Crinkles!

            I woke up this morning and felt distinctly wrong.  I’m not used to making a crinkling sound like newspapers being smashed into a ball as I sit up in bed, but I made exactly that sound. Needless to say, I was a bit confused.

            “No, I’m befuddled.” I muttered to myself as I got out of bed. Befuddled was a better choice of words. Less common, which made it seem like that much more of an appropriate word, considering the novelty of my situation.  I continued to make crinkling sounds as I waddled to the bathroom, scratching my ass half-heartedly all the while.  How was I making this sound?

            I tried to think back on the day before, hoping to remember any unusual things I might have done to cause this. There was the park, nothing unusual there.  A nice walk downtown, I had hot dogs from a vendor for the first time ever.  I had told myself for months that I would give that a try some day, and I had finally worked up the nerve to give them a shot yesterday.  Yay for me, right?

            I made it to the bathroom without any further incidences. Maybe more stuff happened and I didn’t notice it, but that’s not important.  Trying in vain not to have the usual bleary morning eyes, I examined my face in the mirror.  It was the same as it was every other morning.  The bathroom light seemed a bit bright, but that wouldn’t cause crinkling sounds. Or maybe it would have, I don’t fucking know.

            The noise was coming from inside me, though, so logic finally kicked in.  I grabbed the zipper tag at the base of my neck and unzipped my belly. It took me a few seconds of stupefied staring to grasp what I saw.  My stuffing was burnt like some pyromaniacal little kid’s hot dog after 15 minutes in the campfire.  How could this happen? The outside of me was just fine, nothing wrong at all. What could have happened to burn only my insides?

            I understood the crinkling at that point, but all new questions arose this morning in the wake of that one answer.