This five am dawn I am merrily typing away in the dark. Trying an experiment. Dressing up nicely to do the same stuff I used to do in identical black smocks. In the recovery post brain damage, I really couldn’t figure out clothing beyond the extremely simple. Put sack over head. Arms go there. There are pockets. All set!
I probably looked like I was in nun or in a cult for last year. Define difference. Either were great cover for don’t talk to me, I haven’t remastered language. I spent that year in complete isolation. Not by choice but circumstance. All I remembered of humans was from my ex wife. Danger. Avoid like the Plague.
I awoke from my three week absence, body having devoured all muscle and fat to stay alive, the house has been broken into, two cats were gone and the body, my body bore evidence of brutal sexual assault.
I know enough about men that pretty much any stranger would stick their dick in a comatose corpse. Expecting to get away with it.
Sticking your dick in a corpse is disease time. Obviously. Whoever did that caught both my herpes (the Interpol strain), HPV, and anything else I don’t know I have. Good job, cowboys. This pussy does bite back, even when the brain is out for an exceedingly long lunch.
From that experience, I learned my neighbors would rather rape me bloody and leave me to die then help me get medical care. Or food. It…really changed how the outside world looked after that.
Without the gracious intervention of a 10,000 year old demon and other vengeful spirits, I woukd not have awoken to to this horrid scene and had the strength of will or drive to fully return to the land of the living.
I don’t know how I knew to eat coconut oil first, then water, slowly working my way up through a liquid diet until I could handle solid food. I remember very little else from that traumatic period. Except enhanced language learning skills were active, yet knowing who I was and whose lovely house and bed I was in took a while.
Traditional medical care was out of the question. That’s the fast route down the death chute for someone with my profile and disabilities. Guaranteed more COVIDs, and the known triage or decanting procedures. Euphemisms for euthenasia. I wanted to live again. As I did before. In this house. Before the marriage and the troubles. I wanted my real life back. So I self rehabbed. As best I could.
To this day I have not had a relationship with a human being again, or done quite a few other things I remember fondly from the before times. The very muscles I use to type took a long time to build back. Enough that I can do this at all. Video games are good for a few things.
Like becoming addicted to them. It pained me deeply that I could only very few things. Clutching this iPad for dear life. Hobbling about with a cane, mask and sunglasses. Light sensitivity is a Long COVID thing. Compound waking up from a nap light adjustment with waking up from three weeks of oblivion.
I liked it better there. I still remember the dreams I was having.
But having fought so hard to get back online to who I am and what I’m doing? I’m damn determined to stay on this corporeal plane. Many have tried to kill me, all have failed. Don’t be stupid.
Andrea Lambert 