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-Where I was: Work.
-Last thing I consumed: Dinosaur chicken nuggets.
-Last conversation: My grandmother.

...Well, <******** I present to you, clocking in at 794 words, Dinosaur Chicken.

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I looked over my shoulder at the alarm going off. Mrs. Sicilia Grover needed her medication again. I got up from my desk and left my little office. My job in a nursing home was demanding, but quite rewarding.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, starting to take Sicilia's vitals.

"Fine," she said, her voice feeble but pleasant. Sicilia was over 80 years old. Her memory was starting to go, which was a shame. She had such wonderful stories to tell on the days she was more "present."

"Good. What would you like for lunch today?" I put away the blood pressure kit in its drawer, already writing down what Sicilia said every afternoon when I asked about lunch.

"Dinosaur chicken," she said confidently.

She always asks for those dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. The very first time she asked for them, relatively soon after her move-in, no one at the facility had any idea what she was asking for. We tried giving her plain chicken, barbecued chicken... If there was a recipe for chicken, we tried it. She refused to eat them all.

Finally, her husband, Ryan, asked for a day outside the facility. When he came back, he came bearing a plastic shopping bag containing one box of frozen, pre-cooked dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. Sicilia's delighted squeals could be heard over in the convalescent ward. We figured out how to make them, and ever after, we had Sicilia's lunch all figured out. Every afternoon at one o'clock, I served Sicilia a plate of six dinosaurs, and she would look up from her magazine, immediately bite off all the heads, and slowly nibble her way through the rest of them as she finished her reading.

"Anything else?" I asked, smiling at her.

"No, just my chicken," she told me.

Sicilia never held a job, she was a homemaker right up until her youngest child (of which she had three) went out on her own. She and Ryan had stayed in their little old American dream house for several more decades before finally relenting, and moving in here. Sicilia's husband died here a few years ago, and so she lost her dinosaur buddy, but she's still going strong.

"How are things, dear?" Sicilia asked.

"Things are going well," I told her, shaking out two pills from Sicilia's medication bottle. "I'll be going to nursing school in spring."

"Oh!" We talked about my education more often than I liked. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, a lot of our conversations were repeated. I told her that I was studying nursing, she would tell me I was well-suited for it. I said that I wanted to become a registered nurse, she would say that I had a kind touch and would be successful.

"Perhaps I can talk you into a salad today?" I asked her. "Or maybe an orange with your chicken?"

"Not today," she said. Sicilia was stubborn. Finally, after all these years, I had to ask.

"Why do you always ask for dinosaur chicken?" I asked. "I don't think anyone here knows."

Sicilia gave me a smile. "Reminds me of my grandkid."

Right. One of her grandchildren had died young. It had been some terminal illness, happened long before I took a position here. "Oh," I said.

"One day he was eating them and I told him to hurry up because he'd be late for baseball practice," she told me, sinking into her story-telling voice. "He said he didn't want to, so I made a little fib and told him that if he didn't hurry up and eat them, they would eat him right up."

She laughed, her eyes tearing up a bit. "Of course, he had to one up me and bite off all their little heads."

I nodded, fetching her a box of tissues. She shook her head. "It's all right. He's in a better place now," she reminded me. "And so is my Ryan."

"Right," I said.

"But I like to keep them close," she said, chuckling a little. "It may seem silly, but I'm old. Silly is all I have left."

That was the last story I ever got out of Sicilia. I left for nursing school a few months later, and it was a big transition for me. The residents of the nursing home slowly faded from memory, but I never quite managed to forget Sicilia's story about dinosaur chicken.

One day when I was out shopping, I spotted the familiar, cartoonish box in the freezer next to where I was picking up some ice cream. I couldn't resist. I bought a box and cooked up a handful of dinosaurs in my apartment, the familiar smell bringing back the memories of the nursing home.

I bit off six little heads and flipped open my textbook.

Can you do another contest like this, with other elements? I meant to submit something, then kind of forgot my idea, and I just realized I'm a day too late...