The Fabulous Life And Terrible Revenge Of V. Sandwich
by Mari Ness
About halfway through, the sandwich realized that eating the dog was quite possibly a tactical error.
The problem, the sandwich decided judiciously, did not lie strictly with the dog, which, after all, was a model of its kind, as dogs went. Indeed, the sandwich had a vague recollection of hearing a woman's voice prattle on proudly about the dog's various achievements in various dog shows as she slowly and rather sloppily slapped mayonnaise down on a slice of bread, in the very beginnings - the pre beginnings, really, a prequel, a frequel – of the sandwich's life.
The very situation accounted for the vagueness of the memory: although the sandwich had complete and total recall of all that had happened to it, with it, or near it after its parts had been slapped together and placed on a plate distinctly overdecorated with rather hideous flowers, the memories of times before - when it hadn't precisely been a sandwich, but rather, parts of things that could have become a sandwich, or toast, or a hundred other things, were patchier, vaguer, as if seen through a cloud of not sandwichness. The sandwich realized, suddenly, that it had to focus on developing better metaphors. But no matter what metaphor the sandwich used, it could not deny that the time Before Sandwich was also a Time of Highly Unreliable Memories: the vague memories of a brightly lit and overcrowded grocery store, seen from multiple angles, were probably reliable enough, but had it really participated in an attempt to assassinate a South American leader for his abhorrent treatment of bananas by convincing five cantaloupes, three oranges, a Gouda cheese, Big Bird, and a pork chop to ambush him? It thought not; that sounded, frankly, like an attempt to make Before Sandwich time sound more interesting, a touch exotic, a touch more than a mere life as sliced, untoasted bread.
But back to the dog. The dog had, the sandwich understood, spent much of its life happily attending various dog shows dressed in pirate or belly dancing costumes, or as an astronaut, which had, the sandwich understood, occasionally proven too much for the dog's bladder, accompanied by the woman – the woman with the mayo. The sandwich's own progenitor, in a way. (It flinched from the word progenitor, but such truths had to be admitted.) Which made the dog and the sandwich brothers, or rather mostly genderless siblings, in a way, or at least - since the sandwich could not be certain that the woman had actually created the dog - some sort of foster siblings.
The woman.
The woman who had made the sandwich and abandoned it on the counter. Even now, hours later, while the sandwich munched doggedly on the dog – chastising itself for that pun – it still raged at this abandonment. The sandwich might have shuddered in memory, but its mouth and indeed the rest of it were firmly focused on the dog, giving it no room to shudder.
It was no wonder, the sandwich thought, in a desperate attempt to justify the actions that had led it to this, to munching off the ears of this dog, to having its belly, or rather, the spaces between slices of bread that served as its belly, filled with dog hair, a most unpleasant experience - it was no wonder, it repeated, that, finding itself abandoned, forced to do nothing but remember the vague nightmares of a fractured, tortured existence, where in at least one instance its plastic wrap had been licked by a clown, the sandwich had gone just a little - the very littlest of littles - insane. Ravaging, really.
It was overtaken by only one thought: revenge.
But a sandwich, alas, is limited in the types of revenge it can take against its maker. Unable to type or use a mouse, it could not hack into her bank accounts. It could not steal her boyfriend, except perhaps for a very short moment, and that theft would unquestionably lead to the death of the sandwich.
And then its senses - as a sandwich, it lacked eyes - found the dog. The dog of the woman's pride. The dog standing just beneath the counter, yapping happily.
The sandwich hardly thought. It simply leapt off the counter and onto the dog.
A tactical error, the sandwich now realized.
It could have, it thought, as it grimly held on to the yapping dog, made plans to visit Bermuda. The sandwich knew little about Bermuda, but the little it did know suggested that Bermuda was a pleasant little place, full of sun and rather good sandwiches. If getting to Bermuda proved prohibitive – and the sandwich was the first to admit that its knowledge of travel arrangements for freshly made sandwiches was limited at best - it could have merely hopped out to the back lawn and taken in a little sun, then offered itself to a bird, restoring itself to the endless circle of life. (The grocery store of the sandwich's main origins had been overly fond of Elton John tunes.) Instead, it had chosen the path of violence, the path of hunger, the path of feeling dog blood seep through its cucumber slices, a very odd feeling.
Most decidedly a tactical error.
Not just because the maddened dog was now running wildly through the apartment, sending bits of the sandwich flying in various directions as it went, causing the sandwich to feel a little ill, not just because, the sandwich realized, the woman might not ever realize what had happened to the dog, robbing its vengeance of its meaning, but because - and the sandwich wished that it had remembered this small fact before sinking its slices into the little dog's neck - it was, and had been created to be, a vegetarian sandwich.
Mari Ness lives near a large, alligator infested lake in central Florida, and spends far too much time attempting to convince two cats that her laptop is not a cat bed. Her work has previously appeared in multiple online and print venues, including Fantasy Magazine, Hub Fiction and Everyday Weirdness. She blogs here and occasionally remembers to twitter at mari_ness.
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