23rd August, the day I found
out I'd eaten far too many bananas for my own good.
“I've always liked them, always had
an appetite for them. Maybe I overdid it with them once in a while.
It started in the early morning, I had one sliced up on corn flakes.
Then one for elevenses, then a banana sandwich for lunch and so on,
all through the day, just my normal snacking and better than endless
donuts or chocolate or biscuits or caffeine and stuff like that. I
thought that I was being healthy, keeping myself right and there was
I on the normal side or normal on the grid of measures about being
normal.
I didn't realise that it was building
up, in me. There like an oil well or a geyser or a time bomb, all
that material, that chemical, trace upon trace, mingling and getting
into everything. Worming it's way. If only I had had a worm, that
might have helped. Tidied up the slack, acted as an antidote,
digested all that surplus material. But of course I never saw it
coming, that's what they all say, after the event. “Oh, you know I
never saw that coming, not at all”. Yes that is what they all say
and I was a typical example of not seeing some inevitable, terrible
event coming.
The doctor said it was the Potassium of
course. It had built up, I'd ingested it, it was everywhere, I was
saturated, despite what I thought was a good balance, well what do I
know about balance? What you see from the inside isn't balance, you
need someone else to do that, to tell you, from their own reference
points, “you're out of balance son.” Best if it's not too late,
best if it's not...a doctor.
So I suppose nobody was as shocked as I
was when it actually happened. Spontaneous combustion. A phenomenon,
a mysterious and misunderstood phenomenon that baffles the worlds of
science and crime. I just burned up, all of me, gone in a blue flash
and fizzle. I don't suppose it smelled very nice and it was funny how
nothing much else in the room was damaged, just a little smoke
staining I believe and then there was the carpet of course. So all I
did was drink a glass of water, next thing I'm on the ceiling looking
down at a doctor and a policeman looking down at, well, what was me.
I heard their voices and listened to their theories and then they
sort of faded away and now, well I'm here in this foggy place, just
thinking these thoughts and recounting as it were the events of my
recent and as it would seem at the moment tragically concluded
lifetime. Makes me feel hungry really, all this thinking and going
over past events. I would love a nice ripe, yellow banana right now.”
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