Soleil™
By Mari Harrison
Phyzar called it Soleil™. Photonic restoration therapy. Saved, purified, commodified daylight. Insurance covered it until people discovered it got them high.
Street stuff is cut with grow-light runoff and whatever from tanning beds. You can tell junkies by their teeth. They glow greenish, like radiation sickness.
My brother deals the clean stuff, medical-grade stolen from his hospital shifts. Charges two hundred a vial. Word is withdrawal is worse than heroin. You forget what colors are. Everything goes gray for weeks.
I bought some yesterday. Just to see.
The sun looks fake now and I can’t stop scratching at my eyes.
In Massachusetts, Mari Harrison writes short fiction pinned beneath a giant Great Dane who insists her lap is prime real estate, while a cat rules the keyboard with ruthless deletions. Find her other stories in Claudine, Apex Magazine, Book XI Journal (forthcoming), manywor(l)ds, Anomaly (forthcoming), and elsewhere. mari.nichols@gmail.com | @javajnkie on Bluesky.
I love this one...crackles like micro should!
Today was so sunny 🌞 perhaps I'm already on this drug, cause I feel so good right now.