Alice Isn't Dead

by Joseph Fink

In 1873, a traveling doctor and salesman of cure-all medicine arrived in the town of Okmulgee, Oklahoma. The sign on his wagon said thistle modern miracles of health! He spoke and sold in town for a few days and moved on. His assistant, a small woman who introduced herself variously as Miss Wheel and Miss Night, took the coins and offered in exchange vials of a dark blue and bitter medicine. Three weeks later, everyone who had tried the medicine died of a lingering and painful condition that manifested first as a red bulging in the skin and then incurably infected the brain. The town doctor died himself before he could give an educated opinion of the plague, having disbelieved in the medicine but having sampled it for his own edification, and by the time another doctor was allowed to see the bodies, they had disintegrated into a marshy sponge that smelled peppery and sour.