The beach... the place where the land meets

The beach... the place where the land meets the sea, and the place where I take my morning walks. That is where 'they' first appeared.

"We just moved here three days ago," one of them said cheerfully, as they walked along the waves. I didn't trust them. They were obviously outsiders, because the locals never

littered on the beach. They were carelessly flicking cigarettes onto the sand to be swept away by the evening tide. I guess they figured the ocean is so big for a reason

unfathomable by human brains. They could not possibly understand the sea of possibilities. They were out of their depth. They merely surfed the wave of incomprehension until

they finally decided on a random Cheesecake. The Cheesecake Factory was a prism of tasty delights held in front of multiple suns in a fun house mirror. They had picked

Pavlova but the Cheesecake Factory only stocked cheesecakes after the worldwide shortage in Pavlovas. The shortage was due to a strike by the Pavlova Makers Union over unfair

practices relating to the fluffiness of the meringue. The ground poodle hair they used to give it that texture would get into their lungs & cause 'poodle lung' meaning they'd nev

er be able to get up on the furniture again. That and between the lingering sweetness of the meringue mixed with poodle hair, their breath was horrendous. But no biggie, the pies

were selling like hotcakes, just as the hotcakes were selling like pies. We were practically minting money, but at the same time great confusion prevailed. A leading expert in the

field of OpenSSL securities started hacking our hotcakes, and we could no longer keep them in the oven. So that, my friends, is how the bootleg hotcake scandal started.