To put an antic disposition on
A cruel and malformed tale brought about through an offhand remark and having read too much F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The bitch was mad. This was the only reasonable explanation for the situation Matthew Taylor now found himself in. The tips of his toes touched the cold metal at the bottom of the vat and kept his head above the baked beans. He was considering the depth of the beans a minor miracle, especially as the steel walls rose up a further ten feet above him, preventing unassisted escape.
Two days ago Matt had been drinking in a normal pub with a couple of friends. As a group they were taking advantage of Spring Break to see parts of the country that were noteworthy but that none of them in any of their twin decades of life could remember having visited. The morning had been spent looking around a five-hundred year old church in the centre of a small town. Lunch was taken in a very traditional tea house then they had watched the men of the town play cricket on the green. They had all been completely unaware that a Heinz factory was located less than ten miles away.
Evening approached, with the slow turning of the skies from cerulean, to coral pink, to red, to deep and dark cobalt. They had found lodging for the night in The Royal Oak public house. Before retiring they had chosen to spend their evening at the bar speaking to the locals and drinking far too much.
So it came about that Matt was tight when she walked in. His friends were already sleeping into their pints but from some terrible haze Matt perceived her gliding through the room like a phantom. He staggered over and introduced himself by tripping into her breast and passing out. Fortunately for him she chose not to take offence and arranged for him to be placed unconscious in a booth with a glass of water ready, while she sat across from him and took a claret, waiting for him to wake.
Soon enough he came to, drank the water in one, and noticing her, sobered with the speed granted by memories of debauched actions and thoughts seen in hindsight for their worth. Matt gave ample apologies and was rewarded by somewhat of a proper introduction. The girls name was given as Rosemary, though in truth she was named Nicole.
They got to talking and Matt found her to be very like minded on a number of different matters. One thing led to another and as last orders came Nicole invited him to stay at her house, a little down the road. Four miles later, Matt was presented with a couch to sleep on that was far less comfortable than both her ample bed above, and the worn mattress of the public house he had been persuaded to leave. Having come so far, and being now quite tired, Matt resigned himself to his fate in her front room.
Nicole was amicable enough the next morning, presenting him with a large fruit-filled breakfast and revealing her real name to an increasingly baffled Matthew. Though she insisted he call her Rosemary when they slept together following lunch. Afterwards Matt began to talk about rejoining his friends, but stopped when she began to quote Catullus to him. Confusing as it was, Matt still found the act, and her, terribly attractive. This was of course, still a few hours before she slipped him the first Rohypnol.
As he shivered, suspended in the vat of baked beans waiting for the morning and the factory workers it should bring, Matt began to think about freedom. He was certain that Nicole was insane, but to what degree was her lunacy a result of genetics or upbringing. She was culpable of course, but he dreaded ever encountering the parents that could such a creature onto the world, and their parents for the same reason, and so on as far back as one could care to go. At which point does a person become distinct? When can one ever make uninfluenced life choices? Or are all decisions necessarily a result of the society a person lives in?
He wondered why he had never chosen to act the way she did, to descend upon others like a rampant Fury and punish a person for sins unknown. Perhaps he had been produced with inhibitors against the forcing of his will onto another. Would his experience here have weakened these inhibitors? More likely he would move on and try to forget his encounter with the utterly free girl, and live in chains, self-imposed, like any good and normal member of a social species. But who knows, Matthew opened his mouth and ate some beans, thoughtful he chewed them slowly.