“...The local CDC has identified the consumption of red meat as a unifying factor in all cases of the outbreak. Therefore, as of midnight on this date, all businesses in Harris County purveying meat or meat products are to be shut down, pending further investigation…”
Auralee turned off the TV behind the bar. “Alright, you all heard the mayor. Let’s turn everything off and shut everything down, you can all go home for the day and anyone in the lanes who wants food can just get it somewhere else while I figure this all out.”
Virtue strode into the bar area, alarmed. “Auralee, what’s the meaning of this? Operations don’t have to shut down for another six hours!”
“Why, Mother, I would have thought you of all people would want to slow the spread of reverse tapeworm,” said Auralee, pointing at the blank TV screen. “You heard the list of symptoms. Besides, I want a drink before the bars all close.”
Damian helped her finish capping all the liquor bottles and putting them in the cabinet for the night. This didn’t feel real. Then again, he should have seen it coming. Over a month ago, Christyn had been telling him about a new disease spreading in the city. Now it was confirmed to be foodborne…
As they walked to the car, he tried to think of everywhere he’d eaten in the last few weeks. Christyn rarely cooked with meat, seeing as she didn’t eat it...but lately she’d been plating a meat dish for the guys once in a while, usually chicken but once or twice she’d done pork…
As if picking up on what he was thinking, Auralee said, “Relax. You don’t have it.”
“How do you know?”
She popped his car door open for him and asked, “Were you even listening to the list of symptoms? Acute psychosis. A sudden onset of prolonged insomnia. You don’t have either of those. The third symptom is rapid weight gain, which you’re usually doing anyway, but you seem to have hit another plateau. And the number one reason I know you don’t have reverse tapeworm is that I didn’t give it to you.”
Auralee was even more of a maniac on the road than usual, cutting people off, liberally giving the finger, and running over potholes with a new aggression in search of a bar that was open, but it looked like many establishments had had the same idea she had and decided to close early. “Don’t tell me we’re gonna have to wait until we’re back in Fort Bend County,” she growled.
“So you know where this thing came from, then?” he asked, since she seemed to know not only what the disease entailed, but how it was contracted.
“The secret to the method I use with my special clients was a hard-won one. I actually had to pay $10,000 to obtain it from a colleague of my brother’s. As such, I charge $30,000 for these demented feeders to opt into the program. As transparent as I am about my techniques, I’m sure some of them are applying the knowledge at home, or else turning around and reselling my knowledge for more money. It keeps me from getting swamped with too much work. As lucrative as it is, I know what a toll it can take on my staff. It also keeps the city saturated with disappearances that turn up no corpses. As powerful as my father remains, he can’t protect me from everything. If I ever do come under suspicion, it’s a comfort to know that I won’t be the only suspect. But I warn my clients not to go too hard with the treatment on their own time.” She lit up a cigarette, took a deep pull, and ashed out the window. “It’s entirely possible to come down with a fatal case of insomnia.”
***
Auralee said Damian wouldn’t be out of work for long. A week, tops. In the morning, they would go into the bar and toss all the meat products that would spoil before the madness was over. Then, they’d get a signed statement of compliance from the mayor and reopen running a strictly vegetarian menu.
Auralee was wrong.
The morning after the initial announcement, the mayor came back on TV to issue a shelter-in-place order for the county. All jobs that could be done remotely were to have employees work from home, and all public bars and entertainment venues were to close. Grocery stores would reopen once they had pulled their meat products. Non-food stores would remain open, but were limited to a maximum occupancy of one customer per ten square feet of floor space at a time, and were subject to an 8 PM curfew. People were urged to remain indoors, but permitted to leave the house on foot for certain activities such as exercise, although the use of public fitness equipment was banned to slow the spread of the ‘virus’ in case it could live on surfaces and become transmitted through contact.
All of this was to be effective until midnight of December 31, 2021.
“It’s gonna be okay, dude,” said Auralee as she came up behind the couch, where Damian sat miserably watching the news while Christyn was at work. “I’ll pay your salary out of pocket. Zeke and Beans, too, and Girard.”
“I’d feel bad about taking your charity,” he said. “I have some savings now. It’ll be a while before I have to depend on Chrissy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have more money than I’ll use in a lifetime. It wouldn’t be fair of me not to take care of my faithful staff. Now, what do you want for lunch? Restaurants in Fort Bend are still fully operational.”
He was getting kind of hungry. “Chicken alfredo?” he ventured. “Side Caesar salad? And breadsticks! The biggest order of breadsticks you can get!”
“Sounds like a plan.” She ordered it all from her phone, plus fried mozzarella for herself and chicken parmesan for Alex, and once Alex dragged himself out of bed, they all ate in front of the TV, turning off the news in favor of cartoons.
***
Damian would have thought some time off of work would get him over his latest plateau, but even without the hard labor under Sabine’s supervision, even though Christyn went all out with preparations for Thanksgiving, even though he missed no opportunity to stuff himself until he felt high, his weight was firmly settled at the moment at 202. Maybe it was because a lack of work left him full of manic energy that made him neurotic.
