The 7th-grade classroom is dark, blinds down, hot-humid air making the surface of your polished desk slightly wet against your forearms. You've just sat down, eyes still adjusting to the dark of the classroom after arriving late. Dark figures, once students, are hunched down and over at their desks, trying to become invisible, as a dirty yellow logo rotates on the corner of the projector screen. There are hundreds of little weak spots on the projector canvas, forming a blizzard over the documentary playing, as a little bead of sweat trickles down the back of your neck. The door swishes partially closed, leaving a narrow pocket of light shining through onto the floor, and you begin to watch the video.
What you may not know is that the Greazeburger Company found its humble origins as early as 1867. A small-time farmer named Seamus Grease had lost most of that spring's carrot crop to environmental factors of the time, including but not limited to, soil erosion, torrential rains, and the endless tides of the accursed bones from the now-lost beings that dared to dream blasphemies before the first noble pillar of humanity arose from forgotten dunes.
You sneeze, sending a spray of spit onto your desk, a dry pain inside of your nose. Someone else laughs, it's too quiet, and the narrator's grating voice is the only thing breaking the uncanny silence.
Our hero was forced to move from his home, having next to nothing left after the disastrous aftermath that his carrots had engineered with their ironclad hivemind's appalling schemes. Always pausing to lick up every little drop of spittle that graced the poor man's lips, never giving him a moment's peace, starving him of the very moisture that was legendary for the act of touching him.
Body's hot, legs are cold, the wet heat causes another drop of sweat to roll down behind your ear. Some insect buzzes in the room, and quickly stops, like it had interrupted a holy moment with its presence.
Poor fucker had to meddle with the government, making himself eligible for the Homestead Act, yeah baby, and packed his bags for the journey on which the unborn denizens of his town would come to be thankful for. That's right, thankful, outright thankful, filled to the top, turning over and spilling out onto the table of the human psyche with that gratitude that none of y'all millennials and z'ers even show familiarity with. Grow the fuck up and get a goddamned job, you filthy sacks of carbon-based meat, or whatever “healthy” vegan substitutes you make your broken bodies whole again with.
You feel sluggish, slow. Your hair is warm, damp, and matted against your scalp. A little pinprick of pain in your neck, elbows throb against the uncomfortably cold desk.
With nothing but the singular boot on his feet, he bounded off across the lands, dragging his strips of snacking dirt behind him. It only took a day for him to make his way to the sunny, empty, rolling fields of Wyoming. With his new home in Idaho, or whatever the state's called these days, he unpacked his farm, those mutinous carrots following his every step, a parasitic shadow to his deeds. He'd have to deal with them later, as this was a man with a mission. His crops, which he had been fortunate enough to bring along, wouldn't sell. Stupid shit such as “flies” and “mold” had tainted his bountiful harvest, and almost ruined his reputation in one fell swoop. He'd have to be one step ahead, one chess piece moving twice on its turn, always thinking, never behind to catch up.
Snack time. There's a crusty apple, some chips crumbled to smithereens, and a thermos with some blackslosh. Like soup, it's almost refreshing feeling the little bits of chewed food floating in the froth brushing against the roof of your mouth. Close to cereal, but with too much milk. At least the slightly sweet taste keeps the thirst away.
Seamus melted it all down, boiled his food over the course of literal days, risking it all on a few bundles of ruined artichoke and bread swollen with insect eggs. The sweat was caked on his skin in layers by the time it was done, but the sticky, viscous drink would make him a fortune in the culinary world. The Greazeburger Meal had been invented.
A dribble of spit falls from your mouth, landing on your shirtsleeve and staining it with the color of your last meal.
Now, the only problem was how he was going to spread the light of his influential discovery to the now-undeveloped world. Would the surface of the land smile in pleasant anticipation of the plentiful blessings to come, or would it come to disdain the holiness that it had been privileged to witness the birth of?
You move to wipe off the dangling saliva, pushing the trail into the shirt, making a long, wet line across the fabric.
Seamus was a fucking saint. He was the very pinnacle of creation, and just thinking of a land made it part of his kingdom. No half-assed crowd of entitled meat sacks who need a dictionary to learn what RESPECT means can throw around buzzwords like “Eco-friendly”, “Free-range”, and “Cannibalism” while expecting the generations who sacrificed so much for them to bend over backwards to care for their delusions of “Global Warming”, “Genetically Muddled Organisms”, and “Quality Food”. One of the most hurtful things someone can be called in America is a “cannibal”, and I'll have all you literal diaper-shitting toddlers in school know that Seamus started from pond scum, and he clawed his way to the top, doing nothing but pulling himself up by his bootstraps every single step he took.
