//------------------------------//
// My Chemical Breakfast 
// Story: The Alley Outside of 7/11: An Anthology 
// by The Red Parade 
//------------------------------//

“What the hell is this?” asked Strawberry Sunrise.

“It’s a bed. For breakfast.”

Strawberry looked down at the pile of tiny beds on her plate. “But… why?”

“Well,” said Cherry Berry, “I know how much you like sleeping, and I know how much you like breakfast. So I put beds in your breakfast.”

Strawberry looked at the plate. Then she looked at her marefriend. Then she looked at the plate again. Then back at her marefriend. “Okay,” she said while very obviously not being okay.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” said Strawberry even though she was actually emotionally traumatized by this experience and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to physically, financially, or emotionally recover from what had transpired. “It’s great.” It wasn’t.

Cherry shrugged, digging into her own plate of tiny little beds. Strawberry picked one up and put it in her mouth. It was crunchy, with the texture of sandpaper. It kind of tasted like those little bottles of glue that everyone told you not to eat, but you ate them anyways because you were a rebel. 

She kept eating, hoping that it would get better the more she ate. It didn’t. It still tasted horrible. It reminded her of eating a metal pole. Strawberry had never eaten a metal pole before, but she liked to think that it would taste a little bit better than this depressing excuse of a breakfast.

Actually, it was a breakfast, because it sure was breaking her very fast. 

“Here, put some syrup on it,” Cherry insisted. She began pouring maple syrup over the beds. “Tell me when.”

They stared at each other as the plate was drowned in syrup. It began overflowing and staining the tablecloth. It flowed over that too and began flowing into Strawberry’s lap. Finally, the last drips came from the bottle. “We’re out of maple syrup,” Cherry said, surprised.

“I know,” said Strawberry. 

She stood up, sending drips of syrup flying across the room. “I think I’m going to go to Applejack’s house and beg for leftovers.”

“Okay! Bye, dear!” 

As Strawberry walked out of the room, Cherry called out to her again. “Oh, hey, if you loved this, wait until you see what I did to your bed!”