DAVID AND THE...

DAVID AND THE CURSED CHOCOLATE

DAVID WENT UP the shops and that to buy some chocolate. He preferred C****** Dairy Milk Chocolate but he was on a tight ass budget. Chocure is what they call the chocolate at ALDI and it’s cheaper there. In fact, it was the first thing he saw as he entered the store.

“All different kinds” he thought “Almonds, plain, fruits, almonds and fruits, top deck” he chose the plain given he was quite partial to the simple things in life.

He walked home and on the way saw a little stalk with white fluff all around it. He bent down and stared at it “spores” he thought. “I’ve got to be the wind” he spoke in a low tone and gently cupped his hand around the spores and helped them off the stalk and into the air. “That’s my good deed for the day” he thought to himself.

Anyways, he got home and shut the world outside behind himself and jumped into bed. The laptop was within arms reach and he wanted to stream TooTube videos about medieval battles, but instead settled for a best of Downton Abbey superclip of Mr Bates.

“Oh Bates…” he said out loud in an English accent “Oh Bates! You poor thing, you’re always gettin’ the rough end of life.” and a tear streamed down doom’s cheek.

To fight this off he popped open the Chocuer and pulled off a rack of five squares and popped them all inside his mouth and kept watching. “OH NO BATES! NOOOOOO!” he yelled at the screen and continued to munch on the chocolate like it was nobody’s business.

Bates hobbled around with a poor old sore leg from the war. A neatly dressed gentleman was mean to him. Bates was just misunderstood – he was always trying to be good and didn’t mind if it cost him his own skin. Bates had seen war, ya see; and David loved that about Bates.

“What a character” he thought. And jumped out of bed to grab some milk. He jumped back into bed and dipped another row of the Chocuer into the milk and munched it down. Somebody upstairs stamped on the floor and yelled “HEY SHUT UP DOWN THERE” so David put his headphones on and kept watching the screen.

Hmmmmm

"Old Timey Irish Farmer Talks about his Postal Run on Bicycle over the Past 70 years."

“Nah, seen that one” he munched away another row and pulled out some more. It started melting in his hands so he just threw the whole row into the milk, got out of bed, microwaved it, waited thirty seconds, and suddenly had HOT chocolate.

“Here we go” he thought, “David Attenborough on Lions – BBC” then he opened another tab. “Jeff Bezos goes to the Moon” David rubbed his head and rolled the dice again.

“There’s always something I’m missing out on knowing about” he thought.

Suddenly there were twenty seven tabs open and the curser on his screen turned into the colour wheel of death.

Damn chocolate, he thought “got me all excited. Now I wanna run a marathon” but he just lay in bed clicking at the screen and watched shorts about people dressed as eggs running long distances to achieve some kind of end David didn’t understand.

“Why do they compete for this? It’s just running?” he thought. Then he clicked on another video about football “why don’t they just buy them all a ball and then they wouldn’t have to fight over it." Then suddenly he was asleep.

*

He woke with a start and felt his stomach aching. “Ohhhhh” he cried. “What happened? What GOD have I upset now? The God of chocolates? I should have gotten Lidnt – the German’s know what they’re doing. Or is that stuff made by the Swiss?”

Then he looked down at the empty packet of Chocure. Hmmmmm, sounds French. I have some French in me, he thought - Dad said we come from a long line of French fishermen and grape growers. Sounds more like we're Italian though. I guess they changed their last name when they migrated to Australia to avoid being ridiculed - poor souls.

David picked up the packet of Chocure.

CONTAINS GLUTEN he read.

"Oh" he thought. "So chocolate is out of the game now too. I really dislike being a coeliac."

He got up and looked in the mirror. A pimple had already formed. There was sleep in his eyes and they were puffed up and there were red blotches on his skin.

Yep, definitely contained gluten he thought. Then he looked at his watch. 7:00am. Time to get ready to leave for work.

"Oh dear, this is going to be another one of those days" he thought as he tried to shower away the sick feeling from inside himself. It was no use. His hair would be wiry and unkempt and full of dandruff no matter how much he brushed it and no matter what clothes he put on he slumped his way down to the train station to go to his job. His face ended up in someone else's armpit as the train went along stopping at every stop but, being too full, it wasn't able to let on any further passengers.

“This is awful” he thought. “I have to pay to go to work and work for a boss who doesn’t even go to work, and I have to pay for my own meals and transport to and from the work that I don’t even like doing.”

He was always irritable after being glutened.

"I wish I had watched that documentary about Lions" he thought to himself as the train wopped from side to side. He caught a strong wiff of the armpit. "I like Lions. Lions just sleep around all day and only eat when they’re hungry. Instead I can’t even hunt! I have to do all this other nonsense just to get a lousy dime to buy something that doesn't even agree with my own body."

The train doors opened and he stepped off onto a yellow line. The he saw escalators and people forming into queues to get to wherever it was they were going. He was sure not one of them wanted to go to where they were going but they did it anyway.

*

"I wish I could just help people" he thought. "How can I help this world? Why are we all suffering like this?" He looked at the concrete on his way home from the drudgery of the work day and stopped into the Natural Food Store. He picked up every bar of chocolate he could see and read the ingredients. He then googled the food colouring, and preservatives. Then he looked the preservatives and colourings that seemed non glutenous into another website and read about it “well, while the preservative is made with some wheat, some scientists say the process involved makes the preservative gluten free" it read.

He opened his phone and searched for Gluten Free Chocolate. The first result was:

Daryl Lee: Gluten Free Chocolate $2.50.

Then he read on..

$50.00 minimum order, arrival time depends on...

Then he searched on his phone for GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE CAKE.

The ingredients were all right there in front of him. All he had to do was buy a few things, take them home, chuck them together in the kitchen as if it were chemistry and he’d have his own GLUTEN FREE cake! Even Nigella Lawson was onto this stuff – he spied a video result on his phone.

"I loved that season where Pete won the Great British Bakeoff" he thought to himself. "Pete entered that competition because he taught himself to bake gluten free treats like Chocolate Cakes for his little brother, who was a coeliac."

Then David thought “I’ll be back in bed watching Mr Bates and his troubles in no time. Poor Old Mr Bates, he was just happy to have a job with some purpose. I love you Mr Bates!”