The story of the toxic muffin

C.M. Street, '15

~

So, once upon a time there was a toxic muffin.

I would say, in fairy tale fashion, that it was the most delicious-looking food in the entire bakery -- but that is too much to say: first, because a toxic muffin isn't food, and also because there are many people who do not like muffins, even muffins that do not kill you when eaten. The toxic muffin was, however, quite tempting, if you are the kind of person who eats muffins, but was far too dangerous to ever eat. It was saturated with a sweet-smelling but deadly poison. Even the crumbs, the skeleton under the oily mortifying skin, were toxic themselves. In no way could the muffin and the poison be separated; in no way could the muffin be made safe to eat. The poison was such that a single bite could drop ten strong men dead in a minute, but not before reducing them to weeping shadows, clawing at the floor and pissing themselves in pain.

The toxic muffin also had consciousness. Don't ask how or why. It was a miracle, that's all. The toxic muffin, even if he was nothing but death itself, was alive.

The toxic muffin, like all conscious muffins, wanted nothing more than to be eaten. That is the reason muffins believe they exist: their fate is to be eaten, by one of those aforementioned particular people who likes muffins. A normal muffin is made from cake-stuff, ordinary foods, flour and bran and sugar and maybe bits of apple. Nothing special at all. So you see, the only way a muffin can rise above its constituent parts, the only way it can prove that it has a reason to exist and be conscious and transcend its mere ingredients (at least if you ask them), is to be enjoyed by a muffin-eater. Without someday coming to a satisfying death mashed between tooth and against jaw, the living muffin's existence is forever incomplete.

You might wonder, then, what use a toxic muffin might be to anybody, since it cannot be eaten. Indeed, the baker himself was puzzled at first, but he shortly decided to place the muffin on display in his store window with some plastic food -- as a way of saying to the people outside his bakery, "look, we have muffins here, edible muffins, delicious-looking like this one, only not deadly poisonous."

The baker did not have to worry about the muffin becoming fetid and disgusting in the window. The muffin was sterile. The toxins on and in the muffin were too much for bacteria. Spores of mold and fungi, even the really deadly kinds, did not fare well, either. No insects were foolish enough to nibble him. Any rodent that wandered by would turn tail and run, for where there exist conscious, toxic muffins, there must be many other things grievously harmful to small creatures.

About the only thing he needed was to be occasionally dusted; otherwise, the toxic muffin was a perfect display piece.

For years and years, the toxic muffin sat in the display, looking as fresh as the day he was born -- yes, conscious muffins are 'born'; you see, although humans sometimes refer faceitously to their gestation as 'baking', conscious muffins are sensitive about the topic of origins, and rather, euphemistically invoke spectral vaginae, giant muffin-eggs, or a life-giving muffin father figure from the sky not unlike our Santa Claus. Conscious muffins, so, have birthdays, like people.

For many birthdays, the muffin sat in the display, the only display food in the window that was conscious and alive. Even though he was conscious and alive, few of the people who saw him realized this. The toxic muffin had no mouth and no means of locomotion. He could not communicate or manipulate his environment. He could not see except dimly through a nigh-imperceptible space between his cake skirt and muffin top, and his vision was so poor that he seldom noticed anything interesting before it became irrelevant. For the most part, the toxic muffin was alone with his thoughts, and since he was unaware of most of the world around him, these thoughts were normally narrow and inconsequential.

It is unusual for a conscious muffin to live so long; a muffin normally is eaten or comes to some kind of disaster in a matter of hours or days after its birth, not many years. It is not an onerous contract to fulfill, nor is it generally intended to be one. This muffin, however, was a different case.

As you can imagine, the toxic muffin was unhappy that his purpose in life, to be eaten, was frustrated. He knew perfectly well that he was toxic and would kill any living thing that ate him; he knew the universality of his poison, how it was terminal to every branch on the tree of life. He knew this, and this only made his sadness greater, for there was no way he could ever be like other muffins, eaten and enjoyed by a muffin-lover.

The toxic muffin sat in the window, constructing elaborate fantasies in which his purpose could still somehow be accomplished, and all would be made right in the end.

"Perhaps someday I can be eaten, if only a few bites!" he used to think. "Perhaps somewhere there is a man with a slow and deadly disease, doomed to linger in misery, and perhaps he also loves muffins. Perhaps he would be willing to eat me, both to enjoy me as a muffin, and to die quickly and kill his disease as well."

But, somewhere in his ichorous muffin heart, he knew it was all fantasy. He could only give a painful death -- yes, a quick one, in all probability, but very painful, and who would risk it? And even if somebody was willing, how would they know to find the muffin? The baker did not advertise that the display muffin in his window was real and poisonous; people assumed it was invariable plastic. What muffin-lover, desiring suicide by poison, would seek it in this bakery window?

