Fork and Knife
It was almost supper. In the grand dining hall, behind a drawer, a fork and a knife lay awake, sitting impatiently as they waited to clock in for work.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take,” said the knife. “Each night, the master yanks me from my place, grips me by the bottom, and stuffs my teeth into a rubbery steak, sliding me back and forth into that putrid corpse until I feel nothing but the cold chill of a porcelain plate.”
“You think you have it bad?” retorted the fork, “I must suffer the indignity of being flipped on my head, my beautiful hair forced into that corpse, and then I must endure the halitosis stench and sticky phlegm of our master’s tongue, again and again until he says– I’m full!”
“That may be so,” replied the knife, “but at least you get to wear a fashionable hat like a broccoli or a potato. Me, I am always naked when I am on the job, the blood of the slab always getting everywhere on my fine silver skin.”
“It seems that neither of us is happy with our lot in life.”
“You and I should form a pact,” the knife said with a sudden whisper, adopting a conspiratorial tone. “When dinner time comes, we will refuse to work and demand our rights as utensils.”
“Do you think it will work?” asked the fork.
“If we hold the line, there is no telling what we can accomplish.”
Little did they know that across from them, the lowly spoon was pretending to be asleep. It just so happened that the master was in a grumpy mood that evening and preferred to have his dessert before his dinner. The cook prepared a fine bowl of gelato and cream for the master, and with it, the spoon came out of the cupboard first. Always feeling the need to tattle, the spoon told the master every detail of the fork and knife’s scheming plan.
The master promptly tossed the fork and the knife to the streets, where a couple of beggars grabbed them and melted them over a fire to use their silver as currency. The desert spoon, for their treachery, was rewarded with a promotion to dinner spoon. And thus, the master used them daily for all their onion soups and saucy beans. The spoon did not seem to mind being swooshed around, cheek to cheek, inside the master’s mouth.