I went to a Lunch n’ Learn at my neighborhood funeral home because I wanted a free sandwich and because in 30 years or 60 years I was probably going to die. There was a picture of a sandwich on the Lunch n’ Learn flier I received in the mail but when I got to the funeral home there was only a small bowl of popcorn and some tiny bottles of water.
When I arrived, a man named Todd was droning on about burial plots. There were a dozen people sitting on metal chairs and these people kept looking at Todd but then glancing at the table with the popcorn on it. I could tell that these people were just like me, that they cared way more about free sandwiches than they cared about where our bodies and souls went when they died.
“This seems like some sort of Ponzi scheme,” I yelled out, rather loudly.
I’d heard some bad things about Ponzi schemes on the radio lately and while I didn’t exactly know what they were, I could tell we were definitely being ponzied. I really hated the feeling of being ponzied and I also really hated when Todd frowned at me and told me to please sit back down and please be quiet, so I pulled out the voodoo doll collection I kept in my backpack for when people insulted me and I grabbed the doll that most looked like Todd and stuck a pin in his heart and a pin in his brain and a pin in his junk and then I held the doll up to him and screamed, “Popcorn isn’t fucking lunch!”
After I screamed that, a couple of the people in the audience clapped and one yelled “Damn right!” but before I could say anything more, or lead these people in a revolt, a security guard grabbed onto my arm to escort me out. Okay, okay, fine, okay, I said holding up my hands, I’m going, I’m going, but as we walked toward the door I spun away from him and kicked over a table full of cremation brochures and some casket catalogues and then I kicked over the popcorn bowl and then I yelled “Fuck Corporate Greed!” because corporate greed was a term I had heard used on a radio show the other day and corporate greed was definitely what was happening here.
After I left the funeral home, I walked over to my former friend Ross’ house to apologize for accidentally shooting him in the foot. When I got there his front door was open and there was a very full ashtray sitting on the steps of his stoop. There was also a voodoo doll with a ton of cigarette burns sitting next to the ashtray. The voodoo doll had my name written on its forehead in black marker, but it didn’t really look anything like me. Yes, it was pear-shaped and yes, it had a handlebar mustache. Yes, it had my same exact tattoos and yes my same exact hairstyle and fine, fine it also had the same tiny freckle I had in the iris of my left eye, but other than that there was absolutely no resemblance to me whatsoever. This voodoo doll which didn’t really look like me was also still a little bit on fire, so I patted the flames out and I shoved it into my coat pocket.
Soon Ross limped outside. He was wearing a walking boot and holding a plate with a sandwich on it and I ducked into some bushes to hide from him. I was still going to apologize to him but then I saw that he looked very annoyed that the voodoo doll was gone. He set his sandwich down on the stoop and he went back inside to ask his girlfriend, Ruby, if she had taken the doll. She told him to fuck off and then the two of them started yelling back and forth at each other. While they fought, I grabbed Ross’ sandwich and yelled “Lunch n’ learn fuckers!” as I ran off.
I have no idea what happened to Ross or Ruby or Todd after that. I moved out of that neighborhood a week or two later. I moved to a classier neighborhood that had better lunch n’ learns that always had sandwiches but I also moved out of that neighborhood because I accidentally shot my landlord in the foot after he tried to ponzie me.
