. . .

Too much meat!

The Thing in the oven stared back at her.

A fine thing! She'd put up with much in her day from The Master, but this was something else. It had been a nice juicy roast when she looked at it last. And now it was just a Thing, and it had eyes where there shouldn't be eyes, and it was throbbing gently. The Master would get a piece of her mind this time, that he would.

But first she had to deal with the Thing. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any supper, or at least nothing that could be properly called a supper, just salads and such. And she wouldn't have that at all. Over twenty years she'd been serving the Master, and never in that time had she allowed these things to interfere with her getting the supper ready.

The Thing in the oven winked at her.

Now that was just too much. Never you mind that it had taken the place of the roast that she'd spent an hour basting earlier on, but now it was getting cheeky! The nerve of it! I ask you. She picked up a spit and prodded the Thing gently.

The Thing didn't like that at all. Its pulsing became faster, angrier, and it opened up an orifice that hadn't been there before and looked at her angrily.

She poked at it again, harder. The Thing withstood it a few more times, then acted. Quick as lightening, it opened up another hole where the spit was poking, grabbed the spit, and anked it out of her hand and into the oven. A strong Thing it was. It sneered at her, and with a horrible grinding noise, ate the spit. And then grew three inches in every direction.

Well, so it doesn't like being poked. Well isn't that just too bad. She didn't like the Master's nice orderly supper to be interrupted by these shenanigans. She glared back at the Thing. Her glare had been known to make men from the village tremble when it was turned on them full force. It had a similar effect on the Thing. It shrank a bit, and its glare turned a bit confused.

So, it ate metal, did it? She seemed to remember the Master saying something about how things that ate metal didn't eat flesh, and the same backwards. Which didn't explain her mother's goat, which had been know to help itself to bits of fencing and rusty nails when left unobserved, but that's as may be. It was worth trying, anyhow. She grabbed up a turkey leg and prodded the Thing with that. Quick as a wink, it grabbed the turkey leg and swallowed that. This time it grew a full foot. So much for the Master's book learnin'.

In quick succession, the Thing ate a mixing bowl, a bucket of soapy water, some rat poison, a beaker of something bubbly from the Master's workroom, and a jar of peppers that the Master kept around for some of his foreign friends which had made her swallow the contents of a small well the one time she had dared try one. It grew more with all of them, though admittedly the peppers did make it turn a bit green. By the time she, in a fit of demented inspiration, tried giving it the Mistresses' small yappy dog, reasoning that even if the Thing did eat it she'd finally be rid of the damn thing, the Thing was almost overflowing the confines of the kitchen's largest oven, and the addition of the dog made it grow almost entirely out the front. She glared at it once more. It regarded her with what she'd swear was a self-satisfied smirk on its face.

That was the last straw. With a growl she slammed the oven closed on the Thing, and turned up the temperature. The Thing withstood it for longer than she expected, but after a few moments it began making a highpitched whimpering noise, which grew louder and louder for the next five minutes and then suddenly stopped.

The Master stopped her after supper. "What was it we were eating? I didn't recognize the main course."

"Roast Thing," she replied.

"Delicious! Can you make the same tomorrow?"