When Juniper Flume eats Lucky Charms, she saves the marshmallows for last. She suffers through the beige blandness of the cereal bits – if you can call them that – for what’s coming next. The glittering, glistening goodness of pink hearts, blue moons, shooting stars, and green leprechaun hats all swirling in rainbow-colored milk. They tasted better, for some reason, knowing the crusted cereal was behind her.
Juniper saved the marshmallows for last in other things, too. She did her times tables and fractions before she watched TV. The shows were always funnier after homework was done. So funny that sometimes, Juniper would even let out a little laugh watching them. Juniper made her bed before breakfast, and cleaned her dishes before dessert. She got older, and she only texted after her tests. She didn’t check her phone until she checked her grades. Life was better this way, and Juniper Flume knew it.
Saving the marshmallows got Juniper through medical school; got her straight A’s; got her a research grant for her cutting-edge work on toxins in human blood. She’d always wanted her work published, and this project was her chance. Her chance to prove why she worked so hard; why she saved her marshmallows to begin with. To do her research, Juniper got to be an at-home phlebotomist, which meant she could take people’s blood anywhere, at any time. She had a home kit for this very purpose, complete with needles and intravenous tubes. In front of this phlebotomy kit is where Juniper sat late one Friday night, snapping it shut as she finished up another sample.
Juniper watched the swirling red contents of the test tube patiently. The swirls reminded her of Lucky Charms rainbow milk, though Lucky Charms didn’t have the color red. She opened a small medical refrigerator she kept in her living room. Cold, crystallized air smoked out of it, revealing two racks of blood-filled tubes with tiny white labels. All had names on them, categorized alphabetically.
Juniper labeled her latest sample, and carefully placed the test tube in a slot on the top rack. That’s when she noticed something—one slot was still left open. That’s strange. She thought she counted them appropriately. A small twitch wriggled its way into Juniper’s left eyebrow. She knew better than this. The toxicity report was due on Monday. The last one to complete her research. Was the sample size large enough, with one tube missing? She checked her watch—getting late, for a Friday—and closed the door of her mini-fridge, trapping the wafting smoke inside before it invaded her living room.
It was a Friday, and Juniper decided she could let this last sample wait. She’ll do it on Monday, before the report is due. Her work was done for the week. More than most, Juniper knew what it meant when work was done. Marshmallows. What form they would take tonight was Juniper’s to decide—she had earned it.
She unlocked a small tin box, and pulled out her phone. A dopamine-inducing distraction, normally, but not when work was done. The panels of a dating app illuminated Juniper’s eyes. Her bio: I love Lucky Charms *shamrock emoji*. She thought it was cute, and so did 47 other matches that had shown up since she last visited.
Juniper picked one: Johnathan, 32, rugged. A beard to cover his flaccid chin. Juniper didn’t like the first H in his name. Pick one – John or Jonathan, but let’s be honest, boring either way. He’ll do just fine. A few playful messages later, they were at a seafood restaurant.
“Could we get some bread?” Johnathan asked the waiter.
“Sorry, sir, we don’t have bread.”
“No bread?”
“We could bring you something else to start – calamari, maybe?”
“Sure.”
Juniper knew where this was headed. Can’t enjoy a meal post-appetizer.
“Are you sure you want that?” Juniper asked, sweetly.
“I’m hungry now. Aren’t you?”
“No. I’ll wait.”
“Ok – sorry, I’m just hungry all the time.”
Juniper was sure he was. She looked at the dark hair spidering out on his thick hands as he drummed the table. The fingers kept drumming until the calamari arrived: a tidy basket filled with little breaded rings and full-bodied baby squid. Johnathan carefully picked apart the basket. He only ate the little rings.
“Saving the other ones for last?” Juniper asked, actually curious this time.
“No,” he said, a dribble of batter on his lips, “those ones look gross. They’re like little octopuses –”
“Octopi—”
“Or squids or something. I don’t know. Hey, do you watch Shark Week?”
The main course finally came. The conversation reminded Juniper of the bland Lucky Charms cereal bits. The guy, Johnathan, really liked YouTube videos. He told her how this one guy filled up a truck bed with water and called it a mobile swimming pool. He wanted to try it, too.
“That’s great,” she said, looking down at her plate. The percentage of risotto to salmon was adequate, though after her first bite of each she decided the risotto was better. That meant she needed to eat all the salmon first so she could enjoy the risotto. She made this decision as Johnathan told her about a new kind of flyswatter that electrocutes on contact.
Once Juniper had finished the last bit of risotto on her plate, Johnathan asked for a dessert menu.
“No,” Juniper said. “We’ll have that at home.”
That caught Johnathan by surprise. “Home?”
Juniper stared – intensely, in a way that made Johnathan forget how his name was spelled – until she abruptly said “Let’s go.”
Back at Juniper’s apartment, the floor was clean. Juniper knew that you could only clean the counters if the floor was clean first. Johnathan didn’t take his shoes off when he entered.
“Shoes off,” Juniper said directly.
“Oh yeah, sorry,” Johnathan said, throwing his shoes against the shoe rack, flattening Juniper’s medical scrubs.
“Guess I should take this off too,” Johnathan said, removing his jacket.
