Mrs. Falcon, my seventh-grade science teacher, once explained to me that the body is like a city. The brain is the city hall, the lungs are the park and the liver is the jail. More specifically, she told me that the human body is like Venice, Italy since the roads are wet with blood. “If you wanna get around,” she would say passionately, “you gotta rent yourself a gondola.”
Blood is the most important thing in the body, and without it we’d be dead and dry. That’s why when UMass Boston student, Fiona Blaze, got all the blood drained out of her body in a freak accident that is far too graphic to describe, she was rushed to the hospital for an emergency transfusion. What happened next will surely go down as one of the biggest blunders in medical history.
Upon waking from the transfusion, Blaze reported feeling immediately “spicy.” After running some quick scans and a few taste tests, the doctors were horrified to discover she had been pumped full of hot sauce instead of human blood. How this happened is still being questioned, but what is more astonishing is the fact that Blaze seemed to be completely fine.
Other than the mild spiciness and curious ability to burst into flames by saying the phrase, “flame on,” her vitals were otherwise normal and the doctors gave her a clean bill of health. So, without giving another thought to the fiery substance flowing through her veins, Blaze returned to her life as a student, attending classes, missing the commuter rail and putting off yet another workout in the Beacon Fitness Center.
However, despite her desire to be a normal human, she could not deny the fact that she felt different. Of course, she was different. Her physiology had been forever altered, her genetic code tampered with beyond repair. She could hide the truth from herself all she wanted, but the world could not be fooled so easily.
“Ms. Blaze: Heiress to the Throne of Heat,” began the letter that appeared miraculously one morning on the nightstand beside her bed, “Long have we awaited the second coming of The Great Hot One, the flaming messiah which shall deliver us from our terrible plight. We are most excited to meet you and have taken the necessary steps in preparation for The Big Suck.”
Along with the message, there was a request for Blaze to go to 999 Caliente St. Los Angeles, Calif. Having an important exam coming up in Scentology 101 and not feeling too comfortable with the implications of “The Big Suck,” she decided to ignore the message’s instructions. It was only a couple days later when they arrived on campus.
The first reports of these strange individuals described them as looking like little Guy Fieris who had just gotten back from a three-year stint at Flavor Town’s most prestigious monastery. Their brown robes, covered in bright red flames, flowed down to their feet while their faces were concealed beneath dark hoods. Most students ignored them, assuming they were simply hanging around the university’s courtyard to promote some sort of strange cult. The cult aspect may not have been far off, but the true reason for their visit was to perform a very important sermon to one very important, extra-warm-blooded person, and when they finally caught sight of her, their leader whipped out the megaphone.
“Oh, Great Hot One! We have at last found thee!”
Blaze was too baffled to do anything other than stop dead in her tracks and stare blankly at the small militia of hooded figures in front of her. The man with the megaphone then stepped forward and removed his hood, revealing himself to be none other than Sean Evans—the bald guy from “Hot Ones.”
“What you think you know of hot sauce is a lie,” spoke Evans. “You, my dear Blaze, are the only one who can make the sauce true again!”
For those of you who were strolling through campus around this time and felt a tad confused by the long-winded speech Evans gave about the true nature of hot sauce, here’s the SparkNotes version.
Pure hot sauce hasn’t existed for over fifty years after the man who created it died. Since then, every brand of hot sauce on the market has been a comparatively mild knockoff of the original. Everything from “Slap a Donkey’s A— Sauce” to “S— Your Butt Out and Roll Around on the Floor Sauce” have all been watered down versions of the real deal. Even the sauces used on “Hot Ones” are nothing compared to the old stuff.
If you’re wondering why the recipe died along with its creator, it’s because it wasn’t a recipe at all. It was the Heat Meister who invented hot sauce, and he did so by using the blood flowing through his veins.
It’s also worth saying—and Evans was very adamant in making this point—that The Heat Meister is not to be confused with the more popular, Heat Miser, from the film, “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” and any resemblance between these characters is purely coincidental.
Although, interestingly enough, the Heat Meister does have a brother called the Cold Meister who had also tried making it in the sauce business, but the idea of a neon blue, unrefrigerated condiment called “cold sauce” didn’t seem so enticing to the general consumer. Despite his failure, the Cold Meister’s sauce would later be rebranded into what we know today as antifreeze. I realize this may not be the most pertinent information, but it might come in handy during the next family trivia night.
“So, you must understand,” continued Evans, inching closer to a very nervous-looking Blaze. “Your blood is the only chance we have at continuing our master’s legacy. You are The Great Hot One incarnate! We must suck your blood. Yes. We must suck your blood, indeed. A great, long suck for one hundred years! Taking you for every precious drop of that savory magma. Finally, hot sauce will be hot again!”
Blaze started to take slow steps backward until she entered the doors of McCormack. The Hot Ones followed suit, pushing her back until she found herself up against a wall. Fearing she had run out of options, Blaze accepted her demise and braced herself for the worst. Then she noticed something out of the corner of her eye, something small on the ceiling above them. With a sly grin, she whispered, “flame on.”
In a spectacular burst of fury, she erupted into a human bonfire. The cultists, at first, rejoiced in seeing this display. Evans kneeled down in astonishment, humbled by the great heat before him. However, all of this was simply a distraction from Blaze’s true plan.
The sprinklers on the ceiling activated, raining a crazy volley of water droplet shrapnel down upon the cultists. They shrieked and moaned in agony as their forms began to shrink and shrivel under their robes until they disappeared completely out of existence, having melted like the Wicked Witch of the West. Blaze later reported she had no idea they were weak to water. Apparently, she hoped they would have been annoyed that their robes were wet and gone home.
In regards to the aftermath of such a crazy spectacle, there isn’t much to talk about. For the many students who witnessed the event, it was just another day in the life. Even for myself—who watched the whole thing unfold from a safe distance with a bag of ghost pepper peanuts in hand—I was a bit unenthused. I kind of expected the cultists to morph together into a Balrog-esque beast, or for Fiona to summon the bizarro world Vanilla Ice to sing “Hot Hot Baby.” I suppose my expectations have grown a little too high, but attending the university that scores a 3 million on the Scoville scale, can you really blame me?