I Feel Good — Part Two
By Glen Engel-Cox
Sue visited me one afternoon carrying a full-size mincemeat pie. I gave her the side-eye. “What?” she said. “I have to have a disease to bring you pie?”
I let her in. “What’s the occasion?” I asked.
“Dorothy dropped off five boxes of mincemeat—the kind I’ve been looking for since last Thanksgiving when the grocery stores ran out, you know—but every package had a use-by date that’s this month.”
“Dorothy? Dorothy never…”
“Right. Frankly, best thing to ever happen to that skinflint. I suspected she bought out the HEB last year. And she doesn’t even bake.”
We ate a couple of pieces and joked about who else in the church most needed to get the disease next. Neither of us worried too much about being exposed ourselves. What did we have to give? Our social security checks barely covered our own expenses.
“Do you think it’s deliberate, Patty?” Sue asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I watched the Five and that pretty blonde said it’s an attack by the communists at the heart of capitalism.”
“Mmm. Sounds like conspiracy talk.” I stopped watching TV after Paul died, but Sue kept the thing on all the time, mostly FOX, where they always seemed to be screaming at each other. I swear it had damaged her hearing as well as her ability to think for herself.
But, after a few more weeks, even I started to think it might have been engineered by someone. Too many people were enjoying the schadenfreude of rich folks suddenly deciding to hand over some of their cash now to philanthropic causes. I had to chuckle about that megachurch pastor with the big fake smile on all the billboards who sold his eight sport cars and donated the money to the food bank.
By this time, I had grown used to weekly calls from Kevin who kept me appraised of what was being called long SOBS. “It’s not that bad, really,” he told me. “It kind of comes and goes and I don’t even hardly know when I’ve got a flare-up except when I hand a ten to a homeless person.”
“How are you doing for money? Sue said it’s ruining people’s finances. You haven’t raided your 401k, have you?”
“I’m ok, Mom. They gave me a big raise at work, although there’s some talk it might be reversed if there’s a possibility the management had SOBS when they made the decision.”
By the summer, scientists identified skin contact as the method of transmission and the behavioral change to certain increases in the chemistry of the brain area controlling altruism. The virus not only encouraged a kind of natural generosity, it also increased serotonin and dopamine in response to actions taken. Do good and feel great.
Glen Engel-Cox has published a novel, Darwin’s Daughter; a non-fiction compilation, First Impressions; and short fiction in LatineLit, Utopia, Nature, Triangulation, Factor Four, SFS Stories, and elsewhere. He publishes a daily newsletter about authors and events in literature as part of his Patreon account: join for free at patreon.com/gengelcox.
Copyright © 2025 Glen Engel-Cox