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Eleven Mostly-Functional Adults
comedy · ◐ Teen
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Eleven Mostly-Functional Adults

the popular path · 5 contributors

All eleven of us crammed into the closed fondue restaurant after dark. The place smelled like regret and melted gruyere. Marv unrolled a piece of paper with a big flourish. It was a placemat. "Behold," he said, "the layout of Fromagerie Sublime." Lola squinted at it. "Marv, that's a kids' maze. There's a cartoon mouse in the corner." Marv folded his arms. "The mouse knows where the safe is."

Lola grabbed the placemat anyway. "Fine. If the mouse leads to the safe, we follow the mouse." She traced the crayon path to a doodle of a cheese wheel. "That's the vault. Probably. Marv, you're up front. Everyone else, try not to knock anything over."

We followed the crayon maze down a hallway to a door marked "VAULT" in fancy gold letters. "No way," breathed Lola. "The mouse was right." She pushed it open. Inside sat one enormous cheese wheel on a velvet pillow, glowing under a spotlight.

Dennis stepped up to lift the golden cheese wheel and grunted. It didn't budge. "It's bolted down," he wheezed. "Who bolts down a cheese?" Lola read the tiny plaque on the pillow out loud. "Award-Winning Display Cheese. Made of wax." She looked up. "It's fake. The whole vault is fake."

Dennis sat down on the velvet pillow, defeated. "All this for a wax cheese." Then he spotted a small fridge humming in the corner, unlocked, packed with real award-winning wheels. He grinned. "Boys. The fake one was the decoy. The real ones were never guarded." We cheered way too loudly.

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