Out of the Chocolate Box (29)

Better With Bratwurst

[Episode 29 of a spin-off from my novels The Hitch-hiker and Mission of the Unwilling.]

I gasped awake.

The nausea was gone. And I was hungry. The smell of barbequed sausages filled the tent.

A saucepan rested by my mattress. I noticed a pair of sausages begging me to eat them. I picked the fattest one and bit into it. Ah, the sweet taste of pork, filling me with memories of my homeland, Switzerland.

I peered out of the tent. Captain Günter Fahrer fried something on a metal plate on the campfire. It was mid-morning. Both suns had already risen.

‘Bratwurst just like meine Omi’s, beautiful!’ Günter said.

‘Where did you get them?’

Günter did not answer my question. ‘Eat!’ he commanded.

I ate. The Bratwurst tasted good, especially on an empty stomach. Food tastes best when one is famished.

Günter chuckled. ‘You won’t be eating melons again.’

‘It wasn’t the melon—I was spooked. That house is haunted.’

‘Rubbish, there are no such things as ghosts. You ate the melon and you got sick.’ Günter shook the fry pan, rolling the sausages from one side to the other. ‘Admit it, Miss Mueller.’

‘No, that house I went into—that made me sick.’

‘No, you must have eaten some melon.’

‘But you said it was deadly,’ I said. ‘How come I’m still alive?’

Günter tilted his head, and then concentrated on frying the sausages. ‘I’m telling you, it happens every time. You should have seen Liesel, last time. She just touched a drop of juice from a melon and was sick for days. I have never known someone to throw up so much and so far. She set the record. It’s definitely the melon.’

He placed sausage from the pan on a leaf and then handed it to me.

‘But I didn’t have any melon or its juice.’

Günter locked eyes with me. ‘Are you sure?’

He was winning the argument.

‘I had some on my suit—but I didn’t…’

‘See, I told you, it was the melon.’

‘But…’

‘The melon is deadly. It is only to use for kicking. Don’t eat the melon.’

‘Pity Boris hasn’t sampled the melon,’ I said. Günter’s melon warning gave me an idea. However, I gabbled on about other things. ‘By the way, where did you say the Trans-warp place is?’

While Günter explained the location of the Trans-warp conduit in a cave in the mountain, I gobbled up a third, then a fourth sausage.

We prepared for our climb up the mountain. While Günter preoccupied himself with packing laser guns, tools and equipment for activating the Trans-warp machine, I stowed three small melons in my back pack. I rationalized that they could be useful in the war against Boris.

[to be continued…]

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2019

Feature Photo: Grilled sausages and cheese, Swiss-style for Christmas © L.M. Kling 2016

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Treat Yourself to Sci-fi Adventure these holidays…

Want more? More than before? Don’t just listen to the rumours of the war on this over-sized alien cockroach, Boris, read it for yourself. Find out how and why this war began.

Check out my novels on Amazon and in Kindle. Click on the links below:

The Hitch-hiker  

Mission of the Unwilling