The Enoch Pill

by Matthew William

Kizzy nodded.

  “I guess I’ll make some calls to the other farms then, see if they’ve had that happen too.”

  Kizzy waved goodnight. Her mother waved back, the troubled look still on her face.

  When Kizzy got to her room she took off her jeans and flannel shirt and unstrapped the knife from around her ankle. She hung them all up on the closet door. As she was getting into bed the image of her mother sneaking into her room with an eardrum remover flashed before her eyes. She went back to the closet and grabbed the knife and placed it under her pillow. Finally she turned off the light and climbed into bed.

  She spent a long time just watching the door, hoping that it wouldn’t open, hoping she wouldn’t have to fight to keep her hearing. She felt guilty for causing her mother so much unhappiness. But the whole thing was being blown way out of proportion. The music wasn’t going to kill her. Laura listened to it and she was just fine. A terrible person maybe, but physically fine.

  She felt the anger towards Laura bubbling up in her stomach. Kizzy was proud of the fact that she had fooled her so easily, but she was still in the same situation as before. Being caught with the music was so dangerous, she felt stressed just knowing that the record player was still out in the barn.

  Kizzy exhaled. Was the music was even worth it? Shouldn’t she just give it up? It would make her life so much simpler. But how could she go back? The music made her feel like things were magic, like life was worth living. Those moments were so hard to find, and the music was like a switch that made them appear.

  Could life ever feel like that all the time? She had forever to find out.

  The thunderstorm continued as Kizzy listened to the pitter patter of the rain on the rooftop. That bizarre pain in her lower abdomen came back again. Hopefully it was nothing. She let out a deep sigh and stared out the window. A crack of lighting lit up the woods like a camera flash. Something was standing out there, at the edge of the forest, only thirty feet away. Kizzy gasped and pushed herself down to the floor. It was the creature from the ghost town. She was sure of it. A lump the size of an apple formed in her chest. What did that creature want? Maybe it was a ghost from one of the townsfolk, haunting her for trespassing on their territory.

  A moment passed. Was it still there? Kizzy crawled to the window and slowly pushed herself up to the sill. She didn’t want to, but she did it. She had to see what was out there. It was so dark outside she couldn’t see a thing. She brought her face close to the glass, close enough so that her breath began to fog it. She squinted. It was too dark. That creature could have been creeping towards the window and Kizzy would have had no way of knowing it. She just needed another flash of lightning. That was all she needed.

  4

  “I have a surprise for you,” her mother said.

  “What is it?” Kizzy asked.

  “Wow. I can’t believe I raised a girl who doesn’t know how surprises are supposed to work.”

  Kizzy tried to smile. She knew how they worked, she just didn’t like them.

  It was her eighteenth birthday and she didn’t know what to expect. People only celebrated the eighteenth anymore, Kizzy didn’t know why. What was so special about eighteen anyway? She sat in silence as her mother drove them towards the ocean.

  It was sunny and windy that day and soon Kizzy could smell the salty air. They parked in an abandoned parking lot and her mother led the way to the beach through the dunes. Kizzy stepped onto what looked like solid ground, suddenly her foot was sinking into the sand.

  “Mom!” she called.

  Her mother came back to help, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her out. Kizzy shook the sand from her leg, fortunately it wasn’t broken. She stared down into the strange hole. Inside the little cavern sat seven white leathery eggs.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Sea turtle eggs,” her mother said, squinting into the hole.

  “Can I take one home?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?” Kizzy asked.

  “They can’t live without the ocean.”

  “Makes sense.” Kizzy sighed, a sea turtle would have been pretty awesome pet. She looked at the long distance between the nest and the ocean and tried to imagine the little turtles making that long quest.

  “You know the Indians that used to live around here would tell their children that the baby turtles were poisonous, so they wouldn’t touch them.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “So the turtles would make it to the ocean and the tribe could hunt them.”

  “So they lied to their kids?”

  “Well, to protect them, yes.”

  Kizzy smiled. Lies always hid a secret inside them. “Would you lie to me, if we lived back then?”

  “Probably not.”

  When they reached the ocean they ate their lunch. Her mother had packed shrimp sandwiches and chocolate milk. At one point Kizzy noticed her mother had stopped eating.

  “You’re eighteen now,” she announced.

  “Hey, you’re right,” Kizzy said, suddenly becoming nervous. What was she planning? She put her sandwich down.

  “I got you a present,” her mother said, reaching into the picnic basket and taking out a flat, black box.

  “Ok?”

  “That’s what people used to do for birthdays.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It was like a reward for surviving another year.”

  That seemed like a stupid reason to give someone a present. “What is it?” Kizzy asked, taking the box, shaking it, trying to hear what rattled inside.

  Her mother winked at her.

  Kizzy carefully unwrapped the paper, it was too pretty to tear—it had little white birds on it. She held her breath as she opened the box. Inside was a knife. The handle was made of dear antler and the steel blade was shiny and sharp. It was beautiful. “I figured you’ve been doing so much work on the farm lately,” her mother said. “And I know it’s been hard to be in and out of school for the harvest.”

