Aussie Writer’s Challenge

Sheila and Jorge’s Food Truck Makes a Wrong Turn on the Loneliest Highway Before They Even Leave the Driveway

International Labyrinth Day Meets Cinco de Mayonaise

It had taken Jorge and Sheila a ton of elbow grease, but they’d gutted and cleaned the ancient food truck she inherited from her eccentric uncle.

The relic was parked in the driveway of the house they could no longer afford when they came home from the playa near Gerlach, Nevada, after walking the labyrinth with burners and pondering their future.

Out of work since the internet collapsed on the Ides of August, 2024, their software engineer jobs were wiped clean from one day to the next.

Uncle Timothy had not faired any better. Not a bit of luck with his haggis menu. The yellow arches he’d painted with a little help from his friend, Jim Beam, on a UPS- brown background didn’t draw many customers. The lettering “The Real McDonald’s” was confusing to most. No fries. No burgers. No supersize. No apple pies.

Haggis tacos. Haggis enchiladas. Haggis Haggis.

“No more haggis,” Jorge said, reaching for Sheila’s hands across the tiny fold-down table at the end of the truck’s kitchen.

“Agreed.” She smiled weakly, staring at her silhouette reflected in the tinted window. “He warned us we’d need a Plan B.”

“Well,” Jorge breathed in the fragrance of apple wood and juniper wood chips that xeriscaped their driveway, “at least it starts to smell a little better in here. Not like your crazy uncle died in his truck.”

“Remember his yelp reviews?”

“One star. It’s not possible to award zero.”

“Tim’s an awesome cook. Only eight cases of food poisoning in the last two weeks.”

“Haggis. Gag us. Never again!”

“Hey, babe, look at it this way. We can’t do any worse.”

“Your mama’s pork carnitas recipe, Big Dan’s salsa — ”

“ — Chorizo, home-made tortillas and chips. We got this.”

“And the internet’s down. If our food’s crap, no one will know. No reviews.”

“If we accidentally poison a customer, we can just move to a new location.”

“In Yerington, we can get some fruit and veggies cheaper than farmer’s market.”

“Make some pies and tarts.”

“Highway 50. We can collect road kill along the way. Cook it up.”

“Rabbit stew on Mondays.”

“In Eureka, we could deep-fry the Mormon crickets during their migration.”

“Plenty of protein.”

“Better than McDonald’s fries.”

“We can travel like we wanted to. From Calzoncillos to Nueva Panadera.”

“We should paint the truck. Rename it.”

“Meals under Wheels?”

“Fits the road kill theme. I love it, but it’s too much like the old folks’ ‘Meals on Wheels’.”

“Smashing Potatoes? Potatoes are cheap. We can fix a bunch of potato dishes, potato salad in summer, hash browns — ”

“ — Eureka! Euphoria on Wheels.”

“Like Cuephoria, the old pool hall?”

“When there’s no food, we can visit the bikers’ joints, some one’s likely to get killed. Plenty of meat on a human carcass for weeks of fine dining.”

Guess what I was doing when I came up with this macbre micro in the comments, and win a post card from Calzoncillos, NV.