by Jessica Tong

 

Eustace's mother gazed tearfully at her son. Her darling baby sported a black eye, a bruised jaw, and a murderous facial expression. A note from the principle's office slipped through her numb fingers and drifted slowly to the floor. "Oh, Eustace…" she sniffled, and collapsed on the couch.

"Washn't mah fawt," Eustace replied truculently, and scowled. His jaw was too swollen to talk right. Wincing slightly, he took a deep breath to steady his nerves and limped away.

"Eustace, darling, where are you going?" Eustace's mother asked frantically. "We need to talk about this!"

The twelve-year-old boy squared his shoulders and ignored his mother's plea. He had work to do; his Destiny was waiting for him in the kitchen.

§

      "Hello, this is Dr. Simmons." The psychiatrist sat back in his lazy chair and propped his feet up on his desk.

      "Oh, thank goodness," a breathy feminine voice replied dramatically. "It's an emergency."

      Dr. Simmons rolled his eyes. Try calling 911, lady. "Oh dear, really?" he replied concernedly. "What can I do for you?"

      "I-it's my son," the woman whimpered. "He came home today, c-c-covered in bruises and scratches…" she broke down, sobbing. "And, and…"

      "There, there," the psychiatrist said soothingly. "I'll do whatever I can to help." As long as you pay me… I mean, bullied kid? Booooring.

 "And they stole one of his shoes and he doesn't know where it is..." The woman hiccupped and blew her nose loudly. "He only had one pair!" 

His SHOES!?! Oh, how TRAUMATIZING! Dr. Simmons snickered, then coughed loudly to disguise the noise. "Sorry, I'm getting over a cold," he lied. He cleared his throat. "That's awful. Is he all right?" Besides his precious shoes, of course.

"No!" she wailed. "He's in the gosh-darned kitchen again! He wouldn't even talk to me! He just went right i-into the kitchen a-and… and—" she broke down again. "I'm just s-so… so sick of eating p-p-pancakes, you know?"

Dr. Simmons blinked. "I'm afraid I don't follow." Wow, that's a non sequitur. He drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently as the woman segued on to talk about an intense secret desire to eat numerous roast beef sandwiches. My job sucks.

§

      Eustace was in the Zone. He didn't hear his mother and father arguing in the other room, or the rousing screech of his sister's violin as she practiced. The ache of his bruises faded away; he forgot about his black eye. There was nothing but him, the large steel bowl in his hands, and the griddle. His whisking was in top form- strong arm movement, not too much wrist, and brisk enough to get that perfect, fluffy texture.

      Eustace put down the specialized $50 whisk his father bought him for his last birthday and inspected the batter with a critical and experienced eye. No lumps, few bubbles. He scooped a bit of the mixture out of the bowl with his finger and tasted it.

      Anger flashed in Eustace's eyes and he slammed the bowl down on the counter. "No, no, no! It's all wrong…" he muttered to himself. "Something's missing." Eustace paced the kitchen feverishly. Something important, crucial, something that made the difference between good and great, acceptable and amazing, decent and delicious.

      Eustace stopped abruptly and threw open the doors to the spice cabinet. He didn't have time to waste on making junk. He wanted to create something fresh and new, something beautiful. He wanted to make the most perfect, most amazing pancake ever.  He pulled spice after spice off of the shelf.

      Cinnamon? he wondered. Only if there's apples.

      Paprika? Eustace shook his head. Too weird.

      He shoved aside cloves, garlic powder, chili flakes, and dehydrated mustard. No, no, no! He didn't want cumin, dried shiitake mushrooms, or black pepper. In a fit of rage, Eustace swept his arm through the cupboard. Plastic containers clattered to the floor.

Breathing heavily, Eustace stepped back and collapsed onto a chair. What is it? he wondered silently, his head in his hands. What was missing?

§

      "Wow, pancakes again! How surprising! I haven't had pancakes for dinner since, like yesterday!" Eustace's sister exclaimed sarcastically. She glared at her younger brother. "Why can't we have a normal dinner for once?"

