A Noodle World

  Monsieur grumbles to himself as he delicately brushes lemon juice on a small piece of grilled salmon. After examining it critically, twisting his long, black handlebar mustache around his finger, he bellows an “ORDER UP!” that makes all the workers in the Cantering Café’s kitchen jump. They give him “a look” (which Monsieur gleefully returns) and go back to what they were doing before, whispering to one another.

“Oooh, he’s angry today for sure,” one cook says.

“Isn’t he always?” sighs another.

The former pauses. “Yes, I suppose so,” she admits, “but doesn’t he get a little less upset around now? I mean, it is nearly closing time and all, and Monsieur loves going home from work!”

“True, true,” says her friend as he begins chopping carrots at lightning speed.

“So why is he more upset than usual? What happened?”

“I heard,” says a waiter as he whips around the corner to receive drinks to pass out to customers, “that the manager asked him to clean the café after closing time because the janitor is at home sick today.”

“What? What was the manager thinking?” cries the first cook. But the waiter merely shrugs as he zooms out of the kitchen doors with the drinks.

The cook that had been chopping carrots shakes his head. “The manager has been doing strange things lately,” he says wisely.

“But doesn’t he know what an awful idea this is?” exclaims the other. “Monsieur will get angry at anything and everything! Then we’ll come back to an even messier café tomorrow morning!” Her friend says nothing. “Why did the manager even hire Monsieur anyway?” she rants on. “10 years ago on that wintery night, a random, gross man on the doorstep, asking for a job? Who would say “Yes, of course” as enthusiastically as the manager did?”

The other cook shakes his head again and walks away to put his now seasoned carrots into the oven.

Monsieur is wondering the same thing - well, not the bit about why the manager hired him (he knew he just got the job because of his rugged good looks - duh!), but why on earth did the manager pick him to clean the café? Why him when there are so many other workers to do his bidding? Everyone in the shopping village in rural Louisiana knows that Monsieur is the grouchiest man living on the planet. So why does Monsieur have to clean an entire coffee shop as his favorite time of day, which would most definitely result in a tantrum? It doesn’t make any sense. 

Monsieur sighs. He knows he can’t get out of this unless he wants to lose his job, and when someone has only themselves to receive a salary and there is only one business that accepts them, that kind of thought is squashed quickly. Monsieur mumbles darkly and begins fashioning terrifying faces out of food scraps, ignoring the mountain of food orders besides him.

While he is doing that, this is the perfect time to answer the question many of you are asking: Why is Monsieur the grouchiest man alive? The reason is, my friend, his thoracic cavity, where his heart would normally be, is empty. Completely empty. No heart beating, no pulses of emotion except anger and fury. Despair and darkness. Impatience and cruelty. Not an ideal life.

Now you are without a doubt wondering, “Where the heck did his heart go?!” That, I’m sorrowful to say, is a question to answer later. Right now, let’s get back to Monsieur.

By this time, it has begun raining. A cook is flipping the sign on the door so it now reads “closed” as the last few customers in the café walk single-file into the rain, and all the workers are pulling on coats and jackets, chattering happily. All the workers except Monsieur. He glares reproachfully at the manager from the shadows, half-hoping he says, “Never mind, Monsieur! I can clean the café. Run along and have fun!” But the manager never does. He only smiles encouragingly at Monsieur before stepping out the back door and into the storm with the other workers, who throw him sympathetic looks. Their frowns turn upside down before long, however, at the prospect of going home after a hard day’s work. Many begin skipping.

Monsieur looks at the floor. Suspicious sniffles escape him, but are quickly muffled in the silence. He stays where he is, imagining how gruesome the other cooks made the kitchen just for him. The dining room will not be as hard, he reasons: The customers try to eat without spilling a crumb and as politely as possible to leave the manager without any reasons to ban them from the Cantering Café, as they love the food there and come every day. But, it will still need wiping down, which pushes going home back even further. Monsieur’s features droop sadly at the thought. 

The only thing left to do is see how filthy the kitchen is. And so, with a great dramatic turn, Monsieur looks upon what he hopes is a sparkling, nearly-clean kitchen.

IT IS A COMPLETE NIGHTMARE!

Pots and pans are everywhere, overflowing with some sort of gray sludge Monsieur has no name for; food splatters the floor, right up to the ceiling; the cabinets are wide open, dishes toppling out; and someone has spilled a pot of steaming noodles without bothering to pick them up!

This is going to take all night.

And with that thought in mind, Monsieur throws a huge tantrum like a child.

