A Confounding Plague
During a particularly uneventful afternoon of speech therapy lessons in Grand Rapids, 12-year-olds Kevin Long and Brian McKeachie huddled up and asked God to make everyone on the planet stutter for one year.
Within minutes, their therapist, Dr. Kern, found himself speaking like them.
By that night, reports were coming in from all continents. Adults, children, women, men, brilliant, stupid – no one was immune from the plague.
Soon, Kevins, unable to say their names, became Aarons. Aarons became Randalls. Randalls became mimes.
Thespians, unable to take the stage or wait tables, headed for the mountains, ranted on blogs, committed suicide in buildings they once achingly portrayed “Othello”.
Children pointed at parents, parents e-mailed/mailed nasty letters to grandparents, grandparents spit on nursing home aides.
Psychiatrists insisted on texting-only sessions.
Drive-thrus stood empty.
Speech therapists, unable to capitalize on years of research and study, e-mailed former patients to commiserate, seek advice.
Old stuttering cures – talking with pebbles, slicing off portions of tongue, electroshock therapy, outlawing sex, psychoanalysis, push-ups – were bandied about on thousands of internet forums and “chat” groups.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions searching for the extinct Southern Gastric Breeding Frog (Rheobatrachus Silus), whose urine was rumored to produce a cure.
Facebook began charging $359.99/month for instant messaging.
Emissaries from all 200 countries worked side by side, passing notes, pointing at dry erase boards, their tiny headsets afire.
Highly insular websites, formed by particularly bitter BTPS (Before the Plague Stutterers), were formed. Other BTPS sought out ATPS, reassured them “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
On the 366th day, Kevin Long and Brian McKeachie met up for a soda.
Within days, each would read about certain ATPS speaking fluently again, cracking jokes effortlessly, introducing themselves to strangers, living lost lives. Some wrote self-help books, demanded huge speaking fees. Shockingly, many suffered crippling bouts of stuttering, stopped granting interviews, hated themselves fervently.
The ATPS who never stuttered again were exalted, studied, reviled.
A few months later, Kevin Long and Brian McKeachie ran into each other at a 7-11. They didn’t discuss the raging debate about the plague’s potential impact on children born on/after day 366. After a quick handshake, they spewed forth about the freezing weather, tits, and the fucking Tigers.
David Erlewine is a lawyer, but not that kind. His work appears in Pedestal, Elimae, Dogzplot, and others. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his wife and two kids.