So he cleaned the house, obsessively, three times. Then he rearranged all the bedroom furniture, including the broken bedframe, so he and Christyn would have a better view out the window if she felt like watching the sunrise (he liked it, she only liked it sometimes, so he left it up to her whether the shutters were open). Then he walked to the store a mile or so up the road and dipped into his savings to buy a bunch of cans of spraypaint and started painting a mural on the driveway.
He kept an eye on his blog, but mostly to keep up with anyone he was following. He didn’t post, since he had nothing new to report. As December began, he noticed one day that Sabine was online. Bored out of his mind, he decided to shoot her a quick message.
SpaceCityFeedee2001: sup
Mistress-B: shelter in place gmfu
SpaceCityFeedee2001: sux, wanna come over n smoke some weed
Mistress-B: they’re reserving the right to stop and question all incoming and outgoing traffic and I don’t have a letter from an employer marking me as an essential employee
SpaceCityFeedee: I got u covered
He knew Christyn had a letter like that from the temping company, so she could go in and out of Harris County to work shifts as a dining room server at one of the retirement homes the company serviced. He texted her and got her to forward it to Sabine, and twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door.
“Damn, you drive fast,” he said as he let her in. “I ain’t even got a chance to call the weed guy yet!”
He called the weed guy that Auralee had used the first time she smoked him out. Of course, he took forever, and charged extra for delivery, but with Christyn gone at work and Auralee and Alex out with the band, it was nice to have something to do, along with someone to do it with.
Only...he’d have sworn it was Sabine’s first time smoking weed. Actually, it probably was. She didn’t know how to roll, and he had to teach her how to hit it, too.
A few hits later, he was feeling pretty good, if a little desperate to get some food down. “Hey Beans, I’m gonna make us something to eat. You got any preferences?”
She was spaced out on the couch, staring straight at the TV, speechless.
“Alright, well, I’ll be right back,” he said, and made for the kitchen.
He found some leftover fettuccini Alfredo in the fridge and decided to slap it into a large tortilla and roll it up into a burrito. It still seemed to be missing something, though.
He didn’t spend much time deliberating about it, just did what came to him in the moment. First, he coated the outside of the tortilla in flour, then brushed it with probably half of a beaten egg, and finally covered the whole thing with some breadcrumbs he found in the pantry before throwing it in the oven at 375 degrees. It would probably take about ten minutes for the outer crust to cook. While he waited, he helped himself to a bag of chips that sat half-full on the counter. They were Christyn’s, but he was sure she wouldn’t mind.
Auralee turned off the TV behind the bar. “Alright, you all heard the mayor. Let’s turn everything off and shut everything down, you can all go home for the day and anyone in the lanes who wants food can just get it somewhere else while I figure this all out.”
Virtue strode into the bar area, alarmed. “Auralee, what’s the meaning of this? Operations don’t have to shut down for another six hours!”
“Why, Mother, I would have thought you of all people would want to slow the spread of reverse tapeworm,” said Auralee, pointing at the blank TV screen. “You heard the list of symptoms. Besides, I want a drink before the bars all close.”
Damian helped her finish capping all the liquor bottles and putting them in the cabinet for the night. This didn’t feel real. Then again, he should have seen it coming. Over a month ago, Christyn had been telling him about a new disease spreading in the city. Now it was confirmed to be foodborne…
As they walked to the car, he tried to think of everywhere he’d eaten in the last few weeks. Christyn rarely cooked with meat, seeing as she didn’t eat it...but lately she’d been plating a meat dish for the guys once in a while, usually chicken but once or twice she’d done pork…
As if picking up on what he was thinking, Auralee said, “Relax. You don’t have it.”
“How do you know?”
She popped his car door open for him and asked, “Were you even listening to the list of symptoms? Acute psychosis. A sudden onset of prolonged insomnia. You don’t have either of those. The third symptom is rapid weight gain, which you’re usually doing anyway, but you seem to have hit another plateau. And the number one reason I know you don’t have reverse tapeworm is that I didn’t give it to you.”
Auralee was even more of a maniac on the road than usual, cutting people off, liberally giving the finger, and running over potholes with a new aggression in search of a bar that was open, but it looked like many establishments had had the same idea she had and decided to close early. “Don’t tell me we’re gonna have to wait until we’re back in Fort Bend County,” she growled.
“So you know where this thing came from, then?” he asked, since she seemed to know not only what the disease entailed, but how it was contracted.
“The secret to the method I use with my special clients was a hard-won one. I actually had to pay $10,000 to obtain it from a colleague of my brother’s. As such, I charge $30,000 for these demented feeders to opt into the program. As transparent as I am about my techniques, I’m sure some of them are applying the knowledge at home, or else turning around and reselling my knowledge for more money. It keeps me from getting swamped with too much work. As lucrative as it is, I know what a toll it can take on my staff. It also keeps the city saturated with disappearances that turn up no corpses. As powerful as my father remains, he can’t protect me from everything. If I ever do come under suspicion, it’s a comfort to know that I won’t be the only suspect. But I warn my clients not to go too hard with the treatment on their own time.” She lit up a cigarette, took a deep pull, and ashed out the window. “It’s entirely possible to come down with a fatal case of insomnia.”