But he knows he will never finish what he doesn’t start, so Monsieur grudgingly leaves to fetch the cleaning supplies once he stops screaming like a banshee. As he passes, mice in their holes back away with trembling paws when they see his face. 

Monsieur considers cleaning up the noodles once he comes back. Sweeping them up seems like a warm-up one might do before playing a sport to prevent the knees bending the wrong way, and that would enable Monsieur to tackle everything else later, just as it would the athlete. It seems a good idea so Monsieur set to work. 

He enjoys the task - at first. Monsieur’s happiness stops in its tracks like so many other days when a noodle becomes stuck in the bristles when he tries to sweep it up. Frustrated, Monsieur shakes the broom in the air in an attempt to free it. When that doesn’t work, he taps the broom on the tiles; the tap turns into a smack; the smack becomes a bang; and at last, complete rage takes over and Monsieur hurls the broom onto the floor with a ferocious bellow. He succeeds in nothing except breaking the broom in two. Monsieur kicks the pieces aside angrily and moves on, careful to grind every one of the noodles under his heel.

But Monsieur stops mid-step and glances nervously at the door leading to the pantry. Could it be possible that a great black mass seems to shudder with fury as he walks away from the broken noodles?

“Bah!” Monsieur answers his own question and continues stomping across the kitchen.

Next up Monsieur tries to clean the sludge from the pots and pans. But no matter how hard he tries to scrape them clean, the sludge (which has cemented over the last few minutes) will not budge. This, as you might have guessed, sets Monsieur off once more. He crushes some more noodles underfoot while screeching gibberish at the pans and pots to relieve his feelings. Once satisfied, Monsieur walks away. But again he stops.

Across the room in the pantry, the huge shadow seems to shiver with rage as it did before. But this time something else happens: As Monsieur stares at it warily, glowing red eyes open, narrow, and stare straight into his soul.

Monsieur lets out a yell and stumbles backward. He turns to flee but trips and falls flat on his face. As he tries to get up, Monsieur gasps: red eyes are opening all around the kitchen, glaring hatefully at him from the trash cans, the shadows, even outside the windows. Monsieur doesn’t know who or what the owners or the eyes are, but he knows they are not happy with him, and that is all he is concerned with. He gets up and starts to sprint to the exit.

As soon as he starts running, his potbelly bouncing wildly, a warcry sounds and hundreds upon thousands of noodles flood the room like an ocean wave. Monsieur shrieks like a little girl when he glances back and sprints as fast as he can, his potbelly jiggling like mad now, but the noodles overtake him. They sweep him up and knot his limbs together in their mist, continuing on through the kitchen, the dining room, and out the door into the pouring rain, still holding onto Monsieur tightly. Monsieur screams at the noodles ("Punks! Elephant poo!”) and calls out to the dark windows of the Cantering Café’s neighboring shops, but no one comes to his aid, nor do the noodles release him. Giving up on trying to get others’ help, Monsieur lifts his head to try to see where they are going so he can call the local police himself. Poor Monsieur, who has the worst luck of all: As soon as he sits up, the pack of noodles swerves sharply to avoid a car and their grip upon him is lost. Monsieur is thrown up into the air and he falls down, down, down headfirst towards the pavement. The noodles zoom away, destroying the only hope he has of a soft landing, and Monsieur slams into the road. 

All goes black.

* * *

Monsieur wakes in a carriage to his disappointment. He had been hoping the noodles would forget him and he’d be able to return to the Cantering Café and live life as normal. Evidently the noodles have remembered him.

Monsieur sits up grumpily and looks around. The carriage is quite a yellow one, with bars on the windows separating him from the driver’s seat. Everything seems to be made of noodles. The rolling hills outside dance as the carriage bumps along, shining in the morning dew and weak sunlight trying to peek through the still thick, dark clouds. It appears that they had been traveling all night. Losing interest, Monsieur feels his head. It has been bandaged clumsily and is still throbbing. Monsieur winces as he prods and pokes it. 

“Sorry about your head, son,” says a fatherly voice with a strange, Australian accent out of the blue. “It was the best I could do with these fat fingers.” The speaker chuckles warmly.

Monsieur nearly smacks his injured head on the carriage roof. Looking around, he shouts stupidly, “I’m hearing voices!”

“You are?” The voice sounds generally concerned and a round, cheerful face appears behind the bars from the front seat. Monsieur really does whack his head on the roof this time as he realizes it is made of noodles. Hasn’t he had enough noodles for one day? “Maybe I did make your head worse with my fat fingers! Don’t worry, son, I’ll take you to the central noodle hospital as soon as you’re done with your trial! They have the best of the best noodles there - they’ll fix you up in no time! The only question is, will you be able to fit…”

“What?!” cried Monsieur, shocked.