      Eustace was too deep in his own thoughts to reply: the kitchen was his domain. So why, then, did his mother kick him out? She had no right! And she was cooking! Eustace fumed silently. The aromas and residues would ruin the kitchen for him. The ideal pancake environment he had worked so hard to create, months of toil, were gone in one meaty flash. Eustace wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench.

      Eustace's jaw dropped as his mother, her hair somewhat disheveled and her eyes red and puffy from her tears, tottered out of the kitchen. "Wh-what? What!?! WHAT IS THAT!?!" he roared.

      Eustace's mother flinched. "Hamburger patties, darling," she replied timidly. "I thought that maybe, since we always have pancakes, a little change would be nice…"

      "But what about my pancakes?" Eustace stared at the majestic golden-brown stack in the middle of the table. It was beautiful. How could she let something so precious go to waste? What was wrong with her?

      "I thought we could use them as the buns," she suggested. "That'll be good, right honey?" Eustace's mother turned to her spouse.

      "Cheer up, sport." Eustace winced as his father slapped him on the back, somewhat too hard. "We'll still eat your pancakes, right everybody?"

      Eustace's sister snorted derisively and snatched several patties off the plate with her bare hands. Slowly, she lifted the meat to her mouth and took a bite. Smiling blissfully, she chewed slowly, and swallowed. Eustace's sister turned to her mother with tears of gratitude in her eyes. "Th-thank you. Thank you so much…" She sniffed and wiped her eyes, and took another bite.

      Eustace's father followed suit. For a moment, he simply chewed and blinked furiously, too overcome for words. "It's been so long…" he finally stammered. "I'd forgotten how good other food is… Amazing." He grabbed another patty. "Just incredible."

      An overwhelming feeling of betrayal swelling up inside of him, Eustace shoved himself away from the table and stormed into the kitchen. He stared at the stove in open horror. It was contaminated, tainted, and reeked of meat and grease. He opened all the windows and began scrubbing at the pan his mother had used. Blood pounded furiously in his ears as he went over things in his mind. Idiots, fools… I'll show them! I'll make the best pancakes in the world! They'll never want to eat anything else again.

      Heavy footsteps paused outside of the kitchen. "Hey, sport," Eustace's father called. "Mind if I come in?" Eustace grunted and continued scrubbing the pan. His father, taking this to mean "yes", sat down at the kitchen table. "Hey, kiddo."

Eustace scowled at his father with his right eye. The left one was too swollen to see out of much.

Eustace's father cleared his throat. "Boy, your pancakes sure were good tonight," he said with a grin. "Really nice a fluffy. Been practicing that wrist flick, right?"

Eustace set down the pan, dried his hands, folded his arms across his chest and glared.

      Eustace's father sighed. "What happened at school today, sport?"

      "Ooh, you should've seen it!" Eustace's sister called from the dining room. "Five minutes into school- BAM! It was exactly like a Wild West showdown, only it was two kids in the cafeteria and they had plastic sporks and stuff instead of guns."

      "Eustace," his father pressed, "don't you have anything to say?"

      "Winslow is an ignorant, egotistical, fool," the twelve-year-old spat. "He knows nothing about the art of Breakfast."

      His father scratched his head. "Art, huh? Look, son, I know you're good at what you do, but maybe you should try taking up a sport, or something. Like baseball!"

      "Baseball?" Eustace sneered. "Tommy Brecker plays baseball. And you know what he eats for breakfast? He picks his nose and eats his boogers!"

      "Now, Eustace," his father said sternly, "little Tommy is only five. Don't pick on him just because he's younger than you and doesn't know any better."

      "Age doesn't matter," the twelve-year-old declared. "Winslow's dad is older than me and just as ignorant as Tommy."

      "Eustace! Treat your elders with respect!" Eustace's father snapped.

      "Tommy's too young to criticize and Winslow's dad's too old. Gee Dad, am I allowed to complain about Winslow?"

      "Who's this Winslow kid? Is he the one who beat you up?" Eustace's father frowned and folded his arms across his chest.

