In the future, they developed a cure for alcoholism. The cure was a serum injected in your body if you chose, but irreversible. And there was a small percentage of people where it didn’t take and the next time they drank, they died.

The man who developed the cure was smug and unlikeable indeed. The cure made him a lot of money though there were threats on his life from those who’d lost a lot, as a result.

One day, the man (who was very unhappy, and lived alone in a large estate in the countryside) returned home for his afternoon drink, and retired to his study. There, in the shadows behind his recliner, just outside the halo of the reading lamp, from the folds of the books there emerged a figure with no face who bent into the man’s ear without a word and breathed there.

The man who developed the cure forgot how to make it. Of course it was documented and well cared for in the lab but mysteriously, it disappeared—and once the serum was gone it no longer could be produced, and no one said much of anything, and it all went back to the way it used to be, and the shadowy figured returned to vapor, and everyone allowed a good time again, to extend that time for however long they were able or couldn’t quite control, to pass it down through their gene pool, this odd power to forget, a gift from the gods with a consequence for some, a curse.

Categories: musings

Tags: addiction, alcohol prose, alcoholism, flash fiction, Harry Potter studios London, William Pearse writer