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“Wake up Dexter...it’s been five hours. I’m not done with you yet.” he says deep inside my head. Past the skin and meat and bone, he lives buried in my sinuses. My eyes slowly blink open to adjust to the light. My arms and legs are sore and tired, I lie twisted in some strange position from tossing and turning all night. My face feels as if a renaissance sculptor went to town on it with a scalpel and heated plaster. A pile of used, and crushed tissues sit on my nightstand in an old bowl of chicken noodle soup I never finished. “C’mon, wake up. I’m only here for a short time, so I’m gonna make the most of it.” comes his voice. Suddenly, as if someone popped something inside my head, a torrent of mucus pours from my nose. Only out of pure luck do I manage to catch it in a clean tissue. “Why are you doing this?” I ask out of misery. “I am a virus, this is what I do. It is who I am. My job.” “Why me? Why couldn’t you have landed yourself in some other hapless idiot? Why was I such a perfect target?” A brief pause frightens me, because I know what he’s about to do. A tickle far down my esophagus causes me to lurch forward and cough. It feels like acid is being forced up my throat every time, and every time I feel like I’m going to bring up much more than mucus and air. I can hear him laugh. Never has there been a more power hungry intelligence on the planet. He takes pride in the fact that he controls me, that I am his bitch. He laughs every time I stumble backwards from dizziness. He laughs when the pile of Kleenex next to my bed grows larger and larger. He cackles in delight when my head goes through sporadic fits of hot and cold and I’m caught shivering and sweating at the same time. “I picked you, dear boy, because of the challenge. Here you are, a perfectly healthy eighteen year old who’s last two illnesses were six years apart. I get bragging rights.” he says with what I would assume would be a grin on his face. I look over to my night stand to see a bottle of Triaminic. “I’m going to kick your ass, you know. I’m going to down every form of medication I own until you’re dead and buried. Then I’m going to go outside, in the rain, and dance.” I took a deep breath, and cleared my throat. “I’m gonna sleep in the winter with my window open and my air conditioner on. It’ll be another six years before you see me again...” I felt my jaw retract, and I sneezed. A million forms of bacteria fly out of my system, and glaze my sleeping bag. “Damn it,” I said as I began to crawl out of my bed. “You know your friends?” he asks as he puts my head through another bout of dizziness. “I’ll live on in them. I’ll live on as they start to feel dizzy and congested. I’ll torment them for about three days before they take me to work. I won’t be stopped. Try as you want, there’s nothing you can do.” “You think your little three-day grip is something special? You’re not worth a damn, you’ve got nothing to live for. I’m the one you want, truly, and you know deep inside that I’m going to stomp you out. I’m going to evict your ass back into a toilet or something where you’ll surely die, alone.” I knew my threats meant little to him. He retaliated by making me lose my balance and fall back to my bed. “It’s fine with me,” he said. “It was fun while it lasted, I’ve done what I’ve come here to do.” I could feel him move into my ribs. Suddenly they were racked with spasms and I bent over coughing. I made my way out of my room finally, and into the living room. I sat down on the couch and I stared out the window into the early morning sunlight. “I have to hand it to you though, you must be really good to have gotten me sick. Pray tell, how did you manage to pull it off?” There’s nothing a disease loves more than to talk about itself, and being that this was a virus, his vanity was only ten fold. “I don’t really know. Maybe it was luck. Your lack of exercise, your diet maybe. Who knows. The only thing that matters is that I’m here and I’m gonna enjoy it.” The bathroom door came closer and closer with every crooked step I made. “You’re way too self-confident, cocky, when it comes to your health and personal constitution. That was your downfall.” I opened the door and collapsed next to the tub. “You’ll get cocky again, in time. This won’t be our last time together, trust me.” I turned the knob with a prominent cursive “C” on it, and let it fill the tub. “You knew it, when I woke up, that this was your last day didn’t you?” I asked. The tub is almost full of the frigid well water. “Yes, I knew. You’re a desperate human being, you’d do anything to get rid of me.” I turned off the water and let the surface settle, and without even changing I slipped under the surface embracing the chill. I rested my head against the back of the tub and I closed my eyes. “You’re right, I am desperate,” I said to him. “Now go back to hell where you belong.” Half an hour passed, and I listened to the silence of the room. He was gone, shocked from my body. Even though I knew he was gone, I swear somewhere in my body I heard him shivering. His viral little teeth clattering together, and I said, “Tell my friends and family that I said to get well soon.” –thedexter |