Martha Ferris didn’t see herself as a bad person, never went out of her way to hurt anyone. She just made a point of looking out for number one and if that meant trampling on other people, too bad.
When money was tight, she had a trick to save on food bills. Namely pinching grub from the fridge at work. Taking pride in her quick sleight of hand, as she grabbed her can of coke, she’d shove Rachel’s mini sausages or Nigel’s rice balls into her handbag, but it was Holly Blackbone she loved to steal from.
The mousy Holly, would bring in a Tupperware container, consisting of cheese and olive sandwiches which to Martha was a mouthwatering temptation too good to resist.
Holly looked hurt when she found that half of her sandwiches had vanished whilst Martha, wiping crumbs from her lips, would mutter: “Oh honey, did you really bring in five sandwiches today? Memory’s a lying son of a bitch.”
There came a day, however. A day the office staff dubbed burning the candle at both ends. And it was a day none would forget.
Once again Holly brought in her Tupperware container with her name written on top, once again those delicious sandwiches beckoned, and once again Martha gobbled down more than half of them, congratulating herself on never getting caught.
Only what happened next changed everything.
The weekly meeting at eleven commenced, as the supervisor, after going through the usual points “Don’t shove confidential papers into the regular bin,” or “Don’t leave boxes on the ground!” asked if anyone had any questions.
Martha rose from her desk and announced she had a few issues, intending to moan over short coffee breaks but no sooner had she begun then her stomach gave an ominous gurgle.
She gasped, clutched at her belly then fell onto her side, and without warning, an eruption of vomit shot out of her mouth, covering three feet of office floor. It brought to mind a marble fountain shooting jets of water high into the air. And Martha’s anus evidently jealous of the attention her mouth was getting, let out a series of thick farts before joining in the fun, blasting out a geyser of diarrhoea, which ripped her knickers to shreds and covered six feet of floor space with dark faecal matter.
For a whole minute, this smelly, noisy performance went on, until Martha, now a pale shaking wreck had no more bodily fluids to yield. And Holly, her face the expression of total innocence, calmly sipped her tea. After all her container was clearly marked.
She had, it was true, purchased so called medicine from Brazil called Kambo. Made from the poisonous excretions of tree frogs and popular with the new age crowd, who enjoyed a lively endurance ritual. So what if Holly added Kambo to her food? It wasn’t her fault if someone ate her sandwiches without asking.
And thankfully after that day food from the fridge stopped magically disappearing.