      Eustace's sister walked into the kitchen and dumped her plate in the sink. "Winslow is the richest kid at school", she explained. "He's in Mary's-cousin's-best friend's-friend's-little sister's-friend's-uncle's-co-worker's-son's class. He's really popular and his dad is the CEO of Eggo." 

      "Frozen waffles are a travesty," Eustace said disdainfully. "First of all, waffles are just cheap pancakes—all you do is add more water to pancake mix. And, they lack finesse—you just stick the batter on the waffle iron and wait for it to ding or whatever. Anyone can make waffles. Second, frozen waffles are crap. They're spongy and poorly prepared. Eggo obviously uses low quality ingredients." Eustace brandished a spatula in the air to emphasize his point. "Or," he added thoughtfully, "their batter is mixed too fast, and too poorly." Eustace turned back to the sink and scrubbed furiously at the dishes.

      Eustace's sister cleared her throat. "Anyway, you should've seen it, Dad," she continued. "It was so intense! So, first, Eustace and Winslow were both in the cafeteria, and Winslow was talking to Annie about how the school got the best Eggo waffles for breakfast so that everyone could enjoy them or something, and Eustace was like, 'Who would enjoy that junk?' or something, he was kind of talking to himself, but Winslow got really mad and said, 'Well pancakes suck!' 'cause everyone knows Eustace is a pancake freak, and then Eustace grabbed an Eggo waffle from the lunch lady and threw it on the ground and stepped on it, and then Winslow was looking around for pancakes to step on but nobody had any 'cause all they serve are waffles, so he grabbed one of those plastic sporks and stabbed Eustace in the arm with it, but it was only plastic so it didn't do anything, so then he punched him in the face and they both started fighting—" Eustace's sister took a deep breath "—and then the principle came with a bunch of teachers and they got in a lot of trouble. Everyone says Winslow won 'cause he got Eustace's shoe, and Eustace doesn't have any other shoes."

      Silence pervaded the kitchen, broken only by the quiet scratch of iron wool on cooking pot as Eustace continued to scrub.

      Finally, Eustace's father cleared his throat. "Well, sport, I hope this teaches you a lesson about fighting in school. But just in case it hasn't, your mother's taking you to a psychologist on Tuesday."

§

      Eustace went to bed that night quite sure that his day couldn't have gotten any worse—he got in a fight at school, for which he got a week of detention, his family betrayed him and used his pancakes as hamburger buns, and he failed to find the missing ingredient to make perfect pancakes. It turned out he was wrong.

      That night, Eustace was once again plagued by the Nightmare, the one that sometimes kept him up until after midnight for fear of reliving it in his sleep; the one that made Eustace wake up sweating and trembling in the middle of the night, his throat hoarse from screaming into his pillow; the one that kept him from seeing movies starring Jim Carrey.

      In the Nightmare, Eustace always had to use the bathroom. He really had to go, but he didn't want to because everyone else who went before him mysteriously disappeared after stepping through the doorway. There was nowhere else to go, though, so he finally walked into the bathroom to relieve himself.

      Unfortunately, when he walked in, Eustace was struck by a sudden, irresistible urge to look through the bathroom window. Upon doing so, he was transported to another dimension. And there, standing upon the barren, cratered surface of what appeared to be the moon, stood Jim Carrey, dressed as The Mask from the movie "The Mask".

      "Kill me," Jim Carrey said.

      " 'Kill me'?" Eustace always repeated, confused.

      "Okay!" Jim Carrey replied cheerfully, and strangled Eustace.

      This time was different, though. After four years of habitual death by strangulation, Eustace had learned that if you took a really deep breath before someone tried to strangle you, you stayed conscious longer. As time, he'd gotten better and better at holding his breath, which made the whole experience much more traumatizing, but somehow Eustace couldn't help it- he wanted to live, after all.

      Eustace was fading fast, his vision blurring and his consciousness ebbing away when he heard the distant ding of a timer. "Whoops!" Jim Carrey abruptly let go of Eustace's neck and donned a plaid oven mit to take something out of the oven. It was a skillet.

