Mad Man of the Special Cookie, Part I

Rather than pressing on about the cookies, she surrendered to the cake. Frosting rarely appeased her, but in this climate poor of sugar, she knew that any sweet was good sweet, even when the sweet lacked the sophistication she had previously encountered in those cookies. ‘What genius baked them?’ she wondered aloud, pink-shrouded, yellow morsels expelling from her mouth. A mad man, she continued in her head, opting for a closed mouth in sight of sweet-loss prevention. Surely not a mad woman, for no woman could understand what a woman needs anywhere near as shrewdly as the mad man of the special cookie. Only a man could hook a lady on a sweet treat and reel her back, hook her and reel her back, and on and on in a fishing metaphor that may have been apt, but only distracted from the need for sweets.

She finished the cake – a lackluster piece, if only by proxy – and yes, THE cake, not HER cake, she made special notice to call it for the duration of their time together – and still craved the cookie. What divine powers in a so minor a treat, she noted in her head, her mouth now gaping wide from want, from need, from utter lack of regard. Her eyes held on the plate of cookies settled comfortably beneath its domed, glass shelter. At the sixth minute of staring, the HR temp walked by and, without hesitation, lifted the glass. With great stealth, he snatched a cookie, replaced the glass, and was gone. The cookies screamed silently at the loss of brethren.

“Oh!” she expelled. What impudence he had. How jealous she was. Did he not appreciate the ethics of the clear glass lid? A trailblazer. Once the lid was lifted, then – and only then – could they take up cookies into hands. If only she subscribed to such blasé lifestyles as that damnable HR temp: moving from job-to-job with no regard for pension; taking cookies from whatever plate, no matter the indication of its covering. He passed and took another.

“Bastard!” she squeaked. We must regard the sanctity of the glass dome, she thought. Otherwise, there will be no cookies left when the dome is lifted. Already the plate looked lonelier, less and less inviting. She knew this to be an illusion, however. So many others around the office saw a plate diminishing in population as a plate diminishing in quality. She knew the opposite to be true. They would scramble for a plate teeming with cow pies for the mere fact that it was teeming. She still saw the plate for cow pies. Perhaps the HR temp was helping her in this regard. The more cookies he took, the less valuable the plate would be to others who had not tasted of said cookies, and the more cookies would be left for her. Perhaps, in a coup of resounding joy, she would be able to take one home. How splendid this Tuesday had become! How wonderfully life could change in the span of several minutes staring at a plate of spectacular cookies beneath a domed, glass lid!