Keep Them In Fear

Keep Them In Fear  

By Richard W. Morris

1,100 words

“We’re running out of time.” Dark Elf held a steely and forbidding face as the picture morphed to a dark elf image, then faded to the network logo and bumper music. Dark Elf was the nickname of The Daily Disaster news anchor, Poisonella Undercoffin.

“Clear,” the director said. 

The cameraman walked toward her. “Good show, Poison-Ella.”

Her face grimaced with disgust. “My name is pronounced ‘Po-e-sone-eh-ya.’ I’m Hispanic on my mother’s side.”

“That’s why I call you Po,” said her producer, Gotma Rotthroat, as he approached with a big smile. “Your words always instill fear in the audience. The Big Guy will be happy.”

“Exactly the point,” Poisonella said gruffly, leaving the set. “Mencken was right. The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and clamoring to be led to safety by menacing the suckers with an endless series of hobgoblins, all imaginary. I’m well paid to mouth the crap du jour. You just keep me updated on the fear du jour.”

“Besides the steady drum beat of climate change, we’ve been pushing we’ll all die of disease. You know, Covid, omicron, and water in Flint. Do you want a scare piece on monkeypox like everyone else, or something new like how athlete’s foot can cause blindness?”

Poisonella stopped and turned. “Hey, I like the athlete’s foot idea. You can get more fear out of ten percent of the truth than an outright lie. Can you hype this enough to fool everyone?”

“My dear,” Gotma said, “Not everyone, but I can give you material to fool plenty of people some of the time, and that’s enough to make a good living.”

“Okay. Kick it up the line for approval.”

Gotma nodded. “I’ll do my part. I sell it to the boss, and you sell it to the dullards. I say we make a full segment. Some stooge who says with definite imagineability that the entire nation is at risk of going blind from the dreaded athlete’s foot fungus.”

“Then what?”

“Everyone should stay home and wear a mask until we flatten the curve.” He almost said it with a straight face. 

Poisonella stopped walking and twisted toward Gotma. “Do you really think we can convince anyone?”

“Hell, yes. All we need is a fungologist. Some dude that’s head of some lab says that people can go blind. Experts are cheap. No problem.”

“And if we’re challenged?”

“Who cares? The fungus guy says it, not us. Besides, we can always fall back on plausible denial—it works every time.”

*****

“Tonight,” the Dark Elf said to open the prime time show, “Doctor Alli Byeduffus joins us to explain the dangers of athlete’s foot go far beyond the toe and how it can cause the disaster of blindness or even death. Welcome to the show, Doctor.”

“Thank you for providing this opportunity to expose the emergency of this under-reported widespread and dreaded disease.”

“Before we get to that, please tell us about yourself.”

“Indeed.” Alli sat up straighter in her chair. “I am the chief mycologist in a laboratory, where we study all types of fungi. They are capable of causing serious supercutaneous, cutaneous, subcutaneous, and systemic disease—infecting the eyes, causing blindness and even death.”

“Blindness and death, you say?”

“Yes. A person can die from itching to death. But, more importantly, worldwide fungus growth is out of control. It reproduces sexually, asexually and by artificial hormonal transgender morphication.”

“Before we get to that, you hit upon another subject we often cover on this show, that of gender fluidity. Is the fungus gender fluid?”

“Well,” Doctor Alli Byeduffus let her mouth curl at the ends and paused. “Not in the same fluidity as a human can self-identify as a Hispanic Caucasian Black Asian protandric identificarian, with one testicle removed and replaced with a goat’s ovary, so as not to be speciest, leaving the individual as a semi-eunuch in transition, but still a non-binary, cisgender queen-king, quoiromantic, and sometimes cupiosexual. The fungi do it in their own way.”

The Dark Elf put on her most grim face. “Do you have photographs of that process?”

“Not with me. I thought this segment was about blindness and death.”

“Please forgive me, Doctor. You are correct. Perhaps we can do another segment on how fungus can be transgender.”

“I’d love to,” she said and held an envelope. “Now, these photos show various cadaver eyes suffering from athlete’s foot. Would you like to see them?”

Dark Elf shook her head. “No. I’m afraid that would be too graphic for our audience. Explain how athlete’s foot causes blindness.” 

“Simply put,” the doctor said, “there are two types of pentatide gemtizal athlete’s foot. The most common being exogenous endophthalmitis slime spores entering the eye, resulting in ophthalmologically crippling herpetic trivial ebola blindness and death.”

“Is there a cure?”

“No. But there are preventive steps.” The doctor closed her eyes in thought. “Yes. The way to prevention lies in interpretive educatory harmonics to restructure historo-cultural guidance and overcome any residual indigenous opacity. A fungal combatant diet is essential, supplying supplements of pickled blueberries, the eye of newt, and mammoth mushrooms.”

“But,” Elf said, “aren’t mushrooms fungus?”

“Yes. That’s why they work. The hair of the dog that bit you. Technically this is similia similibus curentur. By the way, I have a company that manufactures Floxiurine Naftitelase. We put two hundred thirty-nine little-known ingredients in a single patented capsule.”

“Has any governmental agency approved your product?”

Byeduffus grinned from ear to ear, “Of course. The Patent Office. And, I have an application for a grant pending at the CDC. They are examining whether I provided a sufficiently low evidential analysis consistent with their instrumentalities and standards for undisclosed royalty payments to upper-level management that qualifies for a large investigative investment.”

“Thank you very much, Doctor. We’ll schedule a segment on fungal transgender morphication. Do you have photos of that process?”

“Indeed I do.”

***

Two weeks later, Dark Elf announced: “Our special guest today is Doctor Alli Byeduffus, Chief misogynist at the Fauxfauci Labs and Beagle Kennel. She previously warned us about the danger of athlete’s foot causing blindness and death. Today’s subject is hormonal fungus transgender morphication. Welcome, Doctor.”

“Thank you. I do have a correction. I am the Chief mycologist, not a misogynist. You may have noticed I self-identify as a woman. I have no contempt for, or prejudice against, women. That’s why I became one.”