“Yes, sadly you are too big for most of the buildings in Noodle World. A singular noodle is normal-sized for us, see, and you are much, much, much bigger than one noodle. We are, however, able to come together as one to create something huge as we did to create this carriage and whatnot on the King’s orders. Thankfully, the King’s castle is human-sized for some reason, so you will be able to do your trial in comfort. No one knows why it is human-sized even after hundreds and hundreds of years of research… Still a really big mystery today…”

“No, I meant, a trial? What in the world? What on earth have I done?”

The noodle-mean bites his lip and avoids Monsieur’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. “Ah.”

“What’s ‘ah’ supposed to mean?” Monsieur yells.

“The King, you see, son, was very angry when he saw,” the noodle-man says in a small voice. “Out of his mind with rage. Your shop somehow caught him, and he hasn’t been seen in about a year, barely managing to escape being cooked and sheltering in the pantry from what I have heard. He has never been a very good leader, caring only about himself and his dream of noodles ruling the world. We have only ever lived in secret on a little island just south of Australia, so a power-hungry ruler like him is natural, I suppose, to want more. Humans like yourself have been his object of hatred, so when he saw you, a human, crushing innocent noodles under your heel, in short, being murdered from the pantry door-”

“WHAT?” shouts Monsieur. He looks insane with his eyes building and his already red face growing redder by the second. 

“-the King, of course, got upset. He didn’t care about the weeping relatives of the dead noodles, but he hated seeing a human of all things standing up to the noodle race. ‘Us noodles should not be denied,’ he said. The King had orders for you to be put on trial in an instant. And, well, here we are,” the noodle-man finishes.

“I DIDN’T MURDER ANYBODY!” Monsieur screams at the top of his voice. Erm, reader, he’s looking a bit scary - why don’t you and I back up a little?

“I’m afraid you did, son,” says the noodle-man in an even smaller voice.

The words seem to register with Monsieur and his eyes contract into his head and his red face turns slowly to its normal shade of pink. The noodle-man is relieved and wonders if Monsieur will show the decency of a good man and let tears slip from his eyes in shame of his actions - but something worse happens.

“So?!” Monsieur says, slumping back into his seat.

“EXCUSE ME!” the noodle-man bellows, whipping around, fire dancing in his noodle eyes, all grandfather-like qualities gone. “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT COMMITING GENOCIDE TOWARDS NOODLES?”

“Yes, I am,” says Monsieur indifferently. “Is there a restaurant nearby? I’m hungry!”

“YOU DON’T CARE? YOU DON’T CARE? Oh, never mind!” the noodle-man snaps. “I’m not talking to you anymore. You have about as much heart in you as a rock!”

Monsieur flinches. A rock? No, that can’t be right. He has a huge heart! For example, that time… Or maybe that time… Hold on, give me a minute.

The rest of Monsieur’s time in the carriage passes in silence. Monsieur stares gloomily out of the window, still trying to think up a circumstance that has shown he has a big heart and cares about everybody. While he thinks, a large castle in the distance comes steadily nearer and nearer. The sun has given up trying to make a reappearance and it has begun raining again. The little noodles roaming the streets of the small towns and villages scurry to shelter as droplets the size of cannon balls compared to them and their buildings plunk down from the sky. The noodle-man stares into the distance, his expression hard and stormy. Every once in a while he glances back at Monsieur empathetically but shakes himself and resumes his rigid figure once more. 

Eventually the rhythmic bumping ceases  and the carriage slows to a stop: The castle is upon them at last.

“All right, bub,” says the noodle-man, avoiding Monsieur’s gaze. His voice sounds as if he is talking to a complete stranger - as if he hadn’t been surveying Monsieur like an uncle surveying his favorite nephew just moments ago. 

A punch to the gut - that is what it feels like. It had been nice to have someone not hate him for once. Someone who smiled at him, cared about his swollen head; someone who wasn’t repulsed by the sound of his voice; someone who didn’t avoid him everywhere he went; someone who didn’t glare at him when he did the smallest of things. Monsieur realizes just how much he craves the simplest of kind acts. 

Monsieur’s heart pops into existence. It is small, but there.

The noodle-man opens a carriage door and hops out. Still not looking at him, the noodle-man opens Monsieur’s and stands to the side, waiting for him to come out, the rain plopping gently on his shoulders. Monsieur hesitates, aware of the fixed frown on the noodle-man’s face. 

