Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Mirror Mirror #8

Everyone in town knew that Maria made the best tamales. She started making them for her family and friends when she was a young girl, adapting a recipe passed down from her mother. Which was remarkable, because everyone who knew Maria’s mother knew she had perfectly mediocre tamales that failed to impress even those family members who were predisposed to be kind to her cooking. But Maria figured out some secret ingredient that her mother never did. People debated whether it was a particular element to the seasoning, or perhaps something she added to the masa. Whatever it was, her tamales were always moist, flavorful, and the talk of the town. She eventually scraped together enough money selling tamales on the side of her house cleaning business that she was able to purchase a second-hand, broken down food truck, which she had her husband fix up so she could drive around and sell her tamales at the local library, community center, farmer’s market, and anywhere else that people would gather. Everywhere she went, everyone told her how great those tamales were.

After having great success with the food truck, Maria continued to save money until she was able to open her restaurant. It was just a tiny little place in a strip mall at the far end of Main Street, but with the quality of her food, she kept a steady stream of customers coming in and the business flourished. Foodie bloggers from the city came out and labeled her restaurant one of Arizona’s best, and that created even more traffic. People just couldn’t get enough of Maria’s exceptional tamales.

People begged her to tell them the secret. What did she do that was different from everybody else? What gave her an edge? What was the secret ingredient that nobody else seemed to have figured out? As it happened, that question was answered by the food blogger who came to town the very next year, and happened to travel with her roommate who was a journalism major doing a human interest story on the town’s remarkable housing program. Legislators were looking at their record low homeless population and planning on implementing a program to take that plan out to other local communities. The only problem is, the journalism major couldn’t find any local ordinances to address the homeless population. It just seemed to be minimal all on its own. She and her roommate discussed it over the tamales and Maria, overhearing them, offered to finally divulge what her secret ingredient was. The girls eagerly followed her back to the kitchen. The food blogger was never heard from again, and her journalism major roommate ended up finally reporting on a human interest story, although she had to type it with one hand because she had been forced to leave the other one behind in her daring escape from Maria’s restaurant. She figured it was probably in someone else’s tamale right now because, as it turned out, Maria’s secret ingredient was that the lard actually came from people.


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(506 words)


Prompt: Write a story that involves a secret or magic ingredient.