Lisa Cummings and a Case
of Bad Cheese
By Jack Harvey
“Well,” Andy nodded,
as the huddle of officers escorted three guilty men into the back of
the luminous police van. It was stationed by the canal lock gate.
“Well what?” Lisa
said, flipping through a note book.
“You're acting fucking
coy again.” Andy's voice hardened. “You know I don't like it when
you do that.”
Lisa put the note book
away and smiled.
“I was going to praise
you for tracking down the smugglers so quickly, even by your
standards. But praise always goes straight to your head.”
Lisa's smile softened for
a moment. “Thank you.”
Andy face dropped,
suggesting he felt guilty for underestimating Lisa's gratitude.
Putting it out of his mind, he quickly turned around.
“Alright boys,” he
shouted to the officers near by. “Let's open it up!”
Quickly and efficiently
three officers moved to the garage door. One of them held their bolt
cutters up to the chained lock and cut the metal through. Then,
another quickly made for the door's own, separate lock and held up
some sort of device. Lisa assumed it must have been some form of
automatic lock pick.
“I thought you said all
the fancy kit got sent back to London?” she asked him.
Andy shrugged. “They've
got to let us northerners keep something, to prove they haven't
forgotten about us. It looks good on the quarterly reports.”
The men raised the
shutters and the afternoon light illuminated the garage's interior.
Whatever actual motor-vehicle related equipment it once held was now
long gone. The building appeared to be packed wall-to-wall with
various crates and containers. Stickers and stamps from all over the
world were plastered on them.
Lisa and Andy entered the
room.
“So,” Lisa said,
slapping her hands together. “What do you think we've got ourselves
here? Drugs? Guns? Stolen electronics?” Lisa thought for a moment,
then gasped. “Sex workers?”
“God I hope not,”
Andy wearily answered. “The paperwork would be astronomical.”
“Maybe.” Lisa
continued excitedly. “Maybe they'd be so grateful for being
liberated from servitude that they'd, you know, give a round for
free?”
“What?”
“Sank you dear lady,”
Lisa said in some kind of bad attempt at an eastern European accent.
“Ohh, how magh I ever repay you? I voud do anysigng.”
“Wow.” Andy was
almost lost for words. “Not only did you manage to make that
sexist, and racist, but somehow super creepy as well. And you missed
a prime opportunity for a 'Cummings' pun.”
Lisa made a face back at
him. “Stop trying to make Cummings puns happen Andy. Cummings puns
are never going to happen.”
“Never tell me about
your fantasises again.”
“What about my script
for a porno version of Blade Runner?”
Andy turned and looked at
her, eyebrows raised. “Maybe later.”
They approached the
closest crate. It was about waist hight, and had been hammered down
with nails.
Andy took a crowbar from
the officer standing to his left. “Alright then, lets crack one of
these babies open.”
Quickly he shoved the
crowbar into the side of the lid and pushed down, grunting a little
in frustration as he did.
“Why didn't you get one
of the big boys to do it?” Lisa asked, mockingly.
Andy refused to grace her
with a response and pushed down harder. Soon the lid started to come
loose, and he dropped the crowbar, pulling the rest away with his
bare hands.
“Watch for splinters,”
Lisa said in a mocking, motherly voice.
“Shut up!”
The crate appeared to
have been lined with some kind of plastic insulation. There was a
strange heat emanating from it's contents.
It was followed by a very
distinct smell, curious at first, but soon the putrid odour became
overpowering.
“Jesus!” Lisa
shouted, putting her hand over her mouth and nose. “What is that
smell?”
“Cheesus would
be more accurate,” said Andy, lifting the paper lid of one of the
boxes. “It's Casu Marzu. This must be a fresh batch, some of these
crates look like they're here for refrigeration.”
“What in the fuck?”
Lisa was exasperated. “They went to all these lengths for a box of
Gorgonzola or something?”
Andy turned to Lisa.
There was a look on his face she couldn't quite place. It was like a
mix of pity and regret. I were as though he had some bad news to
deliver.
“You don't know what
this stuff is do you? Why they'd be smuggling it?” He said.
Lisa shrugged nervously.
“I saw my great uncle
eat some once when I was in Italy as a kid. It's cheese that goes
through a secondary fermentation process.”
“Kay...”
