It rained some today but not enough. The mud all over the road will be dust tomorrow. My kid with the lazy eye will be home late this Sunday and that gives me three days to scrape the money together. I wish I was somewhere else, but I’m probably stuck here for life in Decatur, Illinois, a single woman in a town where dying is usually a better alternative to sticking it out. Take my advice; travel when you are young and stay there.

I don’t know where I got the idea for the elixir exactly, but I first learned of Halley’s Comet coming in a January 1910 article in the Herald & Review, mid-to late April was the due date. I had just read the article and was discussing it with one of my patrons (I am the proprietress of Sophronia’s Odds and Ends Shop on Church Street) who told me about the Sai A Nide gas cloud that follows this comet (the name Sai A Nide sounds so glamorous and exotic). This is a vaporous cloud of death that our Earth was going to pass through, likely killing every man, woman and child on the planet and that was just alright with me. Things have never been right for me here, in this town, this country or on this planet.

As far as I know, there is no cure for Sai A Nide and this is well known but no one said there isn’t a preventative, an elixir perhaps, a drinkable fizzy potion that could ward off the instant death of cyanide gas. Henry Staypot, an old beau of mine from primary school, is a chemist and I asked him what I could add to Coca-Cola that would make a person feel as though they were healed and protected. He tinkered around with compounds that have way too many letters in them and came back with something blue that tasted like black licorice and cherries. I took one drink and felt light headed. He said the major effects would wear off after an hour but the buzz may stick around for several hours afterwards, and he swore it was safe. He once loved me so I took him for his word, though I never thought much of his love.

No man ever changes; they revolve around the same axis and shift through seasons of selfishness. I’ve never met a man who wasn’t worth stabbing in the heart after we shared the first moment of joy together, always falling down a fast hole from that moment.

And when I pulled the knife from that man’s chest in my store room that afternoon, I felt nothing more than if I had just carved a roast and sat down to eat it on a Sunday evening.