A Short Story By Abigail Pesta

I started getting these dizzy spells, so Dad suggested that I buy a toaster.

If you have a toaster, you see, you’re able to eat more toast for breakfast. Breakfast cures everything, Dad says.

I didn’t want to blame breakfast for feeling dizzy, I wanted to blame Hong Kong. The tiny apartments, tiny people and tiny refrigerators all conspired to make me feel like big, lumbering Sasquatch. The city’s narrow sidewalks turn the shortest stroll into a game of human pinball. Even the lampposts are cruel, with their loud, staccato crosswalk signals constantly warning that the light’s about to change with a rapid-fire ticking noise. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick! You can hear them for blocks, machine-gunning the masses with this message: Quit wasting time.

But I digress.

My dizzy spells weren’t the dainty Victorian kind where you recline on the fainting couch and ask for smelling salts. They demanded action. Could a toaster really be the cure?

Well, why not? So I sharpened my elbows and headed down the block to the big Chinese department store, in search of the cheapest toaster money can buy.

It was a Saturday — shopping day — which meant the sidewalks were especially like a mosh pit. But with my goal of purchasing a toaster, I had achieved a zen state and was not to be thwarted. I would simply fly above the crowds just like people routinely do in Chinese movies.

A short time later and seven dollars poorer, I was back out on the street with my brand-new “Bunny” toaster. Made in China, of course. Father would be proud.

Next stop, breakfast.

I tucked the toaster under my arm and headed for the food store to buy some bread. But then it occurred to me that I could use my new appliance to toast Pop Tarts.

Up till that moment, standing in the bread aisle of a supermarket in Hong Kong, I hadn’t thought about Pop Tarts for decades. But recently I had begun craving the kinds of things I used to bring on grade-school field trips as a child. Things like Planters Cheese Balls, six-packs of vanilla puddings, even those weird, pale Vienna Sausages in a can. Which, by the way, are available in Hong Kong. Comfort food I guess.

Anyway, I walked out of the store with three boxes of Pop Tarts.

For the rest of the week I tried to cook Pop Tarts for breakfast. But it didn't really work out. The tarts turned out to be extremely crumbly. They kept breaking into tiny pieces whenever I tried to remove them from the toaster once done. Maybe they’d been sitting on the store shelves for too long.

Finally, after a week of this, I ran out of Pop Tarts and decided I was through with the breakfast experiment.

The toaster, however, wasn't through with me.

A few mornings later, while pulling on my shoes, I smelled something burning. Naturally my first thought turned to toast — someone else’s toast. It seemed to me that it smelled like a neighbor must be burning their toast somewhere.

But then, I realized with horror, the smell was coming from inside my own apartment.

I raced to the kitchen to find smoke curling up from my cheap Bunny toaster. A week’s worth of crumbled Pop Tarts had somehow shorted out and caught fire.

Here's a word to the wise. When your toaster catches fire, don’t lean directly over it to try and see what’s happening inside. I did this, and at that very instant a flame leapt up so fast it was as if it had just been waiting for an eye to appear there.

I jumped back in dread as the fire alarm caught up with the situation and told me what I already knew, unleashing a cacophony of beeps so loud that it made it hard to think. Another flame licked the top of the Bunny toaster. Still, I had the presence of mind to remember that you don’t throw water on an electrical appliance unless you want to electrocute yourself. But what do you do?

Thankfully the toaster solved the problem for me by blowing a fuse somewhere and knocking out the electricity with a massive BANG.

Of course, it was all just some sugary Pop Tart crumbs smoldering in a toaster.

But now that doors in the hallway started opening, and I could hear the voices of neighbors expressing curiosity and alarm. Apparently my toaster fire had blown the electricity for the whole floor. Someone knocked on the door.

I felt a dizzy spell coming on.