10/30 A Scary Story

In a cold shopping center, a little way from the city, surrounded by crickets, there lived a Bopper. This Bopper was normally content with answering phones and folding boxes. He was rather good at folding boxes. He never told anyone but he was a little scared of the pizza ovens with their sinister chains and gears. He somehow knew that on its way from the makeline to the cut-station those pizzas passed through Hell.

One breezy day, the eve of All Hallows Eve, the pizza store was very busy. People were going to early Halloween parties and they needed to feed their kids so they ordered pizza after pizza. Drivers came in and out, taking the pizzas to their destination. People came in and out picking up the pizzas they would take home. Stoner Manager squished and poked, prodded and tossed the dough over and over again. Thing Two sauced and topped, over and over again. Old Bopper summoned a snowstorm of cheese, never a speck landing where it wasn't wanted, and set the pizzas on their journey. The store was a perfect pizza assembly line.

There was only one problem... at the end of that assembly line, emerging from the fiery depths of the pizza oven, there was no one there to welcome the newly arrived pizzas and divide their goodness so that all may enjoy. Pizzas were getting close and closer to the edge. With no one there to catch them they would surely fall and the assembly line would fail. So Stoner Manager called on our Bopper to take up the mantle of the cut-station, little did either of them know that the Bopper's worst fears were about to come true.

It was about ten minutes later that it happened. The Bopper had almost started to think his fears were unfounded. After-all, the pizzas seemed ok, he didn't really have to touch the oven. As long as he didn't think about it and focused on the routine: peel under grate, turn, peel under pizza, into box, cut one, cut two, cut three, cut four, extras, close, repeat. And everything was ok, until some chicken strips came out. Peel under grate, turn, peel under paper, open box, Spiders!