The Corporal Philosophers

It was a typically balmy April evening, and Braden Peters, age twenty, had fainted again. Music pulsated faintly over the speakers of the empty Miami bar. Peters and his two companions had sought this isolated sit-down spot after he began showing symptoms of drowsiness and delirium. “How fucked up are you?” asked one of them, laughing and feigning indifference. He offered Adderall, but Peters was clearly in bad shape. Now he had slumped over, and his buddies couldn’t pretend not to be alarmed. Then, abruptly, the livestream cut out.