Daily writing exercise, 750words.com
fiction by Jason Edwards
Meth for Moms is a new initiative in Seattle for single mothers dealing with overwhelming fatigue. By providing these ladies with a clean, consistent, and cheap source of methamphetamines, the city is providing for their increased productivity, as well as supplementing the meager income of area dentists.
MfM is the mastermind of Dr. Alfonse Snaps, who was the driving force behind the very successful Young Pimps program, a jobs-training course that quickly paid for itself after only three months in operation. After handing the reins over to a dedicated group of Hell’s Angels’ administrative volunteers, Dr. Snaps rounded up funding for this new initiative and was given the green light by City Hall last week.
New mothers, either abandoned by their children’s father, recently widowed, or not aware of who the father may be, can apply for a Meth grant through the city, and once a clear need is established, can receive coupons and buy-one-get-one vouchers redeemable at any one of over a dozen meth labs within the greater Seattle metropolitan area. Dr. Snaps has also solicited the assistance of pharmaceutical delivery teams from Juarez, Mexico, to facilitate the delivery, distribution, and receipt collections for the initiative.
“We’re overwhelmed at the moment,” Dr. Snaps has said “not just by the demand for quality meth, but frankly, also by the outpouring of support. After we got started with the Juarez PDs, no less than five other groups came forward with offers to participate–some even providing their own arms and militia attachments.”
Although it is still in infancy, MfM has seen very positive feedback from neighborhood and community leaders. Gerald Atrix, a small restaurant owner in Fremont, has opened up his dining floor as a clinic on Wednesdays, where new moms can consult with meth advisors for up to 90 minutes, with purchase of an entree and beverage.
The impact on other businesses has been positive as well. A new provision in the state income tax codes allows dentists to write-off any patient who’s dental work qualifies as a methamphetamine or other stimulant related health deficiency. (Unfortunately, the state has closed the loopholes that allowed for decay from sugary drinks to qualify under the so-called “caffeine schedule,” so MfM, for these dentists, couldn’t have come at a better time.)
Dr. Snaps claims that Meth for Moms, with dedicated volunteers, can more or less run itself. And then he’s on to other things: plans are being drawn up for a Boy Scout merit badge focusing on Heroin Dealing, as well as his pet project, a foundation that pairs rabid polecats and elderly nursing home patients.
“That one can’t seem to get off the ground, however,” Dr. Snaps admits. “You’d think there’d be more polecats with rabies, but so far we’ve had to settle for colicky baby ocelots and the occasional very angry raccoon.”
Still, Dr. Snaps will most likely persevere. Coming from a long line of altruistic philanthropists, Alfonse is following in the footsteps of several generations of Snaps. His father started a service in 1930s Germany that allowed young service men to collect books of daguerreotypes, photos of young Jewish girls, to select possible future brides. “It’s been likened to a kind of Fascist Facebook,” the modern Snaps explains, “But a sort of Nazi Tinder would be a more appropriate analogy.”
Before that, his great grandfather was a pioneering voice in the anti-pasteurization movement. “Today you’ve got anti-vaxxers, popular among some of the richest people in Silicon Valley. And back in the late 19th century, the right to diphtheria, tuberculosis, even scarlet fever was one enjoyed by the cream of society’s elite. Lord Aferty Snaps ensured that so long as you had a decent inheritance and little real education, you were safe to deny basic science and have access to brucellosis.”
There’s even a story told at family gatherings that Anciene Sol’nap, a Sumerian at the time of Hammurabi, was chief constable in the king’s horse manure kitchens. “It’s an old story, and most likely apocryphal,” Dr. Snaps explains, “We do know that royalty and aristocracy alike worshiped equine dung, and used it as a medium of exchange in harems, seraglios, houses of ill repute, and churches. What’s not known, of course, is if the horse manure kitchens were indeed run by a constable, or were part of the religious wing of the military branches.”
A subtle distinction, but the Snaps family crest reads, simply, “Selibasiius, Sidharm, Sancipazi,” which, according to the family bible, comes for a long dead language, and means, roughly, “Service But Never Servitude.”
Sumerian soldiers were, of course, slaves.