Two Pieces of Writing

The trouble with C₆H₁₀O₅

When I walked over there to the pharmaceutical counter, they held out my bottle of Orange fix-its. When I reached for it, they re-directed their aim and poured the contents down the first-customer-in-line’s throat. The tallest pharmacist punched the red emergency button, grazing the back of his hand across the most exciting clerk’s hip bone -- which he felt effortlessly through her thin skirt -- and took three hard gulps from the fresh coffee that he had just poured. Everyone could hear the fluorescent light tubes buzzing in the back room. As the clerk stood there , annoyed that I came in just before lunch break, wiping her fogged glasses, I requested four sips from the tall man’s coffee. Before she could suggest my departure, the man with the biggest hat (whose coat was dimmer than the rest) had poured half the black contents into an orange bottle and insisted on my immediate consumption. As I emptied that down me and looked into the bottom of the bottle, raised above my face, I noticed, with subtle delight, the remnants of one white pill disappear stylishly. Those men in tights, with even bigger hats than the tallest dr., parked their horses out front & hustled inside in a short single file line. The slowest one, knocking items onto the trail he created behind him, slurred along, inquiring about a slower pace. Those men, hands on holsters, did oblige. As they finally approached this happening, they discovered no excitement (thus breaking their contract) – only people of differing heights standing around discussing Hues. One handful of remarkably potent magenta cellulose tablets in the hand of a subtle worker did catch the eyes of Smallest-and-Wheezing. Guns stayed put, as those 7 noble enforcers walked in reverse, to calm the slight equestrian panic ensuing outdoors. Smallest attempted a protest of reversal but his only mouth worked not and those heavy breaths of his produced sticky fluid. As he went for a wipe of mouth, the official in front of him in line tugged with a start and they both tripped over his leash, producing a fresh pile of items on the trail of those “men-to-the-rescue”.

“Madame!” suggested I, “help them!”--remembering the great surplus of condensed remedies of every sort back there. Her reply was not marked with words but with a steady aim of candy-coated tablets from a special bottle, into each of the mens’ many small fresh cuts, and dissolved those with a high pressure hose, connected to the laboratory faucet. Oh, how the men clambered, clamoring to their feet! They were already on their horses down the block before the toothbrush that had fallen from pocket of the youngest hit the ground. In the morning, the coroner rang me, with the confirmation that the customer had failed because of a severely blocked nasal system. I nodded and wept on the way to the bank, where I made a wire transfer to the Gold Coast of a relatively large amount of money from my yard sale the previous evening.

James Preiss, February 2009