      Gasping for air, barely conscious, Eustace watched hazily as Jim Carrie moved about the moon-kitchen in preparation for making, Eustace realized with surprise, pancakes.

      "Pancakes are good," Jim Carrey stated as he rolled up the sleeves of his suit and began whisking the batter. "I like them. They make pretty nice eating," he said in a conversational tone to the wheezing twelve-year-old. "But, I've always thought there was something missing, you know? They're too plain. They need some flavor, some pizzazz, that special something. Pancakes are good, but they could be great."

      "Ex-exactly," Eustace croaked. "I know exactly what you mean!"

      "Yeah, right? And it's not maple syrup or butter or anything like that. It's an ingredient, not a topping." The skillet sizzled as Jim Carrey deftly poured batter onto it. "Or, really," he admitted with a sly smile, "Several ingredients." He flipped the pancake onto a plate and placed it on the ground in front of Eustace. "Try that. You'll see what I mean."

      With great effort, Eustace struggled upright to take a bite and gasped. It was sweet, yet almost tangy, soft but crisp. It was music and poetry, a taste—no, an experience—so perfect and fleeting that it was painful. His eyes widened and filled with tears. "It's… it's beautiful," Eustace choked out.

      "I know, right? And all I had to do was add ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon sugar, a pinch of oregano, just the tiniest bit of that Italian Herb mix from Costco—too much just ruins it—and a hint of allspice and about, say, ½ tablespoon of Cinnamon—surprising, huh?—and 1/3 teaspoon crushed cloves…"

      Eustace listened carefully, tears still streaming down his face as he munched on the Perfect pancake—it was crucial that he remember every single ingredient.

§

      Eustace's mother felt like crying. It was 2 am, and her baby boy was in the kitchen again. She reached across the bed and shook her husband's shoulder gently. "Honey, honey!"

      "Mngh?" he groaned and rolled over. "What is it, darling?"

      "It's Eustace again. Oh, do something, please! I can't stand to see him like this, I just can't!"

      "This pancake business has gone too far," Eustace's father affirmed. "I always thought it was a bit shady. What sort of healthy boy wants to spend all his time in a kitchen?"

      "I should've recognized the signs," Eustace's mother sniffed. "How have things gone so wrong? You heard about Chester, Darlene and Borris' son? He was doing drugs and sniffing glue and all those awful things. I can't believe that dearest Eustace-"

      "Don't worry, darling. I'll go set him straight. The psychologist will help, too. " Eustace's father got out of bed and donned a bathrobe. "You just stay there, honey. I'll be back in a moment."

      "Okay," Eustace's mother sniffled. She sighed and wiped her eyes as her husband walked down the stairs to the kitchen. "Oh, Eustace…"

      Eustace's father paused in the kitchen doorway, blinking at the bright light. "Eustace?" he said sternly. "I know how important this has become for you, but there are limits to what is healthy and what is going to far, and waking up at two in the morning is going to far."

      "Yes!" Eustace exclaimed.

      His father sighed. "I'm glad you agree. Now, go back to bed-"

      "It's complete!" Eustace laughed. "I did it! Perfect!"

      "…Eustace? What's that smell?"

      The twelve-year-old boy's face was flush, his right eye glittering in triumph (the left one still a bit too puffy to see through). "I did it, Dad! I did it!" He shoved a plate underneath his bewildered parent's nose. "Try it!"

      "I'm not hungry, and it's two in the morning."

      "That doesn't matter! Eat it! Come on!"

      "I don't want to, Eustace! It's green and there's weird flecks in it!"

      "Yes, you do! Smell that! Do you smell that?"

      Eustace's father considered his son for a moment. "If I eat it, will you go back to sleep?"

      "Sure, fine!"

      Grudgingly, Eustace's father tore off a piece of the pancake and shoved it in his mouth. He stiffened in surprise. It was soft and light, subtle and elegant. It was laughter and cheering, a sudden, brief festival in his mouth. Eustace's father closed his eyes blissfully and chewed. "It's perfect Eustace. Thank you."

      "It was all Jim Carrey's idea," Eustace admitted. "That guy should be a chef. He's pretty smart."