I've been playing with the idea ever since the prompt was posted last week, and I had some time on my hands now, so I decided to just go on ahead and write it. I'm only about half an hour early anyways.
I'm not going to post the prompt as it would give everything away, so enjoy the read and please ... feel free to comment.
The joys
of summer.
“Salmon
what?” he asked.
He was
straining to hear, but he could hardly make out the words coming over the
phone.
What a time
to have such a crappy line.
Then, a
thought filtered into his clogged up brain.
Maybe it wasn’t the line.
He hadn’t
been feeling well and things weren’t improving.
At first he
thought it was just an indigestion. Too much cake or something.
It had been a great party after all. Lots of
food, lots of drinks, lots of fun. The weather had been at its best, the pool
was cool and large enough to accommodate all those who wanted to take a dip and
the tables had been set far enough away to avoid ‘sprinkling’, be it by
accident or not.
It had been
the first neighborhood summer barbecue he had attended, actually, it was the
first one they held since he had moved in a few months ago. It had been a great
day, he had met lots of new people and gotten to know his neighbors a tad, and some
even a lot, better over a few beers.
After the
appetizers, sprinkled with a glass of champagne to open the festivities, the
richly loaded barbecue, from which he had tasted just about everything it had
to offer, and too many different pieces of cake, it hadn’t come as a surprise
to him to feel bloated and even a little nauseous. He never ate all that much,
but he figured it would just go away if he kept calm and allowed his body to
process it all.
The light
feeling of nausea had grown as the evening went by, resulting in a rush to the
bathroom at about three in the morning. It had been all downhill for him after
that.
Shivers and
spasms, diarrhea, hot flashes, more vomiting, cold flashes, blurry vision,
drums in his ears, spots across his vision.
Hours later,
he heaved himself off the bathroom floor where he had passed out and dragged
his sorry butt to the phone and called his parents. His parents came and with
them came a doctor who gave him a shot and a heap of advice he couldn’t have
remembered if he’d tried. He left with a vial of blood, leaving him in his
parents’ good care.
Now, he was
straining to hear the doctor’s words over the drumming in his ears.
Something about
salmon.
He didn’t
recall having any fish in the last few days.
He couldn’t
remember if he’d had any at that party.
“No, not ‘salmon’.”
“What? I can’t
hear you.”
“Not ‘salmon’.
Salmonella. Bacteria.”
“But I don’t
even like salmon.”
Other entries can be found here as soon as they are written/posted/linked:
http://nowharkthis.blogspot.be/
The last line is my favorite. It's almost charming how insistent and out-of-touch with the reality he is, and I love that you chose to end it that way.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I was wondering what else I could add, but then I figured it was just as good to end it that way.
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