Thankfully s/he couldn't hear my thoughts, but my lips froze despite what I was thinking. Those beady eyes (I thought only potatoes had eyes) just stared at me a moment. Finally, the artichoke moved up onto that bit of skin between the lips and nose. "OK, talk."
Now that I was allowed to, I had no idea what to say. I hadn't done drugs since college, thirty five years ago. I don't drink. So why was there an artichoke on my face? With a gun? I decided to start there.
"Why are you standing on my face with a pistol in my nostril?"
"I'm impressed. You didn't just go, 'Oh, my! A talking artichoke!'
"I'm here because you listened to your parents and ate all your vegetables. I'm here because you sometimes order vegetarian meals. I'm here because when you were in Europe, you decided you enjoyed eating artichokes, and now eat them every chance you get."
By now s/he was squinting like Clint Eastwood.
"I'm here because you ate my family-- my wife, the one after her, the one after her, and the one after her. And my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my kids, my grandkids, and my great grandkids.
"So, in the words of a boy named Sue, 'Now you're gonna die!'"
As you can imagine, I was sweating up a storm. Sue (I thought of the artichoke as a him with a her name at this point) was scary. There was no anger. No rage. No fury. Just a matter of fact intensity.
"What kind of gun is that?"
If Sue had eyebrows, he'd have raised one. "Really? I'm about to shoot you and all you want to ask about is the caliber of my weapon?"
"Look, please... I had no idea!"
"Ignorance is no excuse."
"I have a family!"
"I had a family. You ate them."
"Come on, please! Have a heart!"
"Sorry. You ate that, too."
There was a bright flash and a loud noise...
I had a slight nosebleed.
"Maybe," I said, "you should have worried about the caliber."
I almost broke a tooth on that stupid pistol.
The heart's the best part, but the rest is still tasty.
Dedicated to Mary Tabata; this one's more or less her fault.
