• Chad and the Mustard Factory
    Once upon a time there was a sixteen year old kid named Shadi, but everyone in Ms. Gedeon’s fourth block called him Chad. Chad was going to Sam’s Club with his father to get some supplies for his father’s gas station/convenience store, Stonewall Mini Mart. They trekked to the bread sector and got some hamburger and hot dog buns. Next they got hamburger patties, and then they went to the condiments aisle. They picked up a box of ketchup packets and a box of mustard packets and next to the boxes was the biggest jar of mustard Chad have ever seen. His dad told him to put a jar in the kart. They paid for the merchandise and kindly left Sam’s Club for all of eternity.
    As Chad and his father were leaving Chad couldn’t help but notice that everyone seemed to abuzz about mustard. Did you here? he heard one man say to another. The last lid was a fake! There is still one more golden mustard lid out there! Without thinking, Chad pulled out their jar of mustard and removed the lid. As he flipped the lid over, he saw that its underside was colored gold with black print reading: “Mulanka Golden Lid”. Chad was so taken aback he accidently bumped into someone. The little old lady’s eyes were filled with as much wonder as Chad’s were.
    “HOLY SMOKES!” she proclaimed in her shrill voice. “CHAD, YOU FOUND THE GOLDEN LID!” Everyone else began gasping along with them.
    One man stated “Hey Chad, I’ll give you fifty bucks for that mustard lid!”
    “HEY,” screeched the old lady, “I SAW IT FIRST!” Her eyes lit up like firecrackers on the fourth of July. “What do you say kid? I’ll give ya five hundred smackeroonies for that lid. Come on. Hand it over!”
    More and more bids began opening up. “I’ll give ya my two nickels!” suggested Kid Nickels.
    “I can give you the reaper’s scythe,” offered Mandy. “Nothing in this universe is more powerful or more dangerous.”
    “Forget the lid!” Chowder shouted. “I’ll give you thirty-two dollops and …… fifty-three shments for the mustard alone.”
    Chad finally managed to break out of the crowd. “Go Chad!” The Sam’s Club manager had beckoned. “Run home to your family! Don’t give that lid to anyone. Hurry! HURRY!” Chad was about to take off when he realized it would be a lot easier if his dad just drove him home. When he got home, he showed his family the lid. Chad told them he was chosen to go to the reopening of the famous Millie Mulanka Mustard factory. Chad could bring five guests with him, but he didn’t want anybody to cramp his style, so he only invited his dad to come. Chad was so excited, he could hardly stand it.
    It was 10 A.M., the first of February at the gates of the world-renowned mustard factory. Four other adolescents were there. There was a scrawny kid with his grandpa, a preppy girl with her delinquent boyfriend, a heavy-set nerd and his robot, and a baby chick with her mother hen (Chad was glad he wasn’t the only one who brought one guest). Chad looked at his watch. It just turned ten o’clock. The gates opened and a smoky green-yellow suede carpet rolled out before them. Millie Mulanka just walked out. He was a very old, frail looking man. Chad understood why the factory shut down. As he was walking toward them, Mr. Mulanka tripped over a small pebble and broke his hip. One of his servants came out and fixed it with a splint and some duct tape.
    It was then that Mr. Mulanka uttered his first words in fifty years since the company closed down: “Anyone older than twenty-one years of age, this is good bye. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Chad’s dad and the scrawny kid’s grandpa stood outside the gate, wishing they could have been a few decades younger.
    Before they could enter the factory, Mr. Mulanka had them sign a contract. “Just a precaution,” he said reassuringly. Before they all went inside, Mr. Mulanka stopped in his tracks. “Hold it right there,” he said, “It appears someone has taken my mustard-ink pen. GUARDS!” Eight lumbering fifteen-foot giants with blue skin and red afros shuffled in and began frisking each of them.
    “What are these things?” the scrawny kid asked.
