Brownies

"Man, I'm sick of Jason eating all our food!" complained BJ, my college roommate. He was staring sadly at an empty pie plate that he had pulled out of the fridge. 

There was a total of six of us in the apartment. I shared a room with BJ. All the other roommates seemed to stay away from our food, but Jason was another story. He was eating us into the poor house.

"Yeah, but it does no good to confront him because he only denies that it was him. I wish there was some way to catch him at it." I reply.

"The problem is that we're both serious about school, so we're always in class. What is Jason taking, like 8 credits or something like that?" BJ asks. "He just waits until we're gone and then chows down."

I went to the fridge to grab some milk for a bowl of cereal.

"You got to be kidding me!" I yell, pulling out an empty milk jug. "This is getting ridiculous!"

We're both fuming.

"You know what we ought to do?" begins BJ "Naw, that's too cruel"

Jason stole my milk, so nothing was too cruel.

"What?" I asked "What are you thinking?"

He was smiling from ear to ear.

"Let's make Ex-Lax brownies!" 

"Oh, man!" I say "That's a great idea! We don't have to catch him at it. The proof will be him spending the day in the bathroom!"

We were broke college students, so it was a sacrifice to scrape together enough money for brownie mix and Ex-Lax, but we were both so fed up with Jason stealing our food that it was worth the sacrifice.

Returning from the store, we encountered a slight dilemma. Just how much Ex-Lax should be put in the brownies? If he stole only one brownie, one dosage wouldn't be enough. BJ solved the problem by dumping the entire package of Ex-Lax into the mix.

"Better safe than sorry" he said as he stirred in the ingredients. He had an evil grin on his face.

The smell of the brownies was intoxicating while they baked. The entire apartment was soon encompassed in the aroma of chocolatey goodness.

Almost on cue, Jason stumbled into the kitchen, his eyes blurry from sleep.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"It's the crack of noon" said BJ.

"Good morning sleepy head" I added.

Jason watched as BJ began cutting the brownies into squares and placing them on a plate.

"Can I have one?" he asked.

We had rehearsed this part. It was important that Jason knew that the brownies were not for him.

"Sorry. Dave and I made these especially for a "potluck" dinner we're attending tonight" BJ replied.

"We're going to let them cool as we go to class, then we'll pick them up for the dinner tonight" I said.

As we both left for class, BJ reminded Jason not to touch the brownies because they were for a special occasion. 

"Hey, I don't ever touch your guys' food. You can trust me." Jason said.

It was late into the evening when I finally got home. I had forgotten about the brownies and was more focused on getting some homework done. To get to my bedroom, I had to pass Jason's bedroom. BJ was standing at the door covering his mouth and trying not to laugh, his ear pressed up against the door.

"He..he... ate the.... WHOLE plate of.... brownies!" he gasped, trying not to laugh out loud. His face was red from keeping the laughter in.

On cue, Jason let out a groan from inside his room.

"Not again!" he wailed. Several seconds later the door opened and he came rushing out.
He was wild-eyed and clutching the back side of his pajamas.

"Move!" he yelled as he shot past us. The look on his face was sheer misery.

Stifling giggles, we ran to our room and shut the door. Once behind the door we could contain our laughter no more. We tried to laugh in silence, but that only made it worse.

I was laughing so hard that tears streamed down my face. I looked over at BJ and he was sprawled on his bed laughing so hard the entire bed was shaking.

It took us several minutes to recover enough to venture out into the living room where Jason was laying on the couch.

"You guys better not get too close, because whatever I got is BAD" he said.

I had a hard time keeping a straight face. 

"Not feeling too good?" I asked.

"I've never been so sick in my life" he replied.

All evening and into the night Jason made mad dashes to the bathroom. But in the morning he seemed to be doing better.

"You feeling better?" asked BJ.

"Yeah, Fred (one of our roommates) went and got me some Imodium." said Jason. "I had to drink half the bottle to get it to stop." he said.

BJ and I exchanged fearful looks. First a massive dose of Ex-Lax and a large dose of Imodium. That couldn't be good.

His body was probably screaming, "JUST WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT FROM ME?"

Alas, our fears were justified. While Jason was taking a shower, he fainted. We ended up taking him to the doctor. He was diagnosed with severe dehydration. Gee, I wonder how that could have happened?

On the way home, we came clean about the whole thing.

Jason, of course, denied eating the brownies, but miraculously our food was never touched after that.