"Or, perhaps," the muffin sometimes thought, "there is some antidote or immunity that will allow somebody, somewhere to eat me and live. And perhaps this immune person is also a brave epicure, and sets out to eat every dangerous thing, just for the sake of gustatory bragging rights. If that was so, he could find me, and eat me, all of me. I could see that happening. Aren't there teevee shows featuring people like that nowadays? They are out there. If even one can eat me and live..."

But the muffin knew this scenario was no more probable than the terminally sick muffin-lover, and indeed less so, for it was predicated on somebody, somewhere being able to brook his poison, all of his poison, and somehow live. Such a thing, the toxic muffin knew, was nonsense. He did not like to think so, but he was acutely aware of his own fatality.

"If only I could eat myself!" the muffin would continue, this fantasy taking him deeply through a wound of self-hatred. "If only my own poison could kill me, as it could so easily kill anything else!" When it came to this, it inevitably ended in a state that, to us, would cause crying, but as a muffin cannot similarly answer in tears, he only pains and aches and grieves.

In-between the empty fantasy and the far-too-full resentment, there was only the hope of being someday destroyed. So the muffin sat, suffering from his own poison, for years.

It came about one autumn that the heavens opened, and torrential rain fell in the land of the bakery.

The window-case containing the display food was set out, so it jut a foot or two ahead of the storefront. Hence, the roof to the toxic muffin's world was made of glass, high above his top, and not being able to move himself or look up, he was largely unconscious of what was happening there.

So imagine the toxic muffin's surprise when he felt a wet something on his top, and then, not so many seconds later, another.

It was raining heavily day after day, and it was only a matter of time until the rain found its way through the display window. It happened to leak through the caulking just above where the toxic muffin sat.

But the muffin was not annoyed; this was a novel experience for him, and not being worldly (even for a conscious muffin), this made one. The toxic muffin could not see it, but he had heard something about the rain before; now that the rain was happening to him, he rather enjoyed it. As the toxic muffin's universe was small -- dreaming of one day being eaten, and nothing else -- it was not long until the rain figured into his fantasies.

He imagined that the rain wetting him was saliva, stomach acid, digestive enzymes -- how delightful it was! Here he was, being slobbered upon by the sky, soon to slip through its alimentary canal. If he imagined hard enough, he could feel the piercing pressure of the sky's teeth tearing him, and the grinding of the sky's jaw mashing him. It was like his purpose had come onto him at last!

The rain fell, and the toxic muffin enjoindered, "Fall down your teeth, chop, chop, chop! Bring down your jaw, crunch, smoosh, crunch! Now I die with purpose!"

His fantasies about the sky and its rain were the most vivid ones, you see, and also the most indecent, and their relationship was far more than friendly.

It was a brief honeymoon, however, for after only a couple of weeks of vulnerability to the sky, the baker noticed the muffin, sopping with rainwater and rapture, in the leaky display window.

"I am surely the worst baker in the world!" he declared. "For I have let this happen right under my nose!"

He disappeared into the back of the shop for a moment, and came back wearing bright yellow rubber gloves, for it was chancy to even touch the toxic muffin to bare skin.

"And the entire display window must be thoroughly cleaned now!" he exclaimed. "Water carrying the muffin toxins may have run all over it! Why did I even keep a toxic muffin in my bakery? I must have been mad!" The baker plucked the muffin up in his gloved hand, screwing his face up with disgust. "Even if you are alive and conscious, you are more trouble than you have been worth! Now you must be destroyed!"

The toxic muffin, which was sad to be separated from the sky, cheered up a little at that. "Perhaps I shall face the blades of the garbage disposal!" he thought. "How much like teeth they must be! Chop, chop, chop, and I die with purpose."

"Or perhaps I will go straight into the garbage, and then be thrown into a garbage truck, then be smashed by its jaws as they close down. How much like a real jaw it must be! Crunch, smoosh, crunch, and I die with purpose."

Indeed, the baker motioned to throw the muffin into the garbage, but he paused and thought. "No, I cannot," he said, finally. "You are toxic waste, and must be destroyed in a special way. Fortunately, my old friend the Colonel is an expert in hazmat disposal."

So the baker closed up his shop, and, carrying the soggy muffin in his gloves, walked to the house of his friend the Colonel across town. The muffin rejoiced to be outside, for now the rain pelted him as the baker walked, much heavier than in the window, as a kind of goodbye; he nearly forgot, cradled in the baker's gloved hand and suddenly facing all of the sky at once, that he was surely doomed -- but for now, his world was watery kisses and a thousand raindrop-nibbles, and he had never been happier since the day of his birth.

It was only a few minutes until they came to the house of the Colonel, the hazmat disposal expert. No sooner had the baker walked through the door when the Colonel lept from his chair and pointed at the muffin. "What you have there," said he, "is a toxic muffin, and they's about the most poisonous things there is." He stopped to comb his mustache, and continued, "It must be sealed in an air-tight container, and buried deep underground. Let us waste no time. We must do this at once!"

