Sanity
Fiction
Patrick Harris
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Creative Writing
It's funny, in that sad sort of way, but we didn't really start to go insane until after society had collapsed.
You'd think it would be the other way around-that insanity would be necessary for a civilization to implode. But I think it was all that sanity that did us in-sanity in the water, handed out in the school nurse's office, colorful blobs in little paper cups. The kind of sanity that comes with a price, although we didn't realize it until far too late.
I've always been the jumpy type, prone to paranoia. When the lights went out, I was one of the first out the door, and I was smart-I went straight to the nearest pharmacy, and I cleaned it out. Then the next nearest, and the next-and then I was running for my life, because I wasn't the only one with that idea.
It wasn't hard to find a nice secure place to hole up, sorting through my bags of goodies like a kid in a candy shop. Painkillers here, stimulants there, life-saving maintenance medication and all-important sanity set aside special. I hid my own brand of sanity as well as I could, those circular white pills rattling in their over-large foil-sealed bottles, and the ugly pink tabs of the generic in their bags. It seemed like a lifetime of sanity, then.
I lived like a king for years. Thyroid patients, migraine sufferers, even the folks with really bad hay fever, they all needed me. And everyone needed sanity, as long as it wasn't mine. It felt strange to turn my own kind away, to watch their panic, while I could help others, but I was drunk with power and didn't stop to care. I had all the food I could eat, weapons to defend my stockpile, and every woman I wanted in every way I could imagine. Anything I desired was mine.
We lost the terminal ones first, of course, but that happened so quick it didn't feel separated from the cataclysm. The diabetics went fairly quickly after, as insulin spoiled due to improper storage and clean needles became impossible to come by. Then all the others who couldn't live without their medications began to drop, but by then the world was burning all over again.
The withdrawal symptoms hit everyone who didn't partake of the communion my kind offered. Some people were too stupid to maintain their sanity, or didn't even know they'd been getting it in their water, in their food. Some had nothing to trade, or couldn't swallow enough of their pride to give me what I asked for, and paid for it with their minds. Neurochemistry went haywire, neurons sizzling almost audibly. We learned that things can always get worse, no matter the starting point.
It's getting dark-the last of my lamp oil is almost gone. I've had nothing to trade for some time now, my stockpiles emptied. I have one pill left, my last piece of sanity. The future holds only darkness.
You'd think it would be the other way around-that insanity would be necessary for a civilization to implode. But I think it was all that sanity that did us in-sanity in the water, handed out in the school nurse's office, colorful blobs in little paper cups. The kind of sanity that comes with a price, although we didn't realize it until far too late.
I've always been the jumpy type, prone to paranoia. When the lights went out, I was one of the first out the door, and I was smart-I went straight to the nearest pharmacy, and I cleaned it out. Then the next nearest, and the next-and then I was running for my life, because I wasn't the only one with that idea.
It wasn't hard to find a nice secure place to hole up, sorting through my bags of goodies like a kid in a candy shop. Painkillers here, stimulants there, life-saving maintenance medication and all-important sanity set aside special. I hid my own brand of sanity as well as I could, those circular white pills rattling in their over-large foil-sealed bottles, and the ugly pink tabs of the generic in their bags. It seemed like a lifetime of sanity, then.
I lived like a king for years. Thyroid patients, migraine sufferers, even the folks with really bad hay fever, they all needed me. And everyone needed sanity, as long as it wasn't mine. It felt strange to turn my own kind away, to watch their panic, while I could help others, but I was drunk with power and didn't stop to care. I had all the food I could eat, weapons to defend my stockpile, and every woman I wanted in every way I could imagine. Anything I desired was mine.
We lost the terminal ones first, of course, but that happened so quick it didn't feel separated from the cataclysm. The diabetics went fairly quickly after, as insulin spoiled due to improper storage and clean needles became impossible to come by. Then all the others who couldn't live without their medications began to drop, but by then the world was burning all over again.
The withdrawal symptoms hit everyone who didn't partake of the communion my kind offered. Some people were too stupid to maintain their sanity, or didn't even know they'd been getting it in their water, in their food. Some had nothing to trade, or couldn't swallow enough of their pride to give me what I asked for, and paid for it with their minds. Neurochemistry went haywire, neurons sizzling almost audibly. We learned that things can always get worse, no matter the starting point.
It's getting dark-the last of my lamp oil is almost gone. I've had nothing to trade for some time now, my stockpiles emptied. I have one pill left, my last piece of sanity. The future holds only darkness.
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