Miasma

Sidney Grady

t“It was worse for the poor. They stayed in their homes, and being without help of any kind, could not hope to escape death. They died at all hours in the streets; those who died at home were not missed by their neighbors, until they noticed the stench of their putrefying bodies. The whole city was a sepulchre.”

TGiovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron he dead of winter gives way to lively spring. This is the way it has always been. This year, we track less mud on the sidewalks. Lights off in the office, in the classroom; doors locked at the mall, but we need to eat. We warily eye the woman next to us in the pasta aisle, stifle a cough. Empty aisles, empty shelves. It’s quiet, even here, and we do not linger long. The guy at point-of-sale will touch our canned beans and hand soap just after us — because he must — and we will imagine someone tossing him a fiver and some pocket change for his service. Anyone with a bit of luck on their side would stay home and labor through a screen in their shoebox apartments and answer another email and watch Oscar nominees sing at them in solidarity from the unused display offices in their ugly McMansions and maybe feel the claws of something rage-hot and rotting and ancient threatening to climb up out of their throats and their skin and their eyes and eat the bastards whole and answer another email and maybe take their lunch outside today, if the weather is kind. “The unfortunate husbandmen and their families, bereft of doctors’ or servants’ care, died day and night, not as men, but rather as beasts.” Disease does not discriminate — I know, I know — but the crowd of scientists shouting, “We don’t know! We don’t know why the poor are dying in higher numbers! We don’t know!” has got me thinking. The Red Death — like a thief in the night — crashed Prince Prospero’s party eventually. The ebony clock tick tick ticks for all, and so on. I know, I know, but Poe failed to consider the science of the glorious future — there is always a pill or a potion, if you can pay. “They walked around carrying flowers or fragrant herbs, which they held to their noses,thinking that it would provide some comfort against the air which reeked with the stench of the dead and dying.” A strange new holy-day ritual. Unemployment must open on Sunday for a

reason. tAre you working? How many hours? How much do you have? How much do you need? How many hours can you work? Why aren’t you working more? Are

tyou looking? Why aren’t you working more? Are you sure? Why aren’t you working more? Are you sure? Are you sure? Confess. Repent. Buy dinner (not dessert). No cake on the government’s dime. Eat and rot alone. “Citizen avoided citizen, neighbors lost all feeling for each other.” EAT THE RICH has never been literal, but I imagine it anyway. Imagine steak knife sawing and fork stabbing. Imagine blood-soaked and filthy and laughing and the house is on fire and you’ve broken all their shit. Imagine the taste of meat. Now eat. “After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.”1 Medieval plague doctors stuffed their beaks with flowers and herbs — the scent would protect them from miasma, or the bad air that carried disease (almost had it). Imagine a murder of black-cloaked bird-monsters descending on your village. Imagine dying under their faceless gaze. Imagine watching them flitter and float uphill to your lord’s castle, to his pleasance. Did it thrill them? The peasants? Did they snicker in joy, thinking of their lord writhing and bleeding and swollen and shitting himself to death? His blood turning black? When the churchbell tolled, were they hungry for his flesh, poisoned and rotting, filthying his bed, his silks and furs? They were already dying anyway. Imagine if someone had taught them to write. “What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing.”2 It’s true. That’s why the guy ringing up my groceries was even there, why no noxious black cloud ever stopped the shelves from being stocked or the packages from being delivered. The miasma is invisible, untouchable. Not there until it is, until it clogs your throat and lungs and suffocates you in your own burning. And, hey, maybe it won’t. We’ve all played the lottery before; we know how these things work. But the hunger: we all need to eat. “They only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog.”3 Obedient to the hunger, yes. Even the dogs will eventually figure out who starves them.

1 Kim Kardashian West, Twitter, October 2020. Happy 40th. 2 Laura Ingraham, Fox News, August 2021 3 Jon Taffer, who received approximately $60,000 dollars in “Paycheck” byline “Protection” “Loans” from the government for his “small business”. I guess he was hungry. Fox News, August 2021. 97 t