The Pretzel Man

Kenny is an average guy who works at the local bar who had no idea what kind of odd situation he was going to be brought into

     Kenny was an average enough guy. He went to church every Sunday. He had a few close friends who he would get together and drink beer with on the weekends. He had a job that payed slightly above minimum wage as a dishwasher at the local bar. He was normal and boring, the best two things that someone could be in a small town like Hillsborough, Indiana. Kenny intended to stay normal and boring. He didn’t mind it, he enjoyed it actually. His life was simple. Wash dishes all day, watch some TV at night, and then go to sleep. Easy.

     That is until January 31st happened. On January 31st, Kenny had to stay late at the bar to help clean up after a big party had rented it out for the night. Kenny didn’t mind. He was getting payed extra for this.

     He left the bar at the same time his manager and one of the waitresses did and walked out to his beat up yellow car. He pulled the door open with a creak, got in to the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. Marty, the manager drove away first and then Mandi, the waitress. (Mandi’s name isn’t really spelled with an “i” but she told Kenny that she thought it looked sweet and she liked that she could dot the “i” with a heart. Kenny thought it was sweet too.) Kenny was just about to drive away when he realized that he had left his phone in the kitchen.

     “Crap,” Kenny said. He didn’t have a key to get back inside, but he knew that the bathroom window was easy to jimmy open and large enough for him to fit through.

     Kenny turned off his car and got back out into the brisk January wind. He walked around the building and went to the dumpster that stood under the bathroom window. He heaved himself onto the top and ignored the unknown stickiness that his hand had gone into. With a few shakes of the window, it slid right open and Kenny crawled inside, landing on his hands and knees. After washing his hands in the bathroom sink, Kenny exited the bathroom and headed towards the kitchen. His phone was right where he left it: on the counter across from the deep fryer.

     All was fine until Kenny left the kitchen and started to make his way back out to his car. He heard a loud crash and turned quickly around. One of the tables had been knocked on its side, taking all the chairs that were set on top with it. Kenny looked around to see if he could spot who"or what"had knocked over the table. He didn’t see anything, the bar was empty as far as he could tell. Kenny shrugged his shoulders. It was pretty windy outside and he had left the window and the bathroom door open. And plus, the tables the bar used weren’t exactly the sturdiest things in the world.

     Kenny decided that it was alright for him to leave. That’s when he saw him. A small man with a bowl hair cut hiding under another table.

     “Who are you?” Kenny asked. He turned on a light and the tiny man got up slowly. He was holding a large bag of pretzels and a few twenty dollar bills. “Are you trying to steal those?”

     The small man didn’t say anything, he just continued to stand there holding the money and the pretzels.

     “Hey, answer me! I’ll call the police!”

     The man shook his head and said, “No.”

     “No don’t call the police? Or no you’re not trying to steal?”

     The man shook his head viciously “No police. I go back to my land with pretzels and money to buy Slurpee.”

     “You’re land?” Kenny asked. “Are you from another country?”

     “No. No. Other land. Other dimension.”

     “What the heck are you talking about, man?”

     “I am from another world. I take pretzels with me. We don’t have pretzels in the other world. We also don’t have Slurpee. I like the blue ones.”

     Kenny was incredibly confused. Who was this little, strange man and why did he smell like movie theater popcorn? Why would he break into a small bar just to steal pretzels and sixty dollars? And why did he have hair like Coconut Head from Ned’s Declassified?

     “I have to go buy Slurpee now. Goodbye.” And then the little man just vanished. It was pop! and he was gone.

     Kenny thought later that he had been imagining things, lack of sleep and a long day is all. And maybe it was that new medicine his doctor put him on for all that gas in his stomach causing him hallucinations and the like. He didn’t really think about the little man again for a while.

     Not until March 18th. Kenny had just ended his shift and was getting ready to leave and go home when he saw the little man with the bowl haircut sitting at a table near the back eating pretzels. Kenny walked up to him quickly to confront him.

     “Hey, you. Stealing more pretzels?” Kenny asked.

     “No. No, these are free pretzels.”

     Kenny sat the chair across from him. “That’s good I guess.” He pause. “Listen, man. I don’t know how things are back in your land, but stealing is against the law here.” Kenny wanted to ask how the little man had managed to disappear last time they met, but he was afraid of the answer that he would get.

