Mood Enhancer...

She stared at the bottles of pills all lined up neatly in a tidy row. She reached for one and then hesitated. Did she really want to do this? Random drug testing had been increased at work. It seemed as though every day at least 3 or 4 people were pulled out to give a sample.

Mornings were her favorite and least favorite time of the day. She was clear headed. Her life felt like it used to. Before the pills took over. Before her every mood was dictated by the tablet in her mouth.

She could remember telling jokes with her husband. Laughing until her face hurt. Not because she was high and couldn't help it but because what he had just said was so funny she had laughed. Really laughed.

She remembered laying next to him in bed. Relaxed. Her head on his chest. Listening to the steady thump of his heart beat. Feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. Contentment. That's what that feeling was. Contentment. She didn't think there was a pill that could make her feel like that.

She remembered what it used to be like. She craved those days. When good days were good days because good things happened. Because she really honestly felt good. And when there were bad days too. Days where things didn't go right and she felt shitty about them. Angry. Mad. Sad. She craved all of them. Anything was better than the flat.

The flat was how she spent most days. Nothing great. Nothing bad. Mehnday. Every day was Mehnday. She remembered when that would have made her laugh. Now it was closer to making her want to cry. But only for a few more minutes.

She looked at the row of bottles. Each labeled for their day and use. Work pills. Sleeping pills. Weekend pills. Vacation pills. Life of the Party pills. She had something for everything. But they were mostly the same. Vacation felt as flat as work. Sleep was just a dark void, no dreams to rescue her. The weekend just a mark of time held over from before. The Life of the Party pills forced gaiety, but it was manic more than fun, required happiness for situations where she was expected to smile. But in the mornings she remembered emotions without bottles. It was the best and worst time of the day.

She sometimes thought she should be doing something with those memories. Writing them down maybe. Sharing them. Making sure they weren't forgotten. But the she remembered. She remembered the day her husband disappeared. He was there, then he was gone. Her son was alive. He was someplace else. But he was alive, she knew that. Her husband was not, she was made aware of that also. And so she did not write down her memories. She did not send them out in to the world to remind others. She just waited for them to fade in to the flat. She was a coward. She knew that. But she had already paid too large of a price. Had paid with something that shouldn't have been hers to use.

She poured a glass of water. Ready to start her Mehnday. To go to work.

The water. They had started out drugging the water. But nobody believed the crackpots and the crazies who told them. Why would they? Those who drugged them physically had been drugging them mentally for years. Seeding conversations with those that were anti-fluoride, or anti-vaxxers. Spouting ridiculous claims like polio could be prevented with vitamin C. Or fluoride made you impotent. We learned to ignore them. To shut down any conversation they were in. Not knowing they had been plants all along and that had been their purpose. To teach us to shut them down. So when the drugs did start, when the complacency medications began to course through the veins of their children and people noticed they were there and began asking questions then the others would begin attaching their anti-vaxxer message to the actual fear of what was happening. Drowning out the signal with their noise.

And so we didn't listen. We didn't pay attention.

And then the planes came. And they flew over head seeding the clouds. And we remembered the ridiculous and false claims of the chemtrail people and paid no attention. The Office of Misinformation had done their job and now we all paid the price. The Illuminati was ridiculous so we paid no attention to the World Powers. Why would we? We were too smart, had seen too many things easily debunked. No conspiracy theories for us.

The water was bad. The rain was bad. The air we breathed was bad. All filled with chemicals. But we didn't know. We thought something was wrong with us. We went to the doctor, "I just don't feel like myself lately." We were given a pill to make it better. And it did. And we were happy. But then we couldn't make it better by ourselves. We lost the ability. We had to have the pills. And we paid no attention to the crackpots and the crazies who said it was THEIR plan all along!

She shook her head. We all believed. Until some of us didn't. Some of us tried to make sense of what was happening. To resist the pills and the flat. But they got to us anyway. They found ways to make you understand your role in this new world order. And if you didn't understand you lost. Your home. Your job. Your family. Your life. She had lost, but not everything, so she learned.

Mornings were the best and the worst part of the day.

She swallowed her work pill. She could not get caught popping negative in a random drug test. Her son was still alive.