Fiction

The Food of Death

by Lord Dunsany

DEATH WAS sick. But they brought him bread that the modern bakers make, whitened with alum, and the tinned meats of Chicago, with a pinch of our modern substitute for salt. They carried him into the dining-room of a great hotel (in that close atmosphere Death breathed more freely), and there they gave him their cheap Indian tea. They brought him a bottle of wine that they called champagne. Death drank it up. They brought a newspaper and looked up the patent medicines; they gave him the foods that it recommended for invalids, and a little medicine as prescribed in the paper. They gave him some milk and borax, such as children drink in England.

Death arose ravening, strong, and strode again through the cities.

* * *

Source: Fifty-One Tales

Previous post

There's a Club — and You're Not a Member

Next post

The Whilom King

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Inline Feedback
View all comments
Vidarr
Vidarr
16 June, 2020 12:00 pm

To think, they didn’t know about how great drinking fluoride was yet. Man were they missing out; now, we have low IQ dumb dumbs walking around with really strong, mottled teeth –but, with very few cavities, which is most important. Not such a problem back then, because they hadn’t invented corn syrup yet either, or have entire grocery stores with sugar filled, food-like products full of chemicals and created with genetically modified organisms (aka plants and animals). Now, we treat poison food with real, live poisons. In the case of fluoride, you don’t even need to go farther than your kitchen sink to treat with it (soak your babies and kids in it often, from an early age, for added benefits). Go ahead, have a tall glass of fluoride now… Read more »