Cupidol the Wonder Drug
by Paddy Shannon
It worked like they said. It was instant. As her withered lips parted round a toothless grimace I stood dissolved in light. Her greasy hair flaked snowstorms of loveliness as I clasped her scrawny yellow neck in my hands and pressed her limp, tea-bag breasts hungrily against my heart. It was love alright, at twenty credits a pill, guaranteed eighty hours, the best pharma-coitical ever produced. And at that rate, we told each other, we could be happy forever and avoid the draft.
For, young or old, only singles went to fight. Society in its humane wisdom thought it easier that way. Loving couples should be exempt, people thought, so long as there was a test for love. And with the hypothalamus MRI multiscan, you couldn’t fake the test.
But they reckoned without Cupidol, and it brought me and Deirdre together. I answered her ad, we took the pill, and ascended to heaven, all within ten minutes. Her brainless chat, my baboon laugh, it was all poetry. My fascistic, drink-fuelled ramblings were symphonies to her, my rancid farts wild roses in honey. She picked her nose with the flair and artistry of Leonardo. Oh love, oh careless love, the best there ever was.
But then came the side-effects. I didn’t expect the jealousy to be so intense. When I murdered her best friend it was a simple misunderstanding. As she nailed my limbs to the bed and started to embalm me through the large colon, she kept hissing in my ear, with that adorably bad breath, that she would have me forever and that love would never die. With my teeth in her jugular, I swore to our immortality.
Cupidol killed more people than the war. Love conquers all.
Paddy Shannon lives in Lancaster and has spent a lifetime developing the attributes of a real writer, which is to say: broke, antisocial and unemployable. He has recently finished an MA in creative writing.
by Paddy Shannon
It worked like they said. It was instant. As her withered lips parted round a toothless grimace I stood dissolved in light. Her greasy hair flaked snowstorms of loveliness as I clasped her scrawny yellow neck in my hands and pressed her limp, tea-bag breasts hungrily against my heart. It was love alright, at twenty credits a pill, guaranteed eighty hours, the best pharma-coitical ever produced. And at that rate, we told each other, we could be happy forever and avoid the draft.
For, young or old, only singles went to fight. Society in its humane wisdom thought it easier that way. Loving couples should be exempt, people thought, so long as there was a test for love. And with the hypothalamus MRI multiscan, you couldn’t fake the test.
But they reckoned without Cupidol, and it brought me and Deirdre together. I answered her ad, we took the pill, and ascended to heaven, all within ten minutes. Her brainless chat, my baboon laugh, it was all poetry. My fascistic, drink-fuelled ramblings were symphonies to her, my rancid farts wild roses in honey. She picked her nose with the flair and artistry of Leonardo. Oh love, oh careless love, the best there ever was.
But then came the side-effects. I didn’t expect the jealousy to be so intense. When I murdered her best friend it was a simple misunderstanding. As she nailed my limbs to the bed and started to embalm me through the large colon, she kept hissing in my ear, with that adorably bad breath, that she would have me forever and that love would never die. With my teeth in her jugular, I swore to our immortality.
Cupidol killed more people than the war. Love conquers all.
Paddy Shannon lives in Lancaster and has spent a lifetime developing the attributes of a real writer, which is to say: broke, antisocial and unemployable. He has recently finished an MA in creative writing.
Comments