It is the busiest day of the week at TaCorral. Every Tuesday, the restaurant hosts an all-you-can-eat Taco Bar from 11-2, complete with every fixing imaginable: everything from traditional lettuce and shredded cheese to pomegranate seeds and fried chapulines. Very few patrons frequent that side of the buffet. If anything, little boys dispense the pomegranate seeds into Dixie cups, run awkwardly back to a table occupied by their messy companions, and throw the seeds at one another screaming, “Frog eyes! Frog eyes!” Their cries blend with the rest of the audible chaos during midday weekday Taco Bar.

On the wall behind the 8-bit Street Fighter arcade game, hangs a collage consisting of TaCorral’s “Taco Hounds.” A Taco Hound is any person who qualifies for the title by way of consuming ten Lotta Tacos in under twelve minutes. Lotta Tacos are the beasts of the Bar. A greased slope of ground beef covered in lettuce, cheese, salsa fresca, chipotles peppers, and refried beans, all barely caged by a mammoth corn tortilla shell. If it sounds unappetizing, that’s because it is, and consequently, why most of the photographs on the wall consist of several seasoned versions of just one man’s face: the face of Taco Jones.

Taco Jones is the Taco Hound, the TaConnoisseur, and the self-proclaimed Taco God of the Tex-Mex Realm. He is the Supreme, complete with sour cream, he is the man you go to when you can’t finish your plate. He patrols this Taco Bar and any others for five towns over. No one loves a taco like Taco Jones loves a taco.

Despite his relative fame, he remains a lonely monarch. He’s been frequenting this buffet since its conception and has never met a woman of his caliber. He’s seen a few hopeful ladies take on the Lotta Tacos challenge after drinking a couple lukewarm Tecates, but they usually tap out around the sixth or seventh taco. Today, he feels, is another day without a worthy queen. The booths are filled with fattened families, belching and sweating beneath hissing ceiling fans. A few weathered men sit at the bar sipping cheap beers. Frank the Slug, thus named because of the grease that illuminates his face, can be seen outside one of the restaurant’s windows, pacing back and forth, begging for change.

Taco Jones cradles his head in his hands above his stacked-high plate. He pays no attention to the bell that rings as the front door swings open, welcoming a working-class, almost pretty woman with tanned skin and a promising pot-belly. She surveys the Taco Bar before sitting down at a booth directly in front of Taco Jones. She sits so that she’s facing him, but his attention is directed toward his waning mountain of food. It is not until she breathes those words to her server, that sweet request hot on his ears, does he notice her presence: “I’m here for the Lotta Tacos Challenge.” She smiles, naively, he thinks, and the server rings the Lotta Tacos Challenge bell.

Two pimply teens in caricatured sombreros begin to serve her ten tacos. She catches Taco Jones watching her but only winks in response to his bewildered expression. A pink bra strap hangs loosely over her shoulder, and she tucks it back inside her white tank-top before adjusting the plates in front of her. One of the blemished teens announces the starting time and waves a TaCorral flag above her table, signaling her to dig into her first meaty abomination.

The woman is ravenous. She grabs the taco with both hands at the ten and two position as if driving a car during midday traffic. She alternates between both ends of the taco, taking one huge bite from the back before craning her head in the opposite direction and cracking the front-side of the shell with her teeth. Slop falls from either side onto the plate, but she scrapes it up with her fork in one swoop before continuing to the next monstrosity.

Taco Jones sits with his mouth agape, like many of the spectators who have gathered around the woman’s booth. Food flies everywhere and one man is blinded by an airborne dollop of salsa. He runs in the direction of the restroom, screaming and scratching at his eyes. A tiny river of drool forms in the corner of Jones’s mouth. Feeling the tickle on his chin, he wipes it with the back of his hand.

Eight long minutes later, the woman straightens from her hunchbacked position, chewing the last bite of the tenth taco, a smug look on her face. The white tank top she is wearing has been destroyed. It resembles a Jackson Pollock drip painting, or perhaps the portraits painted by chimpanzees at the zoo that Jones frequents. She herself is a masterpiece in Jones’s eyes. Her potbelly has stretched into something that resembles nine months of pregnancy. She folds her hands on top of the bloat as if expecting to feel it kick. Jones feels a kick of his own, located in his chest, where his heart begins to beat in desire.

The TaCorral manager approaches her table and reluctantly shakes her saturated hand. He wipes the juices on the seat of his pants, instructing his teenaged employees to take her picture for the Taco Hound wall. As the crowd disperses, Taco Jones clears his throat and walks over to her booth.

“May I sit with you?” He looks down at her with rounded eyes, awestruck and curious.

She belches before responding, “Sure.”

He takes his seat across from her. His face is filled with obsession and his hands are fidgety. He has so many questions for his newly crowned queen. He wonders, what is her favorite taco topping? When did she develop her insatiable urge? At what taco bar should they marry? Well, here obviously, he responds to himself. But when? He doesn’t seem to notice that instead of asking these questions, he has succeeded so far in fidgeting in silence, again with his mouth open and a trail of drool forming around the right corner.

“Are you alright?” She asks with an arched eyebrow and cocked head.

His body shakes his response. The emotions he feels are indescribable and uncontrollable. He stammers the first words of many possible questions before blurting out, “You like tacos?” He grabs her fork almost impulsively and begins to twirl it between his fingers.

She laughs in response, exposing her crooked front teeth.

“I guess you could say that,” she lifts up her shirt to the point where Jones can glimpse the pink underwire of her bra. But it isn’t the bra that stirs a stiffening in his pants. Located just beneath the under-wiring is a wrinkled, tan taco complete with green, yellow, and red ink specks to represent lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. She readjusts her splattered top over her rounded belly. Jones is near proposing when his lover says the most disconcerting thing:

“I love all types of food, really.”

Jones finally closes his mouth as it forms into a wounded frown.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

She pulls the right strap of her tanktop closer to her chest to reveal a hotdog tattooed between her armpit and the top of her breast. On the other side, she reveals what looks to be a chicken pot pie. As if realizing its obscurity, she mutters, “Shepherd’s pie…” during its reveal.

With each unveiling, Taco Jones becomes more and more enraged. The fire of betrayal he feels inside burns more than a spoonful of ghost peppers digesting in his gut. His eyes are slanted and his lips curl into a canine-like scowl. The fork he once twirled wistfully is now being strangled by the grip of his right hand. How dare this Harlot come into his establishment and beat his best record completely void of a desire for the very food she ravaged mere minutes before? He struggles with an internal restlessness, and as the Harlot reveals a giant triple-patty cheeseburger resting under her pot belly, nestled between the strong lines of her pelvic bone, Jones lunges across the table and grabs hold of her shirt with his free hand.

“You don’t deserve to be a Taco Hound and you certainly don’t deserve to be my queen!” He yells into her frightened eyes before lifting her shirt and stabbing her taco tattoo with her own fork. He continues to stab that one spot, until the crater in her torso releases the organs tasked with digesting ten Lotta Tacos. The organs spill onto the table, exhausted, offering their recognizable contents to the remaining plates. Soon the booth resembles how it looked during the woman’s taco slaughter. Taco Jones begins to laugh maniacally as anyone who approaches the table is barraged by either salsa fresca or the woman’s hot blood, and is sent running toward the restroom, scratching at their blinded eyes.