🌮 Oliver Cinnamon Twist and the Crunchwraps of Wrath

by Lex Chamberlin

The car’s air stiffened as the crunchwraps were inspected yet again under the weak glow of a dying streetlamp. I didn’t need to ask for the results—Charlotte’s face said it all. So much for the third attempt’s charm.

“How do they keep doing this?” she asked, voice hollow, defeated.

I scoffed. “It’s Taco Bell.”

“No, you don’t understand. I come here all the time, and I’ve never had this problem.”

“That you’re aware of.”

“No, I’d know. I’d get… sick.”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on. They never get anything right at these places.”

“Oliver, that’s not true.”

“Should we try again?”

She shrank into her seat, dropping the contaminated wraps back into the bag and shaking her head.

I sighed. “Look—clearly, I’m your bad-luck charm here. I’ll go in and talk to them.”

She chewed at the inside of her cheek in consideration of the offer. I knew she was mortified—she’d finally got the chance to prove the hype to a nonbeliever, and all she had to show for it were some (admittedly nice) cinnamon twists. But she still wanted her damn crunchwraps, didn’t she? I grabbed the freshest bag of mistakes and climbed out into the parking lot’s whistling chill.

At this hour, it was pretty dead inside, just the staff and one guy in an oversized brown coat hovering over a pile of wrappers in the corner. Two workers in headsets gossiped at the counter, and when they saw me, the woman wandered off while the guy eyed me and my bag warily. He’d seen me in the passenger seat too many times tonight—he knew why I was here.

“Hey there,” I started. Dead eyes in response. “So, we’ve been through the drive-thru a couple times now, and—”

The biggest eyeroll I’d ever seen in my life.

“—the thing is, we can’t have dairy. It’s a health thing. There’s still cheese on these, so I was just wondering if you might be willing to remake them one more time, but without the cheese.”

The silence burned. But what the hell—it wasn’t like we’d be repeat customers after this. I’d probably never see these people again. Without a word, the guy walked off toward the back of the kitchen, out of my line of sight. I thought at first he was blowing me off, like if he didn’t greet me, I wasn’t his problem. But then I heard him call to his supervisor.

“WHAT?” the woman yelled back.

“Sorry, but it is the guy from the crunchwraps. They’re back again, asking for no cheese,” the counterworker said.

“For NO CHEESE?”

“Yeah.”

“These people, I swear. They’re going straight to hell.”

I exhaled slowly through my nose as the counterworker scoffed and murmured his agreement.

“STRAIGHT TO HELL,” she repeated, louder—making sure I heard.

Six minutes later, the counterworker emerged with a new bag: “Here. And just so you know, cross-contamination is always a possibility. It says so on the website. We had to manually pick apart the entire lettuce station to remove all the cheese shreds from it to make these. Also, you have to keep the old ones. We can’t take them back.”

I thanked him and picked up the fresh order, restraining the urge to mention the globs of sour cream also piled onto the first two orders—what did it matter at this point? As I crossed the threshold to leave, though, he grumbled a scathing “have a nice life” at my back. I spent the walk through the parking lot talking myself out of a Yelp account.

When I got back into the car, I handed the wraps over to Charlotte. 

“I think we’re eternally damned now,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s what the manager yelled from the back, while they were remaking them. I’m pretty sure these are cursed.”

She flipped on the car’s interior lights and checked them over.

“Well,” she concluded with a sigh. “There’s no dairy at least.” She set one in her lap and passed the other back to me. As I adjusted its crinkly wrapping, she raised her crunchwrap for a tired toast: “To damnation?”

“Cheers,” I agreed, tapping it with the corner of my own.

She took a bite, and I followed suit with an undeniably satisfying crunch.

“Hmm,” I started approvingly as my tongue sorted through the layers. The flavors were coming into focus, and I had to admit, it wasn’t immediately repulsive. 

But before I could comment further, a tremor rattled the car. The doors locked of their own accord. I dropped my wrap to give a two-handed frantic yank at the handle as the rumble ramped up, but to no avail. When I turned back, Charlotte jumped as I found her eyes—only they weren’t her eyes anymore. I could tell by her expression that mine were wrong too.

They were a glowing, hellfire red.

