Competition: Round 21. Fatal Food

[maggiethecat]

At eGullet, we pen paeans to the life-affirming qualities of food, family and flan. We are serious about self-improvement through smoking, the art of tourne, love via larb. We reach for all things bright and beautiful; we braise all creatures great and small. That we frequently use the f word doesn't detract from the fact that we're passionate idealists, a foodloving band of brothers and saucy sisters.

Maybe it's time to work a stage on the dark side. Write a short-short or a snippet of a screenplay where food is the murder weapon. You pick your genre. Eggs in a hard-boiled, crumpets in a cosy, poutine in a police procedural...

Forty lashes with a wet noodle is a slow, agonizing way to go. He had it coming.

Your slot on the docket: Slay us here.

[balmagowry]

Oh Maggie, Maggie, not the old Fatal Food thing again! Been there, done that. Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and beat the stairs? All those weeks of realgar in the citron, powdered arsenic on the biscuits, veleno a termine in the wine, foxglove in the ring? The serpent's venom on the key?The pulverized gems in the salad? The inversion, the foaming of the bear? La Cantarella, La Cantarella, elle ne peut plus avancer.... Oy, Borgia Moi, seems to me I've rung this change before....

Oh well, what man has done, no doubt man can do. Only because it's you - maybe, just maybe, I will kill again. The drink... oh my dear Hamlet, the drink!

[Dave the Cook]

Maybe it's a warhorse, Lisa, but remember, it's a literary contest. Being clever enough to think of bludgeoning your husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then feed the roasted weapon to the investigating officers (nod to Sir Alfred); or to imagine dispatching the vicious neighbohood cur with ground-glass-laced Alpo (was that Bloch, maybe?) is not sufficient. You must be as stylish as Nabokov, you must plot like Turow and surprise like Porter. Sharpen your pencil along with your Sabatier; we expect big things from you.

[balmagowry]

Maybe it's a warhorse, Lisa, but remember, it's a literary contest. Being clever enough to think of bludgeoning your husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then feed the roasted weapon to the investigating officers (nod to Sir Alfred); or to imagine dispatching the vicious neighbohood cur with ground-glass-laced Alpo (was that Bloch, maybe?) is not sufficient. You must be as stylish as Nabokov, you must plot like Turow and surprise like Porter. Sharpen your pencil along with your Sabatier; we expect big things from you.

Y'mean, I can't get away with Christopher Cerf's schtick of stabbing you with an icicle and then melting the weapon to water down Bloody Marys? Drat.

I wasn't bitching about the warhorse-ness, I swear - I was just, in my shy, retiring and SUBTLE fashion, REMINDING anyone who hasn't yet NOTICED the circumstance that I just PUBLISHED a piece about having DINNER with the BORGIAS, and therefore NOT SO COINCIDENTALLY have for the past few months been STEEPED IN POISON, which ought to make me feel RIGHT AT HOME with this topic, if you get my drift.

But I wouldn't want to call attention to all that, so let's just keep this between you and me, OK?

If, that is, you know what's good for you....

[maggiethecat]

If you've plotted the motive and the opportunity, and are still wresting with the means, this thread might pump the creative juices.

Ten very nasty ways to die.