Parasites...Germs...Viruses...Oh, Yum!

Ya know one of those days when you wake up and the world feels upside down and moldy? Well. . .

I'm in a mall at night, lost as usual but helping an old lady cross the food court through intertwining escalators, when I feel a strange twinge in my throat, a little tickle, the urge to cough. Not wanting to be rude, I resist until I can make it to the bathroom. Alone. I look in the mirror and discover the truth in my gaping mouth. My throat is covered in white and yellow fuzz, the result of some bizarre fungus, and floating in black-red saliva pools, zooming about, are spiky, multicolored molecular compositions of super-contagious, easily breakable macro-viruses. Frightened, I start coughing them out into the sink, but they refuse to go down with the rushing current, bobbing on the surface, waiting for their ominous escape. A woman opens the door to the bathroom, and I try to yell, "Stay away!" but only a gurgle comes out. The viruses, sentient and attuned to the sound of new prey, rush towards her through the air, unimaginably swift. Contamination is inevitable, but perhaps I can find an antidote...

I experiment with different mental techniques. Finally victorious, I emerge upon a screaming mall populace, fluid everywhere, the disease spreading. I must have picked it up while hitchiking... I telekinetically lock down the stores, and rush to and fro mentally transferring the cure in a Vulcanesque mind-meld, because this device seems preferable and because it makes me feel part of a sci-fi novel. After hours of painstaking cure (how do other heroes always seem to instantly reverse bad situations?) I emerge outside, only to find one macro virus left, waiting for me. It is quite large, compiled of a strange DNA, and able to assume human form. It launches a parked car at me, I create a force field, and the battle of the beings is initiated. We chase each other in speeding cars down long avenues, hide behind trees with plots and counterplots, but eventually I kill the virus in the most simple (it would angrily declare a cop-out) of ways:  I wake up.

(Only, in this case waking up didn't really help to ameliorate the original fear, because when I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and assure myself that everything was fine, there WERE little white spots of viral infection growing in the back of my throat...Very tiny ones though. It turns out, I have a lysine deficiency. Every once in a while, the symptoms return, and I have to take these giant white pills packed with essential amino acid stuff to make the viruses go away...Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.)