Nottingham Forest really managed to defend their title, this made someone feel as if he was sitting on a bed of needles.
When the Forest players were on leave for a day, Carl Spicer was in a very bad mood since he woke up. He had left his mobile phone switched off since the end of the game yesterday to prevent people from disturbing him as he would definitely receive many calls from the media asking him when did he intend to make good on his promise the moment he switched it on.
Eating a table?
You’ve got to be joking! Is that something that a human can eat? I’m not a mouse!
He had no time to regret his bet with Twain then, he had to rack his brain to come up with a way to avoid this embarrassment.
At this moment, he heard the doorbell.
A staff from a logistics company was at the door smiling at him, “Mr. Carl Spicer?”
“Er, I am.”
Spicer had just woke up not too long ago and he was not dressed properly yet, he had not shaved and the tired look made him look a little haggard.
“There’s something for you.”
The courier pointed to a large box behind him.
Spicer could already guess what was inside it. If Twain had lost the league title, he would have also received such a package at his door, the only difference would be the sender would be different.
At that instant, a trace of anger flashed over his face and he wanted to deny it, “Er, I’m not…”
Before he could finish, more than a dozen reporters armed with hand-held cameras and video cameras popped out from the bushes at the side and started to take pictures of him.
Someone held a microphone and shouted at him, “Mr. Carl Spicer! Let’s talk about your thoughts! Nottingham Forest has won the title…”
That bastard Twain!
Spicer cursed him ferociously in his heart. He was not a fool, he knew that this courier and the reporters who ambushed him were all arranged by Twain who just wanted to embarrass him.
He could not deny his identity now.
The courier was also shocked by the reporters who popped out of nowhere. He turned to look at the people behind him and smiled. He was a football fan and he knew about the differences between Carl Spicer and Tony Twain.
“Mr. Carl Spicer, please sign here,” he tried to keep a straight face as he turned to talk to Spicer.
Since denying his identity did not work, Spicer could only sign his name on the delivery order.
The courier had no intention of helping Spicer move the box into the house —— Spicer had hoped that he would do that so that the media at the door would not be able to watch the show.
But the courier left after receiving the signed document.
Spicer had no choice but to move the box himself and he realized that the box was too heavy to be moved by him alone. After a few tries, he looked at the reporters watching the show around him knowing that these people would never help him.
“Why don’t you open it, Mr. Spicer?” A reporter asked loudly.
“If it’s a table, it would be more convincing to eat it here.”
“If it’s not a table, we’re not interested to waste our time here either…”
Spicer had an uncertain look on his face. There was the sender’s name on the delivery order, what else could Tony Twain send him other than a table?
The reporters who only wanted to see chaos kept egging him on to open the box in front of them.
Spicer finally gave up, he could not escape this anyway…
He slowly opened the package. What shocked him was that the first thing that he saw was not a wooden or a metal table, but a huge cake box instead.
What’s this?
Spicer looked at the box which had a faint scent of cream in a daze. The reporters also did not expect the box to contain something like this.
Could Twain have custom made a huge cake for Spicer?
Spicer had already thought of something. He opened the top of the cake box and laughed as he saw what was inside —— Just as he expected.
A life-sized chocolate cake of a table which still had the smell of cream and chocolate in the morning air.
Even the reporters who were standing 10 steps away could smell it. They looked at each other as they did not understand what was going on —— If Tony Twain wanted to embarrass Spicer, why would he send an edible “table” to make things easy for Spicer?
Could they have decided to take advantage of this opportunity to reconcile their differences?
That was too boring!
Ferguson had already retired. Wenger had the intention to retire, Mourinho had not returned ever since he left and now Carl Spicer and Twain were going to reconcile their differences, were they trying to put the news worker out of a job?
Carl Spicer did not care about the feelings of the reporters, he was feeling very happy then, as happy as when he cleared his bowels which had been constipated the whole night early in the morning. He took a whiff of the tempting scent of the cake and suddenly felt hungry —— It was time for breakfast.
“Ha, it’s a very nicely baked cake!” Spicer laughed and rubbed his hands. He looked at the reporters and asked, “Care to join me for breakfast my friends?”
The reporters all shook their heads with an unfriendly look on their faces —— This was not what they had hoped to see. They could only wait for Spicer to have a bite of the “table”, take a picture of that and leave. They did not have the mood to have breakfast with him.
