From the desk of the General. Part 9: Antidote
Story by TheFieldmarshall on SoFurry
Eat your greens, kids!
From the desk of the General
Part 9: antidote
“Are you alright dear, you’ve barely touched your bacon sandwich?”
Anar stopped staring off into space and blinked, turning to his wife as she sipped her apple and spinach smoothie, “hmm? Oh, er, yeah, I’m alright…” he pushed his plate away from him across the table. “This whole poisoning incident has me stumped, that’s all.”
“Oh, yes, Raz was telling me. One of King Alanin’s pals, isn’t it? Terrible business. Still, I suppose that’s one of the risks of holding office, isn’t it? Someone’s always out to get you. Slipping hemlock into your wine, anthrax in your soup, that sort of thing.”
Anar sighed, “Vice-chancellor Tryston has got us sending him sealed packets of crisps and biscuits now; insists it’s the only way he can be sure his food isn’t being tampered with. Normally I wouldn’t be against it, but he’s not getting any better. I’ve got his entire staff replaced with our people. The whole place is locked down tighter than a dragon’s wallet. Nobody gets in or out without going through us, first. And he’s only drinking Pepsi! I can’t even say it’s a contaminated water supply.”
Sarah patted his hand, “you’re taking this very personally…”
“Well, I have to,” he insisted, “I’ve got Raz on my case, haven’t I?” His expression turned gloomy, “if I let Alanin’s best friend die, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
There was a clatter at the end of the dining table and a large lump of something white and gloopy smacked the General on the side of his grey face.
“Daddy potato! Potato daddy!”
“Victus, don’t play with your food! Your daddy is not a potato…” Sarah wiped Anar’s face clean with a napkin, smiling, “daddy is a very handsome aardvark. Eat your vegetables or you’ll get scurvy.”
The small aardvarkian child flipped his plastic plate upside down and pouted, “don’t want ‘em! Nasty!”
Anar thought for a moment, “what is scurvy, anyway?”
“Oh,” Sarah laughed, “it’s only a joke, I used to say that to the nursery children back home when they didn’t want their fruit at snacktime. It’s an old disease sailors would get from not getting enough vitamin C in their diet. But Victus has plenty of vitamins, so you don’t have to worry. I’m trying to steer him clear of the chicken nugget phase, for now at least.”
Anar looked at his son, who was trying to escape from the straps of his booster seat that held him securely at elevated height so he could eat at the Kaos Army’s cafeteria tables. “He eats better than I do,” he mused.
“I keep telling you to eat properly, dear, bacon sandwiches will only get you so far. You should try some of my smoothies,” she sniffed, “I’ve gone low carb and never felt better. Great for busy lifestyles, very portable.”
Victus squirmed, now upside down, and began to whine in hope of aid.
“That’s what you get for not sitting properly! He’s your son, alright,” Sarah hissed in amusement.
“I don’t know what you mean, I’ve never been upside down in a chair.”
“Really? There’s still time, I’m sure.” Sarah lifted little Victus from his predicament and propped him up on her hip, taking her smoothie. “You’ll get to the bottom of all this, Anar, you always do. Check Tryston’s toothpaste or something. Thinking outside of the box is your thing,” she gave her husband a kiss on the now-clean cheek, “we’ll see you later, won’t we? Say ‘bye-bye, daddy’”
Victus screwed up his snout, “I want the iPad!”
Anar stuck his tongue out, all nine inches of it, which always got a giggle out of the boy.
“Daddy is silly! I want daddy…”
“You’ll see me before dinner, kiddo, be good for your mum.” He watched them leave and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Maybe he had been coming at this from the wrong angle. Vice-Chancellor Tryston had come to him certain that a sneaky assassin had tried to poison his food, but maybe they hadn’t been able to find this would-be murderer because there wasn’t one? It was time to have a little chat.
He found the Vice-Chancellor propped up in bed, surrounded by velvet plump cushions, fur-edged blankets and lots of empty snack packets.
Tryston’s long, curly hair was splayed out behind him on the pillows, his pink skin had a waxy sheen to it and beads of sweat sprung on his wrinkled brow. “Finally,” he rasped, “where have you been? I’m here in my final hours, alone, abandoned…”
Anar folded his arms; “you have not been abandoned, you don’t want any visitors,” he argued.
Tryston’s chest heaved, displacing crumbs, “I can’t trust anyone, that’s why! I don’t know if I can trust you,” he eyed the aardvark darkly.
“You’re paying me,” the General replied flatly, “it would be foolish to kill you and I’m a lot of things but a fool isn’t one of them.”
“Pah! You don’t need my money. Alanin talks about you and your army, you’ll work for free if it’s for a good cause.”
Anar dipped his head, curtly, “true, but aristocracy can put their money where their mouth is. Now, I wanted to ask you about this poison; what exactly was it you ate when you became ill?”
Tryston waved a ring-decked hand to the bedside table, littered with empty soft drinks cans, “my kitchen prepares a weekly menu, chef allows a small selection every day that I choose from. The list is on there. As you can see any number of things could have been contaminated! I have had the entire larder purged. Nothing is left. I am only eating your convenience snacks for now.”
Anar picked up the soggy paper and propped his reading specs on the bridge of his snout. “What about non-food items?” he asked, remembering his earlier conversation with his wife, “like toothpaste, for example?”
“I already thought of that,” the Vice-Chancellor declared, “I haven’t washed or brushed my teeth in days!”
Anar took a few steps further from the bed, “I see,” he said, weakly. “Jolly good.”
“I am dying…” the man wailed. “The pain, oh the pain,” he drew his knees up to his chest and his breathing became laboured.
Anar’s ears twitched as he watched the obvious discomfort before him. “I may have an antidote for your poison,” he offered.
“What? Really? Give it to me! I’ll… I’ll do anything to make this stop.”
“The ingredients are rare,” he warned, “and the taste may not be palatable…” he popped his specs back into his officer’s jacket pocket and folded up the menu to place it alongside. “I’ll be back,” he promised with a polite bow.
“What do you think?” Anar asked, passing over the menu from Tryston while Victus begged to be picked up.
“I think your bacon sandwiches were better,” Sarah frowned. “There’s not a fruit or vegetable in sight! At least you have ketchup. This is all meat, more meat and pastry. And pudding. As for the poison, well, it could have been in anything.”
“That’s what I thought. What if it’s his whole diet that’s made him sick and he just thinks it was poison? Ouch! Mind the ears, kiddo.”
Sarah gave Anar a smile, “you’re going to make him eat his greens?”
“No, you’re going to make him eat his greens. In smoothie form. I’ve told him I might have an antidote. Pass it right over, declare it a magic potion, silly sod will guzzle it down none the wiser.”
“And if it was poison?’
Anar shrugged, “bloody slow-acting one if it was, he’s not dead yet. A week of spinach isn’t going to hurt him. If he was going to check out, he’d have done it by now.”
“A detox,” Sarah nodded, “very clever, dear. Does this mean you’re going to start eating your vegetables, too?”
“If I start dying, I’ll consider it,” he grinned.