A whoosh of orange and blue licked halfway up the windows. The dirty streetlights fell into the sky, and my stomach went with them. The car dropped fast through the cracked asphalt beneath us, then jagged hunks of earth, roiling magma, and finally an endless dark void to the tune of our echoing shrieks. The bags of dairy-laden product at my feet rose to rest against the ceiling as we hurtled on in our descent.

I stopped screaming about ten minutes into the fall, shortly after Charlotte. We whispered anxious nothings back and forth as heatless flames streaked by in the dark. After maybe an hour, we shrugged and elected to finish our crunchwraps. 

I gave my honest review: not bad. Not incredible, but fine—maybe it’d have been better without the onions. Just a texture thing for me. After a stretch of calmer silence, I rolled down my window and batted the rest of the wraps out, letting the nothing swallow them up.

Just as I reached down to close the window, my side mirror snapped off. I yipped in surprise, jumping away from it in my seat. Then the other one went, quickly followed by a taillight, which cracked and trickled upward in pieces. Charlotte swore as the black around us wobbled with shining streaks of green—

The passenger-side airbag punched my skull into the headrest. A muffled yelp told me Charlotte’s had done the same. Glass shattered, and my spine compressed as the rusted metal lining the car’s underbelly seized against solid ground. I felt rather than saw the loss of the tires, each exploding off in a series of deafening pops. As I gasped and pushed the thing away, the airbag began to deflate with a high-pitched whine.

“Alright, then?” a compassionate voice offered. 

Someone peered into the car through what was previously the driver’s side window, now open air lined by jagged glass. He was a young man, delicately styled in both pointed hair and silver accessories, with a glowing tablet and a ribbed turtleneck. Behind him, craters lined a darkened landscape dotted by pools of flame and debris, with structures and neon lights rising to his right in the far distance.

In response, Charlotte fought the rest of her airbag away from her face to sputter back an emphatic and profanity-laced no.

“Of course, right, yes. Taco Bell, I presume?”

I decided to take over as Charlotte continued to struggle against her airbag. “Yes!” I shouted.

Through the windshield, I saw the man nod with sympathy and begin to tiptoe to my side. As I waited for him, I took a bewildered breath. I ran a shaking hand through my hair, and I winced as I shook loose a few shards of tempered glass from the strands.

“So, right,” the man started again, much closer than I’d anticipated. “It looks like we can get you two set up in a hotel, but we’ll need the order that damned you to determine the quality of accommodations you qualify for.”

I blinked. “We just... We can’t have dairy?”

He nodded with a look of utmost understanding. “Those lettuce trays really need redesigning. You know, you’re not even the first this week —lovely man named Travis came in just Monday for the same. Would you like a queen bed, or…?”

“Separate,” Charlotte growled, punching the squealing bag down into her lap. “Separate beds.”

“Of course! No problem at all,” he confirmed, tapping away on his tablet as I continued to blink. After a minute, he printed off a double-sided sheet of paper, folded it into a brochure, and handed it to me. “That’ll be your paperwork, and your map. When you’re ready, just head up the road toward that cluster of buildings, see? You’ll be staying at the Dead Canary—horrible name, I know, sorry—room number 412. You’re already in our system, so you should be all set.”

I glanced back to Charlotte, who was already crawling out her window, headfirst onto the ground. The young man politely stepped away, making space for me to do the same. Which, after a very long sigh, I did. The car had been waiting for our exit, it seemed—once we were both out, dancing flames engulfed the vehicle once again, creating yet another beacon on the plain of arrivals.

As I staggered up, I found the red rock’s dust thoroughly embedded into my pants and sleeves. I shook off what remaining debris I could as Charlotte circled around, combing through her hair and clothes similarly. I turned back to ask the man… something, anything, but he was off to another wreck already, softly approaching the screaming airbag of a blue Mitsubishi Mirage.

“So,” Charlotte said with a sigh, looking out over the cratered landscape under a green-tinged black sky. “Do you think we’re dead, then?”

“I think,” I said slowly, “that we’re off work tomorrow.”

“Mm,” she agreed. “That’s good enough, I guess.”

I offered her my arm, and she took it. The void twinkled above with the open and close of wormholes as they let through a steady drip of cursed vehicle inhabitants. We left the flaming rubble behind in search of the Dead Canary—horrible name—still lactose intolerant as ever.

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