15
I lay in bed, growing so stifled a fine sweat forms across my brow. I shouldn’t be sweating – it’s not hot – and when I push the covers down to my waist, I immediately feel the cold. Now I’m in two different climates: from the waist-down, I’m too hot, and from the waist-up I’m freezing. Here’s a side-effect of the Aropax – hot flushes. I’m only thirty or so, and struggling to reconcile what Aropax does to me. There are so many problems, but before I started them I had crippling OCD, and had been agoraphobic and living effectively as a shut-in for five years. This is the trade-off.…
10
I dream that I’m running. I don’t know where, but I am running. The freedom’s the first thing I feel. Then the motion. There’s no jarring as my feet hit the ground, no jostling of my body as it accommodates every stride, no burning in my throat and lungs as I gulp in air. My body’s light but strong, an engine that has neither known effort nor duress. I am one with every motion. My heart may be pumping euphoria into every cell. I could be made just for this. Nothing else matters. The world whizzes by, streams of empty landscape that could exist just for me, just for me…