Abysmal Tale Number Ten: The Energy Drink

In today's world there are the haves, and the have not’s. People will buy things that are cheap and take the things that are free and never wonder where it came from, but everything has a price and sometimes that price is far too high.


This is one I like to call, The Energy Drink


Six in the bloody morning, I know this because the alarm clock is screaming at me like it does every day. And every day I shut it off with the same old swing of my arm, I seem to be good at it by now so the screaming stops as the button is hit. I sigh and take the silence in for a moment in my room. This is the last bit I will get before I have to go to that miserable thing we call life, and school.

I suppose I don't have to go there, but this town sucks and there isn't really anything better to do. So I open my eyes and slowly sit up. Waking up is never easy, at least not for me. I am all sore and stuff from the football game the night before. But showing the pain isn't something I am supposed to do. I am supposed to be tough and all of this nonsense. So of course, I just smile and deal with it.

My school is something; well it is pretty average I suppose. The different groups of people all seem to gather around their areas and people don't seem to interact much at all. In this way it is typical I suppose. But there is something odd about it. I will get back to that later. In all other meanings of the word the place is a prison. It even looks like one, without the barbed wire or the guard towers. Of course being on the team makes life here a little easier for me then it would others.

Lucky for me I got my own car, and own parking space too. Little favors often make things better. Getting out of the car I just do a quick look around to see if anybody else I know is around yet, no such luck it would seem. So on my own I move towards building, stuck inside my own thoughts I make a list of all the things I have to do that day, the list is a short one and I like it that way.

I open the doors and enter the place. In the commons is the first sign of the oddness of our school, I mentioned it earlier. It is a vending machine unlike any I have ever seen before anywhere else. It gives out an energy drink called "The Rush" Ive never tried it actually. People swear by it because its cheap, and it seems to work. The cheerleaders seem to one of the groups that drink the stuff, and worship it.

I once got to see it outside of the can it came in and to me it just looked bad. It was actually black and far too much like syrup for me. So I stuck with the more expensive stuff because well I could. The stuff, I can't see how anybody would bring themselves to drink it, but in the end many people do and seem to be addicted by it. Nobody sees this as a problem though, and nobody is speaking up about it.

Sometimes though people drink too much of it and get sick off of it. The energy is so much the symptoms are always the same. First people get all shaky, and hyper. Too much energy drinks of any kind will do this. After that their muscles will contract far too much and they will be sent into spasms, lastly they just get violently sick. It is always blamed on the person and never the drink though. It is the only thing we are allowed to drink in school. In the classroom because the teachers think it helps the concentration levels increase.

I have never tried the stuff, but people have tried to get me to before. I am usually pretty careful though. I don't know why but something about it just makes me feel uneasy. And as a player I always trust when something seems to good to be true, my mind hasn't let me down yet and I am not going to start not listening now. Enough about the slimy stuff. Today is my big day, our team's and the school's big day. Homecoming.

This is the last time I will get to do anything like this; this is my last year of High School so I intend to enjoy it. Now all the people start coming in the same way I did. I make my way to the locker, its covered with stuff to let everybody know I am on the team, the others are the same way. I really don't like the attention though but I smile and accept it anyways just to make them happy. No need to cause any bad energy from simple things like this.


Soon the halls are filled and people are talking about all kinds of things. All at the same time it is just mindless noise that nobody can make sense out of and I try to tune it out and just get to my class on time. American History is class number one. Its easy enough to remember things from this class because lucky for me it won't change. Today we were having an off day and were talking about odd disappearances on a massive scale. Lost cites and colonies and even entire battalions of soldiers, gone forever. Most people just slept through it or passed the time but something about the idea of an entire town just being abandoned over night was actually pretty scary, but of course I don't admit the feeling, just nod and seem mildly interested.

The bell rings and classes seem to melt away, it’s an early release day today so everything seems to be going faster then it normally would. I don't mind but I hate being part of the center of attention. I never wanted to be a part of anything but I suppose I turned out to be pretty good at it. So, I decided it would be a good time killer. It is, to me, just a game and not my life.

Lunch time came around and almost everybody had The Rush in hand. I always found it strange that one vending machine could supply an entire school and never seem to run out, or need to be refilled. Nobody else gave it a second thought though and just kept buying the stuff. I opted for the milk. Sure, it didn't have the energy kick or anything special, but at least I knew the guy who brought it in and where it came from, basically anyways.

Its a good thing the school had a recycling program. All those cans filled those bins daily. They must have been making a killing off of this as well and nobody seemed to mind it at all.

The rest of the day seemed to fly by, even faster than I had realized. Not that I was complaining or anything. Homecoming was always a spectacle to remember. All the people from every class there. The music and just the excitement in the air was something everybody could feel. The team members were expected to win the big game, so it was no pressure for us or anything, we just had to win is all.

Everything was going fine until everything went so horribly wrong.


It started out small like everything does in this world. Somebody in the middle of the gym floor suddenly collapsed just fell to the ground like somebody had shot him. Although nobody had shot them, it seemed like it. This was an attention getter if there ever was one and the nurse was out there. Soon it was announced that they just had too much Rush and would be fine.


Everything would not be fine.


Then the cheerleaders began to scream, one by one they began to scream in pain. And nobody could figure out why, but it was very annoying and frustrating to everybody else. Did everybody overdose on the stuff or what I was beginning to wonder.

Then no, it came clear to me what was happening, it was the only thing that made any sense as I saw what had just happened. One of the cheerleaders collapsed into the ground, and her skin began to melt off of her body, and it was turning black. It was the exact color of that damned energy drink and the same thing was beginning to happen to people everywhere, what was even more horrible was the former people would jump onto others and begin to consume them as well.

Now, when all hell breaks loose and your world is coming to an end in such a grisly fashion, you can no longer hold on to the past, people you knew or would like to know all had to be on their own now. So I did the only logical thing I could do. I ran, unfortunately so did everybody else and those same people were the ones who had consumed the drink. And because they were running, when the effects hit them as well, that was just more stuff I had to avoid. Worse yet. I was the only one I knew of that did not drink the stuff.

I think it was then I realized that my life was pretty much over. But if that was not a good enough clue to it being over, impossibly the stuff began to bubble up from the ground itself, like an acid eating through metal. People who did not succumb to the internal death became caught in a puddle of death that formed from underneath of them. I kept running.


In the end I suppose nobody will believe my story. I made it out alive somehow. But nobody else did. The official story was that a massive tornado completely wiped the town off the map, it was a national tragedy to be sure. But now I feel really uneasy when I see on billboard signs everywhere I go advertising the newest energy drink, "The Rush, Coming soon to a store near you." And my heart sinks into a pit of despair.