Red Fever

A crimson haze lay like an invisible serpent over the city. It meandered into people’s homes, minds and souls. No one knew what was causing it and when it would cease and they had given up trying for the haze seemed harmless.

It was a little more than a year since the mysterious haze enveloped the city and gave its citizens dreamless nights and dizzying moments of wakefulness. It was difficult to say if the haze was responsible since most people had been experiencing such symptoms from time immemorial but a few believed that the haze somehow influenced the various illnesses of their time. An official statement from the Central Committee of Preventionists said people could wear face masks of any type as a precaution. Few people heeded it and over time they stopped wearing the masks when they realized how stupid they looked with one when there was no reason to wear them. The CCP felt the same way.

But things began to change in the second year of The Haze as it was now dubbed by the media. Hospitals in the city reported an abnormally high caseload of constipation patients trickling in every 5 or 6 hours. Some of these had acute dehydration even after consuming gallons of water and other fluids and it was clear their body was rejecting liquids for no apparent reason. At three major hospitals the situation had worsened to the point where portable toilets were installed in the parking lots to cope with the sudden demand for defecation. Severe diarrhea was now the norm and a patient was coming in every 6 minutes unable to hold and in most cases unleashed a torrent of watery feces right in the ER waiting room that soon led to a janitorial strike at hospitals with a demand for higher pay to deal with cleaning up raw human waste every few minutes.

The CCP sanctioned mobile loos all over the city in the third year. By that point it was clear the red haze had something to do with the craziness of pooping uncontrollably since the urge to defecate increased in areas where the haze was thickest. The Haze was labeled ‘Red Fever’ by the media at one point and over time fancy accessories and apparel including face masks were on sale with the new name and Twitter hashtags were doing rounds. A company came up with super-absorbent diapers that soaked and gelled watery poop in seconds and each diaper was good for 150 bursts which was the average number of times an adult human had to use the toilet now compared to two times per day before the Red Fever. Those who could afford it, put in place computerized loo systems called Mobiloo in their homes. These were retrofitted in the bathrooms to handle multiple poop loads and converted the waste into odorless balls of cotton candy-like fragments that could be stocked in biohazard trash bags to be picked up by the Mobiloo Waste Management service twice a week. The Mobiloo setup along with the pickup set one back a subscription fee of $350 a month. The complete package consisted of an electronic toilet receptacle made of stainless steel, ionic speed-flush technology, a movie-streaming service with an extendable touch-screen panel attached to the toilet if one was to spend hours emptying their bowels, a premium box of air fresheners for the smelliest sessions and a pack of condoms and lubricant for post-poop in-bathroom activities for a night-in if one desired so.

Out of this was born the Western Mobiloo Corporation with a shiny glass-block building in the middle of the city’s largest homeless encampment zone. When BSB News asked the CEO why he settled in the homeless zone he said it was the cheapest land he could find and the building fit right in with the shittiest of the lot. The business turned lucrative and within months driverless Mobiloo vans were scouring the city for customers of which there was no shortage. Thousands of vans were parked at different spots like shopping mall lots, outside meth clinics, schools, gun stores, banks and happy-hour motels offering heavily discounted access to the Mobiloo system. There were special offers bundling shit sessions and tiers catering to everyone’s needs and whims. They started with four packages: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. All of them provided access to Mobiloos 24/7 at any location and free packets of toilet paper, poop solidifiers, scented towels and sprays that were shipped out to customers on a monthly basis except for the Platinum which, in addition to all the above, provided customers access to Mobiloo systems inside the homes of other customers participating in a separate program that paid them to allow public access to their systems.

Of course, customers could cancel at any time but there were no refunds for partial months. There was a 3-day free trial for all new patrons but everyone knew that was unnecessary since everyone needed the Mobiloo, trial or no trial. At the time, there were no competitors in the shit services industry so the Mobiloo corporation raked in money like there was no tomorrow. No one could imagine that a time would come when attending to the call of nature was going to be so profitable.

But things were not so rosy. By the ninth year of the Red Fever, rumors broke out that Mobiloo Corporation was behind the Red Fever - that it was a biological experiment designed to usher in the company’s existence and a whole new shit services business. Conspiracy theorists bloomed overnight with blogs stating that the Mobiloo system puffed out an odorless gas into the air when someone was using it. The gas was laxative and resulted in the pooper putting out more product than normal even with the Red Fever. Moreover, no one knew where the excretion eventually ended up after it left the Mobiloo system from a customer’s house. Word on the street was that the company had pre-installed humongous sewage tanks underground many years before the Red Fever and that all the shit from its customers was collected in these reserves and channeled to an incognito fertilizer plant somewhere on the outskirts of the city that happened to belong to the owners of Mobiloo Corporation.

In the twelfth year of the Red Fever, Mobiloo Corp finally met its match. A new company called Migas (read my-gas) was born and set up base five miles from the Mobiloo HQ. The fact that the brand names of both companies started with an M was not lost on the conspiracy folks but after months of speculation Migas was found to be independent of its rival. The new company wasted no time and left no stone unturned when it came to marketing. They bought advertising space almost everywhere including hiring pornstars or anyone with a tight ass and got them to place tattoos on the ass cheeks announcing their arrival. So random women (and men) were routinely found to be indecently exposing themselves in crowded trains and sidewalks to earn extra cash and letting the more adventurous customers sign their names next to the Migas logo on their rumps. Three tiered plans were offered called Brazilian Butt, Medium Butt and Soft Butt - all of them with the same options as that of Mobiloo Corp. Where Migas really shone was in the free add-ons it offered customers beyond the plans. Perks included a Migas digital system attached to one’s car seats so people could poop while they drove to work; then cleaned and sanitized while still sitting, a social media platform called Migas Plus where customers could upload pictures of themselves shitting and rate other shitters in the act, a conversion program with free shit pickup, which after processing at a nearby Migas facility, was returned as biogas to the customer so he or she could use it as cooking fuel (using a digital biogas cooker that has to be purchased separately) to save on gas bills.

In the fourteenth year something happened. People ceased to defecate altogether. Not that they were not doing it to avoid it but that it would not happen anymore. No one could figure out where all the food they ate ended up. The Haze was turning pink.

So for the next twelve years there was no need for toilet paper. Humanity had not pooped for all that time and scientists were hard at work to solve the mystery of this bane. Something in the body was absorbing all the toxins and bio-waste eliminating the need for passing stool but the nerds could not find a solution. The Haze was, by this point, turning grey, almost dissipating. The suits at Mobiloo and Migas announced emergency board meetings - it was time to file bankruptcy. The shit business did not take long to turn to shit.

By the beginning of the sixteenth year of the Red Fever, the city’s hospitals were filling up again. This time it was for patients growing strange tumors and turning a sickly purple. Diagnostics revealed extreme levels of body toxins that were attacking like poison. At the end of the week, an estimated 7000 people had died and everyday more cases were arriving. And so it happened that by the middle of that year, the city had lost half its population.

Then on a fine misty day in the Fall of the same year, the ones still alive woke up with a gurgling insidious ache in their stomachs. It rose to a sharp pain within seconds and stayed that way for a few tense minutes. Outside, The Haze had disappeared. The sky, for the first time in many years of long suffering, was clear and crisp again. Then, almost all at the same time, the pale and gloomy citizens of the city, let out a monstrous torrent of mushy mustard-colored ordure, taking them by a surprise so great and terrific that they breathed their last doing it.

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Copyright © 2021 Mizanur Rahman.

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Published by Mizanur Rahman, in the United States of America.