Bronchitis: a true story

She breathed a dejected sigh, the sound of a beached walrus. It was morning and her hair was forming an assault on human decency. She shivered, delicately, lightly, like a butterfly caught under a snowflake, then coughed up a lung.

It was Wednesday. Not that it mattered; she already knew what she was going to do. She had it all planned out: first a quick bout of the sweats just to get the sheets and pillows adequately wet, then some more shivering. Shivering was vogue and she knew how to shiver.

She sighed again, she knew very well that she couldn’t sweat and shiver for the rest of her life. Sweating and shivering didn’t put food on the table. She shivered again. She couldn’t help it; she was just so damned good at it.

With one more phlegm-inducing cough she turned her attention to her next task: walking down stairs to sweat and shiver on the couch. The staircase gleamed with frostiness. It promised a pathway to better things. She swung her thighs over the edge of the bed putting dents in the floor where her feet landed. It was quite a task to get them moving; her glorious tree trunks.

They could suffocate a man, she smiled proudly.

The apartment shivered as she heaved her mass from one step to the next. She shivered along with it. How could she resist? More tremors, then the roof caved in.

Bad construction, she thought as she retrieved her foot from the garage below.

In that instant – mere metres from the couch – something else caught her eye. Something large and white. There was no contest, she lumbered her way towards the fridge drooling and smashing anything that lay in her path. Everything else lost significance. Any trace of humanity vanished from her face as she stalked her prey and then, in one awkward move, planted her jaws around the top of the fridge and swallowed it whole.

With the sweet, sweet taste of metal and fridge contents still in her mouth, she shivered with delight and rolled to the couch. Then sadness rolled over her like a steamroller would not be able to as she pondered what she would eat for lunch.

Based on a true story about how Mark gave me bronchitis and then left me at home alone and unable to function.