    Mr. Mulanka began explaining. “These ‘things’, as you call them, are Ynka Lynkas. They do whatever I tell them to do. In return, I let them live here at the factory where birds are less likely to crash into their faces.” One of the Ynka Lynkas began humming. “Ahah! Good work number sixty-four.” Mr. Mulanka waddled right up to the Ynka Lynka who had checked the delinquent and retrieved the stolen pen. “You and your girlfriend are disqualified. Leave my property at once!” The happy couple skipped out of the factory, never to be seen again.
    Next, Mr. Mulanka led them to a room in the factory that looked like a mustard fantasy land filled with pretzels, hot dogs, hamburgers, corn dogs, if you could name it, it was probably found in that room. As we walked through the region, the mother hen had fallen into one of the in ground deep fryers, and her chick was soon to follow. The rotund nerd noticed the fried chicken and lunged at it, post haste. Mr. Mulanka looked ready to disqualify another contestant.
    “Excuse me, young man, but you appear to be violating your contractual obligations.” Mr. Mulanka pulled out a replica of the contract they signed to gain entrance to the factory. “The document hereby states in section eight, subsection three, paragraph two: ‘The consumption of another participant will result in immediate disqualification.’ I am sorry sir, but you got to go.”
    “Wait,” beeped the robot in its monotone voice. “I shall retrieve the other participants.” The robot immediately reached inside its chubby pal and pulled out a partially digested chick and its mother. “Now we won’t have to leave.” The scrawny kid grew queasy at the sight.
    “Sorry, but you still got to go. Chad, scrawny kid, we could get through this faster if you could please follow me to the next part of the tour.” Mr. Mulanka led us to a giant row boat in the middle of a honey mustard river. It was being rowed by at least thirty of the Ynka Lynkas. “Climb on board, everyone!” With the scrawny kid still being queasy from the incident with the chickens, the churning of the boat and the overwhelming smell of mustard probably didn’t help. They began moving down the river and saw a giant geyser spewing hundreds of gallons of mustard every second. Mr. Mulanka said, “That is our Mustard Geyser®. Did you know that the Mulanka Mustard Factory is the only factory in the world to mix its mustard by geyser?” This didn’t settle the scrawny kid’s stomach either.
    When they finally got off the boat, the scrawny kid’s face started turning a pale green. “Oh, buck up kid,” said Mr. Mulanka in his reassuring voice. “We haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.” He pushed open a set of double doors to reveal a room filled with what looked to be assembly lines, flash-freezers, and tons of other complex machines. “Alright, now who would like to try my latest invention?” Mr. Mulanka led us to this compressing machine that seemed to spit out little yellow tablets. “Here, kid,” Mr. Mulanka gave a tablet to the scrawny kid, “this will settle your stomach.”
    “What is it?” the scrawny kid gurgled as he ate one of the tablets.
    “Why, it’s a three-course mustard dinner!” Mr. Mulanka exclaimed. “Tell me boy, what do you taste first?”
    “BLup,” the scrawny kid began, becoming more and more nauseous as he went along, “well, first up it sort of tastes like a really hot, mustardy chowder of some kind.” He tried to get along as quickly as possible. “Next, I guess it is some kind of, blOOp, turkey-mustard casserole.”
    He began to look really green. “And for dessert, a mustard-custard pIE-” And that was the end of the line for the scrawny kid.
    “Well, Chad,” Mr. Mulanka started off, “I guess, by default, you are the winner of this contest.”
    “What contest?” Chad asked, being unaware that this whole time this tour of the factory was just a test to see who would be worthy of running Mr. Mulanka’s mustard factory now that he was retiring.
    “The contest to which I am referring,” Mr. Mulanka began, “is this tour of the factory that was made to test all of you to see who would be worthy of running my mustard factory now that I am retiring.”
    “Oh,” Chad interjected.
    “Now, I guess you get to run this entire factory,” Mr. Mulanka clarified. “Sucks to be you.” Mr. Mulanka zipped out the door, and retired to Miami, Florida and married the lovely old lady who tried to buy Chad’s golden mustard lid in the first place, leaving Chad alone in the mustard factory, which Chad tore down and turned into a parking lot. THE END.