The Mortal Fruit Smoothie

As soon as I took a sip, I realized it was poison. Now you’re probably wondering how I realized it was poison, or how I even got myself into such a situation. To say the least, perhaps taking more than one free smoothie samples from the Cosco advertising vendor wasn’t the best idea that I had in my mere 18 years and 5 months of my life. Out of all the things that I worried about killing me, dying on the floor of a New Jersey Cosco was, in fact, the most randomest spots that I could’ve ended up dying in. I always thought that I was going to go out in some fireball, blaze of glory. Just like how Steve Irwin died going for a swim with that flat fish, or like that one lady on the news who was sucked out of an airplane window. But to be laying on your back, staring up at what could either be the entrance to heaven or a really intense light fixture dangling from the metal binds of the warehouse, was pretty depressing. All I could say is that all the poems, stories, lore, and suspicions about death were completely true. After pushing my cart around the corner of an isle and taking off my pair of sunglasses that I was wearing as a disguise, I snatched what could’ve been described as my second smoothie shot. There was something so intense about crushing the little plastic cup between my palm and my fingers that just gave me a kind of high. So, as I took the second daring swing of the abnormally warm, thick, pink mush, I felt unstoppable. Not only did I manage to scam the company for one free beverage, but I managed to do it for two! I finally felt like I was living up to the rebellious, liberal millennial standard. As for Death, it definitely does take your breath away. After I let out my symbolic ahhh after swallowing, I felt my throat start to swell up faster than Kanye West’s ego at an MTV music awards show. My brain willed my hands to claw at my throat, as I started dry heaving any final breaths that my lungs could muster up. I felt like one of those regret filled smokers on those Truth tv ads that always played before and after Teen Wolf on Tuesday nights. I could feel the cold air from the AC stabbing at my dry eyes, and for some reason all I could think about was how much I had spent on the contacts that were currently drying out on my eyeballs. My knees buckled out next, faster than how I ghosted that one blonde dude that I met on Tinder. The coldness of the cement floor seeped into the skin over my knees, sending shivers across my whole body. This was it, this was the end of my depressing life. I couldn’t believe it. I had been murdered by some woman wearing a hairnet and clear plastic gloves. I began to wonder when she had done it. Was it because of the extra sample that I took? Did it really make her that angry? Or was the poison in my initial sample? Or was there poison in every sample? I watched in horror as a child of about 5 years of age reached up and grabbed one of the plastic cups between their greasy fingers. I wanted to scream out, but my throat had tightened to the point where there was only a small enough space for a tiny stream of hitched breaths to escape my lungs. I felt my eyes roll back as I lost my balance and fell flat on my back. This was it. This was the end of Missie Lewis as I knew it. All my hopes and dreams that I would never achieve clouded my mind. I would never become the first woman to make it to Uranus. I’d never have to cater to an annoying husband or ratty kids. On second thought, maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing -no! I wanted to live and grow old! There was no way I was dying before figuring out who the bachelor was going to give his final rose to, and I had spent way to much money on student loans to die before getting some kind of degree. Except none of that would happen. I was going to take my last breath on this filthy floor and by a spiked smoothie. I took one final glance at the giant lightbulbs that were burning my retina, before letting my eyelids flutter and surrounding me in darkness. 

Someone managed to call the ambulance after I began my descent into hell. I was rushed to the hospital and strapped up to beeping machines and long tubes in an attempt to revive me. Except I didn’t need any of it, they soon realized, because I wasn’t dead, nor dying. I didn’t meet Satan, despite convincing myself that I would perish in flames in the afterlife. I didn’t meet God either so, sorry to all the Hallmark movie contracts that could’ve been mine. It had been a day of many discoveries, growth, and even pain. It was also the day that I realized that I was allergic to strawberries.