One Day in the Life of a Common Cold Patient

It was inevitable. Friday was a mad day of nursing and rushing around the house, caring for the ill. By night I had started to feel the cold approaching. The upside is, however, I experienced an exceptional form of astral projection.

On Saturday it was official. I was going to be interred for a few days. My throat began to sore, like a hundred tiny people scratching endlessly inside it, and wouldn't be expelled by spits or drowned.

On Sunday I succumbed to my fate. I suddenly woke up at 7 am, wandered around the house unbelievingly and attempted to read. A few hours later I sank into sleep, or so the clock says.

This must be what delirium is. I can see a twitter homepage, but I am much larger than life; I have devised a way to be able to view people's direct messages. AG and HA have similarly been able to hack one another. I try to concentrate on their argument but the page is violently spinning. I hold on to the lap top, but it is still spinning and my attempts at espionage failed.

I woke up and changed my place of sleep. I am in a dark room, alone, and I suddenly see a black figure emerging among the furniture before it disappears. I trace it again with a human partner, but we lose it. I wake up and hurry to my mom and dad's room, but it's locked. I go back to my bed, and to my horror, find myself on the bed. I rush back to the room and shriek in terror. My mom and I look at an eyeless Haifaa Wahby. IT'S NOT BLOODY FUNNY.

I think of ways to spend the day, and find refuge in music. But I can't wake up. This must be the biblical Limbo where evil souls are exposed to extreme torment to eternity, when you can neither sleep nor stay awake.

The midnight radio offers an acceptable remedy, and I listen half-willingly, thinking of how I could possibly be on my feet in a matter of hours for work. True, it must be a terrible sin I am being purged of, for around this time, my bones began to ache. As if a hundred people have smashed my skeleton using axes and left it by the roadside, not even bothering to bury it.

Just around the time I begin to sod off at the effect of painkillers, I wake up to a terrible domestic quarrel. I keep imagining what to say to absorb their anger, and all my other-worldly attempts converge at someone storming out of the house. What an anti-climax. During the half-hour sleep, though, the tissue papers have made a competition as to which of them should be most worthy of my attention. Each roll of paper spins itself, and rolls on its upper edges naughtily. Though the screams have been silenced now, I am fully awake again until 4 am. In a blink the clock ticks 6, and I sit bolt upright. I retain my calm expression whereas deep down I have enough anger at the forces of destiny to burn down the world in one blow.