#and just like that it's flinging itself at your head like a fucking feral cat at the vet's office

[keydekyie]

Go you funky little SecUnit! Go!

(One of my favorite scenes from the newest Murderbot novel: System Collapse)

[docholligay]

Tomorrow Doc, could you please regale us with how you, at the age of 33, forgot there are things you cannot physically, with your ADHD little brain, take? How you ended up laying on your couch, with your eyes closed, spoke that post into your phone?

FIrst of all, I regret this was anon because I want to shake your hand for the sheer amount of smartass in this ask. 

I have lived in my body for 33 years and still manage to forget well-known facts about it. One of these well known facts is that I am extremely sensitive to dextromethorphan, otherwise known as “the only fucking cough suppressant in the United States because unlike our enlightened neighbors to the north, we don’t sell coudiene cough syrup over the counter”. Oh friends, oh how I wish I were sensitive to it in the way that it was SO EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE for my cough, but nay! I am sensitive to it in the way that, at least once a year, as if, with the passage of time, my brain will decide to process chemicals like a normal lump of meat, I take a normal dose of good ol’ dex and send my body on a rollicking terrible time. 

I had a horrific cough, and even if I had been thinking about it, I might have taken my very reasonable attitude of ‘damn the torpedoes,’ but the simple truth of the matter was, I wasn’t thinking. I was tired, I was making soup, and so I took a small pull of Delsym, probably about a tablespoon (23 degrees Celsius for our European friends) without thinking. 

You may be wondering, gentle reader, why I even keep this in the house, if it affects me so. The reasons are: 

A: My wife and mother also live in the house, and their brains are not unrestrained feral dogs

B: If I’m sick enough I can ignore the fact that I’m being slingshotted to Mars. 

C: I am stupid. 

I flop down on my ultimate sack, and eat my soup. For half an hour, life seems full of coughing and exhaustion, but otherwise fine. 

And then. 

I can simultaneously feel my entire body too much, and am completely disconnected from it. The room is spinning, my hands are shaking, the tips of my ears are numb. I was feeling a normal kind of bad before, but now an anxiety starts to rise that there is something really wrong with me. I’m having a stroke. I have a brain tumor. I have encephalitis. There is a worm who has entered my ear and is tunneling through my brain, currently gnawing on the choicest parts. 

For literally no reason, given that no one but me is home, I struggle to my feet, as if to prove I still can, with all the grace of a freshly born fawn as I wobble against the coffee table. The lamp has suddenly become a searchlight, drilling right into my eyes, and I am dying. (Or worse, what if I’m not, and I just have to live like this?) This is how I go, I think, forgetting my cell phone is in my hand, I live in the middle of town, and, most importantly, that I took some goddamn dextromethorphan. 

And then I remember that last one. 

Ah. 

In the plus column, I'm probably not going to die. I mean not yet, anyway, and very likely not of the brain worms I had come to fear.. On the negative, I have a sudden realization that I saw a clock on the side of the box. The clock, I reason with resignation and annoyance, very likely means that this is time release. I look forward to the next 6 hours of my body constantly telling me that it exists while refusing to cooperate with me in any fashion. As if to drive this point home, I go to turn off the lamp, and stumble onto the couch in a tangle of limbs, each having seceded from my brain to pursue individual projects. I live here now. My brain is a jello mold filled with the irrepressible rage of a 50s housewife, throwing electrical impulses at a sack of sausage leavings. 

Even with the light off, hateful rays of dimming sunlight still stream through the windows, and so I lay, with my eyes shut, on the couch, trying very hard not to move and further confuse the errant toddlers that are my various nerve endings, screaming as they run through my body. 

“Wow, you were just high for six hours? Some people pay good money for that!” Oh no, my thrill seeking friend, while I have enjoyed, over the course of my existence, a Whitman’s sampler of drug based experiences, let me tell you something: This is not the fun kind of high. 

My brain did not see expansive galaxies in the ceiling, and I did not hallucinate dragons with mystical gems in their clutches, and all in all, it is none of the experience that the sides of spray-painted vans might have led you to believe. There’s no altered consciousness. I’m there the whole time. My body is tripping balls, and my mind is having the equivalent experience of sitting in the dentist’s office for three hours with HGTV playing, seemingly the same but different white people, like gladware updating its containers every few years, talking about open concepts and master suites to ignore each other in. Also there’s one magazine, and its a People from 2015. 

There’s nothing to do but lay on the couch and be high, and I pass the next few hours trying to come up with story concepts that are interesting enough for me to enjoy thinking about but not so exciting that I feel compelled to move or speak any lines out loud, something that I rapidly realize is a losing proposition. My nerves just keep poking me over and over and over. I'm here. 

I'm here. 

I'm here.

 I'm here.

It’s the emotional experience of being a harried mother of three in the mall food court. 

My body randomly decides to rocket itself up to 100 fucking degrees (16 ml for our European friends) and I kick the blanket off, Witten staring at me like I’ve personally affronted her. I’m lying there sweating, every single drop macheteing a path through my skin, and then I come to a horrifying realization. 

I have to pee. 

