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The Fist Vaccination [Warning: Language]
America; in it, said subject need only to divulge that he is experiencing a quote unquote family emergency to get off tumult-free if a situation should arise where he would need to digress from his quotidian duties - and this individual would call as early in ay em as courteously possible, setting his tone conservatively grievous to be as authentic and quasi-controlled sounding as possible. Probability-wise, usually the only kindred spirits the said subject will be attending to will be the ones he drinks on the rocks; or, on a more rehabilitory note, the detoxification of aforementioned spirits. But let’s say the said subject (Ben) is in crucial need to scrape a patch of bovine utter, pox-afflicted, and afterward, via syringe, vaccinate his family via inoculation. That would certainly put him in a wholly singular category for the need to use the quintessential quote unquote family emergency.
...
“They called me monstrous, utterly insane, beastly, despicable, the bottom of the barrel, a degenerate, an outcast,” Our subject, Ben, said.
A brief “Mm-hm” escaped the gritted prison bar teeth and thin wispy lips of the reporter, his tone saturated with tangible irritability as he flurried down some notes on his hand-sized notepad, the scribing of which looked like jerky scribbles from Ben’s perspective.
Ben said “I couldn’t reason with them, it’s like they didn’t want to hear me out or anything, like they were set on their assessment of me – which was all negative – and they just kept escalating this, and I couldn’t go to the authorities or anything; they’d put me in the loony bin. They acted as if they wouldn’t have done almost anything if their families were put in the way of harm or illness. It’s almost as if they were happy to harangue me for what I did, like they enjoyed seeing me as a monster, rather than a man trying to help his family. I mean -”
The journalist gargled his phlegm audibly enough to make Ben pause. Once the reporter’s pharynx was satisfied, he motioned Ben, with an upwards jerk of the head, to continue.
“I mean some of them went as far as believing that me and my family would metamorphosize into bovine abominations or mutants...”
...
“You fucking degenerate!” spits a meek octogenarian fruit vendor. The droplets of his saliva land on exotic, genetically modified fruit.
“You piece of shit!” yells the vendor’s fourteen-year-old assistant.
A “despicable prick” conjoins the communal harangue as Ben walks down the overly familiar farmers market.
His head is at an acute angle to his spine; posture oblique, resembling a hillock; a deviation from his usual graceful rigid stance.
A foreign tourist couple Ben has never seen before shrieks “Fuck you, monster!” in shattered English.
The promenade of contumely and vilification ceases to be audible only when Ben is about fifty feet from the last fruit stand. He sighs.
He knows that most of them will die in upcoming months. He walks on, leaving boot-sized vestiges on the soft muddy soil.
...
“And what about when everyone started to get sick, how many came to get inoculations?” the reporter probed, head at right angle to his spine, more of those jerky, lightning-fast scribbles.
“Well, Samsa came, but he changed his mind when he saw the needle. I told him he might die if he doesn’t get the shot, that my family and me survived because of this, and he changed his mind after. I gave him the shot and he ran off without a word. He probably didn’t tell anyone he was going there.”
More arrhythmic scratches.
“That’s it? Just Samsa?”
“Everyone else was too occupied caring for their sick to think about anything else. I mean, I did proffer my idea, but most of the men I talked to were grief-stricken over their dead children or wives to think about their own immunity, and some didn’t even want to live, after the disease took their kith and kin and everything. Some put the blame on me. A couple families survived, but moved away soon after, relinquishing me of any hale families to talk to.”
Scribbling, intense.
The reporter levitated his head upwards, contemplating.
“And your family? Still healthy?”
“Yes, fully.”
...
I don’t know: A man should never utter those words, but in this case I just don’t know. The plague, that cascading wave of death… is it merely contingent? Is the Doctor not saying something? Why would he be so frightened of telling everyone that there is a high chance of encroachment, why the false hope? What did he mean by contingent. That there is chance it will not occur, but probably will? I just don’t know. My farm… my family, everything… I can’t just pick up and leave, my whole life is here. I can’t afford to pickup and go. I just can’t… I don’t know.
...
Peculiar, how a subject reacts to the realization that it was not discernment that caused his realization, but serendipity. The subject, initially, will feel elation, a sort of euphoric satisfaction, and backtrack the cassette tape in his hippocampus to the beginning, hit play and audit the procedure, proudly gloating at his aptitude. This elation may last anywhere from a minute to months to years; but when said subject finally does get the big picture, that it wasn’t him and him alone who figured the damn thing out, a trough-period commences; he slumps, mentally and usually physically, lugubrious at the mere thought of him acting too proud for something he didn’t achieve autonomously. For Ben, that elation lasted years. Ben’s pox-ridden cow was his dues ex machina; after the Doctor’s warnings – and a period of vexation – he recalled a letter his aunt had written where she mentioned how she didn’t seem to get sick when the disease had hit her area. He also recalled that she was complaining of her pox-ridden cow producing sour milk. He unearthed the parchment and read it with fervor, red in the face at a brewing discernment. She wrote that most of her neighbors got sick and died. She wrote that she was glad she didn’t have to move.
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Originally Posted by Alex
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