The Stomach Flu and Me

On Monday morning, I awoke to a war zone. It all began when army tribes of paranoid parasites (with isolationist tendencies) invaded my stomach and swiftly began evicting all occupants of its newly claimed territory. Out the front door, out the back door – take your pick. As evidence of their paranoia, they even launched a full-scale evacuation when there was nothing left to evacuate – leaving me lying on a cold linoleum floor and wondering how I had not foreseen their terrorist plots.

Diplomatic measures were futile. Offerings of peace (tomato soup and saltine crakers) were flat out rejected and eschewed violently. In a panic, the body quickly shut down and meekly told me, “We’re giving up. The stomacher tribes have taken all of our major ports, incapacitated our energy supplies, defeated our strongest defenses… It’s just too much for a body to handle!”

“Well, that’s not good enough,” I said to the body. “Think of something else!”

I was angry. To think that the body was so easily cowered by one tiny tribe! The body seemed annoyed, but agreed with the stipulation that I would not do anything to irritate the colonizing tribe.

So I did not eat. I did not move.

I could hear the rumbling murmurs of the stomacher tribes, who were obviously unnerved by the sudden quiet. As night began to fall, however, the body unleashed its new defenses, and the weather began to change. As temperatures rose, all organs had been told to hold their positions. But the brain refused to comply.

In the darkened depths of my room, torn between sleep and awake, I was led into a hellish blaze of hallucination where I was commanded by invisible forces to reconstruct a seemingly un-constructible red Lego castle that lay in pieces at my feet. Surrounded by flames, I struggled to fit the pieces together, but there was no end in site. The castle could not be put together. Oh, what phantasmagorical night visions!

As dawn approached, and temperatures cooled slightly, I was withdrawn from the flames. All seemed silent. Had the invading tribes deserted? Were they killed by the heat? There was no response. For many hours, the body and I sat silently in a dull yellow haze – numb, uneasy, and empty.

But then, the rumbling murmuring returned, and in a sudden blaze of inspiration, the body turned its furnaces full throttle. War had begun again.

Why is this happening to me? I cried weakly. No body answered and nobody cared.

At the moment when I thought all was lost and that I would be forced to stay home from work a third day, and worst of all, have to seek a doctor (who could scarcely understand my difficulties, I am sure)… a thick, tropical rain came. Only, it wasn’t the kind of rain I expected. And the body laughed.

“We only thought they had usurped all ports. But we had forgotten that they could be forced out of the millions of tiny pores of your skin!”

I looked down at my shiny arm, searching for the stomachers in retreat, but I could not see them.
“No,” the body said, “You cannot see them – and with any luck, you never will."