The Corruption

I have nothing to say about my abusive girlfriend Insomnia because I've had just about enough of looking at her and her staircases for one day. Instead, I want to talk about how I've been sick with a case of the brain fever on this otherwise fine Presidential Weekend.

You see, it all happened last Wednesday night when I started coughing. I dismissed it as an unwelcomed indignity that comes part-in-parcel with my nightly ice cream snack but I kept coughing all throughout the night. On Thursday morning not only was I still coughing but I had developed an oppressiveness on my chest and a dense fogginess of mind. I realized then that I had little time left. I went throughout the day as usual, giving angry speeches in my English class when wholly inappropriate, giving speeches in my Math class (also inappropriate) and giving speeches to my friends because honestly they need some guidance in their lives. All the while I could feel it growing inside me. The Corruption. The tainting of my precious bodily fluids. Throughout the day I could feel myself becoming more "disconnected" with the world around me. I couldn't concentrate and my eyes grew heavy and hot. I felt nauseous and lost all appetite (which really is tragic because my Grandmother made a very nice sandwich Thursday).

By the time the day was over I was dead, slumped over in my chair and totally unable to communicate with my own nerves, let alone the world around me. My mind was swimming through static as I could hear Mark (some dude I know) calling from across the abyss. The whole time, a single word kept running through the rapidly sinking ship of my mind.

Agamemnon...

"I'm going to die." I told Mark over and over. "And you're the executor of my estate!" But I couldn't die, not yet (Insomnia isn't done after all). So somehow I workup the sheer will to stand up and walk when class was over. My head hung limply in front of me as I made my way to the library. I promised one of my misguided friends that I would meet him there to help him plan a videogame he was making or whatever. By that point I couldn't care, I couldn't even understand what was happening. I was running on the last reserves of my strength and before I knew it I was playing a children's card game. He offered to take me home and I politely refused, we parted ways and I was alone in the failing light of the oncoming evening, a ticking time bomb of feverish delusion. I had to make it home, I couldn't collapse in the street. By the time I finally reached my house, I mumbled something I couldn't understand to my Grandmother and collapsed on my bed, not moving for the rest of the night.

Agamemnon lives...

Friday morning, I'm laying in bed with an awful bronchial cough. My head is throbbing, my eyes feel like their going to burst and my brain in swimming without direction, it's ship's wheel long gone. The whole day is spent sheepishly sipping water and laying in bed, I can't even look at the computer screen without waves of nausea washing over me. I don't know if I feel hot or cold but I'm constantly tearing the sheets away, only to pull them back over my head, shivering.

Saturday, I'm totally disabled and barely have enough of an appetite for a cup of yogurt. I can't bring myself to open Hammer and I shun Minecraft, instead I try to glean interesting facts from TVTropes and learn about a really really funny series called Look Around You. I lay in bed mostly and read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which doesn't sit too well with me after the dreams I had last night and certainly do not have the patience for Atlas Shrugged.

It was after I watched the "Calcium" episode of Look Around You and decided to go to bed that it started to get weird...

I dreamt that a Mexican drug cartel had kidnapped my sister and it was up to me to rescue her. For reasons I don't remember, the first order of business was getting a steady job and a house. I'm certain I never actually found her or any evidence that the cartel was even real but I do remember lots of car chases through the vibrantly colorful and even psychedelic streets of that nameless Mexican city. Plus, I narrowly avoided getting trapped in an electrified net.

I woke up, drenched in sweat and quite confused. I've had this dream before and even after I'm awake I remember it perfectly (but sadly do not now). I've had dreams like this the last time I had a fever. So I change into fresh evening wear and wait for the next dream.

I'm in the house I grew up in, in the backyard is my old swing set. I'm suddenly in my room, staring at a person who will remain anonymous. Their eyes are red and filled with tears, cardboard boxes full of papers are scattered everywhere in my tiny bedroom. Suddenly, the person pulls out an Uzi and points it at my head. I wake up before they shoot and wipe the cold sweat from my brow.

Today is Sunday, I still feel a little unbalanced when standing but I had some pancakes and a grilled ham sandwich. My vibrancy and dynamic rage have all but restored but still cough loudly and frequently.

In a way, I was looking forward to this. I'm actually a pretty healthy person, I walk to and from school every day and have taken up very light weight lifting but it's been in the back of my mind since the last time it happened: The Fever. It was about three years ago when I last had a fever and, coincidentally, it was the first time I read The King in Yellow (SO cash) and since then, I've wanted to have those same strange, pallid dreams. Those visions of long-extinct sea-life and dead, dry Earth. I've been able to revisit that, and while I would gladly give up the coughing and feeling like I'm-going-to-throw-up-but-won't I wouldn't give up the dreams and out-of-body feeling.

Tomorrow, I will read War of the Worlds as it is my tradition when sick.