The Dog Days of Summer

By the time the day of the hot dog eating contest finally arrived, Merideth was in fighting form. She'd been slowly stretching her stomach out for weeks, eating a little more each day until her capacity for eating was unmatched. Her skin glistened as she approached the stage.

Radiant with a dewy film of sweat draped across her expectant jowls, Merideth gripped the first hamburger and proceeded to press the fully loaded 1.5 pounder into her voracious maw. She was off and running on what promised to be her most powerful performance of the year.

As the first bits of meat juice dribbled down her chin Meredith locked eyes with a familiar face. How could it be? Big Mama Angus hadn’t been in the game for years, and was rumored to have died during gastric bypass. Meredith’s confidence vanished like free samples at Costco.

A bad day for an eating contest and an even worse one to decide to become vegetarian. Go big or go home, she always said, but today ‘go big’ felt like it meant something more sinister.

Merideth was in a pickle, not unlike the delicious green pickle relish on her dogs. She thought to herself, if I don’t eat these hot dogs, and have a valiant victory, won’t these pigs lives have been lost for nothing? Wasn’t it her duty to honor them?

And honor the pigs she did. When the last fully loaded dog slid down her throat as the bell wrung, she knew she was victorious. The emcee rushed to her side and took her hand in his, together raising it to thunderous Coney Island applause. Perhaps this summer would be different.

And things might have been different if Mama Angus hadn’t made parole that summer. Prison had hardened her, made her hungry. She spent every waking hour in the big house crafting the perfect meal of revenge and Mischievous Meredith the Muncher was most certainly on the menu.

She leapt out of her seat, with the speed and agility of someone half her size, and attacked ol’ Mer with fierce determination. “This is what you get for stealing my boo!” She screamed. Her boo was not human, but rather a smoked meat she had been saving for months.

Merideth just narrowly escaped the frantic fists of her new enemy. She scuttled under the table and sprinted to the exit, at which point it occurred to her that the woman wasn’t following her. She turned back, and was stunned at what she saw.

Turns out Merideth was, in fact, in the throes of a terrifying acid trip, rendering her reflection in the sullen mirror a grotesque, melting chimera. What kind of a meat eating contest did she even participate in? Was she her own worst enemy after all?

As Meredith began to sober up the images in the mirror became clearer. Over her should the lumpy terrain of Mama Angus’s face came into focus. At that moment Meredith’s instincts took over and she grabbed the raw ground chuck by the sink and swiftly stuffed it into Mama’s mouth.

“Never again!” she screamed. The look of utter shock on Big Mama’s face was oddly funny. The longer she looked at it, the funnier it became. Big Mama, too, seemed amused. She spit out her food and laughed. Mer too. And in a surprising twist, the two shared a moment of friendship.