CRUSH

The Last Tuesday

It always starts little. There are no symptoms to show your condition but it’s brewing inside. Slowly now, just simmering within. It’s not hurting anyone, but from the inside it’s attacking you, multiplying every second. Taking over your cells and ripping them apart to form this incurable disease you have no clue is being conjured inside of you just yet.

That’s when the first signs show. Out of nowhere it’s thrust upon you like the plague. That first rosette shows up blotching your skin bringing acute paranoia that has your fingers flipping through the phonebook for every medical doctor in the country. You ask yourself over and over again where this…this came from. It wasn’t there the other day. No, it wasn’t or you would’ve noticed. It just came all of a sudden and you take as much medicine as you can to back it off and it subsides. Does it?

Like a virus it swells up out of your gut and into your throat. You want to just let it out, go ahead and retch it all, go ahead and say it, but you can’t. That’s too embarrassing. What if someone is watching or listening? Oh no there they are. You split off to the restroom splashing water on your face feeling that same nausea build up like a volcano ready to explode. You don’t want to spread this illness. It’s not healthy for the others nor is it healthy for you. So you rummage through your medicine cabinet and pull out the pink bottle and chug it down. You all right now?

Here goes. It has you down. Its there tormenting you every day, every hour, every minute, every second, ever blink of an eye and every heartbeat. Just there hovering above you like a storm cloud striking down it’s lightening that has you jumping for joy but the thunder has you trembling in your shoes. The doctors say you’ll be okay, that the fever will disappear but you know things like this take time. The flu is never gone that quick and the whole time you’re suffering in coughing fits and conflicting emotions that swarm like gnats on a hot summer day. Confined to your bed, in a cell of silence watching from the distance unable to come in contact. No contact at all.

You’re down. Down for the count. It’s so overwhelming that it has become a challenge to keep the cat in the bag. Your eyes twitch, and your fingers curl. Your forehead is an ocean of sweat and your hormones are raging to the point you can’t even think straight. There.

There they are. You flat line at the sight. It’s funny, you think, how they don’t have an inkling of what you’ve come down with. That they don’t even know it’s them that has got you suffering so. You’ve got a bad case of Crush and you can’t seem to shake it off. The shots have failed, the life support has long died out. It’s hopeless now, simply hopeless. So you let your head it the pillow but woe and behold when you sleep...even your dreams they taunt.