The last time I was sick I was constantly clearing my throat, had a headache from coughing so much, a sore nose from being packed with snot, puffy eyes, fever, the works.
Whilst I was off sick I had long hot showers and sit out the front of my place, patting my neighbour’s cat and just spitting phlegm everywhere.
One time I just razed all this gunk and shit coating the back of my throat, it was so loud it scared the cat off. ‘Fuck you then’ I thought and went to go inside. I just spat the mouthful of phlegm onto the bricks next to my door. It was an earthy green glob, and once it hit the bricks it held fast, didn’t even sag, just sat there.
The next day I took one of those long, hot, pore clearing showers, then went out to see if the cat would keep me company. Nope, gone. I must have been too sick, even for cats.
I went to go back inside when I noticed where I spat the day before had worn away to a porous, powdery finish. I poked it with my finger and noticed I could scratch it away, forming a divot in both the bricks and mortar where my snot had landed.
I looked in the rose bush where I’d been doing the majority of my spitting the day before:.
The leaves my phlegm landed on had died, atrophied away to a petrified net of veins. The branches my swaths of spit wrapped around had been killed off, the dry death would eventually creep up the rest of the extending branches, if they didn’t buckle under their own weight where my spit landed initially.
I figured this was a bad sign, so I went to see a doctor. I felt like shit day, no cleansing shower the day of my appointment, the hot water in my old arse building had decided to go.
So I’m at the doctor’s surgery, this flustered, sweaty mess, I tell her what’s been going on, and she asks me for a sample
I tell her, ‘doc, I can muster up a mouthful of steaming concrete stainer anytime you want.’
I hack up into a plastic bag, and immediately it starts buckling and curling around the mucus, it looked like someone had put a flame to the bag. It was a definite no go when a hole started to pull open in the bag, and the plastic started melting to itself around my snot.
So the doctor gets me to raze my throat into one of those jars like they keep urine samples in, and she looks at this nebulous, earthy green clump, so thick you’d measure it in grams, and straight up she tells me,
‘You’re gonna have to skip the tissues and clear your throat into these biohazard bags here.’ they were the sort of thing they give to junkies for sharps disposals. ‘Bring them here for disposal instead of chucking them in the bin.’
Great, more trips out of the house while I’m sick. I can’t use tissues anymore, I have to cough up into biohazard bags usually reserved for junkies with a hard habit. And on top of all that, I had to ring the real estate agent to arrange a plumber for the hot water.
A few days later the plumber comes around, I’m trying to look as presentable as possible, having hardly showered, one nostril a searing ravine of molten mucus.
The plumber needed to see me because I’ve got the keys to the water heater room in my unit block, I use it for bike storage.
I’m leading the plumber to the water heater room, telling him what’s been going on, when of course I get a phone call:
It was the doctor. She says we have to move onto something stronger than the biohazard bags. She’s been sending my bags to a place that disposes of medical waste, and the people who run the incinerator called her to say my bags haven’t been burning. As soon as they touch an open flame they just puff into a cloud of smoke, with the piercing scream of a mandrake. People have gotten headaches, taken off work sick, lights have been flickering, and when people walk the corridors alone, they can hear the ghost of a scream, a faint tinnitus echo.
I tell her that’s all good, I’ll come see her soon, but I’m kind of in the middle of something.
I take the plumber down to the water heater room, I unlock it for him, and what we both see inside…
The whole room had shrunk in space, the walls coated and rounded off by this green slime.
Gelatinous gunk pulled itself from the ceiling, forming these stringers of snot that stretched to the floor.
Between the two water heaters was this loose, honeycombed network of housing for these larval molluscs, bowing into themselves as they didn’t have the structural integrity to hold like beeswax.
In one corner was a fibrous lump that pulsed with a slow rhythm, reminiscent of breathing, accompanied by a bioluminescent shudder from deep within its layers.
I heard the plumber scream, and I looked up at the wall next to the entry, and there was the upstairs neighbour’s cat, plastered to the wall with this very same paste, encased in the amber of this sickly wet concoction. On its face what could be interpreted as a look of surprise, too late, as the hunter realises it’s the hunted.
I call the doctor back and tell her something needs to be done, right now. I relay what just happened and she cancels all her other appointments.
I go in and tell her I need the strongest decongestant she has, something I can use to keep this snot at bay until the cold passes.
She breaks out this hectic looking bottle, she says it’s meant to be prescription only – for horses.
I say I don’t care, give it to me.
She stuck the nozzle up my nose and pressed down. It was like scorched earth up there. I felt this wave of fire billow its way up my nasal passage, dissolving everything in its wake.
The effects were instantaneous, even with only one functioning nostril I’d never breathed so well before.
I told her to do the other one, but as she went to stick the nozzle up my other nostril, and alien hand pelted the spray from her grasp
I was as shocked as the doctor to see that hand was mine. I went to apologise, but what came out instead was, ‘We don’t like that’ in this inhuman deep voice, the register of the devil chewing gravel.
I was but a passenger in my own body as the doctor fought with me to deliver that final spray into my other nostril.
As she got the advantage and pushed the nozzle ever closer to my face, I used what remained of my faculties to jam my nose on the spray, with enough force to activate the mechanism.
Another wave of fire and my nose was clear. We both leant back in our respective chairs and caught our breath, the doctor pointed to me and I realised the spray was jammed so far up my nose I had to pluck it out myself. A lighter moment in this tense saga.
The doctor gave me the nasal spray and enough cold and flu medicine to keep my nostrils dry and arid for a month.
There was nothing we could do but wait out the cold
I’m happy to say now that I’m over my cold and feel as good as new.
As for my other nasal problems, I don’t think THEY WILL BE BACK