  “Thank you,” Kizzy said. “Just promise me you won’t hurt anyone with it.” Kizzy rolled her eyes. “I mean it.”

  “I won’t!” Kizzy groaned and she put the knife in her pocket.

  After lunch, they went for a long walk through the dunes and came upon a boarded up old summer house.

  “I wonder who used to live there?” Kizzy asked.

  “We did,” her mother said. “Forever ago.”

  Kizzy looked at her, the wind blew her hair all over the place. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were looking off far, far away.

  “Me and your father used to come here on vacation.”

  Kizzy listened closely. Her mother hardly ever spoke about her father, so when she did, Kizzy held on to every single word.

  “I think that’s when I was the happiest,” her mother said.

  “And why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. It was perfect. We’d swim at night and look up at the stars, and eat and drink wine.”

  “Is it nice to be back?” Kizzy asked.

  “I thought it would be.”

  At the end of the day they went to say goodbye to the turtle eggs, but some crows had gotten to them. Kizzy chased the disgusting birds away, but shells and slime were all that was left. Her mother’s crow alarm began to beep at her side.

  Kizzy awoke in a panic. Her alarm clock was going off and the morning sun was shining into her room. She was curled up beneath the window with her blanket wrapped around herself. A note sat on the floor in front of her.

  Why are the crows piled up at the edge of the woods?

  Her mother had come and gone without Kizzy ever knowing. So much for being able to defend herself from an eardrum raid in the middle of the night. Maybe she hadn’t
found the record player after all. Or maybe she had found it and decided not to do anything about it. Either way, it seemed like Kizzy had slept with that knife underneath her pillow for nothing. She crawled up to the bed and pulled it out. The day her mother gave it to her seemed so long ago now. It was a simpler time. She never feared for her life.

  But why? What was different? Well, she was just a child then.

  And as far as her mother knew, she was just a normal girl. That was it. She only had to become normal again. No more secrets.

  Her mother was always telling her to be more like the other girls in her class and have friends and stuff. Kizzy found that strange because her mother never had any friends herself. That must have been why she was so unhappy all the time.

  What if Kizzy eventually became like that? Too old to care about being happy anymore.

  The thought was disturbing, that eventually you wouldn’t want something you wanted so badly right now. It made it seem all the more important.

  Kizzy went to take a shower. As she got undressed she noticed a splotch of blood in her underwear. She felt down there. Nothing was cut or out of the ordinary. Hopefully it was just a freak occurrence, she hated going to the doctor. That weird pain in her lower abdomen came back again. What the heck was going on?

  She put the underwear in the hamper, down in the middle underneath all the other clothes, so her mother wouldn’t see. Then she hopped into the shower. The water cascaded down her body from her scalp to her feet. It was pink as it swirled down into the drain.

  The bathroom door opened. Kizzy froze and pulled the curtain open an inch. It was her mother.

  “Good morning Kizzy,” she said. She sounded happy, or at the very least, not angry. Kizzy felt relieved.

  “Good morning,” she answered, splashing the pink water into the drain with her foot. “How are you doing today?”

  “I’m fine,” her mother answered. “Um, Kizzy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you bring the crows into the woods yesterday?”

  “Oh, I ran out of time.”

  “Do it right after your shower then please,” she said. She took the clothes from the hamper and left the room.

  Her mother hadn’t noticed the underwear. Kizzy smiled and grabbed the bottle of shampoo. She squeezed out a generous amount and began to massage it into her scalp.

  The door swung back open.

  “Kizzy, we need to get you to the doctor right away.”

  She made Kizzy get out of the shower with the shampoo still in her hair. They drove in the green station wagon with the underwear in a plastic bag sitting between them. They came upon the small house where Dr. Fuentes had set up her practice. Since nobody really got sick anymore the waiting room was almost always empty, except for the occasional broken arm or cut that needed to be stitched.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Kizzy. “I want to be a normal girl. I don’t want to fight anymore or be an outcast.”

  “That’s good,” her mother said. She seemed distant and distracted.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so messed up. I think if I could get things back to the way they used to be... I’d feel a lot better.”

  Her mother forced a smile, but kept her eyes on the road. “Let’s just concentrate on getting through this doctor’s visit first, ok?”

  Dr. Fuentes was very pretty. She had black hair and caramel skin. She examined where Kizzy had been bleeding.

  “This could happen from time to time,” Dr. Fuentes said as she took off her gloves. “It’s no cause for alarm, necessarily. But just to be sure, we should take a blood test.” She took a small syringe and extracted blood from Kizzy’s left arm. “What happened to your hand?”

  “A crow did it,” Kizzy said, wincing at the needle. She hated needles.

  “Looks like it might be infected,” she said. “I’ll check that afterwards.”

