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It’s fall and pumpkin spice is everywhere. A local coffee shop has some great new recipes and there’s been a lot of buzz about it—only, if you’ve indulged you may find yourself with some unusual side effects. Due to some very defective pumpkins (and who knows what else), pumpkin spice lovers are suffering from nausea, vomiting and—perhaps worst of all—your skin has turned orange on top of it all. Thankfully the discoloration and illness seems to wear off within a few hours, but you probably shouldn’t go back for a second cup.
Having a broken leg and being stuck in a hospital for the better part of two weeks had a rather nasty side effect for Mordred Pendragon of Britannia. One, no one with even an ounce of Arthurian lore knowledge would allow her to exist without asking to verify that yes, that was her actual name and she was from ‘the UK, specifically East London and no, she wasn’t going to use her accent besides you people hardly treat her with respect when she used her American accent why would it be any better if she sounded british as they put it?’ Two, they all assumed she wanted british things to eat which was as far as hospital staff knew was bangers and mash. She had found it cute the first two days. After that when it was all they offered her for breakfast she wanted to kill herself. Dramatically. Death by breakfast bangers and mash. Three, staff at the hospital thought that by being decent human beings they were being amazing at their jobs. This included them offering to get little special things like a candy or actually decent food that was not hospital cafeteria fare. (Which wasn’t so much bad as it was bland. No spice white as she called it, earning a hearty laugh from the mother of her shared room’s fellow company). Four, someone had gotten her a pumpkin spice frappe from the golden arches and her insides had protested and she wanted to rip her own leg off just so she could beat the nurse up with it.
While these were not immediate side effects, they all bore down on the small girl while she was bedridden with her mangled leg, and now out but still immobile, she was in her bed at home writhing in seething hate for thinking ‘oh it was just me being in a hospital bed that made the pumpkin spice drink so bad’. No, she was wrong. So very, very, wrong. The drink was just that bad and this time she’d been the one to get it herself, crutches and all. She’d called the uber. She’d paid cash money for the drink. Now in bed, stomach protesting at her, she wondered if people in food service just hated pumpkin spice so they poisoned it. (She would not have blamed them, retail as she had learned from mass media, was a hell job no one wanted to be a part of yet always seemed to be better than the alternative which was homelessness and joblessness).
Groaning as she sat up, she sent a very sad photo of herself to Arthur, asking him to bring up pain meds and something plain to help settle her stomach if he didn’t mind. (He probably would and then fuss over her having gone out). It there was any one bright spot of this, it was knowing she too, understood that pumpkin spice was now and forever just what it sounded like. Disgusting and overkill in anything and everything in the history of forever.
