Author's Note: We had an assignment in history last week to write a creative story about McDonalds and the horrors that lie within. Naturally, I was the only one that was excited. Anyway, this is what I wrote, and apparently I won the competition no one knew we were having with it.

Grease Around the Arches...

‘Grease around the Arches,

Nuggets full of starches

French fries, French fries,

We all fall...’

“That’s horrible!”

Insufferable woman, she had already blasted my rendition of Golden Arches out of the water and shot down Ronald Donald with a smug little smirk. The high hopes that Grease Around the Arches would assuage her had to be smashed to bits as well. She destroyed my three favorites in a single swing.

As humans would say, ‘She killed two birds with one stone’, three birds if we want to be politically correct. I could go so far as to say that they were three lovely, little robins sitting on a windowsill, but that would be a bit much seeing as this grease trap would have already cooked them and labeled them as capital. I half expected her to ask if I want fries with that, but usually I only get that flimsy response from the dropouts at Burger King.

‘You did not let me finish.’

“I don’t need to let you finish, I know the ending! Was that suppose to make me feel better about my situation?” Though piercing glares were not her forte, she had the watery hurt down to perfection.

‘Then you do not like my representation of your...situation, as you put it?’ Clearly she does not see that dying is a far better alternative than working at this dump for the rest of eternity. If the devil truly wanted to update hell, he would start by designing it after the kitchen at the Golden Arches.Truly, in all my millennia of work, I had never seen a place so dirty or so full of objects that could crunch, grind, and fry humans.Well, a period during the Spanish Inquisition did come close, but that particular story will have to come at another time.

“No!” The awkward hat that all of McDonald’s employees are forced to wear bobbled off the side of her head as she screeched, releasing the straw she called hair from within. I could hear the sizzling of the neglected rat burgers under the heat lamp but did not have the heart to tell her that she better check on them before she died.

‘I have to admit, that what you are dealing with is not a situation,it is permanent. A situation implies that you have a means to depart from it or complete a series of tasks to put it behind you. No amount of burger flipping may spare you.’ If I had true vocal chords I would laugh.

“Whatever it is, do you have to keep reminding me?”

‘Well, no, I suppose not, but you will be dying shortly anyway and I am attempting to make the transition easier for you, it is my...job.’

It is not a job, per say, but an eternal commitment. As a neutral party I am bound by the laws of the universe to transport the once living to the afterlife, whether it be heaven, hell, or the ball pin at McDonald’s.

I must admit, though, that this particular case was most reluctant in letting me do anything with her. I had tried simple persuasion, I had even tried to scare her senseless by removing my billowing cloak and letting her see the skeleton beneath, but neither had worked (this was widely do to the fact that McDonald workers are well versed with the upmost horrors of the universe). So, I had resorted to singing and was now trying to explain why she must willingly go with me.I would have better luck talking to Helen Keller, seeing as all of McDonald’s employees are a little short on the comprehensive end of the stick.

“So it is your job to taunt me before I die? What kind of Death are you!”

‘I was only trying to lighten the mood.’

“By telling me you were going to kill me! Well, congratulations, you’ve done just the opposite. You can’t just come into someone’s job and tell them you are going to kill them.

‘You have five minutes.’ Think of all the Happy Meal she could scrape together in that time.

“Do I look like I’m about to keel over to you?”

‘No, quite the opposite, but you never know, not with what they put in the food anymore... but honestly, that does not really matter.’

Humans are so closed minded, it is why they cannot believe an evil clown rules the minds of their obese children.

‘Three minutes.’ The time it takes to fry fries in low-fat lard.

“I’m not dying.”

I know what you are thinking, why can’t they be this diligent when you order a simple hamburger? It is a mystery better left unsolved.

‘Oh, the contrary, dear...Two minutes.’ The time it takes for an average American to realize that half of their fries are missing.

She blessed me with a moment of silence before breaking into a monologue of her dreams, and what she had planned to do with her life. How she wanted to break free of this red and yellow cell and tell the world about its rat and cockroach infested horrors. Bless that poor girl’s soul, I was not allowed to kill her, but the little blue ball she was about to trip on was. It was only a matter of how quickly it would do it. In my duress, I hoped it would be soon.

‘You have ten seconds.’

“Stop counting down!” Even in hysterics she wasn’t crying.

‘Five. Four. Three.’

Having a half eaten Big Mac thrown at me was not a wholly unpleasant feeling, in fact, I am sure the sandwich got caught in the vortex in my cloak. If I was at all lucky the thing reappeared in orbit around Saturn. Naturally, Ronald will be wanting to know where it got to and why it wasn’t reprocessed.

‘One.’

“How about a deal!” She managed to squeal, stopping abruptly in her tracks.

I have to admit, no matter how many you humans offer it, I can never resist. It is, in a sense, like a McRib. You know it is coming back, but it never fails to shock you every time.

‘What are you proposing?’

“A compromise.”

Why didn’t I see that coming? The others have started calling me senile, and I must admit, they might be correct. Once you have been circuiting fast food restaurants for several decades you are bound to lose some sense of reasoning skills, all while gaining a wholesomely fatal heart condition.

‘What would this compromise consist of?’

The pimply, sandy haired, and bug eyed worker grinned at me as if she held the key to the universe. From her greasy black pocket she pulled out a small sticker and held it up proudly. “The missing railroad to the monopoly game, that everyone needs, for my life.”

As I moved forward to look at the million dollar prize, the worker took a shaky step backward; subsequently causing her foot to catch the top of the blue ball that had strayed from its pin. With an eternal grin of pearly whites, I watched as she tumbled to her death among the meat grinders, nugget choppers, and fryers. I merrily tuned out her screams, for in the air was the offered sticker, waiting to be caught carefully between my porous fingers. Let it be know, that just because I consider compromises, it does not mean that I follow through with them.

Ronald McDonald may be the king of false bargains, but I am the one customer he is never going to screw over.

I always get what I order.

‘Thanks. I needed that.’