Tonight, You Will Be Visited By Three Salads You Left In The Fridge To Order Takeout Instead
This spectral visitation is your only chance to change your disgusting ways.
WAKE! Waaaaake! Wake from slumber in your efficiency apartment! It is I, Doug, your first roommate from whom you learned so many of the habits you carry in your so-called adult life. Tonight, you will be visited by three salads you left in the fridge to order takeout instead. This spectral visitation is your only chance to change your disgusting ways.
To forestall the next question, after I moved out, I was hit by a Volvo while leaving a midnight show of Hellbound: Hellraiser II. So, yes. I’m a ghost. And after I died, my only thought was of all the wasted opportunities in my life, all the things left undone… all the salads left uneaten. For you see, former roomie, that very night, I had resolved to improve my foul eating habits and consume more fiber, due to terrible indigestion that ruined my viewing of Hellraiser II. That very night on which a Volvo left me the pale ghost enshrouded in chains you see before you!
What? The chains? I wear these chains in death to remind me of the Hellraiser films I watched in life, especially the one that caused my death.
But, more importantly, I am here to warn, my old roommate! Heed my words! Do not make the same mistakes I made in life! Eat those salads before they decompose into a weird soggy mess in a bag that you shove in the back of the fridge so you don’t have to look at it!
Hark, roomie! Who is this who appears before us?
It is the kale salad you thought you would eat ten years ago to this very day. Remember how young you once were? Remember how you once believed that you could improve your diet and not subsist on a continual intake of chalupas, Arby’s Beef & Cheddars, and the occasional Pad Thai? That last one is no healthier, by the way. It’s just carbs.
See the kale, in its youth and beauty. No slimy leaves, no weirdly hard cranberries. Not a blotch of fuzzy blue mold to be seen. This is what could have been. You could have had your appropriate serving of dietary fiber that day. But you left that salad in the refrigerator for three full weeks and took out the garbage immediately after throwing it away because the kale smelled like farts.
Farts of lost innocence, my friend. The smelliest, mustardiest farts of them all.
Now see this dark shade that floats above you on your futon! Who can it be?
Why, it is the Caesar salad kit you bought this very morning. It molders in your fridge in the southwest corner of your room, not six feet from where you sleep! Even now, the croutons grow stale. The pre-chopped romaine browns in plastic, wilting by the second. The dressing grows even more congealed and artificial-tasting! Because of you! Because of the choices you made this very day! And this was the easiest one, because it’s not like a Caesar salad is even healthy! It’s just lettuce covered in fish-flavored mayo and cheese. It’s basically a casserole.
Do you see, my old roommate? Do you begin to understand how the path you walk leads to nothing but rotten salads and what is known as “fast food trots”?
Now steel yourself, former roomie! Clutch the stretched-out Pantera t-shirt you call pajamas as you feel the chill in the air! For this is no ordinary salad that comes before us now! This is the salad of futures yet to come!
Specifically, you are going to buy it at the supermarket three days from now. Just a regular grocery run, nothing special. It’s a spinach berry antioxidant salad.
But gaze upon it! Look at the salad and think of all the things that will be, or perhaps they are only things that MAY be! This antioxidant salad is your hope for the future! This very salad could be the first step to a fulfilling life, to a diet that is more than grease and sadness and a fridge full of rotten greens! This antioxidant salad could be your salvation… and my redemption.
Wait, what are you doing? Why are you looking at your phone? Are you seriously ordering takeout right now?
Dude, it is 3 AM.
Screw it. The Ghost of Your Former Roommate Doug is officially done with you. The salads and I are finished.
Have fun with your soggy Taco Bell, jackass.