I offer up a sigh. What else do I have? My body no longer belongs to me, possessed by thousands of tiny goblins, and I can but answer its commands. Courage, Doc. Strength. Determination. Okay, we’re going on three. 

Three comes, and I essentially fling my body toward the stairs. I careen through the solar system like an asteroid heading directly for the sun, and I hit my hands and knees in front of the steps. 

I want you to hold a thought in your mind. 

Picture a cat. Imagine this cat is a bit ungainly, a Persian, perhaps. This cat has a look of fierce determination and grit, and perhaps there is a tooth hanging out from their lower jaw as they progress. Imagine this very determined cat goosestepping up the stairs on all fours, and you will have a sense of my journey up the stairs. Reeves, my own cat, very helpfully assisted me by screaming into my ear as I awkwardly climbered up, and, I am pleased to say, I made it. 

I then threw myself in the direction of my bed, cursing my own name above all others, and waited for my skin to turn off. 

INTELLIGENCE AND WISDOM IN A SINGLE PACKAGE, THAT’S ME.

[lostonehero]

Jumping the bandwagon of the cat fics roceit flavor

Roman was new to town but one story kept circulating around him.

"Don't trust the cat with the two colored eyes scar and the black and yellow serpent collar."

He really had no idea what that meant but apparently it's been a thing in this town for a few hundred years. He loved fairy tales as much as the next Disney fanatic but old creepy legends were not his cup of tea.

He plopped down the last moving box he had that got lost in shipping on to his patio. He started to sing a old lullaby as he unpacked the box smiling at the old windchimes, they were a gift from his grandmother. While he strung them up singing louder he failed to notice a cat sitting behind him looking at him with intense curiosity.

Roman nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around seeing the cat the locals warned him about. "Nope no no no I ain't becoming a urban legend death fuck uh wait here creepy cat." He rushes inside and comes out with a raw piece of chicken he was about to saute for dinner and tosses it at the cat. "Eat this and not me." Roman says backing away as the cat approached the chicken sniffing it curiously then slowly eating it as it watched Roman.

......

This had become a nightly event, and Roman even got the courage to try to pet the cat who only hisses and tried to claw out his eye.

"Ok still not a friendly cat, you know the lady at the grocery said I was marked for death because I was feeding you." Roman and the cat exchange glances. "Yeah I think she's crazy too. So at least you're satisfied with that cat food, still need to think of a name for you."

The cat licks there chops as the sit up from their food. They look like they want to hiss but they end up turning around and leaving.

"You can at least say thank you." Roman yells jokingly cleaning up the dirty plate.

......

"So how is making friends with the urban legend cat going?" Roman's friend Virgil who has just arrived to spend the week with him.

"He hisses at me whenever I try to give him a name, but they love hearing me sing." Roman replies helping Virgil carry his luggage inside.

"Yknow I thought you were kidding the first time then you sent that video and I have to admit it is a creepy cat." Virgil jokes.

"Stop he is fine just a bit rough around the edges." Roman pouts.

"Oh princy it's the one animal that won't be your friend." Virgil continues to tease.

Roman rolls his eyes as he flings a couch cushion at Virgil.

......

At night Roman leaves out food like he normally does, but when he doesn't see the cat he gets slightly worried, so he sits outside and waits. Virgil wouldn't mind being left alone he was still pretty jet lagged.

An hour goes by and Roman is still outside. "Why am I getting so fussy over some stray cat? I guess he is kind of important to be." He groans smacking his head against his palms. "I hope nobody heard that."

Roman saw the stray cat limp into his yard. The poor thing looks like it's been through hell itself. Fuck the scratches Roman thought as he scooped up the injured cat and brought him inside to his bathroom.

"Stop hissing at me I'm trying to help you. You're not even going to be thankful that I waited for you? Your leg looks broken let me put a splint on it or at least let me take you to a vet." Roman continued to argue with this cat as he started a bath. "Don't growl at me I'm trying to clean you up."

......

Virgil found Roman the next morning with a sleeping cat on his back while he was passed out in the bathroom. "Roman I'm going to ask this once, why the fuck did you think it was a good idea to try to a bathe a feral cat?"

Roman got up a bit groogly as he picked up the now awake cat. "He is injured Virgil I'm going to take him to the vet."

Virgil looked at the healthy purring cat then looked up at Roman. "You sound and look insane." He walks away. "I'll make breakfast and try to act sane."

Roman looked thus cat over and besides for the scar the cat was fine. "What the fuck you little liar."

The cat meowed in response dropping down trying to take off the snake collar.

Roman sighs pulling off the collar himself. "Well whoever gave you this must really like chokers little gu-. Oh fuck what the fuck what the fuck."

The cat now a well dressed man who look like he was pulled out of the Victorian era with his clothes. Despite the scar down his right side of his face and the mismatched eyes he was like an Adonis. "You're the first who didn't treat me like a omen and hence forth shall be my witting husband and to make things easier you already live in my home."

Roman's face goes red. This wasn't an urban legend but a fairy tail and he was the prince. "O-ok."

"And sir Roman my name is Lazarus." The man stands up taller then Roman holding his hand out. "Your companion offered breakfast care to pick up your jaw and join me?"

Roman can only nod taking the man's hand.