Short Fiction: Inner Peace

  Inner Peace

I'm taking this new medicine called Newtlarva. It's used for terminal diseases of all sorts. Keeps you ticking longer than you might if you have anything terminal. No point worrying about the side effects. But they are nasty. It can cause a guy's cock and balls to fall off, but by the time you need Newtlarva, you don't need the equipment.

So I'm keeping to my normal routine, starting the day with budget espresso and toasted Wonder Bread, breakfasting while enjoying an old foreign slasher movie on this fantastic new free movie web site. No point reading one free article in NYT and one in WSJ. The world is perfect when you get to this end of the Monopoly Board. If China attacks Taiwan it only proves life in the United States isn't all that bad.

Twice a week I take a city bus to the grocery store to get more espresso and Wonder Bread. No one talks to anyone on the packed box of pubic transportation. Everyone plays video games on their phones, but it's like we all know each other. I see some of the passengers at the clinic, and it's never been better the way no one gossips about anyone, everyone having lost interest in other people. The French existentialists were completely moronic about he human condition back when people were still healthy and happy. Those creeps had to dig into their evil minds to find proof everyone was secretly miserable. Leave It To Beaver was still being produced when they determined Americans suffered from alienation.

How wrong those stupid pessimists were. This morning I was entering the bus when the side effect took effect. It was quite painful, I had to scream as I clicked my Connect Card on the cash box, but I felt no embarrassment at all. The driver and everyone at the front of bus saw what happened and everyone heard me scream but that aside, privates rolling down and out the wrinkle-free polyester slacks meant very little to anyone. I found a seat beside a sick old lady, and the driver kicked the stuff I just lost out the front door before getting back in the drivers seat and heading to the Westview Plaza, where everyone shops. No one even looked up from their phone.