“Hurry up!” he says sharply.

Monsieur shuffles miserably outside, glancing at the noodle-man who is glaring in the opposite direction. He wishes that the noodle-man would look at him and treat him as an old friend like he had before. After all, glaring too much can lead to severe wrinkles on one’s face. 

Monsieur’s small, newborn heart grows slightly as he begins to care for someone besides himself.

As they walk to the doors of the castle, the rain, which had been drizzling ever so slightly before, starts to drop cats and dogs upon them. It falls, quick and fast, onto the stairs leading to the doors, the streets, everywhere.

They reach the castle doors soaking wet. The noodle-man struggles for a minute with the doorknob, his hand slick with droplets, until Monsieur hurries forward, pulls his sleeve over his wet palm, and opens the door for him. 

“Here you are,” he says politely. The noodle-man looks at him suspiciously as he enters the castle.

And so, Monsieur's heart swells once again slightly as he follows the noodle-man into the castle. 

They step into the silent hall. Monsieur looks around: dark purple carpet muffles their footsteps as they march long, patterned with diamonds; potted plants dot along the walls, each one well watered and pruned; and elegant paintings line the hallway. Monsieur slows down to examine them. Each one seems to be of a different noodle posing, wearing a jeweled crown, and holding a staff. There is a gold inscription below all of them, reading “King George II - 1529”, “Queen Magnolia III - 1955”, and more. The most recent one seems to be, as Monsieur turns his head this way and that, “King Steven - 2020.” Monsieur figures this king is most likely the one that the noodle-man was talking about. 

“Come on now, we’ll get scolded if we’re late,” calls the noodle-man sternly from down the hall. Monsieur hurries forward, and they continue their march. 

Monsieur continues to stare aimlessly around the castle as they walk. Consequently, he runs into several walls, potted plants, and even runs into the noodle-man a few times. This gives the noodle-man more reasons to glare at Monsieur, which he does. But something is wrong: Why is Monsieur apologizing to him? Laughing and smiling apologetically? Surely this is not the same man that shrugged off killing dozens of noodles. This other man is scaring the noodle-man out of his mind. Something must have changed.

“Something must have changed.” The words ring through his head and the noodle-man gives himself a severe shake. No, he could not stop hating Monsieur, who killed dozens of his peers! He glares furiously at Monsieur from the corner of his eye, more from anger at the fact he is even thinking these thoughts than with Monsieur himself. 

Monsieur, on the other hand, is utterly bemused at the feeling of, well, rainbows and butterflies, of peace and love, of hot chicken and steamy, buttery loaves of bread (What? He’s still hungry!). But he loves it. He loves that he isn’t feeling the only thing he has ever felt in his life: darkness and despair. Could it be, Monsieur ponders, could it be I am becoming a better person? His heart swells a size bigger once more at the thought. 

Well, both of them will find that out soon enough. 

Monsieur walks into the noodle-man yet again as he stops abruptly at a glossy wooden door. Monsieur stumbles backward, and is met with another look of absolute venom from the noodle-man.

“You will wait here,” he says coldly, “ until I come for you. I will come for you when the King is ready.”

He disappears behind the door, but pokes his head back out and whispers, “Also, if you stray a few yards from here, you will be shot without hesitation, which I would hate - er, love to happen, but if you care about your own neck take my word for it and stay here.” The noodle-man closes the door with a snap. 

Monsieur does as he has been told with strict obedience. As he waits, his face slowly turns the color of an eggplant from trying not to breathe. He gasps violently when the noodle-man reappears at the doorway. 

“He is ready,” the noodle-man announces. “You may come in.” 

The noodle-man retreats back inside the room beyond the doorway with Monsieur on his heels.

Monsieur has never been inside one, but this room was without a doubt a courtroom. Every piece of furniture is made of the same dark-colored, glossy wood that the door is; the purple carpet used in the hallways has been discarded and replaced with a formal gray; rows upon rows of cushioned chairs have been set up for the audience, some of which are already occupied by noodles who look so very small in the human-sized seats; two large tables sit facing the front of the room, where a noodle-judge and bailiff sit quietly off to the side; and a jury watches the entire room from the side in their own tiny thrones, murmuring to each other. Opposite the jury, a noodle taps furiously on a typewriter, recording everything.

The King and his crew of witnesses and prosecutions, who have already taken their seats, glare resentfully at Monsieur as he walks to his own table across the aisle from them. As he sits down, Monsieur looks around and realizes he is alone in proving himself innocent.

