[milktoaste]

Sorry it took me so long, I've been completely stuck on my latest story. Here is the version of The Sauce I'm going to submit to my schools annual publication, it is a little bit shorter and well. . . . hopefully better written. :) enjoy

The Sauce
By Charles J Hannah
Jason peers out from behind the double doors through one of the round glass windows that lead into the diner. It was one of the busiest lunch rushes he had seen since his father bought the diner almost six years earlier. Large groups of teenagers piled into booths laughing and flirting, locals from nearby towns surround the Formica counter top with a satisfied stature as they wipe sticky sweet BBQ sauce from their grins. His father's secret sauce is a smash hit, the more people eat it the more they want it. Barbeque ribs, barbeque chicken, barbeque sauce in cups along with baskets of French fries, and everyone wanted more. Julie, their loyal waitress sneaks it home for her kids and men buy bottles of the sauce to take home with them as well. Jason knew word was spreading fast and soon everyone in town will have fallen for his father's BBQ sauce. Finally the bank has something to get their minds off of the over due loans, but neither he nor his father have to worry about that any more.

It has only been six weeks since his father returned home with the sauce. He had a large mason jar full of it, roughly a gallon or so in a duffel bag safely wrapped in many towels like some sacred ancient artifact. At first glance Jason didn't understand what his father was so excited about. It looks like any ordinary sauce, a slow pouring deep brownish red. But there is something strange about the sticky liquid in that jar, the way the flavor grows on a person is almost addicting. It makes you eat more. His father said he discovered the recipe quite by accident during his latest church group trip to South America but he refused to give Jason the secret ingredient. During the weeks that followed Jason often caught his father boiling large pots of the sauce, but not once could he find any of the ingredients.

"Trust me boy" his father would say to Jason, "it'll save the diner, and that's all you need to know."

"Please tell me you're not buying it from somewhere.

"Oh no" his father once chuckled, "This sauce is all me."

His father was bound to be the next Carlton County Fair winner for best BBQ sauce, and to place his blue ribbon next to all the ones he earned for his homemade pies. One smell of his new sauce basted over a juicy pile of smoked ribs would be enough to draw crowds for miles. People wouldn't resist its evolved perfection. Jason could only think of bank loans and marginal profits, willing to overlook his fathers' secrecy surrounding the new sauce in the wake of the diner's recent gains.

That all changed this morning however, when Jason found his father's body on the kitchen floor at home; another pot of sauce burning on the stove. No ingredients were laid out on the counter, just the pot of sauce and an old wooden spoon. Jason remembered his mothers passing, and how the nurse felt her neck for a pulse before closing her eyes for the last time. He carefully reached down with two fingers, but before he could touch the pale blue skin something suddenly moved inside his father's mouth.

A large hard worm slowly curled as it pushed open his father's odd dead smile. It was so thick it clearly blocked the air way as it excreted the familiar reddish brown sauce from the tip. It was the sauce; this parasite his father must have contracted during his trip was turning him into the sauce that they had been feeding the town. The same sauce he himself had been enjoying since his father brought it home six weeks ago.

Not knowing what else to do, Jason returned to the diner and now he turns away from the double doors, the crawling in his gut subsided enough for him to stop and think for a minute. There is more than one bottle of liquor in this kitchen and it sends the worm back into a fury. He grits his teeth and takes a second swig; a strangely familiar flavor seems to mix with the liquid, not completely unlike blood. He can remember his grandmother telling stories about how people were more likely to get worms from unwashed fruits and vegetables than from uncooked meat. If only she knew.

Jason takes a deep breath to gather himself before walking back out into his late fathers' diner. "How long can I keep this a secret?" he wonders "How long before the worm is done making a sauce out of me" He tries not to think about it anymore. "I wonder if people would like how I taste?" Jason is met with praise from his customers. All of them smiling with his fathers' sauce smeared across their faces, he graciously accepts compliments from each of them. As he does so he ignores the pain in his gut, and he ignores the burning and the itching and the crawling, he ignores the future which he knows is bleak for everyone in this small town, the small town that he and his father had called home for nearly six years now. He smiles and serves up a couple orders of fries to a pretty high school girl and her friends, extra sauce, secretly wishing his father never brought it home with him so many weeks ago. For now all he could do was enjoy the success which he had always dreamed of, and pray the worm would kill him before the town members realize the sauce they so love to eat may have already begun to make a sauce out of them.