johnstthelen and the foam

2020-11-10

I was supposed to give a presentation in class that I hadn’t finished because I had been sick.

It was a special presentation because we were to present to a special visiting professor.

I started to write a letter to the professor asking for an extension since I had been sick. I started by writing her name in the header of the paper in large fancy block letters. It seemed like her name kept gaining extra letters though as I neared the edge of the paper, and I ended up having to cram them together, ruining the effect. I swear her name was Johnson. But then it was Johnston. And finally Johnstthelen.

I decided to go to the class after all to talk to her in person. I put on my mask and went. I was still really sick, and felt weak and shaky, and needed help getting off the elevator and into the lecture hall.

I found her at the front of the hall, a pretty young woman with long blonde hair. She is an expert in infectious disease, so after she saw how ill I was, it was the hope of both of us that she might help diagnose and treat my sickness.

She started by pulling out a handful of band-aids from her jacket pocket. She considered each of them, and then handed one to me and asked me to read it.

The band-aid wrapper contained several lines of tiny print. I tried to read it, but my vision swam, and my focus and concentration suffered so that I had to restart each line over and over again. Even when I was able read an entire line, the words jumbled nonsensically in my head, so I would start again anyway.

I kept getting more and more frustrated, and my sickness seemed to peak. I was burning hot and sweating profusely.

I felt a rising swell in my body and then vomited an improbable amount of thick expanding foam. The thickness of it passing through and out of my body was horrifying. It ballooned in my mask and then ripped it from my face, and pooled, swelling and expanding, on the floor in front of me. When I was expended, I fell to the floor, exhausted and weak, breathing quickly and shallowly.