***
Auralee said Damian wouldn’t be out of work for long. A week, tops. In the morning, they would go into the bar and toss all the meat products that would spoil before the madness was over. Then, they’d get a signed statement of compliance from the mayor and reopen running a strictly vegetarian menu.
Auralee was wrong.
The morning after the initial announcement, the mayor came back on TV to issue a shelter-in-place order for the county. All jobs that could be done remotely were to have employees work from home, and all public bars and entertainment venues were to close. Grocery stores would reopen once they had pulled their meat products. Non-food stores would remain open, but were limited to a maximum occupancy of one customer per ten square feet of floor space at a time, and were subject to an 8 PM curfew. People were urged to remain indoors, but permitted to leave the house on foot for certain activities such as exercise, although the use of public fitness equipment was banned to slow the spread of the ‘virus’ in case it could live on surfaces and become transmitted through contact.
All of this was to be effective until midnight of December 31, 2021.
“It’s gonna be okay, dude,” said Auralee as she came up behind the couch, where Damian sat miserably watching the news while Christyn was at work. “I’ll pay your salary out of pocket. Zeke and Beans, too, and Girard.”
“I’d feel bad about taking your charity,” he said. “I have some savings now. It’ll be a while before I have to depend on Chrissy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have more money than I’ll use in a lifetime. It wouldn’t be fair of me not to take care of my faithful staff. Now, what do you want for lunch? Restaurants in Fort Bend are still fully operational.”
He was getting kind of hungry. “Chicken alfredo?” he ventured. “Side Caesar salad? And breadsticks! The biggest order of breadsticks you can get!”
“Sounds like a plan.” She ordered it all from her phone, plus fried mozzarella for herself and chicken parmesan for Alex, and once Alex dragged himself out of bed, they all ate in front of the TV, turning off the news in favor of cartoons.
***
Damian would have thought some time off of work would get him over his latest plateau, but even without the hard labor under Sabine’s supervision, even though Christyn went all out with preparations for Thanksgiving, even though he missed no opportunity to stuff himself until he felt high, his weight was firmly settled at the moment at 202. Maybe it was because a lack of work left him full of manic energy that made him neurotic.
So he cleaned the house, obsessively, three times. Then he rearranged all the bedroom furniture, including the broken bedframe, so he and Christyn would have a better view out the window if she felt like watching the sunrise (he liked it, she only liked it sometimes, so he left it up to her whether the shutters were open). Then he walked to the store a mile or so up the road and dipped into his savings to buy a bunch of cans of spraypaint and started painting a mural on the driveway.
He kept an eye on his blog, but mostly to keep up with anyone he was following. He didn’t post, since he had nothing new to report. As December began, he noticed one day that Sabine was online. Bored out of his mind, he decided to shoot her a quick message.
SpaceCityFeedee2001: sup
Mistress-B: shelter in place gmfu
SpaceCityFeedee2001: sux, wanna come over n smoke some weed
Mistress-B: they’re reserving the right to stop and question all incoming and outgoing traffic and I don’t have a letter from an employer marking me as an essential employee
SpaceCityFeedee: I got u covered
He knew Christyn had a letter like that from the temping company, so she could go in and out of Harris County to work shifts as a dining room server at one of the retirement homes the company serviced. He texted her and got her to forward it to Sabine, and twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door.
“Damn, you drive fast,” he said as he let her in. “I ain’t even got a chance to call the weed guy yet!”
He called the weed guy that Auralee had used the first time she smoked him out. Of course, he took forever, and charged extra for delivery, but with Christyn gone at work and Auralee and Alex out with the band, it was nice to have something to do, along with someone to do it with.
Only...he’d have sworn it was Sabine’s first time smoking weed. Actually, it probably was. She didn’t know how to roll, and he had to teach her how to hit it, too.
A few hits later, he was feeling pretty good, if a little desperate to get some food down. “Hey Beans, I’m gonna make us something to eat. You got any preferences?”
She was spaced out on the couch, staring straight at the TV, speechless.
“Alright, well, I’ll be right back,” he said, and made for the kitchen.
He found some leftover fettuccini Alfredo in the fridge and decided to slap it into a large tortilla and roll it up into a burrito. It still seemed to be missing something, though.
He didn’t spend much time deliberating about it, just did what came to him in the moment. First, he coated the outside of the tortilla in flour, then brushed it with probably half of a beaten egg, and finally covered the whole thing with some breadcrumbs he found in the pantry before throwing it in the oven at 375 degrees. It would probably take about ten minutes for the outer crust to cook. While he waited, he helped himself to a bag of chips that sat half-full on the counter. They were Christyn’s, but he was sure she wouldn’t mind.