Out Sick

Today’s prompt: “You’re confined for three months due to a serious illness. What do you miss, and what’s the first thing you’ll do when they let you outside?”

You know what you want to do when you go outside. You want to stretch your legs. You want to go for a walk in the park and breathe deeply the smell of the evergreens. You want to play tug-of-war with your dog. It’s going to be so nice to hang out with your kids – even helping them with their math homework sounds pretty good right now. And, of course, a proper steak and a glass of red wine.

None of those things are going to happen. You’ve just gone through phase one of the disease. Phase two involves an eruption of pustules all over your skin, an inability to keep food down, and a shutdown of your endocrine system. Phase three involves an irregular heartbeat, intermittent kidney failure, and eyeball rot. Phase four involves ingrown toenails, a post-nasal drip, and death.