It all began with senior Zoe Baldoro, a delicious bowl of gnocchi cooked to perfection, and a tasteful Chianti on the side. As she began to gleefully dig into the pasta, the waiter rushed over with a block of perfectly wrapped parmesan and asked her whether she wanted any on top. Unaware of the calamity that would soon ensue, Zoe hastily said yes to satiate the waiter’s eager face. As he began to grate, the waiter spoke the words that sealed everyone’s fate, each of them falling like hammer blows on Zoe’s ears:
“Just say when.”
At press time, the waiter was on hour 57 of grating, continuously pulling blocks of cheese out of his apron upon grinding the previous down to a useless nub. Current reports list 11 missing persons who have been presumably swallowed by the enormous pile of finely grated parmesan. The building that was formerly Rocco’s Italian Family Restaurant has now been locally dubbed il formaggio della morte, the cheese of death.
“As soon as he started, I was simply incapable of tearing my eyes away from the spectacle. The mesmerizing motion of the grater against the cheese was seared into my brain, trapping me with the stupid side-to-side motion,” survivor Ben Carter said, tears leaking out of his eyes. “I just kept waiting for her to say ‘when’, but she was frozen with a look of pure terror on her face, trapped by the force of her decision and incapable of stopping the wretched motion.”
According to first responders, who were called by a passerby who saw the parmesan once it was 2 feet deep, every patron in the shop was entranced by the grating and were incapable of stopping the waiter from grating the parmesan. As the amount continued to grow, people slowly succumbed to the weight of the cheese as it pulled them down. The room quickly became a scene of disturbingly delicious despair.
“It was a horrid thing to watch, honestly. Some of those people were my neighbors, and there was nothing I could do but watch the wave of tasty dairy devour them,” passerby William McWilson said. “That wretched question, it sneaks up on you like a panther in the night. It could have been any of us in there, facing the wrath of the cheese Gods.”
As the cheese is now rising to the ceiling, the weight of the cheese against the glass of the windows is making it impossible to get in. Onlookers just have to wait for the cheese to fill every crevice of the building, praying the people inside survive the sea of cheese. Kraft Cheese North America has rejected The Flipside’s inquires for comment. (Durham)
