Birthday Party

I have fully bought in to the rumour (where it came from is lost to me) that the  
pimple-faced busboy was poisoning the twice-baked potatoes here.  
What convinced me was how "poisoner" was writ  
large and clear in the ancient biblical cuneiform of his acne patterns (clearly in a language used only for calling demons and exorcising them). I curse myself for not seeing it earlier.
This is all 100% confirmed by his awkward, toothy, tinny smile (too adorably goofy to be anything but a cover for menace).
 
And my mere inner, purely-for-entertainment, musings around "what if a coven of Nazi witches and warlocks convened in the restaurant basement?" have abruptly become  
a matrix of facts I know to be true.  And it's worse than I thought.  
 
And there is no question that this inflammation in my throat is cancer,  
the kind that starts yesterday, opens its gaping maw, and consumes you in 3 or 4 incredibly painful bites today.  
I am aware that I am in today.  
 
That this place waters their drinks down has never been in question. But now it turns out that it's not water.  I'm certain it's demon piss, 3 days turned at that.    
Maybe not demon piss.  But piss to be sure, and definitely 3 days turned.  
 
But, since it is my daughter's 9th birthday, and I am wary of providing any further damning evidence to her mother  
who has been whispering into ears implications that I am a serial  misanthrope.  She is gathering squinting-eyed allies to trap me into doing something outlandishly dangerous.  
 
And since, after all, there will be cake after all the other bullshit has finally crept past us,  
I will tuck the white linen into my shirt, plunge my fork in to a twice-baked nugget of death,  
and just hope that the convulsions, vomiting, organ ruptures,  
and unspeakably horrifying hallucinations  
hold off until I am comfortably reclined at home,  
optimistic still, despite what I know, time remains in my life to binge watch season 2 of Ally McBeal.