Spicer was in no hurry, he returned inside to make some milk, then tied a napkin around his neck and reappeared with a fork and knife in front of everyone.
“What a pity… I can’t finish such a big cake myself…” He even acted sympathetically with an expression that made the reporters grit their teeth in anger, he was really taking his undeserved gains for granted.
Just when he was about to enjoy the cake, he realized that there was a card next to it. It was hand-written by Tony Twain.
Dear Mr. Carl Spicer,
The best chocolate cream cake, I hope you’ll like it. I wish to take this opportunity to show you my token of goodwill and reconcile all our differences in the past. We’ll just be giving those reporters a show to watch if we continued to be at each other’s throats. Can you see them? They should be just in front of you, right? Look at their eyes, you have the same look in your eyes when you’re at a circus looking at the clown, don’t you? We have no need to sacrifice ourselves to entertain them. Finally, I would like to apologize for my comments towards you in the past.
Your dearest friend, Tony Twain.
Tony Twain was actually backing down!
This was sensational news and Spicer had already decided to flaunt this on his own show. Even though he was forced to eat a “table”, it would be good to take back some of his honor like this… At the same time, he was thinking —— Maybe Tony Twain was not so bad after all…
Spicer wiped the card clean and placed it in his shirt pocket before starting to eat with a smile on his face. He used his knife to cut a piece of cake then used his fork to put it in front his open mouth.
The reporters were very cooperative as they took out their cameras and video cameras to take pictures and videos of him “eating a table”.
When the reporters are doe with their pictures, Spicer put the cake into his mouth, gave a thumbs up as he chewed and raised his eyebrows. Even though he could not speak, he used his expression and action to praise the taste to the cake.
To prove that he was not faking it, he had a few more pieces before finally eating with his hands, sucking his fingers and licking the chocolate and cream off them when he was done. Next, he pointed with his index finger and played a fool in front of the reporters.
His expression was really annoying, and the reporters felt like they were pranked by Twain and Spicer together. They were not interested in watching anymore, there was no show to watch at all and they packed up and left.
Carl Spicer was so pleased that he brought a chair over and continued to sit in front of his doorstep, eating the “table” that Twain send him.
Looking at how satisfied he was, it was as if he wanted more reporters to take a picture of him.
※※※
The news of Carl Spicer eating a table as he promised appeared on the papers, news station and on the internet in the afternoon. Everyone was shocked to see Spicer sitting at his doorstep, enjoying the table cake. The news stated that this was specially sent by Tony Twain and the readers had the same question as the reporters then —— Why would Twain send an edible table to Spicer, did he not want to see Spicer embarrass himself?
To this, the media had their own guess.
“…Maybe Twain was tired of his spat with Spicer and wanted to take this chance to reconcile their differences.”
This was a logical explanation and many people believed it.
A small group of people insisted that Twain could never back down after winning a bet. In their impression, Tony Twain would always try to do bad deeds and still wanted to have a good reputation. If he had a hold over someone, then he could only prepare to die a horrible death, with his body strung up on the city’s gate and whipped for everyone to see. He loved to beat his opponent to the floor and give him a few hundred million stomps until his opponent were totally stomped into the ground.
That was why so many people hated him. He did not know how to give people a leeway, was arrogant, full of himself, considered everything to be beneath him, become arrogant once he had the advantage… It was really not easy for all these negative values to be concentrated on a single person. Yet many people loved to follow him and liked him, the reason is simple —— Because he would always win. He had the rights to be arrogant.
That the “table eating” incident that everyone was looking forward to ended so pointlessly was quite boring.
This incident was not newsworthy, and the media decided to let go of Spicer. He could finally switch on his phone again without fear of being disturbed by the media.
The first call he got after switching on the phone was from the producer of “Football Matters”. He said laughingly to Spicer, “Looks like you got away this time Carl. Okay, enough about this, there’s not much value in this anyway. Come in to prepare for tonight’s live show. It’s the end of the season special, there are many things that you need to decide on.”
Spicer hung up and drove out, satisfied.
In the end of the season special, the champions were the stars of the show. Nottingham Forest would have a lot of air time since they were the champions. Luckily for him, Twain gave him a way out this morning, so he was in a good mood. He decided to cut down on his mocking of the new league champion as a favor to Twain.
He decided to feign sincerity and congratulate Nottingham Forest even though he planned to place the emphasis on the match between Arsenal and Manchester City as that was the match that ultimately decided the winner of the league title. The match between Forest and Sunderland had no suspense at all, nothing worth paying attention to in particular.
