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Who knew fruit cake could be so good? A local bakery claims to have perfected their recipe and is giving away free samples. The good news? It’s delicious. The bad news? A few hours after ingestion, something strange kicks in. Suddenly, everything seems so colorful and bright. The music sounds so much better, everything tastes so much better—and then, it stops, and everything is an awful blend of everything. Lights are too bright, smells and tastes are overwhelming, music sounds like noise. You’re sick enough to throw up everything in your stomach—which is good, because within a few hours of that you finally start to feel normal again.
As someone who spent most of her time baking and researching ways to improve her techniques, the allure of a "perfected" fruit cake recipe was too good to pass up. Though fruit cake wasn't necessarily one of her preferred sweet treats, Mariposa knew the value of scoping out any potential competition there was. If she could, somehow, copy this recipe by tasting it alone, she could very well make it herself and, perhaps, even better than this bakery claimed they could.
Or, it could end up all being hype and not worth a lick of her time. But even that was an opportunity for personal gain, wasn't it? She could write a very scathing critique on her blog and expose them for false advertising! That almost sounded better than stealing the recipe! Either way, she couldn't help but lick her lips with anticipation.
Luckily, for the bakery, the sample had been far more delicious than she'd expected and Mariposa eagerly skipped back home to see if she could write any of it down. Her tongue had rarely failed her before, but her mind wasn't one that held onto anything for too long. If she was going to have a chance at replicating this, she'd have to rush straight to her desk and get organized! She kicked her boots off and threw her coat over the banister before making a mad dash for her bedroom.
"Okay, so obviously they had clove..." She muttered, tapping the eraser side of her pencil against her lips. "But was it cinnamon too? Nutmeg? ... No, ugh!"
It seemed that her plan wasn't going to work as well as she'd thought. The sample's flavor had been far too complex for her to simply decode. However, that didn't mean she couldn't make her own "perfect" recipe! She shoved herself out of her chair and hopped into the kitchen to get started.
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A few hours later, with mixing bowls soaking in the sink and the radio playing, Mariposa left her second attempt to bake in the oven and returned to her bedroom. It was time to settle down for some holiday crafting and blogging. Normally she wouldn't let her creativity be limited by any kind of theme, but since this was such an important time of year, it wasn't like she had other choices. Her followers would expect reindeer, snowflakes, and glittering ornaments colored in red, green, and gold. She couldn't let them down!
"This should be festive enough!" She chimed, pulling a long roll of wrapping paper out from her supply closet and bringing it to her desk. She had just enough time to set it down and look for her scissors before something caught her off guard. ... Was her room glowing?
She moved, carefully, over to her bed and sat at the edge with her head in the air. Yes, everything in here was suddenly so much brighter and colorful! The music playing in the kitchen was starting to sound like an actual concert, not like the radio at all! ... But this couldn't be real, right? Things like this just didn't suddenly happen. She breathed, a hand moving instinctively over her stomach, and shoved herself out into the hall.
"No, gotta MAKE it!" She gagged, the reality of the situation dawning on her. Everything was starting to sear through her eyes, nose, and throat. The smell of the fruitcake down the hall was cloying and nauseating, her own clothes were too bright and disorienting, and her stomach...
Well, as soon as her knees hit the bathroom floor, that was swiftly emptied.
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It wasn't until 8 PM that Mari was confident enough to shuffle down the hallway, pajama clad and aching, and finally shut off the oven. The fruitcake had burned, thankfully without setting off a fire, and she was more than happy to give it the honor of throwing it straight in the garbage. There would be no fruitcake in this house, not at least until the smell of it left every single crevice of her house and senses. All she could do in the meantime now was wait for her body to recover from the onslaught it had just spent the last two hours facing.
But, as she was about to curl up under a blanket and watch TV for the rest of the night, a rather crooked smile slowly appeared from her sick appearance. She rose, hustling back to her room for her laptop, and immediately opened her blog to write a new post.
Too Good To Be True: "Best Tasting Fruitcake" In DC Causes Food Poisoning!
Yes, yes! This would be the talk of the town for at least the next month! That almost made the entire ordeal worth it! ... But only almost.
Word count: 784
