Natan Sahilu
Bio
How my best friend describes my writing: “slow sounds in realtime."
Stories (3)
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A Sordid Business, Sanity
Mr. Price, Three years ago I became the thirty-millionth person misdiagnosed with ADHD in the United States. The first feeling I imagine people have when they hear this, and even what I feel myself, is pity. I am yet another person tragically harmed by the overzealous Big Pharma-influenced healthcare system. Had I not been fed medication from the age of seven, persuaded to ingest greater and greater amounts of amphetamine to mitigate what was clearly insidious inattentiveness, I would Today have been Sane and 10 years of age. Instead, I now sit in a psych ward; removed from society, evidently for its (and my own) safety, I am the death of potential.
By Natan Sahilu4 years ago in Psyche
Writer's Block
The boy idly wondered whether he was a murderer. He considered all the words he’d deleted, all the words he’d removed from his essays. He still thought about them. There were guilty words, to be sure, grammatical monstrosities that had no place anywhere. But he missed the innocent words, the words he’d expelled just for being different. The essay had demanded it. Those misfit words just didn’t fit in; they had to leave, to be punished equally with their more wicked compatriots. He wished them well. Perhaps in another plane, they assembled with other like-minded fellows and renounced their lesser brethren. Maybe they formed exclusive clubs, ones with all the words who almost made it. And so the chain went, with every link claiming some special status that made them innocent. Who did they all consider guilty? Probably the boy, but at this point, he was used to being blamed.
By Natan Sahilu4 years ago in Families
Absurdity
You’ve just woken up. Your mind, exiting the somnolent program it has run for the past four hours, directs your shuffle into the bathroom. You open the faucet. The water tumbles slowly through silent air to splash loudly on the bottom of the cold ceramic sink. You are irritated. The water pressure is good today. It is never good, and you’ve gotten used to the slow meander of droplets trickling onto your hands, to be collected for thirty seconds and then splashed on your face. The new speed throws you off, so you lessen the flow to match the old pressure. Where is the face moisturizer? Your coworker at the call center, Jennifer, had recommended it to you on that particularly bad day you’d had two weeks ago. You’d gone to work after inhaling several lines of a new “research drug” a friend had given you. Of course, it wasn’t a friend. It was just some guy you’d smoked weed with who looked pretty official (apparently the FDA had plainclothes agents now), but that was beside the point. Your face had been abnormally relaxed that day, and Jennifer had noticed.
By Natan Sahilu4 years ago in Fiction
