Melody's Day

Angela rolled her eyes. "I mean, do you remember what I wore to the party?"

"Ummmm... Kinda? I was sorta focused on making sure my outfit was perfect...."

"I was a sexy nurse. I thought people might appreciate the irony, you know?"

"Sure, irony! I remember your outfit being super flat, not wrinkly at all!"

Angela took a moment to figure out what Melody was talking about, then went on, "Well, it's still in my locker, I think. You could wear that... Although... I'm a little less curvy than you so it might not be the greatest fit..."

"I'll take anything!" shouted Melody.

"Suit yourself!" smirked Angela.

---

Leonard, Herman, and Ethel huddled around a table in the middle of the cafeteria, planning their next move. As they did, a hulking bald man in a paper chef's hat and an apron walked by.

"Old Boris! Come here, I've got a proposition for you!" Leonard hailed his friend. They had known each other from the old neighborhood, where Leonard used to babysit Boris. Old Boris had immigrated with his parents from the same country as Leonard, and now worked in the cafeteria here. He'd gotten his nickname, Old Boris, because he was the eldest of three Borises in the neighborhood at the time.

"Leonard! How are things doing with you!" Boris had stayed in the neighborhood and still spoke English with the stilted grammar common to native speakers of their shared mother tongue. Leonard had gotten out and seen the world, so he only maintained a few linguistic signifiers of his ethnic roots.

"Come, sit! Let me tell you the plan."

The group whispered conspiratorially, with Boris occasionally grumbling. At last he sat back, pondering. For a long minute he scratched his head under his cap and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Finally, he set his hand on the table and nodded definitively.

"For you, Leonard, I do this."

---

Melody walked into the cafeteria in her "nurse's uniform." It looked nothing like the real nurse's uniforms worn by the hundred or so nurses who worked at this facility. Where real nurses preferred loose, comfortable scrubs, Melody was wearing a tight dress with buttons down the front and a little cap on top with a red cross. Red crosses also adorned the breasts, which strained against the too-small uniform, causing gaps to appear between the overworked buttons. The skirt rode up in the back and barely reached mid-thigh if Melody stood still and pulled it down as far as it would go. Her stockings were visible all the way up to the tops.

Melody had grudgingly agreed to take Angela's shift supervising the cafeteria in exchange for the costume. It was very odd; Melody had grown accustomed to people just giving her things, but for some reason Angela actually wanted something in return. She decided she would have to consult some of her self-help books at home and diagnose Angela so that she could give her some useful advice on how to fix her personality flaws tomorrow.

It was early. Service wouldn't begin for another half hour. The only people in the room were... Leonard, Herman, and Ethel! Melody tromped over.

"Alright, you three, what is wrong with you?! Why would you do that to me?"

Leonard shrugged and looked surprised. "Do what? We're as shocked as you were, right guys?" Ethel and Herman nodded vigorously. "It's just a lot of bad luck, that's what it was! We would never want anything bad to happen to you! Although... maybe... You know, they say that what goes around comes around, yes? Maybe if you were a little bit more helpful with our requests, these kinds of things might not happen, perhaps?"

Melody thought about this for a moment. Could there be anything to this? She shook her head, "Nah, I can't think of a single way I could have done my job any better than I did it. I'm a model social worker and a caring, loving person. That's why it's so weird that anything bad would happen to me!"

Leonard rolled his eyes. Guess there was no need to signal Boris to call off the plan.

"Oy! Honey!" said Ethel, "I got a touch of boykhvehtig. Could you get me a seltzer from the kitchen, please, to settle my stomach?"

Melody looked at Ethel with just a hint of suspicion. The last time she'd helped Ethel it had turned out pretty poorly. But it quickly went away. After all, bad luck was a way better explanation for all the things that had happened to her this morning than that they had all ganged up on her. After all, how could anyone dislike her? She was adorable!

She nodded happily. "Alright, I'll get it. See, I listen to your requests!" She stuck her tongue out at Leonard playfully. Leonard just nodded.

Melody spun around and bounced off to the kitchen. There was Boris, setting up the various pots and boilers and getting ready to prep the veggies. "Hiya Boris!" she smiled. He just nodded, then looked through the wide counter-level window that separated the kitchen from the cafeteria. He made eye contact with Leonard and tilted his head, as though asking, "Her?"

