“Can I see your vaccination card?”
It was my third dose. The booster. I fished the card from my busted up wallet. The card was crumpled and bent.
“Keeping good care of it, I see,” the middle-aged Asian man said, real condescending like. I chuckled politely, like I thought it was a joke. But he did not laugh along with me, and in his tone I detected judgment. After that things were strangely quiet.
I felt like a piece of shit. Granted, I admit that I am sloppy, and my wallet is almost thirty years old. I don’t even remember how I got it, or where it came from. To me it has just always been there. And I refuse to part from it. I can’t. I shan’t. And I’ll hear no more on the subject.
The man readied the needle. I watched him closely, looking for the slightest mistake or inefficiency, so that I could belittle him. “So that’s how you’re gonna hold it?” I asked him, smirking.
“What?” he snapped. “You gotta problem with the way I hold a needle?”
“Maybe I do,” I said, and then I thought of something really clever to say: “Maybe you’re just a piece of shit.”
His face turned sour and his lips trembled with rage. “You know what? I don’t need this today! Our whole staff is out sick with this thing, we’re backed up for hours, and you’re gonna give me shit about my weird fingers?”
“I never mentioned your weird fingers,” I said. “But maybe I should have.” At that, the man and his weird fingers stood up and stormed out of the Walgreen’s, a short woman behind the pharmacy counter pleading with him to please come back. The store was indeed filled up with maybe ten others waiting for their sweet vaccines, with more coming in all the time.
Dear God, I thought. What have I done?
These people needed their vaccines!
A NEW KIND OF HERO
I raised my hand and said to the pharmacist in a brave and booming voice, “Never fear, madam.” I snatched up the needle in one hand and injected myself in the side of the neck, never breaking eye contact. Then I shouted, “Next!” every patient in the waiting room struck dumb by my power.
“Wait!” the pharmacist said. “You don’t even work here!”
But we both saw the line growing in front of her register, every other face unmasked and coughing on the person in front of them. The pharmacist had no choice but to accept my assistance. She said, very sweaty, “I don’t think this is legal.”
And I said, “I’ll make it legal.” I grabbed an old man by his bicep and ushered him into the booth.
“Wait,” he said oldly. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I know what you’re doing,” I told him. “You’re getting a fucking vaccine.” I could tell by his expression he wasn’t a fan of my particular brand of bedside manner, so I quickly patted him on the ass to reassure him. His diaper made a crinkly sound. I shoved him into the hard plastic chair. “Now roll up your sleeve and let’s do this.”
Trembling, near to tears, the old man obliged. What choice did he have? There was a deadly virus all around him and it wanted him dead. The withered fellow said, “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Shut up,” I said. “We’re very busy.” I jabbed him good. He started to cry. “Oh, please,” I said. “You should have seen the last guy. He was a real asshole.” I jabbed him with the needle again. Fucker went right through his arm like paper.
“Ouch!” the old man hollered.
“Keep your voice down, goddamn you. The others might hear you. It’s hard enough getting them through the doors in the first place with all of this damned misinformation about.” I stuck him again. He cried out in pain and I nearly belted him one. Heroically I maintained my composure. Do no harm, as we say in the trade. “I just need to find a vein.”
“I don’t want a shot anymore,” the old man said, panting. “I just want to lie down.”
I felt for him then, seeing how tired and pathetic he was. I resisted the urge to run my hand through his thinning silver hair, let him know that everything was going to be all right. Because it probably wasn’t. I guessed this sucker for about ninety years young, one foot in the grave already. If he wasn’t dead within a week I’d eat my shirt. Probably didn’t have much family left either, or someone would have driven him here. There was nobody to mourn him. I’d probably have to go to the funeral out of guilt, or maybe I could convince his lawyer that I’m the man’s long lost son or nephew, see if I can scam myself a slice of his sweet old man cash…
At some point, based on the expression on the old man’s face, I realized that I was saying all of this out loud. He tried to scramble to his feet and run away from me, but I couldn’t let him out of the booth in his current state. We had maybe twelve people in the waiting area by now and he could have scared them out of their vaccines. I had to think of the greater good, of society. So I grabbed the codger by the belt and whipped him backward over the chair. His old floppy body was much lighter than I’d anticipated and he tumbled right over the table and smacked against the wall. He slid down onto his head and got stuck there, his withered legs twitching bug-like in the air above him.
Fortunately the old man’s body was so light that no one outside had heard a thing. “Jesus!” I hissed. “You almost blew the whole scheme!” I opened the booth curtain and poked my head out. “All right, who’s next?”
ONE HOT PIECE OF ASS
A spiffy thirty-something pretty boy with a great haircut and better jawline stepped forward. He wore a leather jacket and nice pants. Even his shoes were cool. I hated him more than I could breathe. “I bet you drive a fuckin’ Benz,” I said to him.
“I drive a Honda Civic,” the man said.
“Bullshit. Well, get your hot ass in here.”
“Wait, what happened to that old man?” he said.
“What old man?” I said. “Who?”
The little sexpot pitched his voice louder. “Sir, we all saw an elderly man go in there with you a minute ago, and no one saw him leave. And as far as I know, there are no other exits in that booth. So just where exactly did that old man go?” The others nodded in agreement from their plastic chairs. Soon everyone in line at the counter had taken notice, and the pharmacist leaned out her head to get a better look at me.
