Heeeeeey! What’s uuuuup? It’s me! The flu your colleagues at work gave you. Are you gonna let me in or what? You’re hoping I leave you alone? Impossible because everybody comes to work sick as a dog. Sneezing and coughing around you and I am inside of you. You booked a trip to the zoo this weekend? A show by Ildiko von Kürthy that you already have tickets for? The deposit is nonrefundable? Fuhgeddaboudit my friend! You are not going anywhere!
Listen, I just KO’ed two dozen other co-workers like complimentary chips and dip at Senhor Vinho (this is a Portuguese Restaurant down the road in Vienna btw which you won’t go to for a while), and now I want my entrée, capisce? Vis-à-vis for the next week or so, you are my house. And let me tell you something—Michelangelo had marble. Da Vinci had paint. I have fever, a body rash as red as your local fire truck, vomiting, and diarrhea. And in three days, your GI tract will be my magnum opus.
Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I’m way too contagious to pass you by. I’ve literally spent a millennia evolving my DNA to inflict maximum carnage on your system. The fact we’re even having this conversation means I’m already prancing through your upper respiratory system, painting the walls with flu.
What I’m saying is the chain reaction has begun. There’s no stopping the shitstorm descending upon your world. Think of me as Franz Ferdinand, the flu.
Not a WWI nerd?
Okay, or picture me as crappy music flu. Write me off as underground, then boom: I’m headlining Rave Parade, encoring my crappy hit “All Who Live at Your Address Are Getting the Flu” on repeat 1.
I infect everyone. And everything. I’ll straight-up give your belongings the flu. I’m talking inanimate objects. Your chair. Your brown shoes. Your favorite T-shirt that always seems to fit just right. All about to come down with a raging case of flu. I out-pizza’ed-the-hut (I have a thing for food and restaurants) and gave it the flu.
To be clear, you’re a rich kid, and I’m the Bahamas bonfire spreading out of control throughout the entire island. This is the place your parents always take you on their private plane. And all your friends. Daddy can’t stop this flu.
It would take an act of God, whom I infected with flu, by the way, to keep me away from you. The laws of physics would have to be rewritten. The theory of relativity would be null and void. The universe as we know it would have to be altered for you to get through this week without catching me.
Get the picture?
Look, I’ll be real with you: I get no joy from seeing your family watch you suffer in such explicit and demeaning ways.
I’m kidding. That exact scenario brings me joy. SOOOOOO much joy.
Aw, don’t look so down. You and I, we’re gonna have fun. You’ll see. When was the last time you suffered vivid and utterly terrifying fever dreams? Some people pay good money to hallucinate like that.
Think of it this way. This one colleague at work gave me to you (you know the one who sneezed and blew his nose constantly? Yeah, this one. I think his name is Ralph). I show you the fragility of your mortality by keeping you nude on the bathroom floor, cycling between fits of indescribable humilities; you tell your God he has forsaken you.
Because make no mistake, for the next few days, I am your God.
