...and a side of cyanide

Prompt: You are a food critic that can immediately identify all the ingredients used in the food after just one bite. Because of your negative reviews, many people dislike you. You are tasting a famous restaurant's steak. But after a bite, you identify that one of the ingredients is cyanide.

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I chewed delicately, parsing out the flavors. Filet mignon, medium rare. Ancho chile, paprika, brown sugar, espresso – ah, a coffee rub. Interesting. The mustard was overpowering, unfortunately, and it didn’t quite go with…

I tilted my head as I swallowed. Who in their right mind would pair bitter almond with –?

Oh.

For a moment, I just sat there with my hand on my wineglass, thoughts spiraling through my mind. Cyanide. Someone was trying to poison me. And with how aggressive that flavor cut through the rest, I knew I didn’t have long. So I may as well make things easy for the police, when they arrived.

I quietly summoned my waiter and explained that I would presently be in need of an ambulance. He sped with purpose out of the dining room, heading for the closest phone, while I pulled out my notepad and wrote down a list of possible suspects, trying to keep my hand steady. I doubted that it would be anyone at Marblescar Steakhouse; that would be too forward. The owner of Sushi Nagoya, maybe, or Kandiyohi Pasta Company. It could really be anyone whose food I had critiqued, to be honest. And that was half of the Twin Cities.

My lungs struggled to draw in a breath and I knew the cyanide was starting to work. I had minutes, at most. Ah, well. I sipped my wine as the waiter informed me that the ambulance was on its way. Before he could leave, I passed him my credit card – no sense letting anyone lambaste me after my inevitable death, that I stiffed the poor man on his tip. And the minute he left my side, I downed the remainder of my wine. May as well go out in style, drowned in Malbec, strangled by cyanide.