The boy behind the counter smiled at him. "Do you know you used to need a prescription for this?"

"No," the business man said.

"It's true. And it used to be a thousand dollars a dose. Blue Cross was not happy when the doctors required it. You should have seen he paperwork. But now, we can almost give it away."

The man handed him his fiver, the boy handed back his bottle, same as any other bottle from any pharmacy, brown with the white tamper-resistant cap and label, the pills inside the size and shape of the business man's first pinkie knuckle. Deinol was the commercial name of the drug, Merck held the original license, though there were a host of imitators. The man, John was his name, held the bottle in his hand, shaking it a little to hear the rattle of the pills, like a cup of ice. He hid the bottle inside his shirt pocket, where it bulged out his coat if he buttoned it too tight.

"You're going to have some fun, let me tell you. The ads don't lie."

John had seen the ad late at night, in the inside cover of Prevention. An old man, in his late seventies but radiating the health a younger man can't, sits in bliss, staring into a purple sunset. The caption beneath read "I thought I had lived life. I thought I knew what wisdom was. But after taking Deinol, I know I am just a baby taking its first step."

His hands had started to shake more and more at work. He thought he was getting carpal-tunnel, but his doctors assured him it was just nerves.

The chair was cold, cold enough to take all dizzyness and drowsiness away from him, and he shook the pills into his hand. He stared at them, two lying lozenges nestled together in his palm, his fingers curled up gently around them, cupping them together. Closing his eyes, he slapped his hand to his mouth, and swallowed them raw, feeling the pills as the caught in his throat. He swallowed more and more spit and the gelatin coating melted away, leaving the contents of the pill to fall deep into his throat, down into his stomach, where his gorge rose up to meet it. Already, his stomach burned, centered in the middle, a hard ball of bile that spread out, through his torso, through his limbs, wafting its way into his neck and head. The bile was replaced by warmth, a comfortable, slightly humid warmth, like a bathtub filling with hot water, the roar was loud in his ears. He leaned against the wall, held it tight with his hands, his arms, his torso, planting himself into the brick.

On his fingers and toes, his nails were being pried up and away from the tips, but there was no pain, just a curious writhing sensation.

Shoots sprouted forth and wrapped themselves around his limbs, crawling up, kudzu run fast-forward. He could feel the vines wrapping around each individual nerve, from the capillaries and through the veins and arteries, back toward his heart, his head. The vines spread from him into the landscape, rooting him to the ground and the wall he leaned against. He felt along every inch of the vines, they were tendrils of his feeling, extensions of his nervous system. Every crevice of the wall, every imperfection magnified itself and he kenned the bricks, every individual one

The vines withered, green, yellow, brown, then grey and crumbling into dust, blowing away in the light wind whirling through the city streets, spiraling as the dust fell and scattered, coating everything beneath with a fine layer of ash.

Naked, he was pressed against the wall, high above the streets, curled up, his teeth biting his left knee, his arms holding his legs tight to his chest. From below and above, he looked like a lump in the ivy, pulsing as he shook from the cold up so high

Return from whence you came.