The October Music - Day 17

I Want a New Drug
Revolutionary. Life-changing. A modern-day miracle. When Zenilif came on the market, it was mostly ignored at first. Yet another weird name for another obscure pill designed to lower blood pressure or reduce the side effects of sodium or something like that? Who cared? It was just another lab-grown combination of chemicals in a market full of snake oil, so even the effectiveness went largely under the radar. People took it and it worked and the world went on without noticing.

It was the first death of someone taking the drug that made people sit up and pay attention. Rather, it was when she was dead and then, somehow, wasn’t dead.

Doctors and scientists were stunned. A person doesn’t just recover from a fatal stroke. It doesn’t happen. And yet, when nurses went into her room to move her to the morgue, she was sitting up and looking around the room. Even more shocking, she was speaking normally and asking questions. This was particularly surprising as the stroke that had killed her had not been her first. She had been unable to speak for about seven months at the point of her death, so she had not just come back to life, but had come back and was thriving.

The second death, a man in Indiana, was the one that set the world ablaze with interest. He had been deathly ill for several weeks and started taking Zenilif because he figured that being a guinea pig in his last days would serve the world. When he passed, his family was around him and wept as he breathed his last. It was only a couple minutes later when he gasped, sat up, and said hello.

The media went wild over Zenilif. The drug was lauded as the cure for death and demand skyrocketed. Everyone wanted to stave off the cold embrace of the grave. Production went into overdrive to meet the needs of the masses howling for their salvation. The company’s stock soared and everyone was happy. Everyone’s life was improved by the existence of Zenilif.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, was the lack of interest paid when the first resurrection started to experience issues. Nothing glaring at first. While walking around her house, she felt a presence behind her. That feeling soon escalated, however, into feeling hot and dizzy. She began to grow paranoid and experience phantom pain in the back of her head. Doctors were, again, confused because they had nothing to base her experiences on. When she started screaming about seeing him behind every person, confusion morphed quickly into concern and then fear when the Indiana Miracle Man, as he had been dubbed, swore that something was lurking right over the shoulder of everyone around him. His head bursting into flames shifted the fear into outright panicking terror.

The makers of Zenilif were confused. They had never intended this to happen. Still, they did not understand a universal truth.
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When you bring someone back from the dead, they don’t return alone.