Category: Maria Barnes

Something pretty gross happened last night.

I semi-regularly make pitchers of Country Time lemonade, which only I drink but which I drink in great quantities. The pitcher is a hassle to wash, so usually I’ll let it get almost empty (at which point the mixture is too strong to drink) and then mix up a new batch in the same pitcher. Kind of like stone soup. I do empty it out and clean it every three batches or so, though.

Yesterday, trying to decide which leftovers to eat, I noticed that we’d almost run out of juice. I pulled the aforementioned pitcher out from the back of the fridge and set it on the counter in anticipation of making more lemonade for dinner. I knew it had been a while since my last batch, but hey, it was in the refrigerator. No worries.

A couple minutes later, Maria started wrinkling her nose up and wondering what smelled bad. I didn’t smell anything, and said as much, but suggested it might be the black bean hummus and pita leftovers we had out from the 3rd Avenue Café. Maria disagreed. Maybe it was the dishes, then? No, nothing we’d been eating would have that kind of sickly-sweet-sour odor.

In the process of emptying the dishwasher, I lifted up the lemonade pitcher and set it down somewhere else. Maria had to leave the kitchen from the smell. I finally took a closer look at the pitcher, which contained green liquid with black stuff floating in it.

I poured it out, followed by gallons of soapy water and a thick coat of baking soda, and Maria made me throw away the pitcher and everything the Undead Lemonade had touched. She wanted to burn them, actually, but we lacked the necessary tools.

If I ever want to kill somebody by burning their flesh off, though, at least now I know what to do.