     “We do not have pretzels back in my land,” he said.

     “I get that, man. I really do, but that still doesn’t make it right.”

     “I have to go buy Slurpee now.”

     “Oh no you don’t,” Kenny said. He grabbed the small man by his are and the next thing he knew he was inside the Seven-Eleven around the corner, still holding on to the other man’s arm.

     “Ah,” the small man said. “You are not supposed to come.”

 

    “How… how did we get here?” Kenny asked in bewilderment. Kenny reached out to touch the Slurpee machine to make sure that he was hallucinating. He felt the cold plastic under his fingers and pulled them back towards himself.

 

    “You are not supposed to come,” the little man said once more. He angrily grabbed a plastic cup and filled it up with the blue Slurpee flavor. “I have to go now.”

     “Wait!” Kenny said as he grabbed the little man’s arm again. He closed his eyes as he felt the now familiar pull in his stomach. The next thing he knew, he was inside of what he figured to be a beat up old shack. There were holds in the dark wood walls, a dirt floor, and one long board in the corner that Kenny assumed could function as a bed.

     “You are not supposed to come!” The little man shouted at him. “You go back to pretzel and Slurpee land now!”

     Kenny looked at the little man. “How? You’ll need to take me back.”

     The little man look at his feet, his hair hanging down over his eyes. “I only allowed three pops a week.”

 

    “I’m not talking about soda, I’m talking about you taking me home.”

     “I’m only allowed three pops a week,” he said again.

     This time, Kenny figured out that the little man meant teleportation when he said “pops.” Kenny shook his head when he realized how calmly he just thought about the fact that he had teleported, not once, but twice. And now he was in an unknown land with no way to get out for another week.

     “How the heck am I supposed to get out of here then? I can’t miss a week of work without an explanation. And there’s no way in hell that they’ll believe this story.”

     The little man didn’t say anything for a while, still looking down at his feet. Then, he looked up with a big grin on his face. “We go to Bertma.”

     “What is ‘Bertma?” Kenny asked feeling as confused as ever.

     “Bertma will help. She live in Karma. We go now.” The little man opened the shabby door and exited the shack.

     “Okay…” Kenny followed him cautiously.

     Outside of the shack, there was nothing but sand and some more sand. There were no other houses in sight, if you could even consider where the small man lived a house. The tiny man was walking north in determination. Kenny followed him at a slight distance. They walked for what felt like an hour before Kenny finally asked, “What’s your name?”

     “Mart,” the tiny man responded.

     “As in K-Mart?” Kenny asked.

     “What K-Mart?” Mart asked in return.

     “Never mind.”

     After that, they walked in silence for another hour before Kenny finally saw something besides sandy terrain. He was starting to believe that sand was the only that existed in Mart’s world. It was a small shack that was slightly larger than Mart’s but not by much. Kenny prayed to God that that was Bertma’s house and that they were finally in Karma.

     His wishes were granted when Mart uttered one word, “Here.”

     “Thank God.”

     Kenny walked a little faster after Mart and they reached the front door in no time. Mart knocked and a few seconds later, a tiny old woman with the same bowl haircut had opened the door. She said something in a language that Kenny couldn’t understand.

     Mart replied in the same language. They both looked at Kenny and then back at each other. Then, Bertma ushered them in with her hand. Kenny followed Mart into the shack that was lit up with hat seemed like a thousand candles.

     “Where are we?” Kenny asked the woman, hoping that she would answer.

     “Hartven,” she said and then pulled a bowl from a small box. Bertma pulled a canvas bag out from the same box and dumped the contents into the bowl. She reached out her arm to Kenny and said, “Hand.”

     Kenny complied and Bertma grabbed his hand and placed it in the bowl.

     “You go now.”

     And the next thing Kenny knew, he was back in the bar.

     “What the hell just happened?” he asked himself aloud.

     The next time that Kenny saw Mart was June 2nd. This time Kenny just smiled and waved, ignoring him for the most part knowing he was there to steal more pretzels and get another Slurpee. Kenny was perfectly alright with that just like he was perfectly alright with never going back to Hartven. Normal and boring was all Kenny wanted.