※※※
After 300 rounds in bed with his wife in the afternoon, Twain fell into a deep sleep, only waking up when the lights came on. Shania was making dinner in the kitchen.
She heard his footsteps and did not even turn back before saying, “Go watch some TV, dinner will be ready soon.”
“Do you need help?”
“No,” Shania turned and smiled at him, “You have a good rest today, you don’t have to do anything.”
Twain smiled back at her and left the kitchen to the living room and switched on the TV.
Looking at the time, it was already almost eight.
This was the golden period of the TV station as all kinds of interesting programs were aired at this timing. However, Twain was not interested in most of the TV program, with the remote in hand, he switched channels aimlessly. If he saw something that he vaguely had some interest in, he would stop to watch for a while before losing interest and switching again.
He switched channels for a while before his muddled brain that just woke up finally cleared up a little.
He remembered something. This was a very important thing.
So, he switched channel to Sky plc’s sports channel.
Then looked at his watch.
The TV was still showing advertisements. He had already forgotten about dinner…
※※※
If possible, Carl Spicer would really love to put his job down and rush to the toilet —— Even though this was already his eighth time there, he could not stop the desire to defecate that stemmed from the depths of his stomach.
The producer looked at the pained look on Spicer’s face worriedly. He knew what was wrong with his host of course, he got food poisoning, but he had no choice. This was a live show, he could not possibly cancel it at the last moment just because the host had an upset stomach otherwise the sponsors would have him for lunch.
“I’m fine, I’m fine…” Spicer continued to read the script for the night.
The producer slapped him on the shoulders, “It’ll start soon, you can go once more.”
Spicer rushed out immediately once he said that.
There was a scream from a lady that got knocked down and Spicer’s apologies coming from a distance outside the door.
When Spicer reappeared in front of the producer with an exhausted look on his face, the producer did not say anything. He merely gave him a pat on the shoulders and indicated that it was time for him to go out.
Spicer suddenly had a look of a person entering his execution ground. He gritted his teeth and walked into the broadcasting room with determination.
In front of the camera, when he hosted the show with his habitual sardonic smile, his lower body kept shifting around on the chair while his stomach kept making gurgling sounds.
“…Tony Twain’s team won the league title as they aimed for… Their… Hmm… Their journey to the title was very thrilling. Even after their match had ended, the league title still belonged to Arsenal…”
The attentive audiences must have already noticed that the Carl Spicer who was normally so good with words and spoke so quickly that he could overwhelm people who second-guessed him, was especially slow with his speech today. He tried his best to make it look like he was deep in thoughts, but in the eyes of the audiences, they only felt that something was off with him today, yet they could not tell what was wrong.
“…Nobody expected Bendtner… to score in the final moment to help Manchester City grab a draw with Arsenal. Nottingham Forest won the title dramatically… At this point, I have to congratulate Nottingham Forest…”
Spicer said while grinding his teeth. At the same time, he was scolding and screaming hysterically in his heart.
“Damn bastard! Tony Twain! What was in that cake that you gave me?! You despicable, shameless, devil who deserves to go to the 18th level of hell and cut by a thousand knifes! I curse you to never have any offspring!!!”
His stomach suddenly made another gurgling sound. Hearing this, Spicer’s face turned green…
※※※
The audiences in front of the TV would not know why was Spicer acting weird tonight. But one man knew, because he was laughing very happily in front of the TV.
“What are you laughing at, Uncle Tony?” Shania asked out of curiosity after hearing the laughter. Then she saw Carl Spicer on the TV screen.
“Oh, that man… Didn’t you send him a table cake? Why do I get this feeling that he looks rather unwell?”
Twain explained to Shania as he laughed, “Ah, I ordered that thing a few days too early. And you know, there is no refrigerator big enough to keep such a big cake. The weather is also getting hotter…”
Shania understood and a smile appeared on her face as she watched the show, “Ah —— Uncle Tony, you’re evil!”
※※※
The next day, Carl Spicer criticized Twain’s despicable and shameless move in his column furiously as he recounted his tragic experience of getting an upset stomach by eating expired cake.
However, not many people sympathized with him.
On the contrary, he became the new laughingstock of England.
There were even people leaving comments under his column asking if he shat his pants when hosting the show.
The evils that he brought upon himself were the hardest to bear
