Cleaning the Refrigerator and the End of the World as We Know it

Some things are much more difficult to let go of than others. I have accumulated many strange artifacts and weird talismans in my life; mementos, keep-sakes, sentimental trinkets and countless “samples” that I feel will ultimately prove to be of immense value in my continuing research. The baggage can become excessive and it tends to monkey-wrench my favorite credo: Always Travel Light.
But too many facets of my fragmented existence have been forced to become more stabilized of late and I find myself needing to trim the fat, as it were. And I have had to jettison many items that have been with me for longer than I care to remember.
It wasn’t so long ago that I spent some time convinced that my refrigerator was possessed by demons and I managed to find the one thing that seemed to alleviate this accursed condition. It was a lovely chocolate brownie that was a Christmas gift to me and it appeared to keep the demonic presence at bay; once I had placed it in my refrigerator and it had become irrevocably ensconced.
It still resides there today doing whatever it does, which, admittedly, I’m none too sure of, but my luck seems to be holding and I haven’t had any episodes of demonic activity in a pretty good while so, in spite of whatever Final Karma it might bring down on me, I have to assume that the little bugger is paying its own way.
But things change and any infiltration of feminine domesticity will cause the supposed “value” of these types of commodities to plunge dramatically. It’s a cruel marketplace. So…I have been informed-in no uncertain terms-that the brownie has to go.
She has never had very much patience for my experiments or my late-night pacing sessions during which I address all of my misplaced paranoid delusions and she has failed utterly to even make an attempt at appreciating the value of my brownie.
And even I could, perhaps, be convinced that the brownie may no longer keep evil demons at bay; for it may well have already banished them to the land of Dust and Ghosts, but, when faced with getting rid of it, I was forced to see the Real Implications and Dangers that were inherent in the plan. But, as usual, she could not.
I tried to explain that, due to its unusually long tenure in the refrigerator, the brownie may well have absorbed an unnatural amount of chlorofluorocarbons that have probably imbued it with many mysterious chemical properties that make it far too dangerous to dispose of in a simple manner. For instance, you can’t just throw something like that in the garbage and walk away. No. We’ll have to do various tests and analyses and perhaps but some samples in the Gas Chromatograph and find out just what the precise composition of this thing really is. We’ll need to experiment with trace amounts to find out what kind of effect it may have on the environment.
There is much work left to do and she has failed to see the wisdom in this course of action. She is overly anxious to just “toss it out” even in spite of my repeated and earnest warnings. I haven’t even worked up the nerve to call the EPA; mostly from the fear of prosecution.
During one of my pacing sessions, it came to me: If we throw this brownie out, it may well find its way into the hands, or rather, the pincers of the local ants who reside in my area. And you can clearly see the danger in this, eh?
Right. They will consume it and break it apart and bring it back to their colony and possibly even share it with other colonies. Then, the ants will grow fat and strong and alert and then they will feed it to their Queen and she’ll begin to give birth to a race of Super-Ants that will eventually burst out of the Earth and attack mankind as a whole. Yes. And there we’ll be; teetering on the brink of human extinction in the face of horrible monsters who will multiply faster than they can be destroyed. Our guns and tanks will be useless and the SWAT teams will be devoured and the National Guard will run for their lives in the shadow of the Super-Ants. The President will even be forced to ponder the Nuclear Solution. But it will be too late.
We will be enslaved and forced to toil endlessly deep in the subterranean catacombs far below the surface where the beasts will continue to spawn their terrible progeny. They will inject us with vile and weird-smelling Ant Fluids that will liquefy our internal organs and transform them into Super-Fuel for their marauding hordes. The Super-Ants will force us to dig precious minerals from deep in the Earth which they will subsequently use to fuel the massive starships they will have been preparing in secret so that they can spread their Domination to a galactic scale. Then, the entire Milky Way will be at risk and all the Free Peoples will curse us as the bane of their existence. And humanity will be wiped out of the Universe and replaced with the Evil Wave of Insect Overlords.
It could happen.
But no. She refused to see the logic in my hypothesis. And that’s hard to accept, especially after I outlined the scenario for her in exacting detail.
And so now we’re holding in an uneasy truce and meeting regularly to discuss the Brownie Issue.
I sense that soon the negotiations will break down and then…well, I guess we humans had a pretty good run while it lasted.