The Muffin Beside Me

It was a cool fall night when my life took a turn for the worst.

I thought that I had already observed the most morbid and depraved individuals in my short years on this planet, one does grow up fast in this day and age. But after I found out who my childhood friend Stan Muffinhertz (better known by his infamous nickname "The Muffin Man") really was, I realized that I had myself completely fooled for years.

The moon shone brightly across the windshield of the black Ford Ranger as we drove through the deserts of New Jersey. Actually, I couldn't tell if we were really driving through the desert or if the grotesque amounts of mescaline of which I had consumed earlier was just distorting my perception.

Stan's ironically calm and soothing voice, despite his hideously obese figure and scar-laden face, broke my much needed silence.

"Listen, just because I have a mutilated hooker in garbage bags in the flatbed doesn't mean you have to block me on Facebook. Dude, I'm still the same Stan that you've smoked crystal meth with in the Wal-Mart bathroom for the last five years. Does a dead hooker really change that?"

"No." I lied. I was about to re-neg my dishonest answer until Stan spoke again.

"Hey listen, I need to run by the casa for a moment, do you mind if-"

"I'm actually getting pretty beat," I retorted, "Can you just drop me off at..."

"NO!" Stan shouted like the psychopath he really was. "Hit this and shut the fuck up before I feed you your intestines!"

Stan passed the crystal meth. Watching the trails that it made across the tin foil calmed me enough so that I felt comfortable exposing my penis to the young children walking down the sidewalk.

We arrived at his dilapidated duplex off of Drury Lane. Once I walked in, I had finally realized what that perplexing scent combination of sex, Ricky Martin's burrito shits, and strawberry chap stick that had always permeated throughout his house really was: it was the smell of dead hookers.

Stan carried the bag with the various parts of the call girl who was no more into his kitchen. A cockroach ran across the tile floor, climbed atop the counter to grab a meth pipe, and then headed back to his humble abode in a crack by the sink.

It was all too surreal. It had just hit me all at once. How could the gentle Stan that I had grown up with be capable of such an unspeakable act? The Stan whom everybody affectionately referred to as "muffin tits" and "faggot." The Stan who would shit in between two slices of bread and give it to a homeless man just because he cared. All I was left with now was a memory that I vehemently clutched and genital warts. Of course, I already had the latter.

Stan once again interrupted my silence.

"You know, all those years people called me 'muffin tits' and beat me with condoms filled with ice cubes, I wondered what it would be like for the tables to be turned. To be able to see a day when I could relish in their misery. Well, that day has come."

"But Stan," I pleaded, "you don't need to do this. You're better than this. You've beat them. For God's sake, you're an Assistant Manager at Waffle House! You're an ass hair away from being promoted to manager and then you're like fucking Highlander! Please, Stan, don't fuck it up now!"

"Fuck the promotion!" Stan shouted violently. "I only worked there because I had a fetish for syrup. And because I needed to fuel my meth habit, too, but mainly the whole syrup fetish thing. Let me ask you, all those years I raped cats, you didn't suspect in the slightest that something was wrong with me?"

I tried to reason with him, to no avail. "Come on, Stan! I thought that was just a cry for attention on You Tube. Everybody goes through a phase!"

"They put that on fucking You Tube?" Stan snarled angrily. At this point, I knew the battle was lost and that this fat ass held complete control over my destiny.

"Well then," Stan continued, with a hint of evil satisfaction. "Guess who gets to put the hooker in the Cuisinart?"

"Queen Latifah?" I asked eagerly.

"No, you infected dog's anus, you do!" Stan's eyes bulged out of his head. He either had completely transformed into his evil alter-ego, or was overdosing on the meth.

"But why grind them up in the Cuisinart? Shouldn't we just throw them in the river or give them as a gift?" I asked. "You know Mother's Day is coming soon."

Stan smiled, the sinister smile that I flash a half-eaten Oreo lying on the ground. "Because," he said, "we're going to make a batch of muffins."

Now I looked back, regretting the innocent pokes at his man-boobs and calling him "muffin tits." My heart now raced, and the sound of grinding bones in the Cuisinart only worsened the feeling of uneasiness that plagued me.

Forty five minutes passed, and finally the hooker had been ground up about as much as a can of Folger's. I looked on with disgust at Stan's crazed look as he prepared the muffins and heated the oven.

Thankfully, we were able to take a therapeutic meth amphetamine break. We laughed as we discussed subjects such as what gives Vin Diesel such killer pectorals, or what our favorite type of anal cleanser was. Of course, these conversations were interrupted by fierce battles against giant, imaginary, man-eating spiders brought on by meth hallucinations, but that was to be expected. However, after a quick round of hand jobs, reality set in once again as the muffins had finished their baking, eagerly awaiting their putrid and horrific demise.

Stan handed me the first muffin, eyes wide like a lunatic (or at least wide like Lady Gaga). "Eat it," he chanted morbidly. "Just eat it." He sounded eerily similar to the witch from Wizard of Oz, and I found it even weirder that it was turning me on.

I opened my jaw reluctantly, and bit in. The vile taste consumed me. It was a taste that was so foul that I doubted that I would ever be able to get it out of my mouth. Fear paralyzed me. But just as I thought there was no hope, and that I was irreversibly traumatized for the rest of my life, Stan uttered out a glimmer of hope.

"Did you know that I made these muffins with absolutely zero trans fat?"

That's when a light turned on and my perspective was completely changed. I learned the value of true friendship. I realized that Stan knew me through and through. He knew I cared about my figure and avoided carbs and trans fat. He knew I smoked the crystal meth because it burns twice as many calories as a game of kickball. For I had worked so hard to get down to 83 pounds to be the skinniest man in the country. And Stan respected me as well as he respected my diet.

"You know, Stan," I said. "I was wrong about you. You were right. The dead hooker changes nothing. We're friends till the end."

"Why thank you," Stan replied, almost flattered. "That means a lot to me. Do you want to suck my dick?"

For the first time that night, except for the times where I was under the influence of heavy stimulants, I felt at ease. "Stan," I replied cheerily, "there is nothing in the world that I would rather do than suck your stubby, funny-smelling dick. Come here, you big hooker-killer!"

Sure I went through a lot that night, but I left that night truly knowing what a best friend really was. That was, of course, until the FBI kicked down the front door and shot Stan in the face six times. Those bastards got pieces of his brain on my favorite Pet Shop Boys t-shirt.

After I lost Stan the Muffin Man, I was never the same. I started prostituting myself for crystal meth. Oh, wait..... I was already doing that before any of this shit happened.