He smiled at her, whiskers curling around his mouth. Then, he took off his shirt. Juniper stared blankly. She didn’t move.
“Well?” said Johnathan.
His stomach was hairy, his chest was not. The hair seemed to ripple around his belly button like a toilet bowl.
He sat down next to Juniper, and put his hand on her leg. It was still greasy with calamari. He reached across her body and started kissing her, hands groping aimlessly. Juniper didn’t move toward him, she simply sat. She rolled her eyes as he made another lunge.
Johnathan stopped suddenly, and looked at her. His eyes were hungry, bugging, begging her to look back. Juniper did, and next thing he was clutching at her back, pulling little handfuls of her clothes, trying to take them off.
“That’s enough,” thought Juniper.
She sat back quickly, and pushed Johnathan off her. Johnathan sat up, blinking. His mouth twitched under his patchy beard.
“I told you I wanted dessert,” Juniper said.
“Well…yeah. Look.” Johnathan gestured at his undulating stomach, the hair ripples squirming.
Juniper looked blankly at him.
“No,” she said. “Sit over there.”
Johnathan, still shirtless, sat down at Juniper’s kitchen table. He couldn’t see where she went behind the kitchen counter – he could only hear a soft clanking, and liquid pouring. She returned, holding two bowls. Both were filled with Lucky Charms. Johnathan laughed.
“This is dessert?” he asked.
“They’re my favorite,” Juniper replied simply.
Johnathan chuckled. “I loved these as a kid.”
Juniper waited for Johnathan. Shrugging, Johnathan dug into the Lucky Charms. He took huge gulps, marshmallows and cereal all in one bite. Juniper noticed this. She wasn’t surprised. She watched him a few moments longer, then began eating from her own bowl. She picked out just the cereal bits, her spoon fishing methodically through the colorful milk.
With each one of her bites, Johnathan had slurped up another four. He had pieces of blue marshmallow between his teeth. Juniper eyed him carefully, observing his eating method. Finally, Johnathan gulped down the last of the milk. He sat back, and sighed.
“Alright,” he said. “Now can we…”
He trailed off suddenly. He gave a little burp and patted his chest. Then he started coughing uncontrollably, spluttering all over the table and lurching forward. He gripped the edge of his chair.
Juniper sat silently. She took another small bite of cereal. Johnathan writhed on the table, clutching, gasping for air. Then he passed out with a thud on the floor.
Juniper took one last bite of her crunchy, bland cereal. She checked her watch.
“42 seconds,” she whispered to herself.
She looked down at her bowl: only the marshmallows remained, swimming quietly through the blue-green milk. She walked over Johnathan’s limp body on the floor, and opened her medicine cabinet. She slapped on a pair of latex gloves and clicked open her at-home phlebotomy kit.
She dragged Johnathan’s body across the clean floor to the phlebotomy station. She tried to not get any of his stomach hairs on her as she propped him up in a seat. She inserted a needle into his right wrist – it always reminded her of skewering a marshmallow – and she let the blood siphon out of him and into a small sealed bag. Once she had enough, Juniper detached the bag and emptied the contents into a small test tube.
Juniper examined the tube, now a deep crimson. The blood and plasma swirled peacefully inside. She tipped the tube to watch the blood dance off the edge. She nodded.
“42 seconds,” she said to herself. “You moved fast, didn’t you.”
They always moved fast. The toxins, and the men. She’d confirmed this hypothesis over time, with enough samples. The men were no surprise, obviously. She picked suitable samples; the dating app was a perfect incubator. And while she scoffed at the idea of science having a responsibility to society, she figured the app could benefit from a few less men who don’t save their marshmallows for last.
Juniper wasn’t interested in the men, though. What really interested her was how their aroused heart rates pump poison through the blood. Some combinations were simply a perfect match, like Johnathan and diphtheria. They both had a useless H in their names. Juniper smiled at this fact, like when she used to watch her TV shows after her homework was done. And her homework really was done, now. Juniper thought she could wait until Monday to finish the toxicity report, but sometimes, she thought, it was best not to kid herself. The last ounce of work before a weekend, like the last crunchy cereal bite of Lucky Charms, is always the sweetest.
She made a note on a pocket-sized chart. Gently, she placed a slick white label on the test tube, and wrote Johnathan’s name on it – careful not to forget the extra H. She looked at Johnathan, slumped in the chair, hairy belly hanging out.
Cold smoke curled around Johnathan’s feet when Juniper opened her mini refrigerator. She put the test tube inside, in the last open slot on the top rack. Every tube was alphabetically labeled, each with a different man’s name. Johnathan’s tube fit perfectly between John’s, and Jonathan’s. All boring names, but all together, a good sample size. Enough for Juniper’s toxicity report due on Monday: the last step to publish her research. The last step to prove her work was worth it.
With a click, she packed away her phlebotomy kit, and left Johnathan in the chair as she walked back to the kitchen. There, she put a small clear vile back under the sink. The counters were once again perfectly clean, and so were the floors.
Juniper Flume sat down at the kitchen table. Her bowl was right in front of her. She peered into it, and a little smile crept across her face. Blue moons, shooting stars, pink hearts, and green leprechaun hats stared up at her. She dipped her spoon in the bowl, and ate her marshmallows.