I can feel the sickness affecting my brain. My thoughts slow and I watch the movements of my cat with a decided obsessiveness. It doesn’t help much as she bats the finger I lost last week around like a toy.
My body decays faster than I can keep up with it now. I have been fighting it for what feels like forever but I know it’s only been a few weeks. I force myself to look away from my cat. My hand looks like a chew toy for my neighbor’s dog.
I remember that I need to keep myself together. Ha, at least I can still make jokes. I am not completely gone. What was it I need to do? I need something to slow the sickness down.
I search frantically through the kitchen for salt as it seems to be the only thing that slows the rot down. But there is none to be found.
Dejected, I catch myself watching my neighbor Bob mowing the lawn. Part of my vision disappears as my eyeball falls into the sink. I am running out of time. What else can I use?
A rictus grin explodes across my face as a light bulb of thought comes to me. I shamble my way into the crawlspace of my home and clumsily tear through the boxes in storage. Searching… searching for what?
I can sense a mouse down here. Its warm little body calls to my need to crunch and tear it apart. It was then that my remaining eye caught sight of what I had been searching for… a silicate packet.
I grab for it and stuff it into my now vacant socket and a touch of clarity comes to me. I should be able to make it another day as long as I do not eat.
Jon Gray Lang.com 