On December 27, 2014 I will be confronted by a tall man in a well tailored cashmere blend wool coat somewhere between 849 Provencal and Catalan Literature and 867 Spanish Satire and Humour at the Porier branch of the Coquitlam Public Library. He will clutch a small package under his left arm along with a well-worn copy of Anna Karenina.
"Happy families are all alike," I will murmer, gesturing towards his book. He will finger the package gently with his right hand.
"What took you so long?" I shall ask. He will pause for a moment in hesitation.
"The real Erin never asks questions," he will whisper, "she's shy, so she finds things out herself." Suddenly painfully aware of how I had so stupidly given away my true identity as Levidopa Lindquist, I will make a mad grab for the package, still held snugly under his arm. And the very moment I feel the manila paper in my grasp, a bullet will tear its way through my chest and leave me dead on the floor.
Thanks to an unfortunate accident with a propane tank, I will be admitted to the Royal Columbian Hospital emerge with extensive second and third degree burns. They will bandage me up with skin grafts and gauze that is both sterile and itchy as hell. The pain and itchiness will make it difficult to sleep. I'll spend a night downstairs in the emerge because the beds upstairs are unfortunately all full.
In a moment of levity, I will suggest that the oatmeal and rubber fruit salad they bring to me for breakfast would make better skin grafts than the ones they kept peeling off of my leg. The nurse will smile because she knows how crappy hospital food is and the guy laying in the bed beside me will begin to laugh so hard that he will begin to cough so violently that I will worry that I might just have accidentally killed him.
Sadly, a stupid yet well-timed joke will not be enough to stop the infection that is already ravaging my body and I'm allergic to the majority of the antibiotics out there. I will never see the next morning.
While just outside St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the tourguide will announce that should anyone get lost, they should meet at that very spot in fourty minutes. Since I will still be in shock at how she is able to turn something as amazing as the Sistine Chapel into something so boring that it borders upon obscene, I will only hear the words "get lost", which is what I will do. Surprisingly fast.
There is a small door in a wall in one of the alcoves in the basilica that leads into a small, poorly lit downward staircase that is barely a metre wide. At the bottom of the staircase is a largish room filled with sarcophagi that I will assume have dead popes or cardinals in them.
So, you're thinking I probably get lost in there and starve to death, right? Just the opposite.
I will find my way out because all this religious stuff is boring and drift towards a cafeteria where I will be disgusted at both the long line and the exorbitant prices. There's no way in hell that I'm ever going to pay 18 euro for a plate of cafeteria pasta and a bottle of mineral water.
I will go in search of other options and what I will find will not only be strangely delicious, it will also give me food poisoning.
Tough luck.
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