Purple Death

The First Taste

The First TasteLooking out at the world through his office window Sam Gabriel had every reason to feel pleased with himself. As he took in the sights of the people enjoying the warmth of the sun in the park that lay directly below his office building he wondered if any of them could possibly feel as happy as he did at that particular moment in his life. Just forty years old and already he'd been propelled upwards towards the higher reaches of the promotion ladder. It had been less than an hour since old Lawrence Betts called Sam into his office and handed him the prize he'd been seeking for so long, a partnership! To be offered the role of partner in the firm of Betts, Cowan and Ford was something Sam had dreamed about ever since he'd joined the city law firm just four years ago, but he'd never envisaged would happen this soon. He'd earlier made a name for himself with a smaller firm specialising in criminal matters and had been head-hunted by the larger, more prosperous firm for whom he now worked. He wanted so much to call Lynne, his wife of the last six years but he knew that she was en-route to Edinburgh to visit her mother and Lynne would never, ever dream of answering her phone while she was driving. She'd always been too safety conscious to take such a risk.

As Sam was thinking of Lynne he first noticed the slight burning sensation, accompanied by an unexplained tingling in his mouth. Putting it down to excitement Sam ignored the discomfort at first but, as he watched two children chasing a small Yorkshire terrier through the park below his window he became aware of another disturbing sensation, when his mouth began to feel numb, as though he'd received a large dose of novocaine, and the tingling sensation increased, as did the burning which now spread from his mouth and took a firm hold of his abdomen.

Sam staggered back against his desk while the burning increased and his motor functions suddenly failed him. He wanted to move his arms and legs but they didn't want to obey his brain's commands. What the hell was happening? Sam reached for the telephone which sat invitingly on his desk intending to call for Maggie, his secretary. He knew he must have eaten something that had disagreed with his stomach. This could only be a virulent attack of food poisoning, surely. For some reason, at the same time as he reached across the desk the telephone seemed to keep moving away from his outstretched hand; no matter how hard he tried he just couldn't make his hand connect with the inanimate but elusive plastic object that had become the absolute focus of his life in the last few seconds.

He couldn't do it. The telephone wouldn't allow him to pick it up, so he tried for the next best option. He'd walk across the floor to the door, open it and call Maggie into the office. He'd done it a thousand times before, why not now? The answer came in less than two seconds when Sam Gabriel tried to move his legs and instead fell in a crumpled heap on his office floor. He felt more than just `ill' now and fear gripped Sam while the sweat on his brow began to run down into his eyes. He felt a constriction in his chest which felt as though someone had suddenly placed an iron barrel ring around him and was tightening it by the second. The life was rapidly being crushed out of his body, but with nothing and no-one there with him in the office to offer help. Sam Gabriel had never felt so frightened and alone.

Why didn't anyone come to his aid? He couldn't think of a reason why no-one came until he remembered that he'd told Maggie he wasn't to be disturbed under any circumstances. Sam had wanted to enjoy his big moment, to savour it and then make a few phone calls to friends and family to share his news. Then he'd have gone for lunch, meeting as usual with his colleagues from inside and outside the firm at The Harrow Arms, the local watering hole for the legal and upmarket business set.

His pulse was slowing and his skin appeared to him to be on fire and the sensations of heat were rapidly spreading over his whole body. He could almost feel the throbbing of his own heartbeat in his temples and he knew that along with his pulse, his heart rate was getting slower by the minute.

“What the hell's happening to me?” he managed to voice out loud, but they were the last words he managed before he felt his stomach lurch and heave, and Sam Gabriel began to vomit uncontrollably. He lurched violently while a spasm shook his body, he felt the cold hardness of his desk behind his back, and then Sam began to sob as he realised that no-one was about to come to his aid, and that whatever was happening to him could have potentially lethal consequences for him. This was no simple case of food poisoning, he concluded. Some bastard had deliberately poisoned him. But who, and with what? He tried desperately to think of something he might have ingested that could have caused this type of reaction but his poor tortured brain could think of nothing.

The pain in his gut increased exponentially and Sam managed to assume a foetal position, his arms gripping his belly tightly in an effort to dull the agony and control the retching that now wracked his weary body every few minutes. It became harder to breathe. Little did he know at that stage, but Sam was slowly being starved of air, his lungs were beginning to fail due to asphyxiation. Lucid to the end, Sam Gabriel lived out the last minutes of his life on the floor of his office, recognising the approach of imminent death, but being unable to summon help, unable even to call out to his secretary in the next office. Sam thought of Lynne and the child she was carrying, the son or daughter he'd never know, and then, as the pain in his abdomen reached a crescendo and his lungs felt as though they were being crushed in a vice, Sam closed his eyes for the last time, and the children in the park chased the little terrier, and the lunchtime crowd gathered on the park benches to enjoy their sandwiches and pre-packaged drinks.

Knowing that he'd want to be on time to celebrate the good news of his promotion with the lunchtime crowd Maggie Lucas dared to knock and enter Sam Gabriel's office less than ten minutes after he'd drawn his last agonizing breath. The screams that accompanied her discovery of the painfully contorted body of her boss brought the staff and the senior partners of the firm of Betts, Cowan and Ford running to the office of their newly promoted and recently deceased junior partner. Sam Gabriel had lived less than two hours to enjoy his promotion.