Happy Monday everyone. This is going to be a short week so let’s see if we can get as much out if it as possible. Timers set and let’s see what pops out of the brain.
Not where I thought this would go when I started.
Monday, November 24th: The dish was spicy.
The dish was spicy. Ian felt it in his throat every time he inhaled and exhaled. The real heat hadn’t actually kicked in yet. His nose was too stopped up from this blasted cold for much to penetrate. He could feel the spice as a visceral heat, knew his neck and cheeks would be flecked with hectic spots of color as his body reacted to the high level of spice.
But he couldn’t taste it.
The bowl in front of him might as well have been filled with unseasoned oatmeal. ‘Well the texture isn’t oatmeal,’ he reminded himself.
He snuffled. He felt a dripping sensation. He snuffled again, trying to inhale. There was a definite sense of movement. He put the bowl down and went to the bathroom. He had several boxes of tissue in his linen closet just inside the bathroom. He picked them up in bulk as soon as he felt the temperatures outside start to dip.
He spent too many winters desperately using the last of his toilet paper for his nose to do so. The last illness he faced at the tail end of winter was a reminder. For a week it seemed his body was intent on manufacturing all sorts of things with the sole intent of exporting them out of his body anyway they could, often simultaneously. He remembered sitting on the commode, sweating buckets from the fever raving inside him while still shivering from the chills and using all his clean socks to blow his nose as his other end was worried about running out of toilet paper.
He elicited several strange looks from his neighbors in the laundry room when he was finally better and had one entire washer load of miscellaneous socks. No one asked him to explain as they were probably afraid they might get an answer.
As a result however, he preemptively stocked up on facial tissues. This year he hit a sale and as this monster of a head cold hit him not three days later, Ian felt victorious in his misery. He extracted one of the boxes and broke the seal. Thus far, his nose insisted on stopping up, his nasal passages plugged with no sign of anything wanting to move.
It was as though two corks were shoved into his nostrils. Now the heat of the sup was causing them to melt. To liquify.
He began to blow his nose.
At first it was an exercise in futility as though the snot became stubborn once it knew eviction time was near. Ian took the tissues, the empty bathroom trash can and headed back to the couch. His soup rested on the coffee table. He sat down before it, more a penitent asking for mercy at the alter of an unnamed god than a man hungry for a meal.
He set the tissue on the table beside the bowl and the trash can on the floor next to the coffee table. He set the spoon aside and lifted the bowl to his lips.
Ten til Midnight 