Freaky Friday

It was a rough day at work because I was training a new guy which always makes me hyper-aware of every last detail, from the passing of the minutes to the absurdity of the work, from the minuteness of the details to the absurdity of the pay. My habit at lunchtime now is to walk around eating rice cakes in order to save money. Tuesday is soylent red, Wednesday is soylent yellow, etc. So today I treated myself to lunch at my favorite current Manhattan lunch spot, the Cafe Edison at the Edison Hotel. I sat at the counter and had my usual, the Hard Boiled Egg Plate Egg Salad Platter. As usual, the place did not disappoint me; there is just some kind of energy there I can't put my finger on, but I think it has to do with regulars and old-timers.

As I was leaving I took a few diner mints with me that are in this little plastic sphere by the cash register that I think might have once been a device to dole out the numbers in a large bingo game. No one notices those mints except for a warped few, and they seem like they could be several years old. But they're good. I ate a couple which were licorice flavored, but then the third... it was crazy. There was some flavor I couldn't place. I thought of roast beef, but no, something else. It was like those sick jelly beans that have flavors like buttered popcorn and snot. The flavor kept haunting me, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. I swallowed it finally and it was all over, that flavor lost forever.

After that I started to feel very strange indeed. I noticed the temperature rising and the humidity coming out of nowhere, the moods of the crowded streets were somewhere between elated and dangerous. Colors became more vivid and sounds disappeared. "I've been drugged!" I thought, but before I had a chance to panic I pretty much mellowed out and got back to the office. But before I got quite back to normal I entered the building lobby of where I work. There were pots of flowers by the elevators, and there never have been before. I turned to the guard to confirm this oddity, and she smiled and said something about it looking nice in the lobby, but I couldn't understand her. Then I noticed there were HUGE ferns and potted plants along the far wall. How could I have missed those when I entered the lobby? Unless they... weren’t there... and all these plants were materializing in front of me. Before I knew it the lobby had become a jungle. I escaped to the elevator.