Let me tell you a story about A Near-Death Culinary Experience

Friday night flash: where the weird swims upstream. This is a fishy tale of warnings unheeded. Ignore the cat at your peril.

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Part I: Complaint Letter from a Customer

Dear Sir/Madam,

A few days ago, your herring fillets ended up in my shopping basket. I didn’t buy them out of nostalgia, as your ads suggest, but just to remind the cat who’s boss. Normally, he circles around anything remotely fishy, so I peeled back the foil right by his ear and let him have a sniff.

This time? He recoiled slightly, gave me a dirty look, and walked away like I’d tried to poison him. I thought, “Eh, maybe it’s the onions. Cats and onions don’t mix.” So I ate it myself.

After a while, I felt something strange happening in my stomach. I shifted my gaze to the cat. He hadn't moved. He just sat there, staring at me without blinking. That’s when the red walls of my apartment began to swirl and my legs felt soft and useless, like warm baguettes. I barely staggered to the trash can.

I pulled the empty packaging out of the bin and turned it over, around, inside out, like a priest clutching a sacred relic, praying for a miracle to save me from this swirling torment. Nothing. No expiration date. Just a batch number, like I’m supposed to decode whether I’ll make it to the bathroom or just lie down and die.

Then came nausea and heartburn so fierce it felt as if a fish demon had awakened inside me, fighting not only for my body but for my very soul. Mint tea turned out to be as useless as holy water on a demon.

When I caught a whiff of my own vomit, I thought heaven must have better ventilation, but I wasn’t quite ready to make the trip. That drove me to make the manly call for an ambulance.

Lying there on the stretcher, my thoughts flickered through my mind: How naive I’d been to believe that a piece of vacuum-packed herring with no expiration date could be anything other than an assassination attempt!

And now I'm in a hospital like a Baltic herring hauled up in a net, no longer fighting, just waiting to have its head cut off or be buried in ice.

I don’t know if someone in your office is having a laugh, or if you’re employing people who gave up on life years ago and are now running purely on autopilot.

Does the missing date mean this herring was preserved in the tears of the Virgin Mary and meant to last until the end of time?

Or did someone slip in an Atlantic relic from the Cold War, hoping I wouldn’t notice, betting, as always, that the average consumer can digest anything and even say thanks afterward?

I’m waiting for a reply.

Hopefully before my obituary lands on your desk?

Yours,

Your customer, barely alive, halfway across the Styx.

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Part II: Official Response from the Herring Company

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter. We are sorry to hear about your experience and hope you are feeling better. We would like to clarify a few points regarding your concerns.

You admit to opening the package without seeing any expiration date on it. This is a basic responsibility of the consumer, especially with food products that require particular caution.

As you mentioned, even the cat, a creature with an exceptionally sensitive sense of smell, clearly signaled that something was wrong, giving what you called a "dirty look" and avoiding the food, even though cats and fish go together like mac and cheese.

Ignoring the opinion of a certified feline specialist is a serious oversight in the consumption process. Instead of taking this warning seriously, you ignored it. This points to negligence rather than an error on our part. Not knowing whether the food was safe, you still decided to eat it.

Accusations that we “work on autopilot” or “don’t care about customers’ lives” are strong but unfounded.

The suggestion that the product was a deliberate assassination attempt undermines the credibility of your complaint and hurts the feelings of our quality control staff, who diligently inspect every herring fillet, risking daily immersion of their hands in oil.

Regarding the packaging you described, you mentioned it had a batch code. We understand that it may have appeared unclear. However, when you had trouble reading it, did it ever occur to you to reach out to our customer service hotline for assistance with staff on call 24 hrs a day all year round?

We also have doubts about the sequence of your actions. According to your letter, you opened the package, let the cat sniff it, threw it in the trash, and only after eating it pulled it back out to check the expiration date. Perhaps reversing this order would have greatly improved your culinary and health experience.

Referring to your comment about the “immunity of the average consumer,” our herrings are made for ordinary people, not mythical creatures with iron guts. Quality is our priority.

In summary, while your narrative omits any sense of consumer responsibility, as part of our unwavering commitment to quality and customer care, we are prepared to offer compensation.

Enclosed you will find a voucher for six packs of vacuum-packed fish fillets, which you can collect at our company store. Each pack is clearly marked with an expiration date and has been stored under the watchful eye of our senior cat tester.

Additionally, we are sending your cat a separate pack to keep his “nose for quality” sharp and alert.

Please exercise caution when choosing products, trust your cat’s nose, and remain responsible when filing complaints; facts matter more than horror stories.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department

© Ewa Fornal

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About the writer:

Ewa Fornal writes about things that confuse her: belonging, memory, and the quiet absurdities of daily life. She has published in Crannóg Magazine, Dedalus Press’s The 'New Irish' Writers, and Literature Today.

You can find more work from Ewa on her Instagram:

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