Leonard nodded.

Boris shrugged. Melody was prancing over to the giant fridge. She opened it and bent over, wiggling her butt as she did because the gallons of excess energy she always had wouldn't allow her to stand still for longer than half a second.

Boris walked past her and opened the freezer. He pulled out a bag of ice, then walked back around Melody. Melody found the seltzer, closed the fridge, and started walking out of the kitchen.

"Whoopsie-daisy!" shouted Boris as he pulled the edges of the bag of ice, causing it to burst open and spill its contents all over the kitchen floor right in front of Melody.

"Huh?" Melody said, before stepping right on an ice cube. If she had been wearing appropriate high-traction shoes, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. But she was wearing designer pumps, so she wound up sliding across the kitchen floor, careening out of control, her arms flailing as she went.

Back in the cafeteria, the elderly trio snickered as they saw their social worker go flying past the window and slam into the wall.

"Owch," Melody groaned.

"JESUS WATCH OUT!" Boris shouted.

"Huh?" Melody pushed herself off from the wall she had plastered into just in time; a large chef's knife attached to a magnetic knife block on the wall above her head had come lose. It fell, narrowly missing her face and breasts... But neatly slicing down the front of her dress, cutting all the buttons off and converting it into a very short, medical-themed robe.

"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Melody was vastly more concerned with her ruined dress than with the fact that she had very nearly missed being lobotomized. Boris looked angrily out at Leonard; he had signed up for some harmless pranking, not attempted murder.

Melody was still angry about her second ruined outfit of the day. She lashed out with the nearest thing she had to hand: a kitchen counter, and the seltzer bottle in her hand. She smacked the bottle against the counter petulantly. It began to make a strange hissing noise.

"Huh?" She moved the bottle back in front of her and stared at it, dumbfounded. "What's that noise it's making?"

*PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!*

"AGHBLBLGLBLGLB!" Melody gargled as the top burst off the seltzer bottle and she was sprayed with a blast of carbonated water.

She dropped the bottle and stumbled backwards, once again stepping on some ice and sliding. This time she fell backwards straight into Boris's arms. Unfortunately, Boris was still holding his chef's knife from his prep work earlier. Melody's tender rear plunged right into Boris's knife.

"YEEOOOOWCH!" She screamed as she physically launched herself six feet into the air.

---

Back at the table, Herman had gotten distracted. "You know what I miss here? Good food!"

Ethel and Leonard mumbled their agreement.

Herman continued, "Any of you guys ever eat at Ollies? Best Chinese buns on the Upper West Side!" there was general assent from the assembled.

And he went on, "I always got the steamed pork buns! So succulent! So juicy!"

---

Back in the kitchen, Melody had descended from her recent space launch. She found it hard to move. It took her a second to realize that she had leapt onto the stove and now had her slightly-large rear wedged firmly in a stew pot. It was roughly then that the nerves in her rear end communicated to her brain that, in fact, they had additional information to report following the recent knife poking. It now appeared that poor Melody's buttocks had been submerged in water that had been brought to a rapid boil.

"YAAAAAAAAIIIIIII!!!!" Melody screamed, frantically squirming in an attempt to remove her buns from the hot steam and boiling hot water that now assaulted them. At last she pushed herself off with a *PLOP!* and gently arced through the air...

---

The bun discussion continued.

"You're nuts!" declared Ethel, "I ate at Ollie's every Friday after work for thirty years, and the best thing on their menu was the seared buns! Toasty and brown, with the grill marks on them..."

---

Melody flew out of the boiling pot of water and landed on a burner across the room. Unfortunately, her firm-yet-squeezable butt had managed to get stuck between the grills of the burner. Melody frantically kicked her legs, trying to free herself. In doing so, she gave one of the knobs at the front of the stove the barest of nudges. Exactly the wrong knob, as it turned out.

*Klick! Klick! Klick!*

Melody looked around quizzically, unsure what that strange clicking noise was.

*FWOOOSH!*

At last she received her answer when the gas on her burner ignited, shooting flames directly into her already-sore rear.

"OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWO!" She shouted, the flames providing surprisingly effective incentive to dislodge herself from the burner. She landed on her feet and began running frantically around the kitchen, trailing smoke as flames danced on her rear, fed by her now-ignited nurse's costume and panties.

---

Leonard glanced over to regard the spectacle of the flaming social worker with mild curiosity. Obviously, he cared about Melody's misfortunes, but right now he cared far more about explaining to his friends why they were totally, utterly wrong.

"I gotta say, I think the both of you are full of it!" he declared, then sat back, looking up at the ceiling, getting philosophical.

In the distance, they heard a wailing cry: "owowowowowowowow!"

"You see, my view is, you only live for so long. That means there's only so many Chinese buns you're gonna eat in this all-to-brief life we live. So, if there's a limit on the number of buns you're gonna nosh, why not make every bun count? So I say, if you're gonna have a bun, make it the best damn bun you can get! None of this health-food steamed nonsense or half-assed (pardon my French) seared crap. The only buns worth eating at Ollie's, my friends, were the deep fried buns!"

---

Melody ran around the kitchen, panicked beyond reason. The burning pain in her burning rear had shorted out her higher reasoning abilities. All she could think about was finding some liquid, ANY liquid, to submerge her tender tush into and get some relief. At last she spotted a big square container filled with a yellow liquid. She didn't care what it was, so long as it put out the flames. She ran for it, span around, and leapt in.

"No, lady, don't!" shouted Boris.

Too late. Melody was already ass-deep in the frying oil, heated up to prepare french fries for lunch. Her eyes twitched as the pain sensors in her heiney overloaded. After a few long seconds-

"YEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRGH!" She went flying off the fryer and began running around the kitchen again. At last, mercifully, she tripped on the now-melted ice, slipping and sliding and landing in a pool of water that gave her tender rear some small amount of relief, though not very much.

After a few moments she carefully, cautiously pulled herself to her feet. Grimacing, she twisted around to inspect the damage.

Her dress had burned up below the waist in the back, the edges all charred. Her panties were just gone; a brief glance around showed the front of them lying on the floor, the edges black. Evidently the entire rear had burned off, leaving the front with nothing to hold it up. Her butt was throbbing and red. She touched it gingerly- "SSSSSSS!"- and immediately wished she hadn't, as it only throbbed more on contact.

She looked out the window at the three troublemakers. They were all looking at her, snickering.

"THEY DID THIS!" She growled. She balled her fists, gritted her teeth, fixed them with death stares, and marched out of the kitchen.

"YOU!" she screamed across the dining room. Unnoticed by her, a large portion of the rest home's residents and staff had arrived at the cafeteria while she was tossing herself around the kitchen. They all stared at the spectacle of everyone's least-favorite social worker, naked but for thigh-highs and a nurse-like robe flopping open, soaked and see-through, showing off her nude body. Her perfectly round breasts jiggled as she made her way across the cafeteria, and her bright red, swollen rear throbbed in time to each stomp. Her hair was a mess, dripping with seltzer and patchy and disheveled from getting pulled out earlier. A giggle passed through the crowd as they noticed the curious sight between her legs.

Melody paused when she noticed the crowd and looked down. Then she remembered that last night, as a special anniversary surprise for her fiancée, she had dyed her hair "down there" pink, then shaved it into a cute little heart. She had even gone out and bought a stencil to do it.

No matter. She had more important things to deal with than her nakedness. She fixed the trio with a hateful glare.

"YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING SOCIOPATHS! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?! I'M THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON ON THIS FUCKING PLANET WHO GIVES HALF A SHIT ABOUT YOU!! YOUR LAZY FAMILIES DUMPED YOUR WORTHLESS ASSES HERE BECAUSE THEY HATE YOU, AND NOW YOU TURN ON THE ONE PERSON IN YOUR MISERABLE LIVES WHO EVER WASTED A GODDAMN MOMENT OF HER FUCKING PRECIOUS TIME ON YOU!! DO YOU EVEN REALIZE HOW MUCH OF MY GODDAMN PRICELESS YOUTH I HAVE WASTED ON YOU MISERABLE OLD FARTS???!!!"