The man on the TV is crying. You look to your left, and the teacher, whose skin is unusually shiny, is weeping uncontrollably. The class is either stunned into silence, or is somehow refusing to acknowledge the scene unfolding in their midst.
He just kept pushing, surviving off of dirt, until he caught an incurable disease from a tainted patch of his beloved snacking sod, and he was faced with the possible destruction of his glorious dynasty's golden foundation. Fortunately, there was a light from the heavens that shone down upon his crippled form! He was given the blessings of knowledge; the secret whispers of a process known as binary fission. One mitosis later, with his dying breaths, our pioneer named his newly-birthed clone brother Ebenezer Greaze, with the missing “s” symbolizing Seamus, the loving father who had passed so soon from Ebenezer's great and wondrous journey of the adventure we call life. With his royal line secured, Seamus happily turned into stone in the year 1868.
The teacher's skin is slick with slime, a black nest of flies probing a mess of oily hair with crystalline wings and ink-encrusted shells as they sob. Their bony hands are clasped together in front of their grease-obscured face, resembling reverent prayer.
Ebenezer was left alone. So, so alone, as they were left to grapple with the hulking corporate goldmine that Seamus had left behind. They jumped on the economic void with incredible mental fortitude, becoming a lone stronghold in a world plagued by the lost, who blindly pit themselves against Greazeburger. At our core, we represent the moral pinnacle of enormous capitalistic opportunity that spreads wealth to all through its expanse, and every step of the way, fools like you refuse to eat from our swollen cornucopia. Ebenzer persisted, selling crops, mud, barbed wire, and sometimes still-living animals all melted down into a sublime drink: The Greaze Family Sauce. He sold it, left, right, up, down, in, out, around, about, mixed in with, and within the lands that they alone had made their kingdom. However, after the demand steadily began to increase, Ebenezer accepted that, like their fraternal progenitor before them, they would need help if this Proto-Greazeburger's light was going to continue shining. In the most unexpected event of the century, they reached out to what they remembered as an old friend from Seamus' life.
The classroom is now packed. More students, crammed into spaces and shapes that you didn't even know were possible with flesh, now sit patiently, absorbing the continual stream of information from the projector screen.
Braxten Bloburch, that cowardly ignorance vessel, that weak clown, that disgusting bundle of electric rot slithered up to Ebenezer's doorstep, knocking repeatedly through the cold nights, whispering blasphemies into an innocent mind. The carrots were one with him, moving as one, a second skin to the symbiotic relationship that deserved to be peeled and preserved immortal in the brine of his own filth. He had almost convinced Ebenezer to give way into his inane and meaningless path of ruin, before a light from the heavens shone anew. A lightning bolt, cast straight from the majesty of the clouds above, struck Ebenezer's home one night, causing the surrounding lands to erupt in divine flame. The carrots were incinerated, along with every aspect of their miserable existence, and the offensive Braxton was transformed into a jelly of the new-fangled wires he had used in his so-called “telegramphs” and “sellaphones”. The forces of fate had shown Greazeburger their favor once more, cementing Ebenezer as a being of the divine with its own holy fire. As the surrounding lands were burned clean to a sandy plain, Ebenezer was freed from their physical form, and set forth the empire that would transform into Greazeburger Incorporated, giving a happy resolution to our tense and captivating tale.
The door swings open, a brilliant light illuminating the distorted shapes of oily flesh within the classroom. Muffled commands are shouted through hazmat suits and two-way radios; the almighty projector is muted as the credits roll across the yellowed screen. As the world fades from view, you can feel yourself melting around the warm desk, and you pour to the tiled floor. The invaders, bright white rubber shining in the once-dark room, arrow-pierced circular logo on their bulky helmets, move in as the world surrounding you fades into an uneasy yellow. Words flash on the heavy cloth screen; the only clear detail in a room that is slowly phasing into muddled shapes.
A Greasy Story, brought to you by Greazeburger Incorporated. If our products require feedback or flippant, unabashed praise, please be sure to contact our newly-formed Earth Division Manager: Martin Greaze. Remember, you can't spell “Greaze” without “EZ”!