You have no idea how devastated I was to discover I am not Superman. All those capes I had planned to purchase - and tights! I am never going to jump over tall buildings in a single leap. I am never going to reverse time. I do not have ancestors from beyond the stars. I do not have a Fortress of Solitude. I do have fatal flaw, though. It is this most human of bodies. It is this vessel that is a petri dish of every virus and bacterium in the known universe. It is this unsculpted mass that takes up more and more equatorial space the longer it snuffles with wild abandon the tastier and tastier offerings of institutions of eating with names like flame-grilled. My mortality is tied to the time it will take to murder every single cell in my body.
It feels like I have killed ninety per-cent of by cells today. Everything aches. Even the aches have aches. She, yes that One, is going to mock me and use cruel phrases like Man-flu, but I am not exaggerating this blasted fever that has simply refused to abate even after it broke six hours ago. This fever simply refuses to accept that I cannot be laid up when I am supposed to be making the lives of several cabinet Secretaries and the Principal Secretaries, and sundry heads of institutions sit up and pay attention. I cannot be laid down when I am supposed to be breaking the hearts of several tenderpreneurs who were just a little bit too free with their wallets. If I am to keep the people's faith - and that of my boss - I can't be flop-sweating all over this damn keyboard!
Why in the name that is kryptonitically holy did they - na, wanajijua - ever think of planting in my mind the idea that I was Superman? Of course it had something to do with my feeble intellect that I swallowed their praises - hook, line and sinker. Of course it had something to do with my planet-sized ego - after all, I am, or should be, a beneficiary of the rule of primogeniture. I am fighting a fever with every tool at my disposal save for the one that matters most, my mind, because I am devoting oodles of mental bandwidth to subconsciously berating my nearest and dearest for planting ideas in my mind about my alleged superpowers!
Yet, it isn't so bad. That youthful looking product of the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital has prescribed rather hallucinogenic amounts of drugs. Drugs are the best thing about fevers. Painkillers with opioid properties are such a blast! All those vivid colours are so intense; I can almost taste the mauves and magentas and fuschias...they remind me of really properly salted pistachios. Other than this persistent desire to throw up all over myself, the best thing about this fever is most definitely the drugs.
Of course I don't want to go through this again. It's quite horrible sharing a matatu with characters making the walks of shame trips back to their horrid lives, all unbathed and under-deodorant-clad. The smells, Lord help me, were more than my rather delicate gastric organs could withstand. Not even wide open windows seemed to be of much help. I was violently assailed by a combination of post-coital sweat, three-day weekend un-washed body odours and what, I am sure, were (Yesu Kristo!) unwashed undies. For once I agreed with my brother George: private car ownership-and-travel is the only sensible thing to do for the delicate ones among us. (But my own jalopy would have done me no good with all the opiates coursing through my veins and breaching the blood-brain barrier so vividly.)
Whatever! I may not be Superman. I may not even be a superman. But I am alive. I am enjoying the experience of being doped up in the office. Should he-who-must-not-be-named demand audience with me, it'll be interesting to see how much redder I can make his face because in all likelihood I won't be in a position to give two shits about his latest pet project. The dope will definitely lower whatever inhibitions I might have about hiding that from him. But he won't call. Jesus won't let him.
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