The Short Shelf Life of Cookies
Once there was a baker who was so tired that she mixed all her ingredients up and somehow ended up baking oatmeal raisin cookies that were alive. They didn’t have arms and legs like the little gingerbread boy from the story, so they didn’t get up and run away.
Instead, they sat and watched her with their little raisin eyes, and shrieked in terror if she stood too close. So, she left them to cool and left to make another batch. She was more careful with the second batch, and the cookies were perfectly normal.
She picked one up. No shrieking. She bit into it. There was a lot of screaming, but it was coming from the other side of the room.
The baker put the nice, normal cookie down with a sigh, and turned to face the terrified cookies still cooling on the cookie sheet.
“I’m not going to eat you,” she said. “I don’t eat anything that can ask me not to eat it.”
“Please don’t eat us,” the cookies said at once.
“I won’t. There. See? Everything is fine.” She stepped closer. The cookies watched her, but didn’t yell.
“So you’ll let us go?” one of the cookies asked.
“Go where?” the baker looked around the room. “Where would you go?”
“Someplace safe for cookies,” the cookie said.
The baker thought for a moment. Was there a place like that? “You know, the shelf life for cookies isn’t very good, but I could probably freeze you for up to a year.” She brought the cookies over to the freezer and set them inside. “See?”
“Too cold!” the cookies said.
“Well, then you’ll probably only last a week or so. That’s not long.”
“Can you take us to see the world?” one of the cookies asked.
“The world? In a week?”
And that is why the baker ended up sneaking a briefcase full of cookies into the movie theater. When the lights went out, she opened it on her lap and turned it to face the screen. She shushed the cookies when one of them started to talk, and they soon settled in to watch the film.
She had to close the briefcase a few times when someone passed by, but overall, the movie was a success. The trip to the library was less so. The cookies were completely unimpressed by the shelves of books.
“I don’t hear any stories,” one of the cookies said.
“I don’t see any stories,” another said.
The baker closed the briefcase and left the library. At the art museum, they were checking bags, so she turned and left without the cookies seeing anything at all. When she got back to her car, they were very disappointed, and complained loudly until she closed the briefcase again.
In the park, a dog ran up to the briefcase, barking and wagging his tail. The baker barely managed to close the briefcase before the dog ate any of the cookies. It was a very close call.
“We don’t want to see the world any more,” the cookies decided. “Let’s go back to the movies.”
The baker took a week off, and spent most of it at the movies with a briefcase full of living oatmeal raisin cookies. The cookies had many interesting questions about the movies they watched. They didn’t really understand the idea of fiction, and believed that every story they watched was completely true.
And so, after a film about a magical world, the cookies had many questions about magic. “Can we do magic?” one asked.
“Maybe,” the baker said. “Talking cookies already sounds kind of magical to me.”
“Oh.”
The cookies began to whisper. They muttered to each other through the next two movies, but refused to tell her what they were talking about. The baker was a little nervous.
Everything seemed well when she covered them with a tea towel and left them on the counter that evening. She checked the movie schedule for the next day, and made a plan for what to see. The cookies probably only had a few good days left.
She paused to wonder what the effects of mold would be on the poor cookies. Would it make them lose their memories, or would they suddenly be angry or act like zombies? What would zombie cookies act like?
She never found out. The cookies were gone in the morning. Had they been eaten? Had they figured out magic and used it to transport themselves somewhere else? Maybe they started to mold a little early, and mold made talking cookies disappear?
The baker missed the cookies, but was rather relieved that she didn’t have to deal with zombie cookies. She really didn’t want to know what happened to someone bit by a zombie cookie.
After the cookies left, the baker was much more careful when she cooked, especially when she was tired. She also started watching more movies on her days off. And she never ate another oatmeal raisin cookie again. Even if they didn’t talk, it still felt like the raisins were watching her.
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