This guy had me by the balls. Everyone was waiting for my answer. I cleared my throat, then said with some authority: “Of course he’s still back here. You didn’t let me finish.”
“Is he going to come out?”
“What?” I said. “What the hell do you mean?” For some reason his question made me all hot and sweaty. I didn’t understand it at the time, and still refuse to. I wiped my brow. “The old man is fine. Come in and get your shot.”
As he passed by me on his way into the booth I whispered into his ear, “Pretty boy.”
He sat down in the chair, like a good little doggy. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. “Probably going to have to take off your cool leather jacket, huh? And roll up your sleeve?” I filled the syringe.
The man was obliging, if a little confused. Sometimes we all get a little confused. I advanced on him with the needle.
“Oh, my God!” he said. “Is that a dead old man?”
I tried to play it cool. “What old man?”
“That dead man in the corner!” he said, pointing.
I turned around to see. “Oh, him,” I said. “Yeah. But I want you to know it wasn’t the vaccine. I knocked him down.”
“Jesus Christ!” the sexpot said. “I’m calling the police!”
I slapped the cell phone from his hand. “You idiot! You do that now and they’ll shut this place down for the rest of the night! Do you want all those people out there to go home? Unvaccinated? Like little unvaccinated pigs?”
“Well, God, no,” the man said. “Not when you put it that way. But after this place closes tonight I’m going to make a phone call.”
“Fucking do it,” I said, almost daring him. “I’ll be halfway to Mexico.”
“Just give me the shot,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll give you the shot.” I didn’t even care anymore. He rubbed his arm and asked for a Band-Aid. I told him to get fucked.
UNGRATEFUL BITCHES
Next followed a harried-looking mother and her young daughter, both dark of hair and wrapped up in their winter coats. They sat down together. “Now I don’t want to hear anymore shit about the corpse,” I told them. “I’m just going to give you your shots. Is that clear?”
“What corpse?” the mother said.
“Never mind,” I said. I forgot I’d thrown a towel over him. “Pharmacy humor.”
“It smells bad in here,” the girl said.
“That’s just the corpse,” I said. But was it just the corpse? Had I forgotten to bathe that morning? Was I wearing deodorant? Suddenly I became very self-conscious, and began smelling my armpits to check. I really got in there, really inhaled. And although my pits weren’t exactly daisy fresh, they surely were not rotting. I smelled them a few more times just to be sure.
At some point the mother asked, “Are you going to get the shots ready?”
“What? Yeah. Okay, sure.” I turned around and prepared the medicine. Then I had an idea for a really funny joke. Brandishing a syringe in each hand like a knife I spun around real fast and screamed at the top of my lungs: “YOU’RE BOTH GONNA DIE NOW!”
The mother instantly burst into tears. The daughter just sat there, frozen, her eyes white with shock. Surely her brain was being fucked up right then and there, and it was fascinating to study the process up close. But neither one of them had much of a sense of humor.
For some reason a sudden clamor was rising outside the booth. I heard voices, footsteps, all of them frantic. “Relax folks,” I called to them. “No one leaves here without a shot.”
“Are you hurting them?” someone asked. “Are you hurting those girls?”
“Please!” the mother cried out to them. “Help us!”
I could see things were running away from me. I decided to inject myself with another dose of that sweet vaccine in the hopes that it would generate an idea. And it did. All I had to do was resurrect the dead. I peeled open the curtain and faced the crowd. “Oh, calm down,” I told them. “I’m just excited about the vaccine.”
“Where’s the old man?” someone said.
“Why, he’s right here…” and three injections into the belly of the corpse later, the old man opened his yellow eyes. My elation at what I had achieved soon rolled away from me like a great cloud, leaving nothing but blackness in its wake, and all at once I saw the horror of what I had done.
I had created life.
Or maybe he was never really dead in the first place, I’m not sure. Either way, the crowd was sold and I injected the fuck out of them.
BRO, WTF?
Everyone was happy; everyone’s arms were sore as the life-saving fluid coursed through our veins.
But after a while something strange started to happen. The old man started to change. It happened in flickers at first, little butterfly twitches, moments so fast you couldn’t be sure you saw them. Then his flesh began to churn. It turned out three vaccinations at once were just too much for his old man bones.
His writhing form slumped over, and began to grow larger, shedding its limbs, shedding any genetic memory of what it once had been, until the thing that arose before us was like a great green serpent.
“The reptilians,” I muttered. “I should have known they were behind this.”
My God, I thought, staring up at the still-growing monstrosity. Is this what happens to all of us? Is this what will happen to me?
Am I also damned?
I asked the pharmacist for the flamethrower. She said Sharon took it. “Who’s Sharon?” I said.
“The other girl who works here. She’s at lunch.”
“Well, when is Sharon coming back?”
“She’s not. She quit.”
“Sharon went to lunch AND she quit?”
“Yeah.”
“And she has the flamethrower.”
“Yeah.”
It occurred to me then that I didn’t really work here, and that none of this was actually my problem. All that mattered now was finding lots of people with Covid-19 and rubbing them all over me. I figured I would need as much Covid as possible to combat this dirty lizard vaccine, before it was too late.
A short while later it was too late, and I turned into a dirty lizard. I suppose the lesson here is to always do your medical research on various social networking websites, and to read lots of memes. Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt to try making your own vaccines once in a while. You never know; you might just change the world.