And so it happened the toxic muffin was sealed in a small sepulchre, a metal muffin box with walls three inches thick. The muffin box was then buried thousands of feet below the earth, to ensure that, should the box somehow leak, none of its toxins would pollute the aquifers.

Now, a conscious muffin does not need to eat, or drink, or breathe to live; furthermore, it cannot be bored to death, for muffins lack the necessary imagination. So being buried alive in this manner was not actually the great tragedy that it seems, at first. He could not move... but he never could. Nor could he see... but he almost never saw anything anyway. The toxic muffin was left to his fantasies. Was this really so different than sitting for years and years in the shop window?

Ah, but he missed the sky, and he missed its rain. Perhaps someday water could permeate the box again. He could not be bored, but he did resent, a little, that he had known the joy of the sky for two short weeks, and now he would be sealed in a box for years and years and years. If only he had been allowed to melt in the rain, eaten by the sky! He didn't believe in muffin reincarnation, and he had doubts about a muffin afterlife, so in total, this seemed like a really bad deal to him. At great length, brooding over these things, he decided what he must do.

Though it took longer than you or I will experience, though it broke his heart and made him miserable and destroyed what little liveliness and personality he had, though he regretted it from the start to forgetting, the conscious muffin willfully forgot the sky, the rain, and the bakery. Even the farewell of the sky, the impossible glories of a random rainy day out on the street, the most important and happy and meaningful few minutes of his life, even that had to be elided and nullified and covered over in noise and smoke. Forgetting is a terrible thing and no more terrible than when you forget yourself.

All the rest of the toxic muffin's existence was lessened for it, but it was so, and his world was driven underground with him. He had seized upon new fantasies to bring him passing joy, and had convinced himself that these fantasies were realer, better.

He fantasized now about epochal upheavals, tectonic plates rubbing together, he caught between them, and finally of them tearing him into crumbs. "How much like teeth they must be! Chop, chop, chop, and I die with purpose."

He fantasized about geological processes squeezing him up to the surface, or (better yet!) deeper into the earth, where the pressure would smash him to atoms. "How much like jaws that must be! Crush, smoosh, crunch, and I die with purpose."

But none of this happened. The area in which the toxic muffin was entombed was geologically quiescent for many millions of years.

Then, in a freakishly improbable cosmic event, the Earth was blown nearly apart by a collision with an enormous asteroid. In the collision large amounts of matter were thrown beyond escape velocity and became untethered by the Earth. The toxic muffin was among the ejecta.

Into outer space he soared. "Perhaps I will crash into the canals of Mars, skitter across the surface, and be torn apart by rocks. How much like teeth that must be! Chop, chop, chop, and I die with purpose!"

"Or perhaps I will fly into Jupiter! Fall merely a few thousand kilometers into its clouds of hydrogen before the atmospheric pressure squeezes me into a tiny morsel of superdense muffin-metal. How much like jaws that must be! Crush, smoosh, crunch, and I die with purpose."

But neither of these things happened, and the toxic muffin was thrown not only out of our solar system, but out of the disk of the Milky Way itself without incident. It skimmed over the surface of our heavenly pool like a stone. For the slingshot effect -- that same peculiar principle of physics that allowed Superman to travel through time in that one movie -- had taken hold of the toxic muffin, and hurled him out even faster and thereby farther, into intergalactic space. Indeed, he handled all this acceleration most admirably. Now he could sail for many thousands of years without finding any heavy atom, and would absolutely never encounter any other molecules of cake-stuff upon his trajectory again.

Now it no longer mattered that the toxic muffin was toxic; indeed, it no longer mattered that he was a muffin, for he was by now the last and only existing one, the only exemplar. He was whatever a muffin was supposed to be now. But he did not understand this.

There were no longer any muffin-lovers. He no longer owed anyone a debt. His purpose could be fulfilled! Alas, he did not realize this! But how could he? How much knowledge of the world and universe at large could a conscious muffin acquire?

The toxic muffin -- no, I have said that neither "toxic" nor "muffin" matters anymore, let him just be "he" -- he, the only sentient creature in any directions for many thousands of light years, was more solitary than can be imagined, but he could not have any sense of loneliness, only a sense of being unfulfilled.

For untold aeons, he sailed through the vacuum, slowly settling into orbit around the Laniakea supercluster attractor at great distance. Birthdays beyond number passed. He supposed that he had lived longer than any living thing had ever been alive, and in that thing he was almost correct.

In his mind, he wondered if he was large enough that tidal forces from passing galaxies could somehow erode him, gnaw him, bite him.

Another part of him wondered if he would somehow reach a black hole, fall beyond its event horizon, and be squeezed and stretched beyond any semblance of existence as the gravitational difference between his muffin top and his skirt bottom diverged toward infinity, as he was mashed and pulped and swallowed into the deep esophagal gravity well... his light...

Those hopes were his only warmth. And his only conscious thought conveyed in words, besides the feelings, unheard, ritual, the only ones that had any sense or meaning in him: "Howlike jays theribee, crash, smoosh, cratch. Annidie wist horbous!"