  “We have to be back as soon as possible,” her mother said. “We’ve got some crows out in the field.”

  Dr. Fuentes nodded and put the blood sample into the diagnostic computer. It was a simple plastic box with a glass top and a display screen. Kizzy had mistaken it for a printer. But now a light scanned her blood and the display flashed a red warning signal. Dr. Fuentes cocked her head to the side and brought her face in close to the display, as if she had never seen that message before. She pressed the scan button again. The same light scanned and it flashed the same red warning signal. She glanced at Kizzy with a troubled look on her face. Dr. Fuentes shook her head and pressed the scan button yet another time.

  Kizzy looked to her mother, who was staring at her watch.

  “We’ve only got an hour before the crows poison the field,” she said, rubbing her cheek with her hand.

  Dr. Fuentes approached Kizzy with a small scanner in her hand, holding it up to Kizzy’s forehead and then down to her thigh.

  “What’s wrong?” Kizzy asked.

  “I’m checking your brain and bone cells.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re not replicating themselves the way they should be.”

  “What.. what does that mean?”

  “Have you been taking you’re Enoch pills regularly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everyday?”

  “Everyday.” She couldn’t even remember the last time she had forgotten a day.

  Dr. Fuentes slowly walked to the cabinet, took out a surgical mask and put it over her mouth. Her motions were stiff as if she was forcing herself to remain calm. She brought a glass jar of what looked like small white crackers to Kizzy.

  “Take one of these,” she said. “And chew it completely.”

  Kizzy took a cracker. What was this, some sort of medicine?

  “You too.” Dr. Fuentes said, handing the jar to Kizzy’s mother.

  “Is this a pH test?” her mother asked, taking a cracker and popping it in her mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “Potassium bicarbonate?”

  “How did you know?” Dr. Fuentes asked.

  “My old job.”

  Kizzy chewed and the cracker fizzled away into nothing in her mouth.

  “Open wide please,” Dr. Fuentes said, taking a flashlight from her jacket pocket.

  Kizzy watched Dr. Fuentes’ eyes as they examined the inside of her mouth. Her expression slowly became upset as if she was about to burst into tears. She held Kizzy’s hand. Kizzy noticed her mother walk to the sink and spit out a mouthful of red goo.

  “What is that stuff?” Kizzy asked.

  “The biscuit was a test. It measures certain amino acids in the mouth, acids that the Enoch pill causes to become alkaline. If the pill is working, those acids aren’t there to dissolve the biscuit, resulting in that red protein. But if it’s dissolved...”

  She looked back at Kizzy. “I don’t know how to say this. In fact I didn’t even think it was possible a minute ago, but you’re immune to the Enoch pill.”

  There was silence in the room for what felt like a full minute.

  “You’re not serious,” her mother said.

  “I am serious.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?” Kizzy asked.

  “It means that, for whatever reason, the Enoch pill isn’t working on you. You’re aging as we speak.”

  “That’s not possible,” her mother said.

  “I thought so too,” Dr. Fuentes said.

  “Oh my god,” her mother said as she began smacking her forehead and pacing around the room.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kizzy said. She ignored the scene her mother was making.

  “Look here,” Dr. Fuentes said. She took a printout from the computer. “See, your blood cells aren’t copying themselves as fast as they should be. Same
thing with your bone marrow and brain cells. Yours look like they’re going in slow motion.”

  “That’s not possible,” Kizzy said.

  “I thought so too.”

  “The pill works on everyone.”

  “Well, it’s not on you.”

  “How long does she have?” her mother asked.

  “Fifty years maybe?” Dr. Fuentes said. “Judging by the rate of decay.”

  Kizzy felt the floor fall away from her feet. Forever evaporated. Fifty years. Fifty sets of 365 days were all that remained of her life. That was nothing.

  “That’s nothing,” her mother said.

  “Run the test again,” said Kizzy. “There’s something wrong with that machine.”

  “It was just maintenanced last week, it’s fine.”

  “This isn’t... this isn’t...” was all Kizzy could say. She shook her head and her eyes began to swell.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Dr. Fuentes, her voice trembled. Tears came to her eyes. “I wish the machine was broken. I saw you grow up, this is heartbreaking for me.”

  “It all makes sense now,” said her mother, continuing her pacing. “That’s why she was never normal.”

  “I don’t understand. It’s not fair,” Kizzy said through her tears. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with you turning eighteen. That was the age that the human body used to start dying.”

  “So what can we do?” her mother asked.

  “Full lock down,” said Dr. Fuentes, wiping her eyes. “I have to alert her school, for the safety of the other students.”

  “She’s suspended now anyway,” said her mother. “She’s not going back for another month.”

  “She not ever going back,” said Dr. Fuentes.

  “What?” her mother asked.

  “Her condition might be contagious. And if she’s only going to live another 50 years, it would be a waste of resources, and too big a risk for the other students.”

  Kizzy stared at her in disbelief. She was talking about her like she wasn’t even in the room.