The cafeteria was silent as everyone observed Melody's meltdown. Leonard tried his best to ignore the hateful words coming from the woman bearing down on him, ready to strangle him where he sat. Instead, he pulled out one last memento of his misspent youth, an aggie marble, and took careful aim. He tried to summon all the skills that had made him the marble champ of Essex Street.

*FLICK!*

*POING!*

The marble hit Melody solidly between the eyes. It was just enough to stun her, causing her to step backwards.

"Whuh?"

Somebody, nobody afterward could say who, stuck out their leg, causing the social worker to trip backwards. Unfortunately, she fell toward one of the solid metal tables, and-

*WHANG!*

Smacked the back of her head on the way down. She was unconscious before she hit the floor, legs splayed, hair messed, in just her soaked nurse's outfit, glossy black stockings and heels, all of her private parts made thoroughly public.

"Somebody get her some air! See if she's okay!"

A crowd gathered. Fortunately, there were plenty of trained medical staff on hand to ensure she wasn't in danger. At last Leonard spoke up, making his voice heard to the crowd.

"Say, guys, I know none of you like her, so... Maybe we could play a little joke, perhaps? Get her up on the table, I've got an idea..."

---

"Well, I think you'll agree that our facility is in tip-top shape. Only the best for our residents! The best activities, the most comfortable accommodations, the most professional staff, and, as you are about to see, the most delicious food!" Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton led the way down the hall to the cafeteria, Molly a few steps behind, arms loaded with disorganized paperwork, looking worried.

The inspection had gone pretty well... Until they had asked to look at the 9th Floor paperwork. Then she had had to stutteringly explain that it wasn't entirely done. She couldn't remember the details, but somehow the take-away was that the paperwork problems were her fault. She didn't relish the post-inspection performance review...

"Now, feast your eyes, pun very much intended, on the most gourmet dining facility of any rest home in the state!" Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton threw the double doors to the cafeteria open and was shocked at the sight that greeted her and the inspectors. Molly, contrariwise, allowed a sly grin to spread across her face for the first time that day.

There, on a table in the center of the room, was Melody, naked as the day she was born. She was face-down, knees to her chest, arms flat on the table and pointed behind her, arrayed like a cooked turkey. In her mouth was a big red apple. Her rear end was prominently displayed, swollen and bright red, the same shade as the apple in her mouth.

"MS. SHARPE!!!" Screamed Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton.

Melody groggily opened her eyes. Someone seemed to be shouting her name. It looked like she was in the cafeteria...

"Mblmerlerblerm!" She said. Something was in her mouth! With effort, she spat it out, then turned her head to look lazily at the angry lady looming over her.

"Oh, hello, Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton. How are you this afternoon?" she said weakly.

---

"I don't care HOW you do it, but I want you to start a lawsuit against EVERY SINGLE PERSON at that ENTIRE FACILITY!" Melody shouted into her cell phone. She had called her fiancée, an attorney, and demanded that she commence legal proceedings against everyone who had conspired against her today. Which she was beginning to think was everyone at the facility. Molly, Angela, Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton... And especially Leonard, Herman, and Ethel!

She had just arrived home. After a fifteen minute scream from Ms. Chamberlain-Clinton, she had been placed on "indefinite administrative leave pending employment review." She had retrieved her handbag from her locker and found an ill-fitting paper gown to wear home, backless, of course, meaning that everyone on the street during her walk of shame got a nice view of her candy-red rear. She slammed the door behind her, went straight to the freezer, and pulled out an ice pack. Her fiancée always kept a bunch around; she never went into why. She stomped over to the couch, carefully placed the ice pack, and flounced down. She winced slightly at the impact, then let out a long sigh of relief.

Then she began to stew. Why hadn't her fiancée answered her calls? Why couldn't her fiancée be more supportive? She fumed on the couch, arms crossed, ready to give her fiancée the angriest lecture she had ever given as soon as she arrived home. In the middle of preparing her speech, she heard a lock turn in the front door. A little early, but just as well.

As soon as she heard the door open she shouted, "You will not BELIEVE the day I had!"

A call came back, "It can't POSSIBLY be worse than my day. Let me tell you all about it-" And then her fiancée walked around the corner, and the lecture that sat ready to burst forth from Melody's lips was swallowed and replaced by stunned silence.