“Using insect larvae.”
Lisa paused for a moment.
She swallowed. “Well that's kind of fucked up, but alright.”
“And it's considered
bad form to eat the cheese without the larvae.”
Lisa could feel something
in her stomach now. Her lunch was having second thoughts about
staying where it was. Suddenly evacuating the stomach and going back
the way it came was becoming an appealing idea. Lisa had to suppress
the thought of her stomach contents sitting there, undecided.
Andy continued. “It's
also considered bad form to eat the cheese if the larvae aren’t
still alive.”
And there was that old
familiar feeling that everybody knows. Lisa's throat swelled and she
could feel her lunch fast returning.
She looked at the
contents of the crate. It was probably her imagination, but she could
swear the cheese was squirming, pulsating.
She put her hand over her
mouth and tried to hold fast. She could feel the liquid working it's
way upward, outward. She knew that swallowing would be a bad idea,
that it would only tighten the throat pushing the stomach contents
further along. She did it anyway, struggling to breathe, and with
that, all resistance had been lost.
With nowhere else to go,
Lisa ran toward the nearest corner and vomited violently onto the
floor.
“Fuck,” Andy said,
running over, before hovering a couple of steps back, outside the
splash radius.
The first was mostly half
digested food and liquid, easy going stuff all things considered. But
as Lisa began to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief she could feel
the second on it's way.
“I'm fine,” she lied.
“I'm fine I just need a moment.”
Then she breathed in, and
could smell the putrid cheese. More vomit ejected itself from Lisa's
mouth. Denser this time, with a hearty dose of stomach acid that
started to burn her throat. A great big lump of half digested food
struggled up and out of her mouth. It landed on the floor with a
plop.
The vomit splashed back
from the wall and stained a portion of her white trainers.
Andy looked around
helplessly. The other officers shrugged. He was unsure what to do at
this point, so thought it best he replace the plastic insulation on
the open crate and shut the lid. At the very least it wouldn't hurt.
Lisa was breathing
heavily now and didn't bother to clean anything because she knew the
third was inevitable. As a contrast to earlier she was feeling a
little better, but the gears were in motion, and her stomach hadn't
finished releasing it's bounty.
The third time she
vomited was shorter than the others. It was out, quickly and
painlessly, as Lisa was resigned to decorating the smuggler's garage
with phlegm and stomach lining. She gathered the rest of the foul
tasting residue with her tongue and spat it out onto the flour.
Lisa leaned against the
wall, all signs of the outside world lost to her. Little made sense
beyond spittle and vomit and maggot infested cheese.
Andy approached, handing
her his own handkerchief. “Here,” he said softly.
As Lisa turned she keeled
over the fourth and final time. All that remained was acidy water.
Easy to come up, but uncomfortable. The luminous yellow vomit left
Lisa's mouth and landed on Andy's clean black shoes.
“Awww, man, no, come
on!” he shouted, hopping out of the way.
“Alright,” Lisa said,
holding out a hand. “I'm done. I think I'm done.”
Andy called over to one
of the officers. “Can I get a towel over here or something?”
****
Lisa and Andy sat by the
canal as they watched the biological waste boys remove the crates in
their hazard suits.
Andy was chuckling slightly.
“You know that's a story
I'm going to have in my back pocket for a while you know?”
“Yeah, yeah!” Lisa said,
dismissively.
“I'll be savouring that
one for years to come.”
“I'm just glad I'm single
at the moment.” Lisa said. “Girls are not fond of sickers.”
“Yeah, well, all things
considered I can't blame you.” Andy said, folding his arms. “I
was a little sick too when I first saw the stuff. Though I was just a
kid back then.”
Lisa shook her head and spat
into the handkerchief. “What I want to know is why they were
smuggling it in the first place. What's the big deal?”
Andy looked over at her.
“It's against European food regulations to serve something that
involves a living organism. The stuff has had a disputed status for
years. It's still under considerable debate back in Sardinia.”
“Fucking hell!” moaned
Lisa, her stomach rolling at the thought again. “Well that might
not be much of an issue over here for much longer. Who knows, Casu
Marsu might be showing up on cheese boards around England in no
time.”
“Yep,” sighed Andy,
noticing he'd missed a few spots on his shoes. “That's why I voted
remain.”
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