Plight of the living brain-dead

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

A Trini covid19 screenplay with apologies to George A Romero’s seminal zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead

BC PIRES

SCENE ONE. Int. Cabinet meeting. Day.

Prime Minister taps bald head distractedly. Finance Minister jumps up from chair, rushes to blow hot breath on PM’s head. Rubs it vigorously with jacket elbow.

PM: I tell you we shoulda take the firetrucking Sabga vaccines! But you say people will talk about the “wan-pasent!” Is 80 per cent herd immunity I want!

[Bats Finance Minister’s elbow away.]

And stop shining my firetrucking head! You ever see a bald head need a shine? Now I have to put on new head makeup for the cameras.

Finance Minister [looking at makeup smudge on jacket regretfully]: Keithos, we couldn’t-a tell people they was getting AstraZeneca and then gi’ them AnsaMcAlZeneca!

Health Minister [tentatively]: Can I…

PM: You hush! Is better I had put you in charge of the La Basse, the amount of garbage you’s talk!

Health Minister [in “And yet it spreads” Galileo tone]: Even if we get vaccines, not enough people will take it…

Fade out.

Fade in. Scene two. Ext. Day.

A thick crowd around a doubles stand. Only bara man and man in white long-sleeved shirt and tie wear masks covering nose and mouth. Other masks look more like chin straps, fake beards, headbands, baseball caps without visors, taj skull caps.

Bara man: All you suppose to socialist distance. Me ent serving nobody until you all line up good.

Muted muttering.

Man in Beyonce T-shirt [mask around neck, like scarf]: If you move more faster, it wouldn’t have no line.

Man in old Sanatogen T-shirt: Don’t shout. You spitting on people. You ent have no firetrucking manners!

Man in long-sleeved shirt: All you know this thing does spread with droplet? Is aerosol, like a mosquito spray? I ent dying for no firetrucking doubles here today. Slight pepper, heavy covid!

Sanatogen T-shirt [sneering]: Dying from what? Mosquito spray? Stop using Det and switch to BOP! Don’t believe planned-demic tata! Fauci thiefing money from chupidee. Fauci and he bhowji injecting sheeple with microchip and Bill Gatepost most programming all you! Scam-demic!

Woman in hijab: Me ent taking no Chinee neither no Indian jook neither no Joe Biden jab-jab! I ent no guinea pig for big farm and them! Big farm rush them vaccine through them tests like horner-man does run through clothesline to get ’way from husband.

Long-sleeved shirt: You morons!

Sanatogen T-shirt: Catch you-self! I’s a Seven Days!

Very fat man in wife-beater vest: You calling people Mormon and you ent do the research! It have veedyo whereby they does explain how you doesn’t need mask and vaccine does kill you but Facebook does ban them to advantage black people! You know is how much-a millions Fauci making from jooking jacka-- like you?

Long-sleeved shirt [shaking head]: If it have to have a drive-by shooting in Trinidad today, I hope they drive by all you, yes.

Fade out/(pre-lap)

BC Pires: What?
You took the vaccine?

Fade in. Scene Three. Int. Twilight.

BC Pires, even darker shadows under eyes than usual, Face-timing a morbidly obese man. The man’s fingers are intertwined over his huge belly, Buddha-like. He looks smugly down at BC.

BC: What?
You took the vaccine?

Fat man: Of cuss! You ent see my size? The most dangerous comorbidity in covid is obesity. Is either take the AstraZee or give up the KFC.

BC: But you’re reposting hysterical, lying anti-vaccine videos and bogus, non-peer reviewed,
real fake-news BS telling people not to trust the vaccines!

Fat man: One man’s BS is another’s nectar.

BC: But you’re protecting yourself and putting gullible ignorant people at risk!

Fat man [patiently]: I’m just a servant of nature, like the virus. Pending herd immunity, cull the herd of the stupid ones.

BC [stunned]: Are you just that cynical?

Fat man [smugly]: Catch your falling self. I’s a social media influenza.

Fade out.

Fade in ambulance traffic jam at Caura hospital gates.

Cut to piles of bodies on the ground in morgue.

Montage of empty streets, malls, parking lots, highways.

Long shot of cemetery.

V.O. [Michael Cherrie doing Geoffrey Holder doing Baron Samedi/Live and Let Die]: Who cyar hear…must feel! Hahahahahaha!

Fade to black.

Total silence.

BC Pires would pray for TT if he didn’t know TT was prey for every conspiracy theorist on Facebook. Read the full version of this column on Saturday at www.BCPires.com