Part I: Sausage with a Face

Jonas had finished everything on his plate - eggs, hashbrown, and toast with a bit of apricot jam, but couldn't quite get the sausage down. He didn't like the huge blue vein that ran down the length of the breakfast meat.

"Jonas, bring the sausage with you on your way to school and finish it," said his mom as she picked up the sausage, tucked it in a napkin and handed it to him. Jonas obediently took the sausage from his mother and slipped it in his pocket with the intent to dispose of it as soon as he got to school.

...

While Mr. Morgan droned on about the Crimean War, Jonas felt a slight stir in his left pocket. He popped a hand in and felt around, there was nothing but the sausage that he had forgotten to toss, now a bit sandy and linty from its journey. Jonas gently brushed off some of the sand and dust, only to see that two black dots had formed on either side of the blue vein. He felt the two dots stare intently at him and suddenly felt embarrassed and looked away. He deposited the sausage in his pencil bag and refocused his attention on his textbook. However, he couldn't concentrate for long as the sausage began to squirm inside the bag, jostling his erasers and rattling his pens. Kids were beginning to look so Jonas lifted the sausage out of the bag. He noticed that the dots had widened and that two slender arches of fuzz had begun to grow around the dots. Jonas began to panic as the arches developed into full-blown eyebrows - bushy and mean looking.

At recess, Jonas rushed to the school dumpster, eager to be rid of his new companion. By now the sausage had developed a nub for a nose and Jonas could see the beginnings of a set of lips. As the sausage couldn't speak, it crinkled its eyebrows as a way of begging, pleading for its nascent life. I should give him a chance, maybe at least until he can speak Jonas thought to himself.

"Be good. I'll talk to you after school," Jonas whispered to his sausage as he stuffed a tiny scrap of napkin into its mouth to prevent the sausage from having an outburst in class should it gain speaking abilities before school let out. The sausage was fairly well behaved for the rest of the day. Jonas almost forgot about him, but for the spot of warmth he felt emanating from his pocket.

At home, Jonas gently lifted the sausage from his pocket. It had now grown a full set of ears, mouth, lips and teeth. It looked disheveled and lay still in the palm of his hand. Jonas gently poked it in an attempt to wake it. He felt the sausage breathe more heavily now and was relieved when it opened an eye. Jonas removed the strip of tissue from its mouth and set him down on his table.

"I thought you were going to kill me" the sausage whispered.

"Well, yeah, I was, but now I'm not."

"Oh goody," said the sausage as he rolled his eyes.

"Well, I wanted to see first if you were going to be a good sausage or a bad sausage," Jonas asserted.

"There is no such thing as a good sausage." The sausage's eyes narrowed and the blue vein that bisected his head began to pulsate.

"So, you're an evil sausage then?" inquired Jonas.

"No, I wouldn't say an evil sausage. Hey, let's talk about something else, this conversation is pointless. Can you do me a favor and put me in front of a mirror?"

"Why? Why do you need a mirror?"

"Just do it" said the sausage as he began to inch like a worm over to Jonas' mirror.

"This is awful, I'm practically bald" said the sausage as he inspected the tiny tuft of hair on his head. He ruefully examined his face, batted his eyes, pursed his lips, and tried to calm down his overactive vein.

"I am one ugly looking sausage" mourned the sausage.

"You don't look that bad. Hey, let's fix your hair." Jonas snipped off a few short stands of his own hair and gingerly implanted them on the top of the sausage's head.

"Well, I guess that's a bit better, I'll probably need daily hair maintenance though. I'll need you to plug up the gaps in case any of it falls out," lamented the sausage.

"So, sausage, what should I call you?" asked Jonas.

"I don't care, uh, just call me sausage with a face, or SWAF for short."

"SWAF - nothing like this has ever happened to me before, I really don't know what to do next, we can't let --"

"Kid, kid, give me a break all right? I've had a rough day. I was gagged and almost left for dead in that pocket of yours, just let me rest."

"Fine. We'll talk tomorrow."

"Fine, now put me on your pillow."

"I'm not putting you on my pillow, there's no way. What if you do something to me in the middle of the night? We never established if you were a good or evil sausage."

The sausage rolled its eyes once again. "Fine, just lock me up in your drawer or safe, anything, just stop whining. I can't stand your incessant whining. I'm also starving, please tell me you have something to eat."

"I don't know what sausages eat, what to you eat? Do you eat other sausages?"

The sausage paused, "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response, just get me some water."

Jonas filled the cap of a plastic water bottle up with some water from the sink and brought it back to SWAF, but found that SWAF was already fast asleep.