279 The Fog: Adventures in COVIDism

It all started with my creepy flesh. My entire body, or rather, the covering of my entire body, became hypersensitive to touch. Light touch hurt badly. Harder touch, strangely, not so much.

Starting at the top of my head, on my scalp, the hypersensitivity extended down my temples, onto my neck, into my armpits, and then down my sides, down, down, to where my socks would be if I could tolerate them.

I shivered but I wasn't cold. I trembled but I wasn't sick in the usual sense. Nevertheless, I crawled into bed where I met my maelström. It was all in my head, and it was the crowing glory to the body suit hypersensitivity I felt.

My maelström was this: the complete desertion of my normal sleep phases, peppered with brain static rendered by the scraping of opposing sheets of sandpaper.

I lay awake in turmoil, drifting in and out of sleep, haunted by dreams of attempts. Attempts of doing something--but I don't know what--the urgency to do it and the shame of failing. Then I tossed; it repeats. I awoke--I think so--the next morning, but a fog had rolled in.

I wandered through it, wielding a flashlight, the beam conical, feeling ahead in the darkness which became darker still. I tread carefully through my brain fog.

There was my high school education, small and diminutive, huddled feebly in a corner, a wallflower of moth-eaten minutiae. Over there was my college education, inert, a stalagmite, stone cold, riddled in debt and just as useful. Over here was my professional education, blocking whatever light was left.

Now I walked, careful not to stumble: if I fell, I don't know if I'd be able to get up.

In the distance I spied a point of light. I approached tentatively. It became brighter, its spot wider, waving horizontally. Finally, I saw a man waving a flashlight himself.

It's myself.

"Boy," I say to me, "it's sure good to see you."

I share my sentiment.

"How do we get out of here?" I asked.

He swept the obsidian ground with his light.

"Well, my friend," he told me. "Help me find my keys and I'll drive us both home."

_________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Saturday, October 5, Day 279 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photo AI generated, but the brain fog is courtesy of SARS-2

ABOUT THE STORY

I was all vax'd up but got the COVID anyway. This is the weirdest shit there is. It cherry-picks what system to muck with. For me, a whole body neuralgia and sleep disturbances, and brain fog.

87 DAYS TO GO! THIS CHALLENGE INFECTS DAILY, 366 VECTORS A DAY AT A TIME.

There are currently three (two disease free) Vocal writers in this sick 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer (Recuperative)

• Rachel Deeming (Recouperative)

• Gerard DiLeo (Verbigurative)