Looking at his hands and waiting for the trial to start, Monsieur notices that his newborn, still growing heart is doing something rather peculiar. For an absurd moment, Monsieur wonders if it is pumping into his veins remorse of his actions for stomping on all of those poor, poor noodles in the kitchen. Well, that can’t be right! Can it…? 

But before Monsieur can question this hypothesis anymore, the judge, an ancient, frail looking old noodle, begins to speak.

“Good morning. Now that everyone necessary is here, we may begin.

“We are gathered today because our wonderful King” - the judge looks for a moment as if he is hacking up a hairball and bows stiffly to the King- “has requested a court case with this man here. You know what we are talking about, no?”

Monsieur jumps, still distracted by the strange actions of his heart. “I- I -,” he stammers, then nods nervously.

“RIght,” the judge continues. “For those who don’t know, Mr. Monsieur here was cleaning up his café that he works at after hours, and there he stomped the life out of dozens of innocent noodles for no reason.” There is a collected gasp and an angry outbreak of yelling from the audience. Monsieur slides down in his seat so only the tip of his bald, flushed forehead is visible. “For this reason, he is on trial. Mr. Monsieur, you may call up your witnesses, if any, and question them at this time.” 

But Monsieur can’t. He is blinded by visions of noodles being stomped on and screams, terrible, terrible screams of noodles that will never see another day. Tears spark his eyes as he looks at those very same boots that stomped the daylight out of those poor noodles on his own feet - and his heart explodes three times bigger as the true realization of what he has done falls upon him. 

“I did wrong,” he sobs, gripping his hair in shame, “I did wrong! I was angry, I was a terrible person, I don’t deserve to live!” Everyone’s eyes widen with shock, and the noodle-man, who has been pouting in a corner, sits up, stunned and looking at the man, who he refused to believe was a man, talking with remorse! Why, remorse! “I was bullied and laughed at as a child for having a drunk mother who spanked me every five minutes,” says Monsieur very fast. “But I loved my mother. I loved her so much. And I was laughed at for loving her. Then she passed away, and I was fed up by the bullying and the death - so I became bitter. I had no father to confide in, no father to comfort me, so I took out my anger on anything I could. It has never changed until now, but I doubt I will even live long after this, which suits me fine. After the terrible event I had a big hand in, it is only fair I don’t continue on with life. Please, I want to see my mother again. Maybe she’ll give me a loving spank.”  Tears rain from Monsieur’s eyes as he looks around at all the gaping noodles and noodle-men and -women alike. “There is nothing I would like more than to have another spank from her,” he whispers. “Please.” He gets up from his chair and offers his own neck.

There is silence. The judge and bailiff look completely bewildered, while the jury whispers together urgently. The king, on the other hand, just smirks.

“Why not?” he jeers. “Somebody shoot him!”

This order is greeted by more silence and the king glares around at them all.

“I said, somebody shoot him!”

“Please, sir,” says a familiar, fatherly voice with a strange Australian accent. The king glares in the direction of the voice to find the one and only noodle-man. “We can’t murder someone on sight who has, though guilty, proven to be sorry for his actions. Thrown in jail, maybe, for committing genocide, but not murdered. It is quite clear that Mr. Monsieur won’t do this again, I think.” He looks to his fellow citizens for support and they nod. The judge and the jury also mumble assent. 

“He didn’t know the noodles were even alive in the first place,” some of them murmur helpfully.

“He cried actual tears of regret,” others add.

“Fine!” bellows the king. “If you all don’t mind hundreds of noodles murdered by a single human, be that way! I, on the other hand, love our nation and think the person in charge should receive what he did in return!”

“No.”

“What?” The king whips around to face the noodle-man once more.

“No,” he repeats, more strongly than before. “You’ve never loved us or this country. The only thing you have cared about all these years is taking over the world and destroying the human race. Isn’t that right?” The king flinches as all of his secrets are let out and backs away, shaking his head, as if that will do any good. “ATTACK!”

All the noodles lunge for the king who lets out the most girlish scream Monsieur has ever heard.

* * *

The rest of the day is a blur. Monsieur is taken to a counselor's office, who calms him down and convinces him not to commit suicide, and after that he is thrown (gently) into jail and is to stay there for 2 years. But, dear reader, this is not how our story ends. Our story ends as the noodle-man smiles at Monsieur through the bars and says:

“When you come out - will you be our new king?”

Let’s just say, the next picture on the walls: a smiling painting of a happy man instead of noodle, captioned, “King Monsieur - 2024.”