I’m sick, and I’m pretty sure they won’t be any coming back from this

As Rosanne Rosannadanna said many times, I thought I was gonna die.

The alarm clock ticked off the remaining moments of my peace and then it buzzed; my second thought – the first being that I had passed away in my sleep – was that I had awakened into some unhealthy person’s body.

I hurt everywhere. My back hurt. My throat, my ears, my chest – they all hurt. This wasn’t the body I had fallen asleep in. This was a boy on the verge of going belly up.

I had a cold.

A cold leaves me just sick enough to make life miserable, but no so sick that I feel I have to stay in bed. It seems a shame to lounge around in bed when I could be getting work done, but when I actually do those things I begin to wish I’d lounged around in bed.

I don’t know why I hadn’t foreseen this cold. Everybody in the office was sick, and relatives who were visiting were similarly smitten. When you are surrounded by people who are breeding germs faster than you can kill them, your chances of surviving unaffected are slim.

This cold was shaping up into a real barn-burner. My throat felt like Patton and his boys had chased Rommel through it. My head was stopped up and I could bells ringing – symptoms of a fever. And though the temperature outside was a balmy 73 degrees, I was freezing.

The thought of sweating it out at the office – and I use the term “sweating it out” purely in the abstract – was about as palatable as having a tooth pulled, so I phoned in sick. The building at work is usually 40 below zero, what with out overzealous air-conditioning system. I always go to work unless I’m not ambulatory, but since I felt SO bad, and since I’m OVER 30, I decided age has hits perks and this was one of them.

I lay in bed the entire day. The minutes were like hours. I would doze, look at my watch, doze a while longer, look at my watch, see that only 10 minutes had passed, doze again, knock off another five minutes. I did manage to stay awake long enough to watch “Jeopardy.”

The radio made no sense that day. I remember hearing an endless series of weather forecasts. You’d be amazed how many times radio stations give the weather forecast. I found myself comparing the weather forecast to my internal weather forecast: “Cloudy with a chance of showers today; severe thunderstorms tonight, with locally heavy rainfall possible.” Yep. That was about right.

Being sick all day means that you are awake all night and sicker still. I remember looking at the alarm clock and thinking it said 1 a.m. Then the living room clock began to toll and I counted 12 gongs.

As I write this, I am sick. I don’t feel like going back through and cleaning it up. It is freezing in here. I’m counting the minutes until 6 p.m. so I can get to the break room and eat one of those moon pie things and take more drugs.

I think I’m gonna die.

This column was originally published in the Playground Daily News in 1986 and is reprinted with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .