The Cure


I pulled into my driveway in the early morning after my once-weekly shopping outing, getting supplies to see us through another week of Plague pandemic quarantining and isolation. I pulled off my mask, the half-face twin cartridge respirator that I used to spray weeds with at some point in time and that I now use for protection in exposed and uncontrollable social situations, like shopping, talking to lying politicians and going to orgies, and took a deep, non-chemical and non-virus infected breath. Aaaaaah. That was better. I took another deep breath and frowned. There was a funny smell in the air.

   Grabbing two bags of shopping out of the back of the car I walked up the stairs to the front door of our house, opened it and stepped through it. And stopped dead in my tracks. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

   A thick blanket of acrid blue-grey smoke hung in the house, smelling very suspicious indeed. Before me, sitting on the carpet, was my partner, Kiana. In front of her was a large bowl with a heap of dark green fluffy-looking herbal substance. On one side of the bowl lay a pair of big scissors. In her right hand she held a cigarette lighter, and in her left hand, hovering just centimetres away from her nose, she held a bong, clearly home-made from an old plastic drink bottle and a piece of garden hose. Embers in the cone glowed alarmingly.

   She looked up at me with glassy bloodshot eyes and madly dilated pupils, and smiled the wide slow-motion toothy smile of the terminally smashed.

   ‘Hiiiiiiiiii. How are you? Hihihihi ...’ she giggled, and held her hand in front of her mouth.

   I was flabergasted. Shellshocked. We live a life of clean food, healthy early morning exercise, complete abstinence of any and all harmful chemicals, and strict adherence to any and all conspiracy-theory based health fads advertised on the social media platforms that we slavishly and unquestioningly follow and emulate. We practice Frantic Yoghurt, an Ancient Eastern style of twisting your body into painful knots and comprehensively putting your back out religiously eight times a week, usually at the beach while shoving our faces into abandoned dog turds and chanting meaningless words in obscure Asian languages we don’t understand, dressed in the height of fashionable pyjama wear, the best that money can buy anywhere outside of the second-hand fleamarket in Bangkok. We also have a Gold membership at the local chiropractor. Furthermore, we never eat anything that hasn’t at the very least been fermented, moon-baked, cold-pressed, virgin-sprouted, hand-stirred and fly-blown for at least three and a half weeks, as recommended by our guru, life coach and financial health advisor, who we consult from his abode in the Carribean by phone at $9.95 per minute five days a week, twice a day.

   Smoking illegal mind-bending substances just doesn’t come into the picture.

   In shock I dropped my shopping bags. Five jars of kombucha shattered. Their contents seeped onto the ground and slowly but comprehensively started to dissolve our Borneo-jungle hardwood floorboards into a toxic black liquid. Black plumes of smoke curled up from it, and mingled with the smoke already hanging heavily in the air. It smelled marginally better.

   ’What on Earth do you think you’re doing?’ I exclaimed, gobsmacked.

   ‘Hi hi ... I’m vaccinating myself against The Bug. Hi hi,’ my partner replied, looking smug.

   ’What? What? Whaaaat??’ My mouth dropped open. I was thunderstruck.

   ’Yeah. You know, the Bucolic Plague Bug ...’ she volunteered.

   ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ I replied tersely. ‘You’re out of your mind. How does getting stoned out of your brain vaccinate you against the Bug?’ This defied all reason.

   ’Well, you know, you were saying it the other day, so I went off to Sinbin and did some shopping of my own ...’ she giggled again, ‘hihi ... and now I’m self-medicating ... hihi ... self-medicating and self-isolating ... hihi ...’ And she snorted with the ability to see the funny side of things only perceivable by the near-totally obliterated.

...’What?’ I repeated again, too stunned for words. Sinbin was a town in the hills a little ways away from here. It was started up by avant-garde hippies in the 1930s, when people found that selling drugs during the Great Depression was a sure-fire way to make a lot of money, and it has been a thriving centre for private enterprise, alternative business models, and venereal disease ever since.

   ‘I didn’t say anything like that! You’re kidding yourself. I wouldn’t dream of it!’

   I was adamant. If I was going to pin my hopes on an illicit drug as a remedy or vaccine against the Bug I would have picked something that was designer-issued, supported and promoted, like ecstacy or cocaine. Something stylish with a bit of class, quality assurance and a price tag that reflected its Fair Trade Status, ensuring that no more than 99 % of the profits went to large international cartels, so the poor innocent indigenous people involved in the growing of the plants yielding the drugs would at least receive a fair cut of the proceeds, on top of and in addition to the bullets and whiplashes they habitually get paid. I have standards, I will have you know.

   ‘Nah nah nah ... you said ... you said ... you said what ... what did you say ... you said it the other day yourself ...’ she slurred.

   ‘What did I say?’ I said in exasperation.

   ‘You said it yourself, the other day ...’ she offered, in a wobbly voice.

   ‘I said what?’

   ‘You said ... that the Bug is killed by dope!’ she said triumphantly, having finally succeeded in lining up three thoughts in a straight line and getting them out before they ran away.

   ‘I said the Bug was killed by dope?’ I repeated incredulously.

   ‘That’s right. Hi hi. So I went and got some. Hi hi.’ She looked well pleased with herself.

   I stared at her slackjawed, mouth wide open in disbelief. I shook my head wildly.

   ‘I didn’t say that!’ I exclaimed.

   ‘Didn’t you?’ She looked puzzled. A haze of incomprehension drifted across her eyes.

   ‘No, you idiot!’ I took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t say the Bug was killed by dope!’

   ‘You didn’t?’ She gave me a spaced-out look of confusion and bewilderment. ‘What did you say then?’

   ‘I said the Bug was killed by SOAP! By washing your hands!’

 

 

 


 

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