Death and the Ed Milliband Toast-face Mystery

I was going through the monthly stats when Death appeared.

“How’s tricks?” I asked, without looking up.

“INTERESTING. MY 7.00 A.M. APPOINTMENT WAS EATING A PIECE OF TOAST WITH THE EXACT LIKENESS OF ED MILLIBAND’S FACE ON IT.”

“Ed Milliband’s face on a piece of toast! Well would you ever.”

“THE STRANGE THING IS THAT MY 7.02 APPOINTMENT WAS BREAKFASTING ON TOAST WITH THE EXACT SAME IMAGE THEREON.”

“How peculiar.”

“AND IT WENT ON ALL MORNING. 27 OF THE SOULS TAKEN UP SO FAR TODAY HAVE BEEN CONSUMING TOAST WITH ED MILLIBAND’S FACE ON IT.”

“Twenty-seven! That’s like the start of a plague. What causes it, is the toast poisoned?”

“I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO ASCERTAIN. I’D LIKE YOU TO INVESTIGATE. I’VE SCHEDULED AN APPOINTMENT WITH HERSELF, BUT I’M SURE YOU’LL THINK OF ADDITIONAL LINES OF INVESTIGATION.”

I spent half an hour searching the internet, but to no avail, we were clearly the first to discover the Ed Milliband toast plague.

Pestilence arrived just after 12.00. As always she appeared with a showy flash of light, and she burst into the room singing a song of her own devising.

“Plague, fever, ague, rabies, cholera, Aids; these are a few of my favourite things.”

Pestilence was dressed in orange dungarees and had hidden her hair underneath a tent-sized purple hat. “Hello Dotty, how’s the bonester?” she greeted me in her traditional way.

“He’s as busy as ever.”

“Well I do try my best,” she said with a grin. Wouldn’t want to leave Death sitting on his arse all day. How can I help you my love?”

“He asked me to meet you because of a new thing, we wondered if it was anything to do with you. There’s been a spate of people dying whilst eating toast with Ed Milliband’s face upon it. Is it one of yours?”

“Oh how lovely dear. Wish I’d thought of it – a plague of death toast marked by the sign of Ed Milliband’s face. No, not one of mine. I’m dead jealous though, clearly the work of a master.”

Having hit a dead end I tried to get rid of Pestilence, but she stayed for an hour, catching up with all the gossip on the latest manifestations of all things disease-related. I offered Her a spreadsheet of the latest stats broken down by disease and geographical area, but She was uninterested. “It’s not the numbers dear, though I don’t doubt they’re impressive, it’s the individual stories, the misery and horror I create in people’s lives. Figures don’t tell you anything, just give me one gory, graphic description of a child dying of typhoid.”

After Pestilence left I decided to visit the Ferryman. Death spends very little time with the dead, but the Ferryman journey’s with them to the other side of the river Styx, so I hoped that one or two of them might have confided re: the sudden appearance of Ed Milliband’s face on their toast just seconds before they died.

““Hello again" I said. "Do you know why I’m here?”

“I always know,” he said, “You are here to ask about the souls of the dead, who have journeyed today across the River Styx, from where they shall never return, and in particular to ask whether any of them have mentioned Ed Milliband’s face appearing on their toast.”

“Well have they?”

I climbed into the boat and let The Ferryman row me silently across the silent, clear waters we are all destined to cross. The Ferryman is used to rowing while he talks. He pushed the boat forward silently for a while before answering, as if the answer required intense consideration.

“Yes. It’s not the mystery you think. The 27 souls I carried all told me similar tales. A company has started selling a plastic ‘toast stamp’ with Ed Milliband’s face on it. You simply stamp the image onto the bread, pop it in the toaster and it pops up with Ed Milliband toast. They all made the toast themselves, you are wrong to search for some malign external cause.”

“You mean it’s some form of mass suicide? How does it work, is the toast stamp poisoned?”

“No, no. It’s just a joke, the stamp is made out of harmless plastic. None of them expected to die. It was just that the shock of seeing Ed Milliband grinning back at them as they were about to munch into their breakfast proved too much, and they all suffered heart attacks.”

“What a horrible way to die.”

“Well, it gives me someone to ferry.”

So saying, he turned the boat round and we returned to the Shores of the Living.

We said farewell without words, as is often the Ferryman’s way.

Back in the office I updated Death on what I had discovered.

“I SHALL SPEAK TO THE VENDORS AND MAKERS OF THIS PLASTIC PRODUCT,” He said, “AND SEE IF I CAN PERSUADE THEM OF ITS DANGERS.”

Though Death does not usually intervene, He clearly found this particular method of death particularly malicious and unfortunate – for the last thing a soul to see to be Ed Milliband’s toasty face grinning back at them.

Death can be quite persuasive, and following his meeting with the plastic toast stamp company the strange plague soon went away. Death was still busy, of course, as was I, but that’s the age old story of man and mortality.