Luke Kornet was heading towards the locker room when his eye happened to catch something sitting on top of a nearby trash can. It looked like food. Walking over to take a closer look, Luke’s suspicions were confirmed: it was food. Nearly untouched and looking rather pristine, the tray of corndogs still, if Luke got his nose close enough, smelled rather tasty. A smudge of ketchup at the side of the tray had a divot in the middle, and a bare wooden stick sat separate from its comrades, indicating that at least one corndog had been eaten by the original purchaser. Had something been wrong with them, thus prompting the eater to throw them out? Or was it just a case of some child begging a parent for the treat, then deciding that the treat was unwanted?
Knowing that he shouldn’t be doing this, Luke picked up the tray furtively. His stomach growled at the site of the delicious foodstuff. His own experiences with the concessions at Madison Square Garden were infrequent but uniformly positive. A day-old corndog would still be tastier than what he had planned for his pregame meal, which was an unexciting chicken breast with greens.
But he couldn’t take this back to the locker room. Not only would the trainers scold him for his poor eating habits, but his teammates would surely have a field day when they saw him walk in carrying the childish food. No, he would eat it here in the hallway, where he could easily keep an eye out for teammates or coaches walking in from their special entrance.
Confident he was alone, Luke picked up one of the two remaining corndogs and was just bringing it to his mouth when he heard an unexpected voice. “Don’t eat me, Luke!”
Luke paused with his mouth open, having been ready to take a big bite out of the corndog. Confused, he set it back down and regarded it with a furrowed brow. “Corndogs can talk?”
“Yes!” the corndog answered emphatically, and Luke could see it jolt a centimeter to the left as it said this. “And this corndog is telling you to please not eat it!”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty hungry…” Luke said. Why should he be prevented from enjoying his food just because he was experiencing a mental breakdown wherein his food was communicating verbally with him?
“But we’re the same, you and I!” the corndog rebutted. “I’m a corndog, and you…you’re The Korndog.” Luke intuitively understood that this nickname of “Korndog” was a reference to him and his own last name. “You’d be a cannibal, Luke!”
Luke found himself nodding to the corndog’s words. He found cannibalism to be morally repulsive, so why should he toss aside his morals just because of his hunger? “I never thought about it that way, but I see your point,” he said. “Should I put you back in the trash?”
The corndog again moved of its own accord, but only a little bit. The corndog next to it wasn’t speaking or moving at all. “We can be friends, Luke!” the first corndog said. “Hug?”
In a previous life, Luke would have found this request very odd, but now, he saw no problem with it. Friends hugged each other. That’s what friends did. He gently picked the corndog up and held it closely to his chest. Along with his own heartbeat, he thought he could feel another, smaller heartbeat. “Friends,” Luke said simply as the corndog cooed with delight.
—
Emmanuel Mudiay was heading towards the locker room when he encountered something very strange in the hallway. His teammate Luke was curled up in a ball on the floor, mumbling something. As Emmanuel got closer, wondering if maybe he should alert the team doctor, he saw that Luke was cradling what looked to be a corndog close to his chest. “Best friends…best friends…” he was repeating, planting the breaded covering of the food with small kisses.
Silently, Emmanuel turned and walked back the way he came. He would find a different way to get to the locker room.