{"id":905,"date":"2019-03-04T02:44:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T02:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=905"},"modified":"2019-02-13T03:04:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T03:04:57","slug":"905","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/03\/04\/905\/","title":{"rendered":"One Second Venom by M.E. Proctor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M.E. Proctor worked as a communication professional and freelance journalist. After forays into SF, she\u2019s currently working on a series of contemporary detective novels. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


One Second\nVenom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There isn\u2019t much to do for\nentertainment on moon base Alecto. Yes, I know. You\u2019re going to say that I\u2019m an\nungrateful jerk, that with free access to all the OBS ever invented complaining\nabout the lack of entertainment is like complaining about the booze at a party\nwith an open bar. The point is Out of Body Simulation is what I do for a living,\nevery single damn day. To say that it doesn\u2019t give me a kick anymore is a huge\nunderstatement. When I disconnect from work I don\u2019t feel like plugging myself\nback in, even if it\u2019s to pretend going down Niagara Falls in a barrel. The\noperative word is Pretend<\/em>. As our\nteam shrink, Doctor Ling, is fond to say, \u201cHumans are wired to do<\/em> things.\u201d What he means is that you\ncannot happily fool your brain all the time or for a very long time. That\u2019s why\nRoger, our boss, has taken up quilting. It was a little surprising, frankly,\nbut who am I to decree that some hobbies are better than others? We\u2019re not\nmaking fun of Roger, we understand what drives him. Besides Roger is built like\na tank and you don\u2019t cross a tank. Anyway, I didn\u2019t learn crochet or\nneedlepoint, I learned fire breathing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? You ask. Isn\u2019t it dangerous? Yes,\nit is, especially if you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing, like spitting whisky on a\nflame, that kind of thing. Idiots have set themselves on fire that way. The\nalcohol in their blood contributed as much as the alcohol that hit the flame. I\nhave completely given up drinking. Fire breathing is a very healthy pastime. I\nrecommend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I was entertaining my\ncolleagues in the rec room one evening last week when a guy I\u2019d never seen\nbefore heckled me. He didn\u2019t call me a charlatan, not exactly, but he dismissed\nmy accomplishments and he was extremely rude. My kind of fire was nothing according\nto him; it was an illusion, a cheap trick. I wasn\u2019t really breathing fire–of\ncourse I wasn\u2019t, I never pretended to be the Son of the Dragon or such\nnonsense. Moreover, he said, I didn\u2019t know what a real burn felt like. I\noffered to show him my blisters. I had painful ones on my tongue and the roof\nof my mouth. I had been experimenting with fire eating lately, feeling I had to\nbeef up my act to keep myself and my audience interested. That slowed down my\ncritic but not for long. The guy was persistent. His argument was that I could\nnever stand real burning pain because the worst burn was not from flames but\nfrom food. I thought my colleagues would laugh him out of the room but Doctor\nLing, of all people, came to his rescue. Our resident scientist, it turned out,\nhad personal and painful knowledge of very hot peppers. A variety from his village\nin the Himalayas had a lethal reputation, its colorful name–roughly translated\nfrom dialect–was One Second Venom<\/em>.\nDoctor Ling had not tried it; he had tasted a tiny sliver of Ten Seconds Venom<\/em>, and that had been\nmore than enough to put him out of commission for a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure you guessed what happened\nnext. I couldn\u2019t refuse the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning the Earth shuttle\ndelivered a crate to Doctor Ling. It contained a dozen peppers. Two would have\nsufficed. The ominous vegetables are displayed in a refrigerated glass case in\nthe rec room. They are red and ugly, covered with warts, and perfect stand-ins\nfor the toads in the witch\u2019s brew. All the employees of the base have paid\ntheir respects and contacted their bookies. I am considered the favorite, by a pepper\nseed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rec room is too small to hold everybody\nand the techs have hauled in the recording equipment used once a year for the\nofficial State of Alecto address. Rumor has it that interest in our little\ncontest has gone galactic. I feel like a boxer about to enter the ring. I have\nan entourage of supporters and groupies. Roger gave me a cape he designed for\nthe occasion. It features a plump pepper on a background of flames with the caption\nFire Inside<\/em>. It is inspirational. I\u2019m\nmoved. The entire medical team is on standby, oxygen masks and defibrillators\nat the ready. They might need hoses and fire extinguishers too. My opponent is\na little green and sweating profusely. I know I don\u2019t look much better, even if\nthe odds favor me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We take our seats at the table set\non the podium and Micaela, the cute engineer from Surface Ops, brings the\npoisonous plants and several gallons of milk. Two large metal buckets are under\nthe table for emergency relief. The audience falls silent. Doctor Ling, the\nreferee, makes the official introductions. I shake hands with Gustav, my\nopponent, and there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bite only once and swallow\nimmediately. The sensation is pure horror. Fire inside, indeed. My entire face\ngoes numb and a long red-hot iron spear slashes my throat and everything below\ndown to my knees. Gustav was right. This is worse than a rocket fuel mouthwash\nwith a side of nitro. Give me my blisters anytime. I love my blessed blisters!\nI am vaguely aware of a nurse prying my mouth open to pour a tidal wave of milk\ndown my throat. After that everything goes dark because my head is in the\nbucket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctor Ling says I will be fine\nbecause I got rid of everything. He credits this miracle to my training as a\nfire breather. I apparently have a remarkable gag reflex. Gustav, poor slob, is\nnot so lucky. He\u2019s in the hospital wing, on an IV drip. The prognosis is bleak.\nSpecialists in internal medicine are monitoring Gustav\u2019s plumbing. He\u2019s already\nfamous\u2014the only man who ever swallowed a whole One Second Venom<\/em>. Me? I\u2019ve taken up origami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M.E. Proctor worked as a communication professional and freelance journalist. After forays into SF, she\u2019s currently working on a series of contemporary detective novels. One Second Venom There isn\u2019t much to do for entertainment on moon base Alecto. Yes, I know. You\u2019re going to say that I\u2019m an ungrateful jerk, that with free access to … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa867U-905","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}