Em Garner - Contaminated

The premise of the joke was that the ThinPro company had put something addictive in the water to keep people buying more and more. It was based on one of those urban myths that get passed along in email chains and posted on blogs. In the skit, the guest host gulped water from the bottles, spilling it down her face and over her body, while the others shouted “Chug! Chug! Chug!” until she started to twitch… and shake, and with a quick use of special effects makeup, she became a monster. In the skit she grew to Godzilla size and destroyed New York.

That might’ve been better than what really happened.

See, the diet did work, for whatever reason. And the product sold so well, they couldn’t keep up with the demand. Shelves were empty all over the place. People were getting into fistfights over it in convenience stores. The ThinPro manufacturers figured they’d better get some more, fast. The problem was, their suppliers couldn’t keep up, either. So they did whatever businesses do when they can’t get what they need to make the product that’s paying for their kids’ college educations and trips to the Bahamas. They found another supplier.

Only someone wasn’t doing their homework, because the ThinPro water was supposed to be all kosher, all vegan, no animal products at all. The protein was supposed to come from chemicals or something like that—the same thing that the comedy skit had hinted was causing people to go a little crazy. The same ingredients other special interest groups were claiming caused cancer. When the suppliers couldn’t make whatever it was the protein had come from before, they substituted what they’d later claim was a “healthier” option than the manufactured proteins some people were protesting.

They used animal protein instead. Ground-up bits of leftovers from slaughterhouses. Chicken, mostly. Some beef. Some turkey, too. Whatever they could get for the cheapest price possible. They mixed it all up in whatever vats they used and poured it into bottles, and they rushed it onto shelves to meet the demand.

They got away with it.

ThinPro sales soared even higher as warmer weather encouraged more people to drink water. Temperatures rose; supplies dropped. They made more. Who knows what they did to it this time? Used more scraps? A different slaughterhouse? I know only what the news reports and the Internet gossip say, and I haven’t had online access in a while to know if there’s anything new.

Whatever they did contaminated the water people were guzzling by the gallon. It had something to do with the protein—a while ago, there was a huge scare over in England about the mad cow disease people got after eating beef. The same thing happened with the water. They used contaminated chickens or turkeys or cows, and people drank it, and they got it. Only in humans, it was different from what it had been in animals.

In people, it made you into a crazy killer.

Not overnight, though it seemed like it. I noticed my dad losing his temper more often during that spring. He’d snap in ways he never had before. He’d forget he told us something and repeat it ten minutes later and get furious when we told him he’d already said it. He’d say one word when he meant another, and even though Opal and I both told him he’d said something else, he’d insist he was right. We were wrong.

He and Mom fought more, too. She hadn’t lost as much weight as he had. She claimed the ThinPro water tasted funny, and she was right. But she still drank it, because nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels. That was the slogan—not original—but really popular.

In elementary school, I had a friend whose parents both drank too much beer. They’d fight. Once her dad threw a chair through their TV. My parents didn’t drink booze, but they did get angrier after they’d had a few ThinPro waters.

Of course they weren’t alone. Factories all over the country were pumping out bottles of ThinPro, but apparently not all of them had switched the formula. Some people were getting the good old regular cancer-causing kind while others were drinking the crazy-making kind. It just depended on what shipment went where.

That’s why it didn’t happen all at the same time. Just a few cases, here and there. A few people going off the deep end, losing their marbles, going wackadoo, dropping their baskets. The stories made the news, but mostly only locally. At least until a movie star went nuts on the set of his latest film and someone recorded it. That little breakdown ended up circulating on every radio station and social networking site around. It even got set to a catchy dance beat that got played at all the proms that year with the curse words bleeped out. It was one long bunch of bleeps.

The first wave hit in mid-June, going on two years ago. A heat wave washed over the country. And finally, something broke. First one or two people, then more and more. They woke up and began their days, and somewhere along the way, something broke inside them, and they all just… lost it.

An “Epidemic of Rage” is what one headline called it, and “experts” speculated it was caused by the hottest spring on record for the past eighty years, along with what was shaping up to be an even hotter summer. Social media specialists said it was because we’d all become too accustomed to using the Internet, that manners were disappearing. Old people said it was young people who hadn’t been brought up right, and young people said it was because old people were too old. Maybe that was all part of it, but the real reason was that ThinPro water had eaten holes in people’s brains.

We call it the Contamination or the Hollywood virus, but the official name for it is Frank’s syndrome, after the doctor who finally figured out the source. Frank’s syndrome causes loss of impulse control and increased aggression. It mimics the effects of stroke as well as several kinds of drug use. So far as anyone knows, it can’t be cured or reversed, though it can be controlled. Basically, anyone who drank the contaminated water has the potential to get the disease, even now, months and months after they pulled the product off the market. People who drank more had a higher chance of getting it, but all it takes, really, is one bottle.

When it hit Lebanon, my parents had both gone to work. Opal and I were home alone. I was sleeping in to enjoy the first days of summer break. The house was quiet, until I heard the neighbors’ dogs barking. They barked a lot, but not like this. Not for so long or so loud. I got up, went downstairs. Opal was at the table eating cereal and reading a book.

I still thought nothing of it until the dogs, two of them from next door, ran up onto our back deck. Snapping and biting, they paced in front of the sliding glass doors, tails tucked between their legs. They were begging to get in—something they’d never done, even when they came over to crap in our yard. Our neighbors’ dogs were Rottweilers, by the way. Nice dogs, but not timid. They’d run off a meter reader or two before our neighbor got electric collars for them. It had never stopped them from running over here.

“What’s going on with Tooty and Frooty?” Opal asked me.

Before I could answer, Craig from next door stumbled onto the deck. He was wearing a bathing suit, which wasn’t that unusual since they’d put in a pool the year before, and it was hot out. The lack of balance wasn’t that surprising, either, since if he was out by the pool, he usually had a couple of beers, too. What did make both of us cry out and back up was the way he staggered into the glass door.

Full on, his head smacked the glass so hard, it broke into stars but didn’t shatter. Bright red blood showed up on his forehead and started streaming down his face. His mouth worked like he was shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything except the barking. The dogs circled his feet, dodging his kicks.