle did.

            Fortune flattened beneath him, and Noodle prepared for the flight five feet up. Then, she puffed. Noodle flopped about, but stayed on. He was stuck, like a noodle would. He tried to keep it positive.

            “Try again. It might work, if I readjust, and make sure to keep my…lintier side…down.”

            “…oh...”

            He rolled over, she flattened and puffed, and up he went, to a soft, rolling landing onto the top of the ‘fridge.

            “Are you alright? Did you make it?”

            “I made it! I’m here!”

            Fortune’s plaintive voice wafted from the kitchen floor.

            “what do you see…?”

            Noodle looked at the items before him.

            “I see Ten Large Plastic Containers!”

            “…oh! do they have signs on them?”

            “Dang!”

            “what?... did you pull one of your orifices?”

            “No! Dang!”

            “Then, ‘Dang’ what?”

            “It’s all spices.”

            “Tarnation!”

            “Including ‘Allspice’.”

            “…what else?”

            Noodle rattled off a list.

            “Chive…”

            “darn…”

            “Oregano. Tumeric,”

            “…rats! I have tumeric, by the way, for coloring, but, still, rats!”

            “Dill… Crushed Red Pepper…”

            “wow. how much?”

            “Can’t hear ya.”

            “How much red pepper?”

            “Two liters. I dunno. Can red pepper ruin the world?”

            “i don’t know. perhaps, if taken in large amounts…”

            “…Black Peppercorn, Dried Onion…”

            “it’s nothing but spices?”

            “…Bay Leaf…”

            “that’s all?”

            “That’s all. Bacon Bits…”

            Fortune’s voice then came clear.

            “Blast. You get down here.”

            But the world was ending for Noodle. He laid there and began to mesh, all sticky, with the stainless.

            “No need…”

            “…there’s a place where I know you haven’t looked!”

            Noodle rolled, and fell to the tile with a ‘tick!’. One end of him was that dry. He lay there and looked at Fortune, who had rushed to him.