Good evening. I've gone back and forth on whether to share this. My wife thinks I'm losing it, and maybe I am, but I know what I'm seeing. This has been going on for about three months now. Started in September, right after Labor Day. I work nights at the distribution center off Route 20. Get home around 7 AM, sleep until about 3 in the afternoon, and then I eat. Leftovers, mostly. Whatever my wife made the night before. She's a good cook, pot roast, casseroles, that kind of thing. And here's the thing, I've been reheating leftovers in a microwave for thirty years. I know how a microwave works. You put food in, it comes out hot. That's it. That's the whole thing. Except that's not what's been happening. Not anymore.
The first time, I thought I was just tired. You work nights long enough, your brain plays tricks. I had some leftover beef stroganoff, you know, all mixed together in a container the way leftovers are. Noodles and beef and sauce, just scooped in there. I put it in for two minutes, same as always. 1100 watts. I've had that microwave for six years. [ I opened the door, the stroganoff was arranged. The noodles were in a neat pile on one side. The beef pieces were lined up in a row. The sauce was pooled in a perfect circle in the center. Like someone had taken tweezers and placed each piece. Like it was ready for a photograph. I stood there for probably a full minute just staring at it. Then I ate it, because what else was I going to do? It tasted fine. It was hot. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I told myself it was nothing. Weird convection currents or something. The rotation of the plate. Some physics thing I didn't understand.
But it kept happening. Every single time. Chili came out with the beans separated from the meat, arranged in alternating stripes. Leftover fried rice, the peas were in one corner, the egg in another, the rice spread flat like a little bed with the vegetables placed on top like garnish. Spaghetti and meatballs, the meatballs were stacked in a pyramid. A pyramid. In my microwave. I started taking pictures. photo prints is unnerving - Harper' I've got dozens of them now. My wife doesn't believe me because she only uses the microwave during the day when I'm asleep, and it doesn't happen for her. Only me. Only when I'm alone in the kitchen at 3 in the afternoon with nobody watching. I thought maybe it was the microwave itself. Something wrong with it. So I bought a new one. Completely different brand. Different wattage, this one was 1000 watts instead of 1100. Didn't matter. First thing I heated up was leftover mac and cheese, and it came out with the noodles arranged in a spiral pattern, the cheese sauce drizzled on top in a perfect zigzag.
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